The Pearl (The Godwicks #3) - Tiffany Reisz Page 0,1
to stand? Arthur would demand. Well, in that case he’d have to learn how to pick himself up.
Easy for them to say. Charlie didn’t call them at four in the morning when he was too drunk to find a way home. They weren’t the ones who answered the phone when Charlie was detained by the police for starting a fight in a pub. No, it was Arthur. Always Arthur. “King Arthur,” his brother would drunkenly proclaim. “King Arthur saves the day again.”
The lift deposited Arthur on the top floor. He found a set of grand double doors at the end of the corridor with a brass plaque that read Penthouse.
He took a deep breath to calm his nerves, then knocked.
The blonde who’d given him the note opened the door. “She’s on the terrace,” the girl said. “With your brother.”
She pointed to a set of French doors along the far wall that opened to the outside. Before Arthur could thank her, she exited the penthouse, leaving him standing by himself in the entryway.
Arthur’s first thought upon seeing the interior of the suite was that his brother was flying in very high circles these days. He’d never seen a grander, more decadent hotel room, and he’d stayed in some of the finest hotels in the world when on holiday with his parents. The walls were gold damask wallpaper with black trim. An enormous gas fireplace with a black china marble mantel dominated the sitting room. To the right of it was a curving staircase that led to a second level, where he imagined he’d find a luxurious bedroom. Black leather club chairs framed the fireplace, and above the mantel hung an oil painting of a pretty young woman wearing a black raincoat and holding an umbrella. As the son of art lovers who owned dozens of galleries, Arthur reflexively glanced at the plaque on the frame as he passed it on the way to the terrace. The Umbrella by Marie Bashkirtseff, a Ukrainian-French painter. Not your typical bland mass-produced hotel art.
Arthur was nearly at the terrace when he stopped next to a golden velvet chaise lounge. Another painting was propped up in the seat, another original he recognized at once.
The subject was a handsome gentleman wearing a three-piece suit, with black hair and dark eyes, the subtlest smile on his lips…Lord Malcolm Godwick, thirteenth Earl of Godwick. The portrait he’d last seen hanging in the hallowed halls of Wingthorn, the Godwick ancestral estate. It should have been there now, so what was it doing here?
Arthur went quickly to the French doors and peered through one of the panes. For a split second, the sight was so uncanny, he thought the painting over the fireplace had come to life. A woman stood on the terrace in the rain, black trench coat belted tightly at her narrow waist and black umbrella overhead.
Not a painting come to life. Just a coincidence. Her umbrella was being held by someone, a young man facing the city. He needn’t turn around. Arthur would have known that rust-colored hair anywhere.
He pushed open the door and stepped onto the spacious garden terrace. It was filled with so many green plants and small trees, it was like walking into a miniature forest. He went straight to the iron railing to find his brother wearing an expression of pure defeat. Charlie was clutching the umbrella and staring down at his own shoes.
“What the hell are you doing?” Arthur hissed, shielding his face from the rain with his hand. Before Charlie had a chance to answer, Arthur turned to the woman. “Who are you, and why are you forcing my brother to hold your umbrella in the freezing rain?”
Arthur had expected a much older woman for some reason—maybe because of the commanding tone of her note—but no, she was young. Thirty, if that. She had chestnut-brown hair that hung in a long French plait over her left shoulder. Her face was lovely and her eyes wide, intelligent, and grey as the rain. Pale olive skin. Peach lips, full and soft. She wore a white-collared shirt under her coat, a pearl choker draped around her graceful neck.
And what was she doing while Charlie held the umbrella over her head? Feeding raw meat to a raven perched on a brass ring on the railing.
“Things aren’t what they seem,” she told Arthur. “Your brother offered to hold it for me. Didn’t you, Charlie?”
Charlie nodded without emotion. Something about the woman, the way she looked at Arthur,