"Wonderful! A charming, clever, and engaging storyteller not to be missed." -- Sarah MacLean, New York Times bestselling author A lady with secrets, a man with a burning desire, a love that breaks all the rules Lady Charlotte Beaumont has spent her whole life being ignored. By her parents, her brother, even the servants. So she was secretly able to develop her talent for painting well beyond the usual watercolors. Too bad no one will let her actually use it-women are rarely accepted into the Royal Academy. But when a connection at the Haverhall School for Young Ladies gets Charlotte her dream commission, she'll do whatever it takes to make it work. Including disguising herself as "Charlie." Flynn Rutledge has something to prove. His lowly upbringing is not going to stop him from achieving his artistic dreams. This commission is the key to his future, and his partner, an unknown youth in oversized clothes who is barely old enough to shave, doesn't exactly inspire confidence. But Charlie does inspire Flynn's artistic passion-something he worried he might have lost forever. For all his street smarts, nothing can prepare Flynn for the shock of Charlie's true identity. He doesn't care that she's a woman, but a lady of the ton is a different matter altogether . . .
Release date:
December 5, 2017
Publisher:
Forever Yours
Print pages:
109
Reader says this book is...: happily ever after (1) historical elements (1)
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Or at least Charlotte hoped it was. It would need to be to fool the man currently examining the painting. From the canvas, a young girl clutched a fan and gazed back at her with an enigmatic look far beyond her years, offering no reassurances.
A bead of icy sweat slid down Charlotte’s spine.
“Van Dyck did not paint many children,” the man said, straightening slightly, his fingers drumming against the silver head of his ebony walking stick. He turned his unsettling pale blue eyes back in Charlotte’s direction.
“He did not,” Charlotte agreed smoothly, relieved her voice didn’t shake.
“That fact would make this painting very valuable.”
“It would.”
“And where did you say you acquired it?”
“I didn’t say.” Charlotte was treading carefully. It had taken all her courage to request an audience with this man, known only by the name of King. A man whose origins were murky at best, though there were rumors that his control of the underworld stretched far beyond the limits of London. A man whose knowledge of fine art was eclipsed only by his reputation for being able to secure anything. For a price.
And Charlotte had come to bargain.
King tipped his head slightly, and had his gaze not been so remote, Charlotte would have believed the man had almost smiled. “What is it, exactly, that you wish to do with this painting?” he asked.
And there was the crux of this entire matter. “I was told that you were a purveyor of fine art,” she said slowly. “The best in England. I wish to…sell it.” Not entirely true, but a starting point.
“Ah.” The man wandered to the far side of his desk, and Charlotte was once again struck by the stealthy grace in which he moved. He had red-gold hair and aristocratic, austere features, and if she were to paint the most infamous Tudor king, before age and excess had ravaged his appearance, this is how she imagined he would have looked. This man was almost too beautiful to possess the dark reputation that cloaked him.
King was examining a painting that dominated the wall behind his desk. “Judith Beheading Holofernes,” he said, and Charlotte wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or himself. “A woman driven to extreme measures.” He gestured at the maiden, her wickedly curved blade buried deep in the neck of a man whose eyes bulged in terror. “Tell me, what do you see in her expression?” King asked.
Charlotte hesitated, looking for pitfalls to his question but unable to find any. “Determination,” she finally answered. “Maybe a small measure of desperation.”
“Indeed.” He turned around again, and now his cool eyes were fixed firmly on hers. “Similar to what I see on your face. So I must ask what extreme measures have driven you to try and sell me a forgery.”
Charlotte felt her stomach plummet to her toes and bile rise in her throat. She focused on keeping her breathing even. “How can you be so sure that it’s a forgery?” she asked with every ounce of bravado she still clung to.
King’s lips twisted, and his eyes became positively glacial. “I would advise you not to insult me further. Just answer my question.”
“Perhaps I should go,” Charlotte murmured, chilled to the bone. “Perhaps we’re done here.” She had risked everything coming to see this man. No one knew she was here. Only the bored hackney driver she had paid to bring her here, who had agreed to wait for twenty minutes and no longer. She was utterly on her own, and if she were to disappear, there would be no trail to follow. Which was probably just as well. At least they wouldn’t carve fool on her headstone.
“I think not, Lady Charlotte,” he said, moving with a lethal grace to block the door. “For I am not done with you at all.”
Charlotte’s heart stopped before it resumed again. “How do you know my name?” she whispered. She had not given it to King. Only identified herself as Miss Hawkins, using the surname of one of the kitchen maids. She didn’t look like a refined lady—she was too tall to be elegant, too broad shouldered to be sophisticated. And she had twisted her plain brown hair into a forgettable plait. Left every trapping of wealth at home in favor of homespun wool and worn leather purchased in Petticoat Lane to cover her unremarkable figure.
“I asked you not to insult me further,” King repeated coldly. Which told Charlotte nothing. But then, that was probably the idea. “The forgery,” he said, leaning over his walking stick. “Tell me who painted it.”
Charlotte swallowed hard. Should she lie? Tell the truth? Would it matter at this point, or would she simply become a footnote in history either way? A woman who had badly underestimated a very dangerous man and didn’t survive to tell the tale. “Me,” she finally said. He wouldn’t believe her, but at least she wouldn’t meet her demise as a liar.
“Good.” King nodded like she had just passed some sort of test. “And the original? Where is it?”
Charlotte blinked, trying to find her voice. The sneering censure and mocking disbelief she’d expected at her declaration were absent. “Um…”
“The original,” King repeated as though he were talking to a half-wit or a panicked filly. “It must be somewhere where you had access to it to execute a forgery of this quality. Where is it?”
“Jasper House,” Charlotte blurted. “In Aysgarth. North of York.” One of the many estates that her father, the Earl of Edgerton, owned. Her solitary prison every summer and every winter for as long as she could remember. And one that she would be returning to within a fortnight unless she did something drastic. Like this.
“I know where Aysgarth is, Lady Charlotte,” King replied, sounding pleased. “Can you be more specific?”
“Specific?”
“Where is the painting? In a drawing room? A ballroom? A gallery—”
“The attics.”
King’s expression flattened. “The attics,” he repeated, his lip curling.
“It’s been there for generations. No one in my family has ever believed that portraits of children are worthy of wall space. Or have any value at all, really.”
“Except you.”
“It’s a Van Dyck, for pity’s sake,” Charlotte retorted, forgetting herself.
“It is indeed.” King took two steps closer to her.
Charlotte steeled herself against the urge to take two steps back. If these were her last moments, she would live them no more a coward than she would a liar. King had been right. Extreme measures had brought her here, and determination and desperation would see this out, come what may.
“Tell me, Lady Charlotte, why not just bring me the original?”
Because here in London, she didn’t have access to it. Because time had been of the essence and a lengthy journey up to Aysgarth and back would have taken too long. “This was in my possession,” she said honestly. “The original was not.”
This time, the beautiful man smiled, though it fell short of his eyes. “And what, exactly, is it that you need money for so desperately that it would be worth your attempt to defraud me?”
And now they had come full circle. Because this wasn’t about money. It never had been. It was about her life and the way she was watching it crawl by from the confines of the empty, gilded cage she resided in.
She raised her chin a notch and met his gaze directly. “I don’t want money.”
Something shifted in his pale eyes. “Indeed? Well, you certainly have my attention, Lady Charlotte.”
She wiped her damp palms on her plain skirts. “I want a job. St. Michael’s. Coventry. The Renaissance-styled murals that have been commissioned for the church.”
King regarded her coolly. “Hmm.” He turned abruptly and wandered back behind his desk. “I’ve always felt a rather odd affinity toward that particular saint. A great warrior, vanquishing those who deserve it. Yet descending at the hour of death to offer each soul a chance to redeem itself.” He stopped. “Redemption is highly underrated, don’t you think, Lady Charlotte?”
She gazed back, feeling the perspiration trapped against her skin. “Yes.”
“I am familiar with the project. I understand that there are two artists to be hired for the work. I also understand that the architect overseeing the project has already selected one.”
“Yes. And I would like to be the other. My work is as good as or better than anything currently on display at the Royal Academy. But—”
“You are a woman,” he finished for her.
“Yes.” A woman and a lady. Slowly suffocating under the crushing limitations that both imposed.
He turned from her to study the painting, his elegant fingers drumming slowly on the head of his walking stick again. “I would agree with you, you know. That your work is better. This copy really is quite astounding,” he said. “There are very, very few in the world who would notice the minute technical discrepancies between this and a true Van Dyck.” He paused. “It must have taken you some time to paint.”
“Yes.” But time she had in spades. Months and months of exile to the countryside every year assured that. Yet each of those months was time that she was left alone with her pigments and oils, her turpentine and canvases. Months every year in which she continued to be ignored and was allowed to covertly perfect her craft and proficiency.
“Your application of asphaltum is masterful,” King murmured. “So few forgers can get that last step right.” His eyes drifted back from the painting toward her, and he fell silent.
Somewhere in the room, a clocked ticked into the quiet, small noises marking the passage of time as more of Charlotte’s life slipped by her.
“I’ll have the original,” King said suddenly as if coming to a decision. “Because I do not sell forgeries.”
Charlotte felt a tiny ember of hope ignite amid all the trepidation. “I can get it—”
“I don’t need you to fetch it for me, Lady Charlotte. I employ professionals for such menial tasks.” He smiled another empty smile. “You can keep your copy.”
“Then you’ll help me in exchange for the painting?”
“My assistance will cost you more than a single painting, Lady Charlotte.” He set his walking stick against the side of the desk.
The tiny hairs on the back of her neck rose. She forced herself to remain still, even as she wondered just how far she would be willing to go. Just how much she would be willing to sacrifice for the opportunity to escape—
“You look pale, my lady.” The bastard sounded like he was enjoying this.
Charlotte. . .
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