Read Online Art and Artifice by Regina Scott - Free Book Online

Society
annual art exhibition, perhaps her own pieces hanging for all to
see. She couldn’t help the sigh that escaped her.
    “You’re too young, you know,” her aunt said,
as if determined to burst any bubble of hope. “You cannot possibly
live alone at seventeen, and very likely not even after you reach
your majority at twenty-one.”
    This time Emily’s sigh was shorter and more
forceful. “So you will have it there is no other course but
marriage.”
    Lady Minerva smiled, a pointed, crooked,
determined smile. “Not at all, my dear. I’m saying that if you wish
your quaint country cottage, you need someone to chaperon you.
Promise me a home with you, permanently, and I will do all I can to
convince your father this match with Lord Robert is ill
conceived.”
    Emily stared at her. “You fraud! You make
yourself out to be simple, but you know exactly what you’re
about.”
    Her smile softened. “Indeed I do, my dear. I
like to think I am a survivor. And I can help you survive, if you
will allow it.”
    Living with Lady Minerva, for the rest of her
life? The idea was not as foreign as it would have been even a
quarter hour before. When she considered the matter, her aunt’s
history and her own were not so different—called here and there,
never quite welcome, always the outsider. She put out her hand. “We
are agreed. You have a home with me so long as I have one to
command.”
    Her aunt seized her hand, wrung it like a
lifeline. “And you have an ally in me. Now we must convince your
father to allow you to cry off.”
    “Easier said than done,” Emily assured her.
“I want to prove to him his faith in Lord Robert is misplaced. But
first I must catch Lord Robert in some indiscretion.”
    Her aunt hitched her shawl closer. “That
shouldn’t be so difficult. The boy has been a wild one since his
youth.”
    “So I have heard. But he has apparently
showed signs of reforming.”
    Lady Minerva snorted. “Reformation is
relative. He must have done something horrid or you would not be
contacting Bow Street.”
    Emily scowled at her. “Is there anything you
don’t know?”
    “Very little,” her aunt said cheerily. “I
shall not interfere with your friends’ investigation of the fellow,
but do keep me apprised of your progress. I’ll be happy to put my
powers of observation to work on your behalf.”
    Emily had sufficient reason to feel confident
in her own powers of observation. After all, hadn’t she been the
one to first suspect that Priscilla’s aunt might be homicidal?
Surely, if she spent some time with Lord Robert, she’d be able to
ferret out his secrets. Attempting to find him didn’t hold much
promise. Perhaps she should encourage him to come to her.
    “Thank you,” she told her aunt, “but I have
some idea how I wish to continue this investigation. Young ladies
on their Season generally see the sights of London, do they
not?”
    “Quite often,” Lady Minerva agreed. “The
death masks at the Tower, the catacombs under Westminster, the
skeletons at the Hunterian Museum, that sort of thing.”
    Sometimes it was a little scary how much her
aunt appreciated the same things she did. Could a fascination with
battles and death run in the family? Unfortunately, she somehow
doubted Lord Robert would be amused by any of those things.
    “Is there something more popular,” Emily
ventured, “perhaps with an artistic flair, to which I might request
that he escort me?”
    “The Parthenon Marbles?” Lady Minerva
suggested. “They have been all the rage since Lord Elgin stole
them.”
    Emily had heard of the sculptures from the
Parthenon that Lord Elgin had shipped from Greece. “The very
thing,” she said, rising to go change for dinner. “I’ll send a note
asking Lord Robert to show me the Marbles, tomorrow if possible.
Then we shall see what we shall see.”
    * * *
    Late the next
morning, Emily was trying to determine how blood would pool around
a decapitated body when the footman announced