Mad for Love (3 page)

“And so would mine,” Archie added. “Because I’m going to write all about it.”

The tingle shot right up Rory’s spine like a bolt. Because Rory could imagine it. He could imagine what it would be like to finally gain the full admiration his lack of birthright had denied him. He could imagine it all. “We’ll set a thief to catch a thief.”

“I like the sound of that.” Alasdair rubbed his hands together and smiled.

“I think this calls for brandy for breakfast.” Rory retrieved the decanter, and turned to survey his friends. “I hope ye packed evening clothes, gents. If ye’re coming to live with me, ye’ll need to cut quite a dash.”

Chapter Three

Mignon saved her breath to cool her porridge, as the English were wont to say. Because outside the window, Soho Square filled with the sound of a great commotion.
 

Mignon peeked down from the dormer to see a great coach wheel up to the house with armed outriders. Her chest filled with the cold clutch of dread. This was how their flight had started in Paris—with riders at the door. “Papa, there are riders! They have come to arrest you!”

“Who?” He scrambled to the window to peer out before she could pull him back. “Oh, Mignon.” He relaxed against the window frame. “What a shock you gave me. It is only Sir Joshua Reynolds come to talk to me of the Verrocchio Diana.”

The cold dread cooled to chilly alarm. “What of the Verrocchio?” The statue had been the most important piece of art that they had taken from France.
She
had taken, actually—she had snatched the foot-tall marble statue to use as a weapon as they had run from the house. But today the Diana had pride of place, both in Papa’s collection, and in his heart. Because it was also a forgery—one that his own papa had made.
 

Like father, like son—scoundrels all.

And the scoundrel was in the midst of one of his schemes. “Sir Joshua asks for the Diana statue to be the centerpiece of a great collection of masterpieces to be exhibited by the Royal Academy of Arts at Somerset House.”
 

“Oh, no. Absolutely not.” Such a plan was potentially worse than if Papa had been arrested—it would only encourage him to paint more by feeding his vanity and pride.

“Why not? Why should it not be shared? It is a great masterpiece.”

“Papa, you should not even let it from the house.”

“No, no. The time has come. The Diana must be seen.” He threw off his smock and went to the basin, where he scrubbed his paint-splattered hands before heading for the door through the armoire. “Don’t fuss.”

She would do more than fuss—she had to make him think more clearly. “I beg you listen to me. This is madness. You were the one who insisted—”

“
Non,
” he insisted. “I must go to the man—he has come in all this state.” Once on the other side of the passage through the
armoire
, Papa donned a deeply embroidered court coat that was still magnificent, even if it were a little threadbare. “And my shoes—where are my heeled shoes?”

Against her better judgement, she handed him the shoes. “Papa, they are here.”

“Think of it, my angel—with this money from the sale, I can hire a valet, and you will no longer have to fetch my shoes.”

“Think very carefully before you do, Papa. That will mean another person who knows your secret. Or another person from whom you must keep it.” Oh, what a tangled web. “I beg you to reconsider.”

“You worry too much, Mignon! Just like your mother, God keep her. Do I smell of paint?” He took up an atomizer of
eau de cologne
,
and sprayed himself liberally.

Too liberally—Mignon could barely breathe for the thick mist of scent. “Papa.” She waved the air around her face. “You must stop and think. The Diana is a forgery.”

“
Chut
.” He made an abrupt sound of rebuke. “That is a word I cannot abide. It is a beautiful work of art.”

“A beautiful work of art that was not sculpted by Verrocchio.” She stood her ground, barring his way.

He simply put his hands on her tiny waist and moved her bodily. “Come, you will like Sir Joshua,” he cajoled. “He is impeccably honest, and therefore entirely dull. I insist, even though you are dressed in this dull English manner—you look like a shepherdess.”

Mignon saved her arguments about fashion for another day, and dutifully followed him down the stair, thought she was reluctant to become any part of Papa’s charade.

“My dear Sir Joshua.” Papa’s greeting of the head of the Royal Academy was everything effusive. “How kind of you to come in person.”

Sir Joshua Reynolds made her father a cordial bow. “My pleasure, I assure you, Count Blois.”

The title was another falsity Papa had adopted on the death of his cousin, the
Comte du Blois
.

“Allow me to present my daughter, Marie Chantal.” Papa pulled Mignon down the last of the stair.

“Delighted, Mamselle.” Sir Joshua made her a courtly, if stiff leg.

With the introduction done, Papa directed their attention to the salon. “Henri, the doors.”

Henri dutifully threw back the doors of the salon, where the statue of Diana the Huntress was displayed like a grail atop an altar on the central table.

“There she is.” The president of the Royal Academy of Arts clasped his hand to his chest in a show of reverence.

Mignon would just as soon not watch such goings on, but Papa was determined to keep her dutifully at his side. With Mignon in hand, he led the way into the salon. “Allow me, Sir Joshua.”

“My dear sir.” The Royal Academician was all appreciation. “I first saw her many years ago, on my grand tour. I have never forgotten.”

“Oh, yes?” Papa smiled, but Mignon saw the smudge of heat tinting his cheek— this was a circumstance he had not foreseen. But still, even on the verge of being found out, her scoundrel of a papa looked only vaguely uneasy.

Mignon thought she was going to be ill.

“Yes.” Sir Joshua was walking around the plinth. “I was fortunate enough to see this at the Hotel de Blois in Paris.”

Papa passed his hand over his eyes. “Happier times,
monsieur
. Much happier times.”

“I am so sorry for the loss of your family, of your cousin, the count.” Sir Joshua bowed his head in condolence. “The tales one hears from France these days… So dreadful.”

“Thank you. Such tales leave me
désolé,
my dear Sir Joshua
.
Absolutely desolate.” Papa closed his eyes, and shook his head. “But I have my Mignon, and we are here, alive and well in London, with our Verrocchio, which we were fortunate enough to save.”

Sir Joshua could not be effusive enough in his praise. “Sublime, I said then, and sublime I say now. I express my gratitude, not only for myself, but also on behalf of the Royal Academy. Thank you for letting loaning us the Diana as the centerpiece of this exhibition to raise funds for those who find themselves refugees from the terror.”

Papa was everything modest, and subdued, and false. “It is my honor to do so much for my countrymen. I only wish I could do more.”

Sir Joshua Reynolds signaled to the small army of attendants lining the foyer—who knew Soho Square rated such precautions—to bring in a special crate. Clearly they did not want the Diana stolen, or damaged.

Which gave her an entirely new idea—if she could not stop this farce with logic, perhaps she could with mishap. “Let me help you, Papa.” She reached for the figurine.

But her papa had not escaped the mob just to be outwitted by her. “Oh, no, no.” He cut her off, and wrapping the Diana in his silk handkerchief, he removed the stone goddess from the plinth himself.

Mignon tried again. “Papa, let me help you. Let me take the base—”

“No, no,” he cried again. “You may touch it only with gloved hands. The oils from your skin, my dear—they will stain the marble.” He turned to the academician. “Into your hands, Sir Joshua, I give you this, our ultimate treasure. Care for it as if it were your very own.”

Sir Joshua hastily donned his gloves, and very carefully passed the statue into the gloved hands of the attendants, who placed the Diana carefully into the straw-lined wooden traveling crate.
 

Mignon tried again, for she might still prevent the forgery from being exhibited if she dropped and broke the marble base.
 

But she was hopelessly outclassed—Papa’s wiles were of an altogether higher order than hers would ever be. “Mignon!” He snatched the base from her hands. “Have a care, my dear. There.” He handed the base to the footman to pack away with the rest of the statue.
 

There was nothing Mignon could do but watch as the statue was crated up and carried out of the house to the coach as if it were a queen lying in state. And then Sir Joshua was making his goodbyes, and the groomsmen were mounted, and the whole troupe jangled off down the street, bound for Somerset House. And the public display of a forgery.

“Oh, Papa. I wish I did not have the most awful feeling of foreboding. The same terrible feeling of dread as that awful week before we left France.”

Her papa would not be drawn by either sentimentalism or fatalism. “But it was a good thing we left France, a great thing. Look at this house.” He flourished his arm like a conjurer. “We never lived like this in Paris.”

“You were not selling forged paintings like hot horse chestnuts in Paris.”

“Ah, where is your
esprit de crops
, your spirit of adventure?”
 

But it was a rhetorical question, because both of them knew exactly where her
esprit
had gone—left behind in Paris where it belonged.
 

“These forgeries are our security in uncertain times,” Papa insisted. “What if something should happen to me, and there was no money? What would you do—become a seamstress?” He answered his own question. “No! Better to sell a painting. Or loan out a statue.”

“Oh, Papa, I wish I could make you understand what you are doing is wrong.”

He made one of his many sounds of Gallic dismissal. “Don’t look at me like that. The loan of the statue is necessary to enhance the reputation of the Blois collection, so the world will know that
Comte
Charles Blois escaped France with coaches filled with treasures that I may be persuaded to part with in good time, due to the unfortunate fact that I am separated from the family estates, perhaps forever, by the revolution. I have lost my family, but I still have my treasures. A treasure like the Verrocchio Diana.”

“Except that it’s not by Verrocchio.”

“Why must you talk like that? It is art! Brilliant art. Why must you be so negative?”

“I worry, Papa. These Englishmen, they are great collectors, difficult to fool.”

“
You
have become too English, with your need for precision, and your worry, worry, worry.”

“You may make light of my worry, but one day, Papa, you will overstep. One of your forgeries you will sell to the wrong man.”

He dismissed such a possibility. “Who? Who will be able to tell? Who knows more than I?” He answered his own questions. “No one. No, they cannot tell, these Englishmen. They are all too happy to snap up our patrimony at what they think are bargain prices. Well, I have bargains for them. And when I think of the money I have turned down already for the Verrocchio, it gives me palpitations. Why, at the auction of my Vermeer, I was offered ten thousand pounds. Guineas! A fortune.”

“Papa. It. Is. A. Crime.”

“
Chut
. The problem with you is you’re too honest—a rogue branch off the family tree. I blame your mother, God rest her soul. Oh, I don’t say that to hurt you, my child.” Papa came to sit beside her and pat her hand. “You cannot help what you are.”

“Thank you, Papa.”
 

“What you need is a sherry.” He moved toward the drinks tray. “I will have
cognac
to celebrate, but you are too English, and ought best have sherry.” He brought her a healthy measure of the nut-brown fortified wine. “Oh, my darling. You must see that I am proud that our Verrocchio is a forgery. It is nothing to make something from one’s imagination—but to copy or create in the style of a genius, stroke for stroke, line for line, chisel mark, by chisel mark—that takes something more than genius.”

Mignon had heard similar lectures before, but never with quite so much gusto.