portrait feels like a Dirk Channing, and that is all anybody will care about.”
Oak touched her cheek. “That painting is a forgery, and not a very good one.”
This mattered to him for some reason, while to Vera… “Nobody will believe it is a forgery, and unless I leave this vile, stinking, cesspit of a city, Longacre will make trouble.”
“As he’s been making trouble, apparently, for years. He tried to convince me that you were like Anna, dispensing favors in all directions, but now I wonder if Anna was like Anna, or if Longacre spread the same lies about her that he did about you.”
Vera could not think when Oak was gazing down at her so sternly, when he was close enough to touch and cling to. She sidled past him and took a seat on the sofa.
“Richard was the reason Dirk’s friends thought I was fast?”
“I am certain of it. Did you know Richard and Anna were engaged at one point?”
Oak came down beside her, and Vera wanted nothing so much as to throw herself into his arms. But that was no solution to anything.
“I knew they were distantly related, second cousins, maybe third, but I didn’t know they were engaged. Why does that matter? Longacre has decided to ruin me, and I want to be far, far away when that happens.”
Oak’s touch on her shoulder was as light as a kiss. “What a coincidence. He’s set about to ruin me too.”
She caught his hand in her own. “I do not understand, and I am sick of feeling like a simpleton. Whether it’s my ignorance of art, or my inability to see an enemy standing right before me, or the intrigues and schemes Longacre is weaving… I want to go home and never leave Hampshire again.”
Oak wrapped her hand in both of his, his grip warm and firm. “Maybe that’s what Longacre wants. Maybe his objective is to ensure that we both scamper away, trembling in fear of him and his vast influence in the art world. I am not inclined to oblige him.”
“Oak, he will ruin you. You have waited years for a chance to take your place in London’s artistic community. You have talent, your family here will support you, you deserve…” The damned tears tried to ambush her, but she won that battle by virtue of pure stubbornness.
“Longacre told you to either pose for more nudes, or he’d resume his nasty gossip. Did he also tell you he’d ruin me if you refused his coercion?”
“Exactly, but, Oak, if I do pose for him, he’ll ruin you all the same.”
Oak tugged her hand, and she sat back so he could wrap an arm around her shoulders. “Explain yourself.”
“If I pose for whoever Longacre has recruited for this project, you will go happily on your way, painting this or that commission, submitting to the exhibitions, occasionally lecturing at the Academy, and making your way ever closer to admittance.”
“My dream come true.”
“And Longacre will make it a nightmare. Sometime soon, he will ask you to do a few canvases for him, and you will realize they are to be sold as forgeries. He will threaten to start talk about your brothers’ club, to malign you, to support a rival if you don’t accommodate him. You will have your membership in the Academy if and only if Longacre wants you to have it, and by that time, you will be as bitter, manipulative, mendacious, and scheming as he.”
Oak was quiet for a moment, his lips against Vera’s temple. The tears threatened again, because the moment was both so sweet and so bitter.
“He told me,” Oak said, “if I did not paint a nude series of you, in Dirk’s style, that he’d set about my ruin immediately—and yours, too, of course. I refuse to accommodate him, Vera.”
Well, of course, Longacre would choose Oak to execute the portraits. Oak had the talent, and for Vera to model for him—a former guest at Merlin Hall—would appeal to Longacre’s twisted sense of revenge.
Vera made one more try to reason with the man she loved. “You can either have eventual membership in his bloody Academy, Oak, or you can have a very hard road, with Longacre thwarting you every step of the way.”
“You had that hard road,” Oak said. “You didn’t know he was thwarting you, which in a sense made it even worse. For that alone, I will see Longacre pay.” Oak spoke calmly, and his thumb moved over Vera’s nape in lazy circles. He