A Lady's Dream Come True - Grace Burrowes Page 0,108
table, exchanged a glance. Oak had been watching his siblings exchange glances since his earliest youth, and those looks had never included him. He read this one easily enough: What has Oaky-dear got up to now?
Cam spoke first. “I thought you needed to conquer the Academy and storm London, paintbrushes affixed to your blunderbuss?”
“Shut your mouth, Cam,” Ash muttered. “What do you need?”
Ash was something of a family conundrum. He was as smart with numbers as Cam, as canny with people as Valerian, as physically robust as Hawthorne, and as good at strategy as Casriel. London’s matchmakers should have snapped him up and tossed him into parson’s mousetrap long ago, but he remained quite single and quite self-possessed.
“I need…” Oak considered the pictures in his head. “Vera and I need allies.”
Cam propped his boots on the corner of the table. “Has the fair widow mis-stepped?”
“No.” Ash had spoken at the same time as Oak.
“Cam, you are overdue for a thrashing,” Ash went on. “I will be happy to oblige you anytime you wish to step into the ring with me at Jackson’s. You, yourself, said she is smitten with Oak.”
“Ladies, when presented with a more attractive and youthful alternative, can get unsmitten,” Cam said. “Sensible ladies.”
Oak cuffed him on the side of the head. “Stop playing the brat. This is serious. Vera has done nothing wrong.”
“You would not care if she had,” Cam countered. “You are so lost to sense, you would dance naked in the streets of Mayfair for that woman.”
“Of course I would, and you are jealous.”
“I am. Utterly overcome. Envy is my middle name, and of you, of all the daft notions.” Cam smiled sweetly, and in the midst of a very serious matter indeed, Oak smiled back.
“About damned time,” Ash muttered, for no particular reason Oak could discern. “What do you need from us?”
“I need Cam’s big mouth, and your discreet asides, Ash. I need gossip, the very thing Longacre has wielded so skillfully against Vera and has threatened to wield against many a talented young artist. Except that our gossip will be true. Dirk Channing likely felt sorry for Longacre’s lack of artistic success, or perhaps Dirk had a guilty conscience because Anna Beaumont chose him over respectability. Longacre appeared to patch things up with Dirk, the better to spread lies about his former betrothed.”
“Hell hath no fury like a hack revealed as a hack…” Cam muttered.
Ash hit him on the arm, a mere love tap compared to the pugilism Ash was capable of. “We are to put it about that Longacre is a liar?”
“We will let that be our little secret,” Oak said. “For now, put it about that Longacre trades in lucrative forgeries.”
“Does he?” Cam asked, his smile acquiring a feline quality.
“He absolutely does.”
Ash’s smile bore a close resemblance to Cam’s. “Do go on…”
“I like this one better,” Oak said, standing beside de Beauharnais before the finished work. “A touch of haste has inspired you.”
De Beauharnais wiped his hands on a rag. “A touch of revenge. You really think she’s better than the one I did for Longacre? I walked a line with that one, trying to make the crime obvious, but not too obvious.”
“You succeeded. Your shadows are more restrained with this one,” Oak said, comparing the newest creation with the work he’d had shipped in from Merlin Hall. “You had a better example to copy from. Dirk’s rendering of Anna Beaumont simply wasn’t as good as this treatment of Hannah Stoltzfus.”
“I’m good,” de Beauharnais said, as if coming to that conclusion for the first time. “What do you make of the Anna Beaumont portrait Longacre has?”
“It’s genuine,” Oak replied. “Dirk painted many such portraits. I found eleven different nudes at Merlin Hall, all hidden behind lesser works. One of them is a Sapphic duo and nothing short of spectacular. Channing is well known for painting in series—duets, trios, octets—but what artist paints a series of eleven canvases? Longacre got his hands on the twelfth canvas—Vera didn’t even realize she’d sent it to him—and that gave him unholy inspiration where Mrs. Channing was concerned.”
De Beauharnais rolled down his sleeves. “You should call me out, Dorning. Mrs. Channing should call me out.”
“You’ve apologized,” Oak said, gesturing at the fresh canvas, “and you created this. I could never have accomplished what you did with the Stoltzfus portrait, particularly not in so little time.”
“I am good, aren’t I?” De Beauharnais fished a sleeve button from his pocket and began fumbling with his cuff. “What a