Page 33 of An Unusual Wager

Kitty nodded. “That’s him, over the fireplace.”

Verity looked. The portrait was large and ostentatious.

The Old Earl, Jonnie and Kitty’s father, was portrayed sitting at a table, a pen in his hand, caught in the act of writing a letter, his expression faraway and pensive, as though his whole attention was on what to write. His free hand rested elegantly on his left leg and he wore a rust-colored banyan over a silk waistcoat and neckcloth. His graying hair was tied back from his face, revealing a man with a long nose and chin and a wide, intelligent forehead. Yes, this was the man whose portrait Verity had seen in Cavendish Square, only in this one he looked less stern and his mouth less cruel, and was clearly some years older than in the other painting. Perhaps it had been done not long before his accidental death.

But, now she knew Jonnie better and had another of his offspring to study, she saw he looked nothing like Kitty, nor much like the image she could conjure of Jonnie. Kitty’s face, with her little pointed chin, pert nose, and wide eyes was quite a different shape to her father’s. Jonnie was more like him than his sister was, but, even so, there must surely be more of his mysterious French mother in him than his autocratic-looking father. A little odd that Kitty was not like either of them, but perhaps she took after her own dead mother.

Kitty had moved on. “And this,” she said, in tones of deep gloom, “is the new dowager countess. The one living in the Dower House who doesn’t like me.”

Verity followed her and halted in awe. The Dowager’s portrait, which was smaller than her husband’s, took her breath away. It had clearly been done when its subject was very young, for the woman in the picture glowed with the bloom of youth from her jet-black tresses via her alabaster skin to her suggestively parted, ruby lips. She was a beauty by anyone’s standards, and by the look of her, she knew it. Her knowing, dark eyes held promise, her whole bearing enticed the watcher to drink her in and be impressed. Verity had the sensation that the artist had captured her very soul with his brush, perhaps soon after her wedding. The only other time she’d seen a woman with such obvious allure had been in a high-class brothel in Florence. And that woman had been one of the main attractions for the rich clientele.

Easy to see this was the same woman whose portrait she’d seen in the Cavendish Square parlor with the little boy at her side. A boy who’d grown up to be her husband. Only that portrait had been bucolic in comparison, and very much a portrait of a mother. This one, by contrast, was the sort of painting a man might commission of the love of his life. A man besotted, perhaps.

But the most interesting thing about this portrait was how very much Kitty resembled the woman who was not her blood relative, although in a softer, more innocent fashion. Jonnie’s mother had the same wide eyes and tilt to her nose, and her chin was just like Kitty’s. How very odd.

“She’s French,” Kitty said, as though that explained everything, interrupting Verity’s ponderings.

Verity nodded. “My own mother was French as well. Breton, in truth.”

Kitty pursed her lips. “So you and Jonnie have that in common, at least.”

But it was most likely the only thing they did have.