a slight bow and awaited the inevitable introduction. Marisol, he noted, appeared to be trying to recall where she might have encountered him. As he had not tried to avoid being seen at Lady Claremont’s affair, he was not troubled that he had attracted her notice. In truth, he was more surprised that it might be so. It was his judgment that Marisol Vega saw little that was beyond the length of her own nose.
“Mr. Gardner, allow me to introduce my cousin, Miss Marisol Vega. Marisol, this is Mr. Gardner, your father’s visitor. He has come to inquire about one of Sir Arthur’s recent paintings.”
Restell did not correct Emma’s explanation of his purpose. It was true enough, but did not encompass the whole. “A pleasure, Miss Vega.”
“Mr. Gardner.” She glanced at Emma. “Father sent me to find you.”
Emma doubted that. It was much more likely that Sir Arthur had instructed a servant to do that task, and Marisol had offered her services instead. What her intention might be, Emma could not divine.
“I fear I have kept you overlong, Miss Hathaway. Are we settled on the sketches?”
“You truly want them?”
“I do.”
Marisol walked over to the table and held out her hand to Emma. “Those sketches?” she asked. “Allow me to see.”
Restell did not miss Emma’s infinitesimal hesitation. He understood her reluctance as caution when he observed how Marisol held the drawings without regard for the placement of her fingertips. She seemed to have no awareness that she might smudge the sketches or curl the paper. He was tempted to take them from her hands himself but feared she would shred the paper with her nails, so tight was her grip.
“I do not understand, Mr. Gardner,” Marisol said. She flicked her thumbnail across the upper corners of the papers to separate them. “These are singularly dull. Pencil renderings only. Do they not beg for the application of watercolor?”
Restell picked up the sketches the moment Marisol let them slip out of her fingers and drift to the tabletop. “I could not say whether watercolor would improve the look of them. I have no expertise in matters of art, so I purchase such pieces that interest me. These interest me, Miss Vega.”
She sighed so deeply that a wayward strand of curling, ebony hair fluttered at her forehead. “As you wish, but I think it would benefit you to speak to my betrothed before you are seized by another impulse. Mr. Charters is completely agreeable to sharing his views on the essence of art. He is accounted to be an expert, you know.”
“While your father merely creates it.” He offered this with no trace of the irony it suggested.
“Well, of course there is that,” Marisol said blithely. Her gaze swiveled sideways to Emma. “What is your opinion of the sketches?”
“I don’t believe I’ve formed one.”
“No, you would not, would you? You must needs sell everything my father has done, even when such a sale might cast a shadow on the whole of his work. Neven advises the exercise of prudence when putting new pieces before the public.”
“Marisol,” Emma said, her tone gently chiding. “Your father directed me to show Mr. Gardner these sketches as well as an early, and only partially complete, painting of the fishing village. It is possible that he is willing to part with them.”
“He is the artist,” Marisol said. “Not the expert. Did you not hear Mr. Gardner agree with me on that very point? Naturally Father wants his work to be seen, but you cannot always indulge him. It does not serve, Emmalyn.”
Diverted, and in anticipation of blood sport, Restell’s eyes darted between the combatants. Knowing he was of two minds, he wondered if he could trust his own judgment. While throttling Marisol Vega had a certain appeal, he believed it would ultimately be less satisfying than kissing her cousin.
Chapter 4
Sir Arthur did not rise to his feet when Marisol, Emmalyn, and Mr. Gardner returned to the library. He was comfortably ensconced in an oversized armchair—dwarfed by it, really—and had no desire to remove his aching legs from the hassock on which they rested.
“So you are come at last,” he said by way of greeting them. “I hope, Mr. Gardner, that my niece did not insist you look at every piece in the studio. She is perhaps too ardent in her approval of my work.”
Marisol went directly to her father and leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Emmalyn does indeed admire your talent, Father, but offers no more praise for it than is your due. Look, she has encouraged Mr. Gardner to consider the purchase of your fishing village pencil drawings.”
Restell was much impressed by Marisol’s tactics. She and Emmalyn had been unable to resolve their differences of opinion in the studio. The verbal sparring had simply ended when Emmalyn refused to engage her cousin by defending her own position. Once Marisol realized she’d had the last word, she turned on her heel and started down the stairs, supremely confident that she would be followed.
She was…eventually. Restell did not make to exit until he observed that Emmalyn had composed herself. That she was embarrassed by her cousin’s behavior was evident in the color in her cheeks and the hitch in her breathing as she tried to calm it. He had considered telling Emmalyn that she was not responsible for Marisol’s impolitic attempts to discourage the sale of the sketches, and hadn’t she, in fact, tried earlier to dissuade him of the same? He elected to keep his own counsel. His experience with the women in his own family suggested this was the wiser course. Females did not seem to appreciate the interjection of logic and reason into their emotional arguments. On the one occasion he pointed this out to his mother and sisters, they turned on him.
A hint of a smile crossed his features as that memory came back to him. He almost missed Sir Arthur’s inquiry. “I am quite taken with these sketches,” Restell said, holding them out to the artist. “Miss Hathaway was uncertain if you would have need of them.”
Sir Arthur accepted the drawings and studied each one for several long moments before passing them back to Restell. His fine, aristocratic features were set with a certain wistfulness as he explained, “I had entertained the notion of painting the village on a much larger canvas. It would have been a self-indulgent exercise as there is no interest among my patrons for a painting of the dimensions I envisioned.”
“Then it was not a series of paintings you meant to do,” Restell said, glancing at the drawings. “But one.”
Sir Arthur nodded. “It speaks to my dissatisfaction with the finished work. Mayhap Emmalyn told you.”
“She did.”
Marisol moved to stand behind her father’s chair and placed her hands on his shoulders. “Neven’s advice was sound, Father. The painting would not have sold, and you would have been heartsick that it was not well-received. How you would have disliked seeing it sitting in the studio day after day. I shouldn’t wonder that you would eventually be moved to pitch it from the balcony where it would fall on the head of some hapless gentleman and strike him down. The trial would be scandal, and although you would plead that a fit of artistic temperament prompted your action, you would nevertheless be transported to Van Diemen’s Land. I would be inconsolable, and Emmalyn very nearly so. Neven might very well decide he cannot marry me. A gentleman does not, you know, often choose to marry the daughter of a murderer.”
Sir
