“I am, for my sins.” Eamon gestured at the false Claude. “I’d be honored if you’d allow me to copy this piece. Not to sell,” he added hastily. “I would pin it to the wall of my dreary lodgings to brighten up the place.”
He’d already copied several paintings, courtesy of Caravaggio and Canaletto, that made his rooms a little more colorful.
“I suppose it would do no harm.”
Caro did not sound at all in transports that she and Eamon could be gazing at the same painting at the same time, even when they were apart.
And when the devil had Eamon become so bloody sentimental?
When he’d gazed into Caro’s green-flecked golden eyes, that was when.
“Continue loving the painting,” Eamon said. “I’m certain the original artist would be thrilled, even if he’s been dead and gone these several hundred years.”
Caro returned her reluctant attention to it. “You are right—the picture is beautiful, no matter who painted it. It would be a shame to toss it away because it isn’t worth the large amount it was supposed to be.”
Eamon wondered who’d managed to sell the thing to whatever Duke of Aylesmore had plunked down his money for it in the first place. The dukes seem to have been happy to pay for art without being very wise about it. They’d been the sort of purchasers who liked the look of the thing with no idea as to its true value.
“Did your husband treasure this?” Eamon asked.
Caro softened. “He actually wasn’t one for paintings. He liked some of them, but his true love was books.” She plucked her candle from its holder and continued down the gallery to the far shadowy corners.
A bookcase covered the end walls of the gallery, framing a doorway and climbing to the high ceiling above them. Books lined the shelves, tomes of all sizes bound in leather, cloth, and paper, some with covers cracking, others with the spines falling away from neglect.
A ladder hooked to a runner reposed at the end of the shelf, so the collector could climb to the top and caress the books there.
Eamon gazed at the shelves in dismay. “Quite a lot of them.”
“Leopold could never resist a book if it was dusty and faded,” Caro confessed. “He said that one never knew what was inside if one didn’t take a chance on it.”
Eamon pulled a small volume from a lower shelf, its leather so worn he could not make out the title. The binding gave an alarming creak as he opened the book, and the first two pages curled away from the threads that had fastened them to the spine. “I see he did not resist many.”
The book was nothing very ancient, a twenty-year-old reprint of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Eamon could have found this in a secondhand bookshop in Covent Garden.
“Leopold adored his books,” Caro said. “I sometimes teased him that he ought to have married them instead of a wife who only had conversation to recommend her, and not much of that. He would smile and say, Nonsense, my dear, then return to his reading.”
Her eyes filled with sudden tears, and she quickly turned away.
She’d loved the old fool, damn him. Eamon’s heart burned.
This was not a lonely young widow eager to succumb to the wiles of the first rogue who came her way. She’d mourn her husband until the end of her days, leaning against his pile of worthless books for comfort.
She’d been no empty-headed girl, proud she’d landed herself a duke, Eamon assessed. She’d had a true marriage with a man she’d liked and held in high regard, and she’d borne him a son. The newest Duke of Aylesmore was a product of this marriage.
“I must admit to you, I don’t know much about books,” Eamon said to give Caro time to regain her composure. “A consequence of my misspent youth. I was more apt to draw in the margins than read the words.”
When Caro turned back to him, her eyes were dry again but held sadness. “Mr. Clive examined them. He did not find much of value.”
Eamon was beginning to consider Mr. Clive a perfect fool. If he’d missed that the Rembrandts and the Claude were fakes, would he know a Shakespeare First Folio if it hit him on the head?
“It does no harm to go through them again,” Eamon said. “I am fortunately acquainted with those who have more expertise in books than me. My friend Wolfe, for instance, who grew up in homes with vast libraries, and my friend McCormick, who is a genius. By the bye, if the young duke has need of a tutor, I can recommend none better than Hayden McCormick.”
“Oh.” Caro regarded Eamon uneasily. “A tutor would be welcome, but to be honest, Mr. Stone, I could not pay the fee.” She flushed, embarrassed.
Eamon wanted to kick himself. She must think he was an obsequious leech, worming his way into her household, eager to discover something valuable so he could receive his commission. Now, he was suggesting he bring in his friends to take advantage of her hospitality, more or less demanding noblesse oblige.
“As myself, they offer their services gratis,” Eamon said, trying not to imagine explaining this to his annoyed friends. “McCormick loves to shape young minds, and Wolfe is at home among obscure texts. Let them come and speak to you about the books, in any case.”
“Well …”
