Page 84 of Artfully Yours

“What?” Geoffrey stared. The garden was queerly silent. Alan took a step closer. His throat was too tight for his voice to carry.

“I’ll act as his guardian. You’ll see his health improve under my roof.”

A muscle leapt in Geoffrey’s jaw. “You. My son’s guardian. My son, the future Duke of Umfreville.”

“You use his frailty when it serves you.” Alan felt as though he were pushing the words through a jagged fissure. “The rest of the time, you shun him for it. He’s dejected and friendless. I’ll provide him with tutors, company, varied entertainment, nutrition, exercise. He will thrive.”

Geoffrey lunged forward, his boots overlapping Alan’s at the toe, their faces so close Alan could count the red threads in his eyes.

“Say goodbye to Claud before he leaves for Pistoia. Or don’t.” Geoffrey slapped the gloves against Alan’s chest. “It’s the only decision that’s yours to make.” He turned, bowling over a slight, blond man who had the misfortune to step into the garden as he stepped out.

“How do you do?” He said it coldly, without stopping. The other man inclined his head with an admirably pacific expression, considering he’d been knocked into an artichoke plant. He’d kept his feet at least.

Moments later Alan heard carriage wheels bumping over the paving stones. He looked at the high, blue sky, at the gloves he’d caught in his hands, at his visitor. His heart beat an alarming tattoo, and his lungs felt flat.

In the drawing room, Herr Steucklen spread out samples of his wares—tube paints, pencils, paper. Alan’s heart slowed as he watched the man’s methodical, unhurried movements. With a silent apology to his stationer, he placed a large order, then rang for tea.

By the time Steucklen was repacking his box, Alan had queried him comprehensively on his corner of High Holborn and its denizens.

Steucklen sometimes mounted drawings for Sleaford but had no notion of where the dealer had gone. He did know a Jack, Sleaford’s friend. Not an artist. Jack worked at a knickknack emporium at Cow Crossing Yard and gave him bargains on poured-wax dolls for his wife’s collection.

“This Jack?” asked Alan, and showed him a sketch. Augustus Burgess, whose studies at the Royal Academy had overlapped with Reeve’s, had dashed it off with a bemused smile.

Steucklen’s smile was also bemused.

“I think perhaps,” he said.

Alan didn’t waste a moment after Steucklen’s departure. He went swiftly to the library. Nina was sitting cross-legged on the high-backed painted settle bench that faced the stained-glass windows, a typed copy of his current manuscript divided into two piles on the cushion beside her, a book in her hands. She looked up, jolted, and frowned. Since she’d taken ill at the patisserie, she’d seemed strained and skittish.

“I’m not a quarter of the way through,” she said. Stacks of books surrounded the settle, bristling with slips of paper. She’d been finding and marking lines he’d quoted from memory so he could correct any imperfections of recall.

“There’s no rush.”

Her hair was scattered with colored light.

His fingers twitched, and he made his hands into fists.

He wanted her with him when he entered that emporium. She’d been a part of his investigations from the beginning. She’d been there when he’d discovered that first forgery. It was fitting that they saw this through, together, to the end.