Page 2 of Artfully Yours

“I could show you documents attesting to that picture’s history,” said Geoffrey. “Every sale, from Rembrandt’s workshop to this drawing room.” He had to look up at Alan, who topped him by half a head.

Alan kept smiling. “Please do.”

Geoffrey’s nose was a touch longer than Alan’s, his lips thinner, but the set of his eyes was the same, as was the angle of his jaw. They resembled each other. Although—who could ever have guessed?—Alan the invalid had become the larger man, taller, more heavily muscled, more vital.

Perhaps Geoffrey, too, was drawing comparisons. He stalked away, kicking at the teapot, which the maid had righted. The pot tipped. He kept going and flung himself onto a sofa. In Parliament, he’d cultivated a reputation for sangfroid. In his household, and in his dealings with Alan, he reverted to a child.

“Sleaford’s pictures are genuine.” He bit out the words. “Even Lloyd Syme goes to Sleaford. He acquired a Rembrandt, a Brueghel, a . . . a . . .”

Alan raised his brows as Geoffrey cast about for the names of old masters.

“Shall I list possible candidates?” he inquired.

Geoffrey scowled. “It’s whoever you’d think. All the greats. For the art collection at the South Kensington Museum.”

“Syme’s judgment is flawed. Clouded by ambition and animosity.” Alan felt the dampness beneath his boot as he returned to the settee. Tea was still seeping into the carpet, staining it with an irregular rosette. He felt the urge to halt the flow, to stand the teapot on the tray, for the sake of the servants. But he wouldn’t kneel in front of his brother.

“He looks like a wise old owl, but he has an ophidian heart. Ophidian means snakelike.” He sat, throwing his arm across the settee’s back in a casual pose. “How many pictures did you acquire?” he asked. “If you want to build your collection, I can introduce you to the best artists of our age. You can buy a painting wet from the easel.”

“Stuff your advice.” Geoffrey spoke through gritted teeth. “That’s an order. I’ve had enough of your opinionating, and so has the rest of society.”

“So has Count Davanzo, you mean.” Alan sighed. “It’s not my fault if your cronies produce abysmal operas. If you so dislike my opinions, don’t read my reviews.”

“The bloody review in question took up a full page of yesterday’s Times. It was deuced difficult to avoid. And Davanzo found it horribly insulting.” Geoffrey leaned forward. The tea table interposed between the sofa and the settee, and he looked poised to lunge across it. “By God, he’s the Italian ambassador. Central to the efforts of the Home Office to protect the nation from foreign terrorists.”

“So I should flatter him?” Alan shook his head. “He perpetuated a musical atrocity on our nation. What of that? I’ve yet to meet an anarchist who’s done worse.”

“Ha.” Geoffrey snorted, then drew a sharp breath. “Let’s come to the point, shall we? You’re here because I closed your bank account.”

“Not exactly.” Alan smiled. “I’m here to make you open it.”

“I will open it, and return the funds.” Geoffrey smiled back unpleasantly. “When you learn to comport yourself. When you resume use of your family name. And when you stop dipping your pen in poison.”

“It has come to this.” Slowly, Alan removed his spectacles and polished the lenses on his sleeve. Window-glass lenses. His vision was perfect. Better than perfect.

He met Geoffrey’s eyes. They’d never been close, but they’d made, on several occasions, a fragile peace. Every time, the peace fractured, due to pressure from beneath, the bubbling up of what they’d covered over to achieve the semblance of fraternity.

The secrets. The rancor.

Their latest peace—such as it was—had ended.

“If you won’t honor our arrangement, I won’t either.” Alan replaced his spectacles on his nose. “Perhaps you don’t remember? I inherited everything dispensable.” Not only the properties in fee simple, which he’d sold immediately, investing the sum in railways, shipbuilding, and steel, but the books in the libraries, the portraits in the galleries, the silver plate, the very settee upon which he sat.

A muscle flexed in Geoffrey’s jaw. Of course he remembered. That final proof of parental preference had put the seal on his brother’s resentment. No matter that Alan had presented him with the investment portfolio, given him control of the capital he’d needed to resuscitate the dukedom. To avoid a loveless marriage, if he’d been willing to forgo extravagances, live more reasonably; that was, like less of an Umfreville.

He hadn’t been willing, in the end. He’d married Fanny, about whom Alan had, to date, heard him utter only one approving statement: At least she’s not American.

“Open the account,” Alan said. “Or I’ll sell every stick.” Starting with anything to which Geoffrey attached a sentimental value. Let him buy it all back at auction.

“The portrait of Great-Great-Grandmama is a Gainsborough,” Alan mused aloud. “It’s certainly worth more than your Rembrandt.” He tilted his chin toward the forgery.

Geoffrey gave a strangled cough. He looked, for an instant, overcharged, like his twenty-five-year-old self, reeling from their father’s death, and from his crushing patrimony. The estates had been so encumbered he couldn’t borrow enough to pay the interest due on the preexisting loans. The night before the funeral, he and Alan had talked until dawn, drinking straight from the bottle. That was the closest they’d ever come to each other. The first and only time they’d shared confidences. It was the night Alan had learned of Geoffrey’s desperate, doomed love for Lady Patricia Kempe, third daughter of the penniless Duke of Harewood. It was the night Alan had revealed his darkest suspicions about their mother.

Sometimes, Alan recalled those impassioned, drunken hours and imagined doing them over, saying something different, something that would have made Geoffrey believe him, that could have changed the whole course of their adult relationship.

“You haven’t asked after Claud,” said Geoffrey, his tone suddenly slippery. “He was poorly after his swimming lesson.”

“I’m sorry to hear he was poorly.” Last Friday, Alan had spent an hour with Claud in the Serpentine, his nephew’s first time in the lake since last September.