“Mary’s invited me to the exhibit’s preview tomorrow.”
“Then you’ll meet Miss Herford, the artist who drew Micah Miller. She sent a note with the sketch, recalling another attack several weeks ago. Someone ransacked the printing workshop at the Victoria Press.”
“What’s the connection?”
“They printed the catalog for the women’s art exhibit. Miss Faithfull, the director, dismissed it as harassment directed at her female compositors and proofreaders. It seems their gentlemen colleagues in the printing world do not welcome them.”
“You surprise me,” Julia said dryly.
“We found an exhibit catalog in Micah Miller’s bedroom. It had ‘Property of the Victoria Press’ stamped on the title page. It’s the copy stolen from the window display. We’ll charge him with the attacks on the printshop and Miss Allingham’s studio.”
“Do you know what drove him?”
“Jealousy and obsession over his stepsister, Margot Miller. She’s in the painting on the catalog’s cover.”
“And she posed for Mary’s picture—the damaged one.”
Tennant nodded. “Micah doesn’t want to share Margot with the world.”
“What will happen to him?”
He shrugged. “Prisons are crowded. A guilty plea will bring fines for damages and a suspended sentence. And a warning to stop stalking his stepsister.”
“Margot Miller . . . Annie’s vicious letter about her, the catalog cover, and Mary’s vandalized painting—all Margot.”
“The drawings Micah stole from Miss Allingham were of Margot as well.”
“At every turn, you come back to her.”
“It seems so.” Tennant eyed her cape and medical bag. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “If you’re leaving . . . shall we share a cab? I can drop you off at Finsbury Circus and continue to Russell Square. It’s no trouble. That is . . .” He felt oddlytongue-tied, and he cursed himself for behaving like an awkward schoolboy.
“Delighted.” Julia stood and picked up her hat. “But on one condition. That we talk of anything or anyone except Margot Miller.”
Tennant held her cape for her. “Agreed.”
CHAPTER5
Charles Allingham circled the gallery and returned to where he began his tour of the women’s exhibition: his sister’s picture,The Three Graces. He stroked the fair hairs of his Vandyke as Mary and Julia joined him.
Two Graces turned their heads to gaze at the bold-eyed, auburn-haired woman in the picture’s center. Undraped, she looked directly at the viewer, a languid hand covering herself below, the other trailing a lily seductively along her cheek.
Allingham tucked away his spectacles. “ ‘And from her eyes, desire—the melter of limbs—trickles down when she looks.’” He answered Julia’s curious glance. “Hesiod’s description of the Graces.”
Mary took his arm. “Showing off your classical education, Brother?”
“Showing off your marvelous technique, Sister?”
They are a golden pair, Julia thought.Tall and fair and gleaming.
“Not to mention yards and yards of female flesh,” Allingham said. “No wonder that old zealot frothed at the mouth.”
“Not the response I sought, believe me.”
“Still, that Grace in the center could walk out of the frame and strike a man dead.” Allingham lifted his sister’s hand to his lips. “My dear, I envy your talent.”
“You’re wasting yours, Charles,” Barbara Bodichon said, arm in arm with Louisa Allingham. “Exert yourself. Pick up a brush again.”
“My dear Madame Bodichon, I’m content to be a painter in words and a promoter of art—a writer, critic, and publisher. All the real talent is on the female side of our family.”
