A Portrait of Love (The Academy of Love #3) - Minerva Spencer Page 0,8

manage to entertain yourself in the face of such deprivation?”

“She gave me an automaton.” His smile was blinding.

“Ah. And have you taken it apart yet?”

He gave her a scoffing look that told her what he thought of such a foolish question.

Freddie came to join them after depositing a small pile of correspondence on the salver by the door. “He is making his own automaton, aren’t you, Oliver?”

“Oui, Tante.”

Oliver called them all aunt and spoke a fluent mix of French and English that was beyond charming.

The door opened and his mother, accompanied by Mrs. Brinkley, with the tea tray, entered.

“Thank you, Mrs. Brinkley,” Honey said to the tiny housekeeper, who was looking a bit fierce.

“My pleasure, ma’am.” She plunked down the tray and then bustled from the room, no doubt headed back to the kitchen and a resumption of hostilities.

Beside her, Oliver’s stomach grumbled and Honey gave him a look of mock, open-mouthed shock.

He flushed. “J'ai faim.”

“English today, Oliver,” Serena reminded her son. “Did you get a letter from Miles?” she asked Freddie.

“Yes,” Freddie said, gesturing to the single page on her desk. “You may read it. He says he won’t be back from the country for at least another week.”

Miles Ingram was a friend of theirs who’d been the dancing master at the Stefani Academy for Young Ladies, where they’d all taught before the school closed last year.

There’d been seven teachers and they’d grown as close as siblings over the years they worked together. And now they were scattered to the four winds: Portia had gone to the wilds of Cornwall; Annis lived with her Grandmother in the tiny town of Cocklesham; and Lorelei with her brother and his family at his vicarage just outside York. Only Honoria, Serena, Freddie, and Miles remained in London.

Freddie busied herself with distributing tea, small sandwiches, and biscuits.

“Well?” Serena demanded. “Will you put us out of our misery, Honey? What does the duke have to say?”

“Perhaps she would like to wait until we’ve finished eating?” Freddie murmured.

“Oh, bother waiting,” Serena said.

Honey laughed at her friend’s impatience. “Very well, I shall read it to you.” She opened the letter and spread the single sheet out on her lap.

“Miss Keyes,

I am writing to you at the recommendation of Viscount Heath, whose wife’s portrait you painted this spring. I have seen the painting and found your rendering of the viscountess to be accurate without excessive flattery or over-indulgence.”

Honey couldn’t help chuckling at that. “Perhaps I should print that on my calling card—Accurate portraitist not given to flattery or over-indulgence?”

“Keep reading, my dear,” Serena urged.

“I would like to engage you to paint my wife and my daughter, who is sixteen and—”

Serena clapped her hands and bounced up and down on the settee, jostling Freddie beside her. “Oh, Honey, that is marvelous.”

“Does he mention his terms?” Freddie asked, ever the practical one.

“He asks that I respond with my terms and the earliest date I will be available.” She placed the letter in Serena’s outstretched hand.

“When will you go?” Serena demanded, looking up from the letter, which she was cradling as if it were spun glass.

“Goodness, I’ve only just learned of it. I’ve not even decided if—”

“Pfffft! Don’t be coy. You know you will do it. How could you not? A duchess and her daughter. His Grace is quite well off, isn’t he?”

Honey’s friends did not know of her girlhood infatuation with the duke’s younger brother. Why should they? Who told their friends such embarrassing private details? She shuddered at the thought of disgorging such a pitiful confession.

“Honey?”

Serena and Freddie were watching her with expectant expressions.

A slight knock on the door made her jump.

It was Nounou, Oliver’s nurse.

Serena smiled at her son. “You may take some of Una’s biscuits up to the schoolroom.”

Oliver—who’d been behaving with remarkable composure for a little boy in the middle of a tedious adult conversation—placed another three biscuits on his plate and dropped a careful bow before following the French woman from the room.

Honey waited until the door closed before clearing her throat and asking Freddie the dreaded question. “What do you know of the Duke of Plimpton and his current household?”

Winifred Sedgewick made her living as a matchmaker, even though she despised the term, and there was very little about society that she did not know

“I know His Grace has been married for almost eighteen or so years and that his wife was the Duke of Stanford’s youngest. She is delicate and cannot have more children. I believe the daughter is their only surviving