(Malloren #5) Devilish by Jo Beverley
Author:Jo Beverley [Beverley, Jo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Chapter 18
Diana distracted herself by exploring the charming boudoir, but found little of interest. The paintings were insignificant, and the few books in a glass-fronted set of shelves unlikely to be Elf’s choices. Elf had moved on to her husband’s house, and these rooms held only ghostly whispers of her.
A side door opened into a bedchamber, and beyond, Diana found the dressing room. Clara and another servant were carefully extracting her formal court dress along with its awkward panniers, while others filled a huge tub lined with thick linen cloths. A fire already burned in the grate to warm the room for bathing.
It was not a newly laid fire. This had clearly been thought of ahead of time, too, and this evidence of planning chipped at her hopes. Most of the time, Bey ran his affairs with efficient perfection. Nothing was neglected or done on impulse.
Clockwork precision, not easily changed.
That clicked her thoughts to the automaton. Presumably it had been unloaded by now and placed tenderly somewhere in this house. The drummer boy looked as she had as a child. What had Bey looked like at five or six? Was there a picture of him as an even younger child, before his mother’s cruel act? Did later ones show the change, even in childhood features?
When the housekeeper returned, followed by a footman bearing the tea tray, Diana asked, “Is there a portrait gallery here?”
“A small one in the corridor outside the ballroom, milady. Most of the family portraits are at the Abbey, of course.”
“I would like to see the portraits that hang here.”
The woman was clearly startled, for the tea awaited and the bath would soon be ready, but she curtsied.
“Of course, milady. Be so kind as to follow me.”
She was led past the stairs to the other half of the house where a wider corridor was indeed lined with portraits. Diana thanked the housekeeper and dismissed her, then turned to stroll by the pictures.
The first were ancient paintings, one small miniature going back perhaps to the early Tudor period.
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Farther along she found two large portraits of a man and a woman in the opulent dress of the Restoration. Probably Bey’s grandparents, and again she saw a resemblance in the woman’s sculpted lids and the man’s classic bones.
Nothing here of his parents, however. She wondered if any portraits survived of his mother, and if so, in what secluded corner they hung.
The end of the corridor contained one moderately sized portrait surrounded by miniatures, rather like the sun and the planets. With a smile, she wondered if he thought of the arrangement that way, too.
The central portrait had to be Bey as a young man, a youth almost. It was probably the usual one painted in Italy when on the Grand Tour for he leaned against a stone pillar, book in hand, and revealed a glimpse of some Italian town behind him. She understood that many Italian artists kept a stock of canvasses already painted
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