Page 23

“So I did. The position is filled as of this moment.” De’Ath gestured, tipping his head, a lock of hair falling across his brow. “Get your things later. For now, take a seat. Do you need a pen? Paper?”

She fumbled with the clasp of her chatelaine in her eagerness to extract the pen and the small blue morocco notebook.

“I brought the essentials,” she said. “And one other thing.” She hesitated. “Not a thing. That is, I apologize, but I had to bring . . . I hope you don’t mind. I brought . . .”

“Fyodor!” Kuznetsov finished for her, stepping forward proudly. Only Fritz’s head was visible, peeping out of his waistcoat. Fritz chirped, then stuck out his tongue.

“Dear goblin!” The woman in the armchair leaned forward with a delighted cry. “Aren’t you an imp! I want to put you in a picture.”

This time, Nina did reach for Fritz, but he wouldn’t go to her. Too much stimulation. He wiggled out of Kuznetsov’s waistcoat and bounced between them down to the floor, skittering over the rug to a carved cabinet. Within moments, he was perched on top, beside a blue vase. Bollocks. An expensive blue vase.

“He’s very well-behaved,” asserted Nina, less a lie than a fervent wish. Dear God, if he starts breaking china . . .

De’Ath had removed his spectacles and was polishing the lenses slowly on his sleeve, watching Fritz with that amused smile. If the fate of the vase concerned him, he didn’t show it.

“He’ll fall asleep in another moment,” she added, another wish. “No one will notice him.”

“I’ll continue noticing, if that’s all right.” The woman hauled a large bag onto her lap and pulled out a sketchbook.

“Quite.” Nina fixed a smile on her lips. She’d worried about the impropriety, introducing a loud, potently aromatic, ill-tempered mammal into Casa De’Ath. But he’d already won the hearts of the occupants. Well, perhaps not De’Ath’s heart. Everyone else’s, though. Soon, he’d figure in poems, ballads, pictures, novels. With luck—lots of luck—he wouldn’t transform himself from hero into villain.

Kuznetsov clapped a hand to his heart and said something in French to De’Ath, who laughed and responded, also in French.

Nina drifted to a Morris chair near De’Ath and plopped into it, ears burning. She felt—oafish. Embarrassingly inadequate. Kuznetsov was disheveled, yes, but his very raggedness seemed proof of intellectual preoccupation. He had a cultured mind. Everyone did in Casa De’Ath.

Praying that they wouldn’t all begin speaking in French, she set her ink bottle on the side table, opened the blank notebook to the first page, and composed her face. She had a secretarial demeanor at least, with her pursed lips, and her plain dress, navy with thin white stripes.

She couldn’t concentrate. New worries intruded. What if Fritz had eaten too much orange? Fruit rarely sat well. The finely knotted Persian carpets on the floor looked older and rarer than those in Umfreville House, intricately ornamented with dense, curvilinear designs. If Fritz messed them . . .

Her lips screwed tighter. She began to scrawl with the steel nib of the pen, spelling out the only words of French in her vocabulary.

Boudoir.

Volupté.

Merde.

“Miss Finch,” said De’Ath, and her pen skipped. Hastily, she scribbled out the column. She realized Kuznetsov was heading for the door and almost rose in a bid to make him stay. Too late. He disappeared into the hall. Her benevolent guide. Suddenly bereft, she turned her eyes on Alan De’Ath.

He was settling his spectacles on his nose, an arm draped across the back of the love seat. “Let me introduce the Duchess of Weston and Miss Holroyd.”

Nina kept her lips together. Secretary. That was her role. No gaping. Elegant deference. But how to display it? She dipped slightly in her chair, a discreet bow. The duchess didn’t notice. She’d twisted around to sketch Fritz, who huddled against the vase, very much awake.

“He’s a perfect gargoyle,” said the duchess. “I might add wings.”

Nina cleared her throat but thought better of speaking.

This was the East Ender who’d painted Endymion, a massive, mythically styled nude modeled on her future husband, the Duke of Weston. Even Jack, who on principle ignored the hullabaloos that attended the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibitions, had taken note of that sensation.

The Duchess of Weston formed part of a clique of modern painters, all female. The Sisterhood. Aside from the ubiquitous engravings of Endymion, Nina hadn’t encountered their work. Over the course of her life, she’d spent thousands of hours in the National Gallery, copying the paintings in the collections, training her eye and her hand. But she never set foot in the galleries devoted to the latest canvases. Jack wouldn’t allow it. Too risky, rubbing elbows with the habitués of those exhibition rooms—critics and collectors, the very people who’d evaluate and buy their forgeries. She had no personal acquaintance with any artist of any fame.

She and Jack focused on the dead artists exclusively.

Until De’Ath had lectured her on the relationship between the trade in old masters and the depressed sales of new pictures, she’d never considered the negative impact forgery might have on living painters.

Did it make her conscience prick?

“We were just discussing Lloyd Syme’s impenitent stupidity,” said De’Ath’s other guest. Miss Holroyd, by process of elimination. Also a member of the Sisterhood, if memory served.