A Lady's Dream Come True

by Grace Burrowes

  “I know my husband’s signature, Oak. You needn’t be delicate.”

  Another step, and even though Oak was holding a frilly parasol and a lace-trimmed bonnet, he had the quality of an advancing storm.

  “I know your late husband’s signature too. Did you smell that painting, Vera?” He set the bonnet and parasol on the sideboard. “Did you examine how flat the whites were? How extravagant the brushwork in the shadows?”

  “The portrait feels like a Dirk Channing, and that is all anybody will care about.”

  Oak touched her cheek. “That painting is a forgery, and not a very good one.”

  This mattered to him for some reason, while to Vera… “Nobody will believe it is a forgery, and unless I leave this vile, stinking, cesspit of a city, Longacre will make trouble.”

  “As he’s been making trouble, apparently, for years. He tried to convince me that you were like Anna, dispensing favors in all directions, but now I wonder if Anna was like Anna, or if Longacre spread the same lies about her that he did about you.”

  Vera could not think when Oak was gazing down at her so sternly, when he was close enough to touch and cling to. She sidled past him and took a seat on the sofa.

  “Richard was the reason Dirk’s friends thought I was fast?”

  “I am certain of it. Did you know Richard and Anna were engaged at one point?”

  Oak came down beside her, and Vera wanted nothing so much as to throw herself into his arms. But that was no solution to anything.

  “I knew they were distantly related, second cousins, maybe third, but I didn’t know they were engaged. Why does that matter? Longacre has decided to ruin me, and I want to be far, far away when that happens.”

  Oak’s touch on her shoulder was as light as a kiss. “What a coincidence. He’s set about to ruin me too.”

  She caught his hand in her own. “I do not understand, and I am sick of feeling like a simpleton. Whether it’s my ignorance of art, or my inability to see an enemy standing right before me, or the intrigues and schemes Longacre is weaving… I want to go home and never leave Hampshire again.”

  Oak wrapped her hand in both of his, his grip warm and firm. “Maybe that’s what Longacre wants. Maybe his objective is to ensure that we both scamper away, trembling in fear of him and his vast influence in the art world. I am not inclined to oblige him.”

  “Oak, he will ruin you. You have waited years for a chance to take your place in London’s artistic community. You have talent, your family here will support you, you deserve…” The damned tears tried to ambush her, but she won that battle by virtue of pure stubbornness.

  “Longacre told you to either pose for more nudes, or he’d resume his nasty gossip. Did he also tell you he’d ruin me if you refused his coercion?”

  “Exactly, but, Oak, if I do pose for him, he’ll ruin you all the same.”

  Oak tugged her hand, and she sat back so he could wrap an arm around her shoulders. “Explain yourself.”

  “If I pose for whoever Longacre has recruited for this project, you will go happily on your way, painting this or that commission, submitting to the exhibitions, occasionally lecturing at the Academy, and making your way ever closer to admittance.”

  “My dream come true.”

  “And Longacre will make it a nightmare. Sometime soon, he will ask you to do a few canvases for him, and you will realize they are to be sold as forgeries. He will threaten to start talk about your brothers’ club, to malign you, to support a rival if you don’t accommodate him. You will have your membership in the Academy if and only if Longacre wants you to have it, and by that time, you will be as bitter, manipulative, mendacious, and scheming as he.”

  Oak was quiet for a moment, his lips against Vera’s temple. The tears threatened again, because the moment was both so sweet and so bitter.

  “He told me,” Oak said, “if I did not paint a nude series of you, in Dirk’s style, that he’d set about my ruin immediately—and yours, too, of course. I refuse to accommodate him, Vera.”

  Well, of course, Longacre would choose Oak to execute the portraits. Oak had the talent, and for Vera to model for him—a former guest at Merlin Hall—would appeal to Longacre’s twisted sense of revenge.

  Vera made one more try to reason with the man she loved. “You can either have eventual membership in his bloody Academy, Oak, or you can have a very hard road, with Longacre thwarting you every step of the way.”

  “You had that hard road,” Oak said. “You didn’t know he was thwarting you, which in a sense made it even worse. For that alone, I will see Longacre pay.” Oak spoke calmly, and his thumb moved over Vera’s nape in lazy circles. He was not ranting or hurling wild threats, he was planning a composition only he could see.

  “He will ruin you,” Vera said dully. “I am apparently already ruined, did I but know it, but you… You take him on at great risk to your ambition, Oak.”

  Oak planted a cheery little smacker on her cheek. “Longacre takes us on at great peril to his ambitions, Verity Channing. Did you know that your nipples shade closer to pinkish taupe than the pink of a blooming carnation? And here,”—he patted the juncture of her thighs gently—“the hair is the same color as the hair on your head, not three shades lighter, as Longacre’s forger would have us believe. You take after a brunette rather than a redhead in that regard.”

  He’d seen both the forgery and Vera’s naked form, studied both, which Vera should not have found amusing, but she did.

  “What has that to do with anything?”

  “Somebody forged the painting Longacre showed us. I suspect I know who, and he is doubtless neither the first nor the last to be so manipulated. Longacre believes himself the prince of some artistic fiefdom here in London, but he’s been oppressing the peasants for too long.”

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “I will do what countrymen have done in the face of tyranny from time immemorial, Vera. I will lead a peasant revolt and march on the capital, but I need your permission to do it. My plan now will impact you and potentially your children, and I cannot undertake it without your support.”

  “Peasant revolts seldom succeed, Oak. What are you asking of me?”

  “First, don’t let Longacre hound you back to Hampshire. Stay in London a little longer. Second, plan on attending Lady Montclair’s exhibition with me.”

  Vera subsided against him, her feelings in a welter of confusion. “Dirk asked me to marry him, and that was the last time he asked me for anything of substance. The rest was… he assumed, he politely demanded, he simply took. He did not ask.” And Vera had learned to give, to do without, to argue on occasion, and to manage in a lonely marriage.

  “I am asking for your trust,” Oak said, “and your help, but you must do as you see fit. You have children to consider, and cleaning London’s artistic house can profit you nothing.”

  Not quite true. If holding Richard Longacre accountable for his schemes benefited Oak, Vera would consider that a substantial profit.

  “What weapons will you wield, Oak?” she asked. “London is not your home turf, and Longacre has been at his games for ages.”

  “I will use the same weapons artists have used since the first caveman dabbed ashes on the walls of his abode: I will use talent, truth, and courage.”

  Courage. Oh, that. “I am not very brave,” Vera said.

  “Verity Channing, you are the bravest woman I know.”

  She liked the sound of that, liked the utter conviction in Oak’s words. What had cowering out in Hampshire earned her anyway, but more loneliness and a pair of spies in her nursery?

  “Tell me what you have in mind. I will do what I can.”

  Oak timed his first sortie for midday at a club frequented by those whose greatest artistic successes were in the past. The staff was discreet, the furnishings comfortable, and the capacity for gossip endless.

  Stebbins Holmes greeted him with a friendly wave from a table by the windows. “Dorning, a pleasure
. You are here in London at last and ready to take the art world by storm. Do have a seat.”

  Oak didn’t bother perusing a menu. The meal would be steak, bread, and potatoes, washed down with port or ale. Yeoman’s fare, of all the ironies.

  “Longacre is attempting to blackmail me,” Oak said, just as the waiter approached the table. The fellow’s steps faltered, and he sent Holmes a bewildered look.

  Holmes gestured him closer. “Steak for me and my guest, Timothy, and you will ignore Mr. Dorning’s penchant for hyperbole.”

  “Longacre is also trying to blackmail Verity Channing,” Oak said, before the waiter was more than three feet from the table. “We are not the first victims of his scheming. Why haven’t you done anything to stop him?”

  A mug of ale arrived for Oak. Holmes apparently preferred port. “We all have our little secrets, Dorning. One doesn’t fly into the bows over petty dramas.”

  “Ruining Dirk Channing’s widow, spreading falsehoods about her over a period of years—falsehoods that saw her repeatedly assaulted and nearly raped—is not a petty drama. It’s contemptible, dangerous, and exactly how artists end up in unflattering caricatures.”

  Holmes took a sip of his port. “And do you know why the Society of Artists failed in my father’s day?”

  “Because everybody was too focused on petty squabbles rather than on advancing the cause of British art. I have eight siblings, Holmes, I know all about petty squabbles.”

  The food arrived, and a few more diners took tables nearby. Oak recognized two older fellows who lectured at the Academy and an Italian sculptor in London to execute some expensive commissions.

  “Exactly,” Holmes said, picking up a knife. “Internal strife can ruin an organization, and artists are an excitable lot. Richard has fallen victim to unfortunate medical limitations, and he works tirelessly for the Academy as a whole. We overlook his games for the sake of the greater good.”

  We, meaning Longacre’s plots were common knowledge in some circles. Oak lost what appetite he’d had.

  “Endymion de Beauharnais is leaving London,” Oak said, loudly enough to turn a few heads. “He is one of the best talents to come along in decades, and Longacre’s disgusting behavior is forcing him back to the shires. You allow that to go on.”

  Holmes sawed away at his steak. “A pity, but de Beauharnais is young. He has time to return to the fold when he’s not so—”

  “He will go to Paris,” Oak said, “and he will make sure the French know why he’s turned his back on London. From there, he will go to Rome and very likely the Americas. A man with that much raw ability need not put up with an Academy that tolerates extortion and corruption.”

  The Italian was gaping. Three waiters were assiduously perfecting the arrangement of cutlery at empty tables nearby.

  “Longacre forces talented young painters to create forgeries,” Oak said, which might have been slander, except it was the truth. “He’s attempting the same game with me.”

  Holmes leaned across the table, his air of urbane humor deserting him. “Paint a few pictures for him,” he all but whispered, “and he’ll move on to fresh game. Richard is venal, but not stupid. He hasn’t the talent to create his own reproductions, and one must nearly admire his ingenuity. I suspect if Anna Beaumont hadn’t thrown him over for Dirk Channing, he might have been content to paint landscapes and flatter dowagers.”

  Oak did not lower his voice. “But instead of politely ceding the field where Anna was concerned, Longacre has been sulking ever since she threw him over.”

  “It’s worse than that,” Holmes said, glancing around. “He refused to release her from her betrothal agreements. If she’d married Dirk, Longacre would have brought suit. It’s not the done thing, but a man can legally sue for breach of promise.”

  “A gentleman would not,” Oak countered. “And this is your version of supporting the greater good? Ignoring Longacre’s tantrums and crimes?”

  Holmes speared a bite of beef and chewed vigorously. “Dorning, you are not a bad artist, and I did have hopes for you, but London might not be the best place to pursue your ambitions.”

  Oak resisted the urge to dash Holmes’s port in his face. “I point out to you that the Academy is harboring a forger, slanderer, and blackmailer among its ranks, and your reaction is to tell me to run along, because this criminal has the patience to winkle commissions out of women married to wealthy cits. Where is your honor, Holmes? Where is your artistic integrity?”

  “Artistic integrity? Dorning, such a quaint concept has no place in—”

  “Without our integrity, artists have little to offer but shallow decoration to cover the water stains in our grandmothers’ parlors. You have disappointed me, Holmes, and betrayed your calling. I’ll bid you good day.”

  Holmes set down his knife and fork. “It’s not as if Anna Beaumont was a lady. She was just some country cousin Richard took a fancy to. Pretty enough, but Dirk had to have her, and she had to have him, and there was no reasoning with either of them. One feels sorry for Longacre as the losing party.”

  “The losing party,” Oak said, “will be the Academy if you continue to ignore Longacre’s behavior. And, Holmes?”

  “Dorning?”

  “Anna Beaumont was a lady. They are all ladies.” He nodded rather than bow or offer his hand.

  “Dorning,” Holmes said, picking up his wineglass, “righteous fury becomes no one.”

  “Sheer complacence in the face of wrongdoing becomes us even less, and moral bankruptcy becomes us not at all.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Oak took a seat at a faro table, though in the afternoon light, The Coventry Club was deserted. “I need your help.”

  Sycamore and Ash, lounging at the same 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.”