A Lady's Dream Come True

by Grace Burrowes

  “I am certain,” Mr. Dorning said, “if we were to turn this work over and examine the canvas, we’d find it nearly pristine, suggesting that what you have is a recent work intended to look venerable. Notice her headwear, called a fontange. They became fashionable in the 1680s, but Louis XIV took them into dislike when they grew ridiculously large and ornate. By 1700, they were no longer worn.”

  “Perhaps the lady wasn’t a slave to fashion?”

  “Perhaps she was an independent spirit, but consider her beauty patch. When the Duchesse du Maine brought beauty patches back into fashion, the custom became to wear several, as many as half a dozen at once, and they were of black silk. This lady’s single patch is red.”

  “Because colored patches are a more recent trend,” Vera murmured. “But this is a signed painting.”

  “Signatures are the easiest part of a painting to forge,” Mr. Dorning said, bending close enough to sniff at the canvas. “Brushwork is much harder to duplicate, and many artists have peculiarities of palette that come from the specific dyes available to them in their locality and period. This painting doesn’t smell fifty years old.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Take a sniff.”

  Sniffing paintings was decidedly eccentric. Mr. Dorning apparently sniffed paintings as a matter of course, and thus Vera complied.

  “It smells like a painting.”

  “Exactly, like the oils and pigments used to create it. To lose that scent takes years, and during those years, the painting will acquire the odor of coal smoke if it hung over a fireplace, perhaps a hint of tobacco if the portrait graced a gentleman’s study. I’ve come across paintings that smelled of lavender or tallow, based on where they’d spent the previous twenty years. Then too, I’m almost certain this canvas is linen.”

  “Dirk occasionally painted on linen.”

  “But hemp was the preferred type of canvas in France for much of the last century, and most French artists still use it. I prefer hemp myself, finding the fibers less troublesome than linen.”

  Vera stalked away, not in the mood for a discourse on the merits of hemp versus linen. “I can’t sell forgeries.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it, Mrs. Channing, for I could not be associated with such an endeavor.” Mr. Dorning prowled after her, and though the gallery was flooded with late morning sunshine, he conveyed the sense of a thundercloud rolling across an unsuspecting landscape.

  “I was under the impression,” he went on,” that my task here was to restore older paintings to better condition, not appraise forgeries or support their sale.”

  Vera stood before a bow window that overlooked the side garden. Paddocks of lush summer grass stretched beyond the scythed lawn, and where the paddocks ended, the overgrown hedgerow shaded a stream and a walking path. On the far side of those trees, the ground turned into a mire for most of the year.

  That progression—from garden to bog—was like this conversation.

  “I do need to have a substantial number of paintings cleaned and restored,” Vera said, hoping to stick to the path of truth. “If I can sell some of the more valuable items, that’s all to the good.”

  “Must you sell them?” Mr. Dorning asked, propping a shoulder against the window frame.

  He had the rangy, muscular dimensions of a plowman, and yet, he knew art. The combination was disconcerting and intriguing. Dirk had been a compact, tidy man of economical movements, quicksilver emotions, and grand ideas. Mr. Dorning was lanky of frame, and his mind seemed to prowl along logical, even shrewd, paths.

  Why else would he be asking about Vera’s finances within twenty-four hours of meeting her?

  “My step-daughter, Catherine, is fourteen,” she said. “Her antecedents are irregular. Dirk never married her mother, though the lady lived with him here as his hostess. I suspect Catherine’s mother was married to somebody else, otherwise Dirk would have sanctified their union.”

  “You suspect? You aren’t sure?”

  That frown did not bode well for Mr. Dorning’s continued interest in working at Merlin Hall. “Catherine is not at fault for her parents being unable to marry, Mr. Dorning. She’s a perfectly lovely girl, and she needs a more-than-lovely dowry. Dirk promised me the Hall was full of treasures, but in several years of trying, I haven’t found those treasures. You give me cause to doubt they exist.”

  Mr. Dorning was surrounded by art, and yet, he studied Vera. “And if I cannot find your treasures, will you expect me to clean up the forgeries so you can pass them off as part of Dirk Channing’s collection?”

  Vera sank onto the bench before the window. Fine motes of dust danced in the slanting beams, and the warmth of the sunshine was pleasant.

  While this discussion was most unpleasant. Why had she never pressed Dirk for specifics where his damned treasures were concerned?

  “If I knew I could sell forgeries without risk of discovery, Mr. Dorning, I’d be tempted. Catherine needs generous settlements, and Alexander will require means to run this estate when he eventually controls it. Those who buy art are seldom pressed for coin. They can afford to pay for their pretty acquisitions.”

  Mr. Dorning remained standing at the opposite end of the bench. “Is there a but, Mrs. Channing?” His tone suggested there had better be.

  “But neither child would be served by the scandal that attaches to forged art. Some former colleague of Dirk’s from the Royal Academy would make a disparaging remark, another former colleague would agree with him, and then I could be brought up on charges. Dirk’s memory would suffer from such a scandal, and thus I will not be a party to selling forgeries. Where the welfare of my children is concerned, I will be ruthlessly sensible.”

  Mr. Dorning folded his arms, which caused fine wool to stretch across broad shoulders. “The paintings aren’t all forgeries. Dirk might have purchased the French painting on a whim, knowing it to be flawed, or out of pity, because the artist was a friend who needed funds. Many a painter works in the style of the more successful artists of the past, and those works are not considered forgeries.”

  Now he was being kind. Vera preferred his shrewdness. “I had hoped you’d set foot in here and be awed by the number and quality of the artistic wonders you beheld. You needn’t loom over me.”

  He joined her on the bench. “I’m sure you have plenty of good quality work here. I’ll do a thorough perusal while I’m waiting for my supplies to arrive. Is there more art elsewhere in the house?”

  “Merlin Hall is awash in art, but good quality is not enough, Mr. Dorning. I need excellent quality art if I’m to see Catherine happily settled.”

  “Did Dirk ever paint you, ma’am?”

  The question caught Vera off guard, perhaps because she spied Catherine emerging from the copse of trees behind the stable. Her bright gold hair was a beacon at even this distance, though Miss Diggory had claimed Catherine was feeling indisposed.

  “My husband sketched, drew, and painted by the hour, Mr. Dorning, and I have not paged through his every volume and stack of scribblings to know if he rendered my likeness. I assume he did. I see a truant, though, trying to sneak back to the house undetected. Feel free to linger here as long as you need to, and then we can attack the attic. I must have a word with my prodigal daughter.”

  “Should the young lady be putting up her hair?” Mr. Dorning asked, gaze on Catherine as she stopped halfway across a paddock to pet a broodmare.

  “Put up her hair? She’s only fourteen.”

  “My sister Daisy started putting up her hair at fourteen. My mother bestowed that privilege in hopes of inspiring adult behavior.”

  Catherine was growing up. Vera had been trying to deny that reality for months. “What sort of behavior?”

  Mr. Dorning rose. “Mama thought Daisy should remain indoors memorizing poetry when a beautiful summer morning tempted a girl out of doors. Sitting patiently for hours behind a dreary old desk when Daisy longed to move. Listening to the third retelling of some dusty old lect
ure about deportment when native curiosity compelled her to explore the natural world.”

  He bent low, as if he’d whisper in Vera’s ear. “I daresay you were not the sort of girl who passed up a beautiful day to remain closeted with a translation of Seneca.”

  No, I was not, and look what became of me. “Why did you ask if my husband had ever done my portrait?”

  He straightened. “Because you are an interesting subject, Dirk was a talented portraitist, and I have thus far seen no likenesses of you in Merlin Hall’s public rooms. I would enjoy attempting your portrait.”

  Vera rose, the open, airy gallery abruptly feeling too private. “Sitting for a portrait takes hours I doubt I can spare, Mr. Dorning, and I did not retain you to create yet still more paintings to hang on Merlin Hall’s walls.”

  If Vera knew one thing to be true, it was that allowing Oak Dorning to paint her portrait was a bad idea.

  “I am considered quick,” he said. “A sitting or two might be sufficient. If you don’t want to hang the painting here, I could sell it for you in London.”

  Worse and worse. “I must be going. I would like to apprehend Catherine before she adds use of the maids’ stairs to her list of charges. I’ll see you at dinner.”

  “And you’ll think about allowing me to do a study of you?”

  Had Jeremy Forester made that request, Vera would have known his objective to be thinly disguised flirtation. Mr. Dorning’s interest was expressed without a smile, without flattery. He was once again studying her features, probably deciding what to do about her too-strong nose.

  Vera absolutely must refuse him, particularly if he was intent on the result being exhibited in blasted London.

  “I might consider it,” she said, “but you are not to pester me. Please excuse me.”

  Mr. Dorning bowed politely, and Vera all but ran from the gallery.

  Chapter Three

  Oak used different pencils for sketching and for writing, and while he always had a sketching pencil and drawing pad with him, he lacked a writing pencil with which to make notes about the gallery’s offerings. Rather than appropriate what he needed from the library, where Bracken might come upon him rifling a desk, he returned to his apartment and retrieved a sharpened pencil from a side pocket of his valise.

  He was replacing the valise in the cedar chest at the foot of the bed when he realized that somebody had gone through his effects.

  The bed was made, the hearth swept, and the curtains opened. Clearly, a maid had been in the room, but would a maid open and retie the flaps over the valise’s side compartments?

  Having an abundance of brothers meant Oak had learned to guard his privacy. He’d attempted at one point to use some statues in his father’s conservatory as models for a series of nude drawings. Sycamore, his youngest brother, had found the sketches and helped himself to the best two. Oak had drawn them again, and Sycamore had again helped himself.

  The next time, Oak had drawn his youngest brother’s face on the body of a satyr, but endowed the satyr with microscopic reproductive apparatus. Sycamore had left that image by Mama’s place setting at the dinner table.

  Mama, bless her, had passed the drawing to Papa. His lordship had harrumphed, slid the sketch into his pocket, and offered the blessing. After supper, Oak had received the dreaded summons to join Papa in the estate office.

  Papa had returned the drawing with a few terse words of advice: Satirical sketches could be very lucrative, but if Sycamore had to work a bit harder at his purloining, those sketches might be entirely unnecessary.

  Out of necessity, Oak had become proficient at identifying when somebody had done a clumsy job of trying to replicate a complicated knot.

  In the case of his valise, no attempt had been made to hide the invasion of privacy. The snoop was either foolish or arrogant, possibly both, but he or she was not a thief. Oak found nothing missing, not a pencil, not a cravat pin, not the green and brown dog whelk seashell his father had given him on his eighth birthday.

  Perhaps the maid had been nosy.

  Oak forgot about that conundrum as he returned to the gallery and spent the next several hours studying Dirk Channing’s collection of paintings. At some point, a tray laden with sandwiches appeared, but Oak didn’t stop to eat until Jeremy Forester sauntered in sometime during the afternoon.

  “You could rest for a day,” he said. “Pretend travel left your artistic sensibilities fatigued. May I?” He gestured toward the tray.

  “One-half of one sandwich,” Oak replied, setting aside his pencil and paper. “I’m hungry.” Famished, in fact. He took the tray over to the padded bench by the window and straddled the bench. “Is today not a day for lessons in the schoolroom?”

  “Today’s a lesson day,” Jeremy replied around a mouthful of beef sandwich. “The terror was allowed to run tame for too long. He needs to catch up, so I am ever and always selflessly dedicated to his instruction. He’s copying his Bible verses at present, and thus I am at liberty. What do you make of the great master’s collection?”

  “You mock Channing?”

  Forester took the far end of the bench and stole a sip of Oak’s ale. “I mock most everything, including myself. I’ve always thought art something of a racket, though I dare not admit that to other members of my family. Who’s to say if a piece is good or bad? People buy what they like. What pleased some old Italian count two hundred years ago looks clumsy to me now, but mine is not an educated eye.”

  “Some of what’s in here is lovely,” Oak said, tearing into his first sandwich. “Some is intriguing, some is clearly an attempt to replicate the style of a bygone master. Channing included a few of his own works in this display, and yet, they are not his best efforts. I can’t make sense of this gallery.”

  “He might have hung the best in the master suite,” Forester replied. “God bless a cook who isn’t parsimonious with the butter. Mind if I have a strawberry?”

  Oak liked strawberries, but not enough to arm-wrestle for them. He dumped half the contents of the bowl onto his plate and passed the rest to Jeremy.

  “I doubt Mrs. Channing wants me working on her late husband’s paintings. They are too new to need restoration and of too much sentimental value to be for sale. I haven’t inspected the library yet. I’m assuming some of the older works are in there?”

  “A half-dozen grim, dark fellows in ruffed collars and odd hats scowl down from the walls. Some ladies in outmoded fashion smile at them, and there’s a little boy with a dog. The terror occasionally whines for a dog. Might I have another sandwich?”

  “You had your own lunch, Forester. Have you been in the attics?”

  Forester produced a mock shudder. “Not even to track down the terror when he’s in a rebellious mood would I venture into Merlin Hall’s attics. The footmen have a dormitory on the attic floor—the maids’ dormitory is across from the housekeeper’s apartment belowstairs, by the by—but the attics are mostly full of covered furniture and such.”

  Meaning Forester had stolen at least a peek.

  Oak started on a second sandwich. “Will Miss Diggory join us for supper?”

  “She and Catherine usually do. Catherine drives the poor woman to distraction. The Channing offspring have more than the usual complement of stubbornness. Suppose they get it from their father. Catherine has the Channing name, but she’s from the wrong side of the blanket. I mention that not because I am the judgmental sort who holds the sins of the mother against the child, but because one wants to know where to step lightly.”

  “Or not step at all. What of Miss Diggory?” And what of the father’s sins?

  “Miss Diggory is a good egg. She’d have to be, else she’d have strangled Catherine. She and I would both be eternally in your debt if you’d offer our charges some rudimentary drawing lessons. You can’t be cataloging paintings the livelong day, after all.”

  Actually, Oak could, easily, but he considered a small boy trapped indoors behind an unforgiving wall of Deuteronomy, an
d a very young lady feuding with her own body.

  “I like the role of drawing master,” he said, picking up the tankard of ale mostly so Jeremy wouldn’t help himself again. Public school bonhomie was one thing, unwarranted presumption another. “If Mrs. Channing has no objection, I’ll spend some time instructing the children.”

  “Splendid,” Jeremy said, rising and thumping Oak on the back, which resulted in ale sloshing over Oak’s hand. “I’ll tell Miss Diggory, and you will be remembered fondly in our prayers.” He snatched up the remaining half a sandwich and went munching on his way.

  Oak took his time finishing his meal, and may the kitchen be eternally blessed, somebody had included two generous squares of shortbread with the repast. He wrapped one in a linen table napkin and took the other and the last of his ale with him on a circuit of the gallery.

  Dirk Channing had assembled these paintings for reasons, and displayed them knowing how unimpressive several were. The collection made no sense, the house having plenty of other rooms where a professional artist could have displayed works of more sentimental worth than aesthetic quality.

  Wherever Channing’s treasures were, they weren’t in the gallery.

  Oak took his ale back to the bench by the window, set down his tankard, and gave in to the urge to do a little sketching. The light was wrong, the pencil wasn’t as sharp as he preferred, and he hadn’t proper paper to work with, but the compulsion to capture Verity Channing’s likeness would not be denied.

  Vera’s afternoon had gone completely awry, though she had enjoyed the time spent with Catherine. For once, they hadn’t been arguing or trading veiled barbs. Catherine had claimed to be seeking fresh air to combat a megrim, a plausible excuse for truancy. When Vera had suggested they experiment with upswept coiffures, no more mention had been made of the headache.

  Or of playing truant.

  “You simply walk into the dining room as if it’s another family dinner,” Vera said, passing Catherine a paisley silk shawl of blue and gold. “If anybody comments on your appearance, they will do so to offer a compliment.”