May 1816
Caroline, the Duchess of Aylesmore—Caro to her family and closest friends—took the pale card that Singleton, the household’s butler, presented to her. On it an engraving of a picture frame enclosed the words:
Eamon Stone, Esq.
Assessor, art collections.
Paintings, sculpture, objets d’art.
Valuations, estate sales, art placement.
Very small letters at the bottom declared: No fee for consultation.
The very reason Caro had hired Cheswell’s gallery was because they would send someone to value the paintings at no charge. Mr. Cheswell had assured her in his last letter that they would take their fee from the proceeds of any sale.
“Who is it?” the dowager duchess demanded imperiously from her favorite corner of the sitting room. Her voice retained the aristocratic French lilt from her girlhood. “The picture man at last?”
“It seems so,” Caro answered. “They’ve sent someone called Mr. Eamon Stone. Do you know him, Maman?”
“Stone.” The dowager lifted her keen blue gaze from the novel she perused. Her face was thin and pointed, her figure as elegant as the day she’d married the Fifth Duke. “There were the Bedfordshire Stones, but no, they fled to the Continent years ago, to escape their creditors. Living in Lucerne now, I believe, near the lake. Beautiful land. I traveled there when I was a girl.”
If Cheswell’s gallery didn’t purchase a few paintings from the ancient Aylesford collection, Caro and the dowager, along with Caro’s son, Leo, might find themselves fleeing to Lucerne as well. They’d learn to eat goat’s cheese and climb about the mountains behind their tiny chalet.
Caro had only a dim idea where Lucerne was in Switzerland, but mountains were bound to be nearby, as well as chalets. And goats.
“This Mr. Stone is here in London,” Caro answered.
“Then I do not know.” The dowager lightly touched her lip. “I find that odd. Ask him who he is when you speak to him.” She returned to her book, unbothered.
“Where have you put him, Singleton?” Caro asked.
The Grosvenor Square house of the dukes of Aylesmore was vast, with a complex hierarchy of rooms into which visitors should go. The first-floor drawing room was for dukes and duchesses and the occasional royal visit, while the second-floor drawing room housed lesser nobility. Various nooks and crannies existed for everybody else, based on lineage and rank. Singleton knew every place for every person.
“Ground floor reception room, Your Grace,” Singleton answered in his lugubrious tones. He wasn’t an ancient specimen, his hair still black, his gait sprightly, but he’d cultivated an antiquated air. “The blue one.”
Caro felt sudden pity for Mr. Stone. “Oh, dear. That bad, is he?”
Singleton looked down his long nose. “He has no precedent, Your Grace.”
Which meant Singleton hadn’t known how to classify him. A man who assessed paintings for a gallery likely was not much more than a tradesman, but Singleton’s hesitation indicated that Mr. Stone might exist in the space between tradesman and impoverished gentleman struggling to earn a living. The end of the long war with France had returned many such men to England.
“Well, it’s a pleasant enough room.” Caro kept hold of the card as she moved to the mirror and forced a stray lock of dark hair back into its severe knot.
The dowager’s head popped up again. “The blue reception room? It isn’t pleasant at all. It’s dreadfully cold, and the chairs are hard. Apologize for it, my dear. We don’t want the picture man to rush off.”
Caro turned from the mirror. “Are you certain you still wish to sell? These are paintings from your husband’s collection, after all.”
Caro had never met the Fifth Duke of Aylesmore, who’d been gone before she’d married his son. By all accounts, he’d been quite a man.
“He liked looking at the damned things more then he enjoyed talking to people, including me,” the dowager answered decidedly. “If he could have married them, he’d have been very happy. Sell them, my dear. We need the blunt.”
As always, Caro’s mother-in-law spoke to the point.
“Very well.” Caro tucked the card into the pocket of her everyday gown and left the room, followed deferentially by Singleton. “Send him to the second-floor drawing room,” Caro instructed the butler.
By Singleton’s intake of breath, Caro knew this was a breach of protocol. Only barons and above went to the second-floor drawing room. But a worse breach would be for her to descend to the blue reception room to greet Mr. Stone herself. Singleton would faint in horror if she did that.
Caro and the dowager—the former Eugenie Duval, daughter of a French marquis with a very long title and surname—had been reposing in the private sitting room on the fourth floor, a level Caro rarely went below these days. Her bedchamber was directly above this floor, with the nursery above that.
