notion.”
“You are not merely good, de Beauharnais, you are brilliant. That you doubt yourself is exactly why Longacre must be banished from the Academy. He sent you enough minor commissions to keep you dependent on him and kept you from more ambitious and visible work. You are not the only person he’s abused like that.”
De Beauharnais seemed to be having trouble with his sleeve button.
“Let me do that,” Oak said, taking the little gold clasp from him. Oak fitted the sleeve button through the buttonhole of the cuff, then did the second one. When he would have stepped back, de Beauharnais caught him by the hand.
“I wasn’t bound for home,” he said, his grasp desperately tight. “I told you I was leaving Town, but that’s not… I wasn’t.”
Foreboding gathered low in Oak’s belly. “Andy?”
“You go at night,” de Beauharnais said, gaze on the carpet, “to London Bridge. You tie your boots together at the ankle—tie them tightly with a complicated knot, so tightly you can’t pull your feet out if you lose your courage. Sew your pockets full of rocks. I’m told it helps if you’re drunk. A wool cloak is best, because it becomes heavy in the water. You put a coin in a little bag around your neck—for the watermen or the mud larks, whoever finds you—and then you jump. A few minutes later, all your troubles are over. Tolly’s cousin went that way.”
“No,” Oak said, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. “No, you do not. Not ever.”
De Beauharnais eased away and turned his back, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket. “My uncle said I wouldn’t last a fortnight in London. I lasted six weeks before Longacre started… started in on me. That was nearly a year ago. I couldn’t see a way… Well, I saw one way.”
Oak allowed de Beauharnais a measure of privacy—and himself as well, because as bad as Longacre’s behavior toward Vera had been, this was worse.
“Longacre came after me when I’d been in Town less than a week,” Oak said. “I suspect that was because you had pulled free of his clutches. As long as he had you to do his bidding, other newcomers were safe. You had enough talent for whatever Longacre got up to.”
“I did four paintings for him,” de Beauharnais said, facing Oak, “in addition to whatever commissions he sent me. I will write to the buyers of the forgeries and claim there has been confusion regarding the works they possess. That will likely land me in prison—one of the patrons is quite wealthy.”
“No,” Oak said, “it will not. I have a different suggestion. We will sort out Longacre, and he will take responsibility for any confusion he involved you in. And I assure you, before you came to Town, some other talented prey stumbled into Longacre’s snares, and some others before that.”
“We’re not the only ones?” De Beauharnais wandered over to the Dirk Channing nude and ran a careful finger over the lady’s pale flank. “You’re sure of that?”
“Positive. I am equally certain we will be the last. Now tell me about the four forgeries.”
In the days leading up to the Montclair reception, Vera watched how a family with one foot in the countryside and one foot in the capital mobilized its resources. Sycamore’s traveling coach made another lightning dash from Town to retrieve Trenton, Earl of Wilton, whom Oak knew as a connection through his sister Jacaranda’s husband, Worth Kettering.
Kettering himself returned to Town, contending that his lady wife would disown him if he allowed a Dorning scheme to unfold without his supervision.
Other august parties were quietly recruited, including a marquess once thought dead on the battlefields of Spain—another of Worth Kettering’s clients, as it happened—an enormously tall earl who counted among Willow Dorning’s in-laws, and a half-dozen courtesy titles connected to the Dornings through the vast labyrinth of polite society.
Not a one of them had any claim to artistic expertise, but they had come when Oak needed them.
“I begin to see,” Vera said, “that the world I thought so broad and sophisticated was really just Dirk’s little corner of a littler corner.”
“Little corners can be complicated,” Oak replied, “and you look splendid.”
Vera had dressed for the Montclair reception in a creation of burgundy silk, one she and Sissy Banks had spent endless hours stitching. Her shawl was deep lavender, as were her gloves, and the ensemble honestly made her feel more than a little self-conscious.
Also pretty and daring. “You chose the colors,” she said, turning