The Duke Heist (The Wild Wynchesters #1) - Erica Ridley Page 0,84
“Not everyone lives and breathes art.”
“Lawrence does,” Chloe said.
Jacob wiggled his brows. “Lawrence does, does he?”
“Er, Faircliffe,” Chloe corrected quickly. “His Grace. Who has our painting. I hope.”
That got their attention. All their eyes turned to him at once.
Elizabeth tapped her fingers on her sword stick. “Do you have it?”
“I do,” he admitted. “Why are there two copies?”
“Who knows? We only care about ours.” Chloe’s eyes were fierce. “It’s a piece of Bean and an intrinsic part of who we are. Puck & Family is us.”
All six siblings touched their fingertips to their hearts, then raised them to the sky.
How Lawrence yearned to be part of such a tight-knit, caring group. To know what it was like to care for someone so much and be an integral piece of something bigger than oneself. To love unconditionally and be loved unconditionally in return.
“Well?” Great-Aunt—or, rather, Tommy prodded. “Will you return our painting?”
He certainly couldn’t hold on to something that meant that much to them. Particularly when it was an object that no longer belonged to him.
Lawrence nodded tightly. “I shall.”
They erupted in cheers and began talking over each other at once.
He watched them make plans amongst themselves in silence, as if he were a distant observer in a lonely theatre box gazing wistfully down at a fantasy world below.
When he handed over the painting, that would be it. The Wynchesters wouldn’t need him anymore.
They had never been interested in him from the start.
27
As soon as Lawrence returned home, he hurried to the library. This was where he’d brought all of the artwork his wastrel father hadn’t managed to lose over a whist table. Or, apparently, sold off to his friends.
The majority of the paintings on the walls had come from the country seat. The rest had hung throughout the town house. They had even found a handful of forgotten paintings tucked away behind a sideboard in his father’s study. Lawrence had wondered why.
He now supposed that his father had removed them from the walls because he intended to sell them. The selections made sense: the rejected paintings had unusual subjects for an aristocratic household. Besides, if Father happened to have a near duplicate of the same painting, why bother to keep both?
Which begged the question: Where was the duplicate? Neither Lawrence nor the staff had come across any additional artwork, or it would be displayed here on the library walls.
He thought back to the night of his father’s accident. Father was impulsive and reckless in all things. Apparently, the duke had been fleeing the scene of a crime, having just stolen a painting from the Wynchesters. He’d driven himself in a curricle that did not survive the crash.
A broken axle had thrown Father to the street, where one of the horses kicked his stomach and his leg. Lawrence was eating supper alone in the dining room when the front door banged open and the corridor filled with heavy footsteps and panicked voices.
That was when Lawrence glimpsed the painting. It would not have registered, had Father not seemed more concerned about its safety than the state of his fractured limb. Lawrence summoned a surgeon to inspect the injured leg. Father seemed fine. Once his leg was splinted, he took the framed painting into his study and did not emerge for hours.
By the third morning the old man could barely speak. He was drowsy and nauseated, and his limbs had swollen alarmingly. The sore leg was not the gravest concern after all. When the horse kicked Father’s midsection, organs began to fail inside. There was nothing the surgeon could do. That night, Father was gone.
The painting must still be in his study.
Lawrence strode from the library to investigate at once.
The study had been dusted and swept but otherwise it was still the way Father had left it. A pile of journals here, a deck of cards there, a stoppered bottle of brandy next to an empty glass. The bare shelf where the cherub vase had once stood. Nothing on the walls.
He turned in a circle. Father had taken the painting without permission. He would have hidden it from view. Perhaps even removed the canvas from its frame.
Lawrence would find it.
Blood rushing in his ears, he lit every candle and sconce in the room. He was no longer willing to live beneath his father’s shadow.
He flung open drawers, yanked tables aside, tossed papers about. The study was not a shrine. He could tear down the walls with his bare hands if he wished.