Page 94 of A Baby for the Duke

“That is a very great deal to get out of a nail,” he remarked.

“It is the only thing I am good at.”

He looked at her over his glass. “I said that to you in the gallery an hour ago.”

“You did.”

“You have repeated it back to me as though it were your own opinion.”

“I have adopted it.” Leonora shrugged. “You may consider it a compliment or a theft, as you prefer. Either way, I intend to go on doing it, because you are right about pictures more often than you are right about people.”

The sale began at half past three, and for the first hour, it was the most tedious affair Leonora had ever sat through.

They sold the Dutch things. They sold a great many brown landscapes to a man in the third row who did not once look at any of them. The entire wall of Ferrand ancestors went in a single lot, for the frames, to a dealer from Bath.

Leonora watched four generations of somebody’s family carried out of the room in one armful and had to look at the ceiling.

“Sixteen people,” she muttered under her breath.

“What?”

“There were sixteen of them on that wall. Somebody sat for each one. Somebody’s mother put on her best gown and sat still in a chair for a fortnight, and now she is going to Bath in a cart to be taken out of her frame with a knife.”

“Duchess.”

“I know. I know it is only wood and canvas, and I know they owed a great deal of money.” She snapped her fan open. “I would merely like it noted that I do not care for this room.”

Colin fell quiet beside her, but he did not look at the ceiling, which meant he had noticed her doing it.

“How much longer?” she asked, at lot ninety-one.

“You wished to come.”

“I wished to come at half past eleven. Now I have been in this room since half past three, and a man has bought nine paintings of a cow.”

“They are not nine paintings of a cow. Four of them are of a cow.”

“Your Grace.”

“Two are of a bull, which is a different animal and a great deal more expensive, and three are of a barn.” Colin did not look away from the stage. “You are extremely fidgety this afternoon.”

“I am not fidgety. I am warm.”

“You have looked at that door four times.”

“Because I am considering leaving through it, and abandoning you here, and taking the carriage.”

“You would not get to Hounslow.”

“I should get to Hounslow easily. It is Reading I should have difficulty with.” She snapped her fan open. “Nine paintings of a cow, Colin.”

Lot ninety-eight. Lot one hundred and one.

“You are sitting extremely still,” Colin observed.

“I am attending.”

“You have not attended to anything for twenty minutes. You have been counting the rows.”