His hand cramped, slashing black ink through the gentle waves of the blue sea.
He threw down his brush. His butler, Sinclair, stood solidly by the door, waiting for a response. The kitten, who he had not yet named, sprinted across the room and clawed up Sinclair’s leg. The butler disengaged her and held her by the scruff in one hand far from his body, the way Leo might have held a rodent. “Shall I tell him you are not receiving?” Sinclair asked.
Leo sighed. “Send him to my office.”
“Your office, my lord?”
Leo swirled his paintbrush in a cup of water. “What’s wrong with my office?”
“Nothing, my lord. The dust gives the room character.”
A book flew from Leo’s hand and hit the door as it closed.
Leo removed the stiff, gray apron splattered with paint and hung it on a peg jutting from the wall. The apron, and his clothing, were so restrictive. Given the choice, he would have painted in the nude, but the one time he had done so during the day, his housekeeper had caught him and nearly fainted.
He capped the small bowls of oil paints and rubbed sand on his hands to remove the flecks of paint from his skin.
The latest letter from his mother sat unopened on the windowsill. He had stopped reading them years ago, when she had accused him of being the cause of his sister’s death. He didn’t need her to remind him of what he already knew.
He set his painting out of the sunlight then closed and locked the door to the one room in the house that still held some of the life and warmth that had once filled the estate. Once, he’d considered filling the house with the sounds of laughter. Back before his family had shattered, before he’d retired to his ancestral home and buried himself in art.
Those days were long past.
He followed the cold, barren halls to his office and stepped inside. Although it was just as dark and brooding as the rest of the estate, this room held something of the man he had once been. The walls were covered in paintings. Not portraits, but colorful landscapes. His sister’s early works.
Simon sat in a chaise by the crackling fireplace, holding a cut-crystal glass in one hand and a cigar in the other. He was impeccably attired in a double-breasted frock coat and striped trousers. A significant amount of spirit was missing from the bottle of brandy on the table.
“Helping yourself to my spirits already, Simon?” Leo asked as he sat across from the man. “It can’t be that bad.”
Simon waved a hand. “Good afternoon to you, as well. I must ask, where are all your servants?”
Leo handed Simon an ashtray. “The noise was making it difficult to paint.”
Even after he’d issued instructions that no one should come near his studio, the sounds of footfalls and murmuring conversation had still reached him and disrupted his focus. Finally, he’d instructed his housekeeper to dismiss all but the most essential of the staff.
Simon set his glass down on the table. “I came to ask you to join me in town for a Season.”
Of all the things he’d expected his cousin to say, that was not one of them. “Why come to me?”
“You rarely leave the grounds, I know,” Simon said. “I had thought after the ball last week, you might have changed your mind.”
Leo snorted, and Simon winced. “Right. Yes, poor excuse. Well, straight to it, then. I do not have the means.”
Leo nodded. This was more in line with what he’d expected his cousin to discuss. He crushed a twinge of disappointment to dust as he calculated the amount he should give the man that would send him away without setting expectations for further funding.
“You can use my townhouse and carriage in the city,” Leo said, “and I will open an account for you to use at your leisure.”
Simon beamed. “Excellent. Will you be joining me?”
Leo looked at the pile on his desk and shuddered. He had no desire to re-enter society, but he had to figure out who was stealing the paintings. Writing to the collectors would be a pointless exercise. Even if he trusted them to tell him the truth, knowing who had purchased the paintings did not help him track down who had stolen them in the first place. There were thousands of artists in England alone who were skilled enough to create a forgery that would not be detected as false except by the most skilled appraisers.
But he couldn’t tell his cousin any of that without risking the entireTonlearning his plan by week’s end.
“I thought I would host an event here,” Leo said. “A country party, for perhaps three days.”
It would be a challenge to organize such an event on short notice, and it would require Mrs. Banting to hire many more servants, but he was more concerned about the disruption to hisstudio. He would have to relocate his supplies, and there would be few opportunities to paint, but he was not willing to threaten his sister’s legacy. He would find the thief, recover her paintings, and restore them to museums, where they belonged.
Simon fell back into a chair. “At this mausoleum? Wherever will you find space for all the eager ladies?”
