Artful Deceptions

ARTFUL DECEPTIONS

Patricia Rice

Chapter One

Holding her breath and biting her lip, Arianne Richards removed the oddly situated backing from which a piece of canvas protruded. Many old paintings had unusual frames and odd bits of paper and board tacked to the reverse, but this particular painting was neither very old nor very valuable.

Actually, she considered the insipid portrait on the other side one of the artist’s poorest works. Her mother could not possibly have looked that vain even twenty years ago, and she certainly had never been the frail beauty the artist had thought to make of her. Perhaps that kind of beauty had been as fashionable then as it was now, but Arianne knew that her mother was as tall as she, and had always enjoyed robust good health.

Until these last few years
. Frowning, Arianne pried at the backing. If she listened carefully, she could hear her mother’s cough in the rooms above, but here in the workroom she tried to shut out this reminder. Her father had brought in no new commissions lately, and there was nothing to be done down here, but Arianne had used the excuse of cleaning one of their own portraits to escape for a while into this solitude.

Not that she minded tending to her younger brothers and sister, or even cared that the major part of the housework fell on her shoulders now that her mother’s coughing spells had become more frequent. Her family had been all her life for twenty-one years. She knew little else. But the constant worry of the hacking cough gnawed at fears Arianne didn’t wish to confront.

She could remember a time when she had run through the wild grasses of Somerset, free and laughing as only a child could be. She had been too young to remember the death of her first baby sister, but she could remember the time after the fever, when her new baby brother had been carried off on angel’s wings, as her mother had explained it. It had been then that the laughing summer days had dwindled to a permanent winter.

Her mother had been a long time recovering from the fever. Her father’s genial absentmindedness had become more distracted. Bits and pieces of their heavy old carved furniture had begun to disappear: the lovely chair with the faded tapestry of lions and Romans, the massive walnut sideboard with so many intricate carvings that Arianne used it as a hiding place for her smallest treasures, even the golden candlesticks with the dragon heads that breathed fire when the candle was lit. Along with these fantasies of the past disappeared Arianne’s childhood.

They had removed to London by the time Lucinda was born. Even as a six-year-old Arianne had taken the responsibility of looking after the infant, rocking her cradle when she cried, keeping her amused when she was awake so her mother could rest and get strong again. It seemed a natural progression of things that her mother’s “best little helper” should be the one to watch the toddler when she began to walk, to set the table and clear the dishes on the maid’s night off, to stir the custard when the kitchen was a flurry of activity.

Arianne breathed a sigh of relief as the backing finally came loose from the frame. She knew no one minded when she came down here to get away for just a little while. Her father had encouraged her habit of slipping away to watch him work as he cleared centuries of dirt and grime from the rare and valuable oils brought to him from the collections of the wealthy. He had even allowed her to help him on less valuable pieces, until she knew the best chemicals to use for which oils and could work patiently without his guidance while he went out to obtain more business.

It was because his own collection was so extensive that Ross Richards was consulted by royalty and aristocracy seeking to refurbish their family treasures or keep newly acquired ones in good repair. Arianne wrinkled her nose in frustration as she thought of the fortune in paintings adorning the walls of this rather humble abode. The paintings were almost all they had left when they had moved to the city, and her father refused to part with even the least of them, even if it meant not taking a much-needed trip to Bath or Brighton to improve her mother’s ailing health.

It was the one subject on which she and her father were at odds, and it wouldn’t do to dwell on it now. Her father’s passion for art supported them, while her parents’ aristocratic relations gave them the connections to the world necessary to provide that support. They seemed content with that, and Arianne knew it wasn’t her place to interfere.

But as the backing slipped away to reveal a palette of colors that shouldn’t be there, Arianne gasped and felt a flutter of hope somewhere deep inside, hope hinged on keeping this discovery a secret from her beloved father.

* * * *

Arianne didn’t bother to look in the mirror as she tied the ribbons of her eminently practical buckram-stiffened bonnet over her heavy chestnut hair. She had no lady’s maid to cut and comb and tease and curl the thick lengths into a fashionable coiffure, and she had no patience for it herself. By pinning her tresses carefully into a heavy chignon, she managed to keep them in control enough to fit a bonnet over them. That was all that was necessary under the circumstances.

Tightening her generous mouth and catching a glance of the result in the mirror, Arianne sighed as the knocker sounded below. She had been watching for the carriage and had hurried to make ready as soon as it had turned down the narrow street, but it would be completely indecorous to run out before Melanie’s footman had even knocked at the door. Thinking of Melanie, she sighed again. Melanie had the pouty bowed lips of fashion. Why couldn’t she at least resemble her fashionable cousin in this one small respect?

Hurriedly pulling on her gloves, Arianne hastened toward the hall stairs, but she had no chance of escaping without notice. Fifteen-year-old Lucinda bounded out of the upstairs parlor, and from the sound of running footsteps, she would be followed closely by their brothers.

“Rainy, Melanie is here! Could I go too? Please, Rainy? Just this once? I’ve never ridden in a carriage through the park before. Please, Rainy?”

Arianne didn’t hesitate, though her heart tugged at her sister’s plea. Were it not for their cousins, she would never have seen the fashionable world from an elegant carriage either, but this carriage ride had more importance than a gay outing.

Smiling up at her sister, Arianne called, “Another time, Lucy, I promise,” before hurrying through the door held by Melanie’s footman.

Her cousin practically bounced with eagerness as Arianne sat beside her on the velvet squabs. Melanie had lost both her parents, leaving her in the somewhat whimsical care of her twin brothers, Gordon and Evan, but aside from that one unhappy circumstance, Melanie Griffin had everything that Arianne had not.

The Griffins were wealthy and moved in the fashionable circles of their grandfather, the Earl of Shelce. At eighteen Melanie had been presented to court under the auspices of her brother Evan’s new wife, and she was now enjoying the Season she had been denied after her father’s death.

But it wasn’t so much Melanie’s wealth and fashion that Arianne envied as her cousin’s blond, petite beauty and sunny disposition. Melanie practically glowed with charm and laughter and seemed totally unaware that heads turned to watch her wherever she went. Beside her, Arianne felt the veriest dull horse, but then, she wasn’t here to charm anyone into anything,

“Tell me now, Rainy!” Melanie clasped Arianne’s gloved hand and turned blue eyes burning with curiosity to her elder cousin. “Tell me or I shall die of suspense. What is it that actually has you sending for me for a change? Usually it is I who must seek you out. Have you found a beau, Rainy, and wish to meet him secretly? Is Uncle Ross to become curator for the Regent? It must be something vastly exciting to stir you from your busy hearth and home.”

Arianne smiled briefly at her cousin’s overindulgence in romantics. It was widely recognized among the family that Arianne was the practical one while Melanie was an incurable dreamer. Before the late Viscount Griffin’s untimely death, Arianne had been much in Melanie’s household simply as a balance against the younger girl’s high spirits. They had been tutored together until Arianne was too old for tutoring and was needed too much at home to be spared. It had been several years since she’d enjoyed the freedom of the Griffin household but Melanie hadn’t allowed their friendship to fade with time.

“How can I tell you my poor secrets after hearing those wild dreams? Art curator for the Regent! As if Prinny weren’t far enough in debt, my father would have the whole of the monarchy up the River Tick in no time.”

Melanie giggled at this solecism from her solemn cousin. Arianne seldom smiled, and it was difficult for strangers to know whether she was serious or not, but Melanie knew her sharp wit well enough. “I should like to see that. Do you think they might sell the crown jewels, then? I rather have a fancy for that ruby coronet. Wouldn’t I look grand?” At Arianne’s lifted brow, she grinned again. “And you have not ruled out a beau, Rainy. I wish you had allowed Gordon to bring you out with me. Some of these entertainments are deadly dull without you along to prick all those puffed self-esteems.”

Arianne shook off her annoying bonnet within the privacy of the carriage’s closed confines and smiled at the memory stirred by her cousin’s words. “The Puffed Self-Esteem, a rare bird, as I remember. One wouldn’t want to prick one, would one? Now, the Haughty Snuff-Snatcher, there’s a common one, put salt on his tail if you like. He’ll not likely know the difference.”

“He will if the salt lands in his snuffbox! Oh, I had forgotten that, Arianne. You should never have encouraged me so. I don’t think there was one of the twins’ friends who did not avoid us after that.”

“Oh, p’raps one or two. They weren’t all lofty fellows. I rather suspect some of them had a good laugh at their clubs that night. ‘Twas a pity I hadn’t told you pepper worked better, but I had no notion you would take it into your head to salt our imaginary birds.”

Melanie swallowed a chuckle. “I don’t suppose the poor fellow ever figured out why I chose to salt him. But the stairwell wasn’t a very good hiding place. Even if the lid of the salt cellar had not come loose, someone would have seen me as soon as he began choking on that awful snuff. I must have appeared quite the goose.”

“Feather-Headed Guinea Hen,” Arianne affirmed readily. “But by now I’m certain all is forgiven and you have bevies of suitors at your doors.”

“Straitlaced Sapsuckers and Peafowls by the dozen.” Melanie dismissed them airily with a wave of her hand. “Now, what is it that you need my advice for? It is such an unusual occasion, that you cannot hope to distract me from your request for long. If you have not found a wealthy suitor, have you some notion of persuading Uncle Ross to part with his precious paintings?”

To Melanie, all of life was a game to be laughed at and played with an abundance of cheer. Arianne had to smile at her wild assumptions. It was much easier to feel good about her decision when there was someone to urge her on. “In the absence of suitable beaux and the silver tongue required to persuade my father of anything, I have done something quite despicable. I have stolen a painting.”

That startled the laughter from Melanie’s lips, and she sent her cousin a hasty look of concern before realizing the ever-practical Arianne had made another joke. Relieved, she sat back and joined in the game. “You have spirited his Gainsborough from above his desk and hidden it in the garden.”

Arianne did laugh at this mad suggestion. “The house and grounds would have been leveled by now in his search had I done so. No, nothing nearly so dramatic or valuable. You know I have been helping him with cleaning the paintings that have been brought to him?”

Melanie made a face. “All those smelly oils and turpentines. I don’t know how you abide it.”

“It is great fun. You must persuade Gordon to bring in some of your family portraits sometime. All those years of dirt and grime from wood smoke hide so many of the true colors. I enjoy watching a musty old ancestor become a colorful rogue or dashing lady once the colors are revealed.”

“I doubt that we have a single interesting ancestor between us worth uncovering, but what does any of this have to do with your stolen painting? Surely you have not stolen someone else’s painting?”

The horror in Melanie’s voice rang more with drama than anxiety, and Arianne ignored it. With some difficulty she explained the discovery of the hidden painting and her decision not to tell her father of its existence. “For I know he will spend more money to have it framed and hung on a wall where no one but his clients will see it and where no good can come of it at all. But if it could be sold, even for a few pounds, I might persuade Mama to spend a few days in country air. The physicians say she should spend time at Bath or Brighton, but the expense is enormously prohibitive. But I thought just a few days somewhere quiet, out of the stench of belching chimneys and flowing sewers ...”