The Art of Stealing a Duke’s Heart by Ellie St. Clair

Chapter 19

“Arie, I really don’t have time to be here. I told Xander that.”

“So he related to me. But Calli, I don’t have time to wait any longer either. My buyer is running out of patience. This entire affair should have been dealt with days ago.”

“Replicating a master’s work is not as simple as you might think.”

Arie fixed a benevolent smile on her, one that she hated, for it made her feel like a young child.

“That is not what you said when you assured me weeks ago that you could take this on. Something has changed, Calli. Best you start telling me just what that is.”

Calli looked around the room for sympathy from her other siblings. But Diana, of course, stood beside Arie, his ever-faithful general, while even Xander seemed to be awaiting her response. Damien looked pained, as he always did whenever he could sense controversy within the family.

“You must understand, Arie, that I am working with the children all day and then painting all night. It is exhausting.”

“Right,” Arie said, standing from the chair that Calli knew he considered his throne of sorts before he walked toward her. He leaned over her chair, holding her captive between his arms as he stared her down. “So none of those nocturnal hours are spent… otherwise?”

His eyes flashed and, in that moment, Calli knew. He was aware of her relationship with Jonathan. How much he knew, she had no idea, but however much it was, it was enough.

She must act ignorant. She gasped aloud indignantly. “How dare you?”

“How dare I what? Find out? I have eyes and ears everywhere. Even in a duke’s castle.”

Calli cast a look over at Xander, who wouldn’t meet her eye. She gritted her teeth, for she was well aware where those ‘eyes and ears’ usually came from — pretty maids or serving girls that Xander charmed.

“There is nothing to discover. The duke and I have become… friends, yes, but nothing more. Which is a good thing, for then he has little cause to suspect me.”

“And you still feel that you can betray your… friend?”

Arie leaned back now, releasing her, and Calli took a breath of the air that seemed to return once he gave her space.

“If I am to be honest, I will tell you that I do feel some guilt at the fact that I am deceiving him, yes,” Calli said, determined to hold true to the promise she had made to herself. She was going to make this right. She was going to make all of this right. She just wasn’t sure how. Not yet. “He took me into his home, gave me a position on his staff. It just feels… wrong to do this to him.”

As Diana’s eyes widened, Arie snorted in disgust.

“He is a duke, Calli. It will make no difference to him whether or not one painting goes missing. For him it is equivalent to anyone else losing a pound note. He likely won’t even be the wiser.”

Except Calli would know. And she knew far better — yes, it may be inconsequential to Jonathan in terms of wealth, but if he were to discover her deception, it would change everything. He would not only never want to see her again, but he might be forever changed.

She swallowed, standing as she faced Arie, determined not to let him intimidate her.

“I would know, Arie.”

He scoffed at her. “You never were quite one of us.”

The words struck her painfully deep within, far more than she could ever allow him to know, causing her to shake so hard she had to grip her hands into fists at her side to keep him from seeing their trembling. Diana’s gaze flicked down, perceptive as always.

“Arie,” Xander said, unfurling his long frame from where he sat astride a hard-backed chair. “That’s not fair. Calli has never been anything but loyal to all of us.”

“Until now, apparently.”

Xander looked uncertainly from Arie to Calli, as though unsure of just where his loyalty should lie. That hurt nearly as much as Arie’s words for, if anything, she thought she would always have the support of the brother who had been there since the day she was born.

“I’ll not go through with it — not anymore,” she said, holding her head high, and Arie shocked her when he simply laughed.

“You don’t have a choice.”

“I do.”

“No,” Arie said, shaking his head. “You don’t. For I am going to steal that painting — whether you agree or not. And if I steal the painting without your help, I will be sure to inform your beloved Jonathan just what role you played in it all.”

“You wouldn’t,” Calli ground out. “That would only implicate yourself.”

“I have my ways to ensure that I am never found out,” Arie said smugly. “As for you, however…. Listen, Calli, at least this way, you have a chance that he might never find out the truth.”

“But I shall always know it,” she all but whispered, and Arie shrugged, apparently not caring.

“Now, I hear you have acquired a statue for me.”

Calli shook her head. “You heard wrong.”

She couldn’t do it. She had left the statue back at Jonathan’s house. Somehow, she was going to return it to the baron. She didn’t know how yet, but she would.

Arie looked from Calli to Xander. “Well, well. One of you is lying to me. Just which one of you is it?”

Calli looked to Xander, hoping he understood her plea not to give away her secrets.

Her brother stared at her, fighting a war within himself, until finally he turned to Arie,

“I must have been mistaken,” he murmured, to which Arie waved him away with a hand.

“Fine, then. Keep your statue,” he said, but his eye twitched as he stared at Calli. “But the painting is mine. Send word when we can come and switch them out. No longer than two days’ time, Calli. Do you understand me?”

She nodded mutely. “Understood,” she whispered.

Xander didn’t say much on the return journey, but as he left her near the servants’ entrance of Jonathan’s house, he stopped her before she left the carriage, grabbing her wrist. “I’m sorry, Calli,” he said, his words low. “But there’s nothing else we can do. You agreed to this.”

“I know,” she said miserably before she bid him goodnight and let herself into the house.

She was hardly aware of her surroundings as she walked up to her room, wishing now only for the comfort of her bed. She might as well enjoy it while she could.

Which is why she nearly stumbled over the pair of feet hanging off her bed. She caught herself in time, looking up to find herself staring at Jonathan — and her painting spread out in front of him.

* * *

Jonathan had heardher come in. Walk down the hall. He waited for her, sitting on her bed. The longer he had waited as he watched his lone candle burn low, the more his ire had grown, until he was nearly shaking with it.

He tried to tell himself that he should be patient. That he should give her a chance to explain. But instead, it seemed all his mind was capable of doing was imagining all of the reasons that a near-perfect copy of his painting was underneath her bed.

“Jonathan.”

Her voice was breathless, defensive, and he looked up at her, no longer seeing the woman he had come to know so intimately, the one he had thought he would marry, but instead someone he knew nothing about.

“What is this?”

He threw his hand out before him, hearing the disgust in his voice, even though, had she asked, he would have been forced to admit that it was a masterpiece. For it looked like the very painting he stared at from his study desk each and every day.

“It’s… it’s a painting.”

“It’s my painting.”

“Yes and no.”

“What,” he seethed, “is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that it is a copy of your painting, yes, but that I was the one who painted it.”

“Why?”

She shrank back from him, bringing a finger to her lips as her eyes darted to the second doorway.

“Please be quiet, or you will wake the children.”

“You mean the very children that you have left for your late-night wanderings?” He raised an eyebrow. “Where have you been?”

She took a step back into the room, holding her hands out in front of her, palms up, as though she was quieting him. “Perhaps we should take a moment and calm down.”

“Pardon me?” The words were clipped, and from the way her eyes flicked back and forth, he knew he was scaring her, but he didn’t care at the moment.

“I just think… that, well, perhaps if we sat down, had a reasonable conversation, we could figure this out. You seem very… angry right now.”

“I seem angry.”

“Yes.”

She deliberately didn’t meet his gaze, instead taking slow and steady paces across the room before unfastening her cloak and hanging it on the hook. Jonathan had stood from the bed, staring down at the painting feeling vaguely that it was insulting him. Calli took a seat next to it, patting the bed beside her.

“Sit, please?”

“No, thank you. Why don’t you tell me where you have been and what this painting is for before I pack it all up for you?”

“Very well,” she said, looking down at her intertwined fingers. “I love the painting in your office. I truly do. I wanted to have a copy of it for myself. I thought it would be good practice for me to see how close I could come to replicating it.”

“It looks identical. Just missing a few details.”

“Thank you?” she said, looking up at him with some hesitation.

“Tell me this, Calli,” he said, crouching down and staring at her so that she had no choice but to look at him. “Were you going to try to sell it? Make some money off it?”

“No.”

“Where were you going to put it?”

He looked around the room, holding his hands up.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t sure how long I would be here, I suppose.”

“And just where,” he stood and placed his hands on his hips, “did you think you would be going?”

She shrugged, looking small and unsure, and he began to somewhat regret the tone he had taken with her.

“I don’t know, Jonathan,” she said softly. “I figured that, someday, you would marry, or court a young woman, and I wouldn’t be able to stay any longer.”

“Why would you think that?” he asked gruffly, although he could understand why she would assume she would have to leave. He knew he would never be able to see her with another.

“The night we met, you were hosting an event to try to find a wife, were you not?” she asked, her eyes wide and glossy as she looked at him.

“How did you know that?”

“The children told me.”

“I see,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back as he began to pace the room. “Would you care to tell me where you were tonight?”

“I had to go check in on my family.”

“The sick relative again?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He is doing much better.”

“If you need time to go see family, you know you just need to ask me,” Jonathan said, wondering why she wouldn’t feel she was able to.

“I know, but I am aware that I am only provided my one day a week. I wouldn’t want to ask you for any more on account of you—we…” she looked away, apparently not able to properly describe what they were to each other.

“Calli,” he said, attempting to soften his words, “I wouldn’t say no to you, no matter what our relationship. I hope you would know that I am rather benevolent with my staff.”

“I wasn’t sure,” she said softly.

Jonathan sighed, placing his hands behind his back. She had provided reasonable explanations for the painting, for her whereabouts, and yet, he had the sense that all was not as it seemed. He had trusted before and was made the fool, and he was not about to allow that to happen again. He thought back to how excited he had been earlier this evening, and he wished that he hadn’t allowed anyone else to see it, not even Davenport. For there was no way that he could, at least at the moment, ask anything further of Calli than the relationship they already had. Not until he was sure, until he knew who she was and where she came from, until he could completely trust her.

“Since you seem so close to your family, I was wondering…”

“Yes?”

“Perhaps the children and I could meet them sometime. We could arrange a trip to Gunter’s or something of the sort.”

“To Gunter’s? With my family?” she repeated him, her eyes widening and her mouth rounding as though she could never imagine the thought.

“Would that be an issue?”

“Yes. No. I—”

“In two days’ time.”

“I shall ask.”

“See that you do,” he said, striding to the door, taking one last look back at Calli and then the painting. “Goodnight, Calli.”

“Goodnight, Jonathan.”