“I enjoy your art, Allie,” Beck said. “I think your mother does too, but what will count in the end is if you enjoy it.”

“Maybe.” Allie shifted away, and Beck let her go. “She likes what I do, but it bothers her too—like I do.”

Beck drew her back for a growling hug. “It is the job of mothers to be bothered by their offspring. Now go see if your mama needs help. She’s unpacking the crates my sister sent down from Belle Maison, and I suspect Nita might have tucked in some maple candy, for we raise both bees and sugar maples.”

“Maple candy?”

“Go.” Beck closed her sketch book and handed it to her. “And don’t stop sketching, Allie, not as long as it makes you happy.”

She grinned and nodded, casting off her pensive mood in the fashion of young children. And then she was gone, leaving Beck to ponder what had changed in Sarabande Hunt’s life that she’d traded in her violin for wrinkled sheets and dirty andirons?

* * *

Appraisers apparently considered it their purpose in life to state the obvious, repeatedly and emphatically, as Henri Bernard was doing now.

“They’re unconventional, very unconventional, but the brush work is…”

Extraordinary, Tremaine thought, wanting to kick something—or someone.

“Mr. St. Michael, I tell you the brush work is nothing short of extraordinary. Absolutely, utterly extraordinary. And the use of light—the mastery of it—beyond extraordinary. Words fail, they simply fail. Have you more works by the same artist?”

He had a good dozen more, larger and just as well executed, the subjects conventional enough for a dowager duchess’s drawing room—provided her grace had exquisite taste in paintings.

“Let’s start with these three. I need a value on them.” Which was the same point Tremaine had made nearly forty-five absolutely, utterly, extraordinary minutes ago.

Bernard stuffed a quizzing glass in his pocket and straightened. “Are they to be sold at private auction? An auction for gentlemen, perhaps? Christie’s will do an excellent job, and there are smaller houses, too, that I can highly recommend.”

Because each of those auction houses would pay the dapper, so-French Monsieur Bernard a healthy commission for bringing these works to the block.

“I’m considering my options,” Tremaine said. “The first step is to determine a value for them.”

“That will take some time, sir. I must correspond with colleagues on the Continent, research sales of paintings of a similar nature.”

Damn the French and their confounded, mule-stubborn delicacy.

“How long will you need,” Tremaine asked, “and how much will it cost me?”

* * *

Beckman set an idle pace across the yard. “My money’s on young Cane.”

“Your money?” Sara liked that he’d escort her like this on a simple trip to the pond, and liked even better the way his hand rested over hers on his arm.

“In the great sweepstakes to win Maudie’s heart,” Beck went on. “She spends more time goggling at the scenery than she does helping Polly. We’ll have to get two scullery maids, one to serve and one to stand as lookout. They can take turns.”

“Cane is a handsome boy, but he’s only fifteen. My guess is Maudie is more impressed with the older fellows. Angus is too old, but Jeffrey has a nice smile.”

“Jeffrey’s too old for Maudie too. If I find him walking out with her, I’ll have to say something.” Beckman sounded very stern over this business of calf love among the infantry.

“Maudie will be sixteen this summer. She’s plenty old enough to marry, and if her parents don’t object, you haven’t anything to say to anyone.”

“God’s hoary eyebrows.” Beck’s idle pace slowed further. “Maudie doesn’t seem that much older than Allie.”

“Because she isn’t.” Which was an alarming notion every time Sara came upon it. “Allie will have some height on her soon.”

“Allie will always be your little girl.” Beck brought Sara’s knuckles to his lips for a kiss, then replaced her hand on his arm. “She worries about you.”

“Me?” Sara stopped and peered at him. “Why would Allie worry about her own mother?”

“She thinks you’ve forgotten your music,” Beck said, his tone so very casual. “She’s worried raising her has cost you your art.”

“My art.” Sara snorted derisively. Of all the causes for worry, this one did not signify. “I might, once upon a time, have aspired to the title of musician, but by the time I put away my instrument, I was a fiddling strumpet.”

“I have a certain fondness for strumpets.” Beck’s tone was mild. “I gather you mean the term as a pejorative.”

“I most assuredly do, and my so-called husband was my procurer,” Sara replied flatly. “When I met him, I had a little talent, a lot of dedication, and a confirmed love for music. Within two years, my technique had slipped badly, I wasn’t fit for solo repertoire anymore, and I was so tired of performing the programs he chose that I was tempted to smash my hand just to put a stop to it.”

And that was describing the situation in euphemisms.

“But you didn’t.”

“Within two years,” Sara’s tone softened, “there was Allie. I didn’t dare stop playing. We had bills, and the child deserved to eat.”

“Why had your technique slipped?”

Brave man to ask such a thing. “It might seem to a nonmusician that frittering the day away spinning melodies is the next thing to idleness, but it isn’t,” Sara explained. “Not physically, as one stands to play the violin properly, and that requires strength of the entire body, but especially the arms, back, and torso. And mentally, if you are going to improve, you must attend what you create, and attend it closely. With Reynard controlling my schedule, I simply became too tired to practice and to perform day in and day out.”

Because she had her hand on his arm, Sara could feel the tension her recitation provoked in the man beside her.

“How old would you have been?”

She needed to change the subject, but Beckman would only come back around from a different angle of inquiry. “I was seventeen when we left England. I was a girl, with stars in my eyes, ready to love the world, my husband, and my music. I was determined to do my brother’s memory proud, because I was going to play better than I ever had, and everybody would love me for it.”

“But instead…?”

The memories rose up, mean, heavy, and miserable. “One ratty inn after another, one leaking tenement after another. I’d try to stay up practicing after performances while Reynard went out ‘seeking patrons,’ as he put it. We were supposedly on our way to his family’s chateau, there to put Polly in the tutelage of an old master. One city led to another, and another, as I was transformed from a relatively decent, if young violinist, into the Gypsy Princess, a hack sawing away in vulgar costumes, barefoot, and made up to look like a cross between a ghost and a streetwalker.”

The memory was so worn and tattered, to speak of it should barely hurt. To discuss it with Beckman made Sara sad, though, made her wistful and tired.

If she’d had her violin, she’d be playing Beethoven slow movements. As it was, she had Beckman’s escort and a spring evening with more promise than many other nights had held—though it was temporary promise.

Let that be enough. Let some other younger, more innocent woman have the Beethoven. Sara no longer deserved it.

* * *

Beck strolled along beside Lady Warne’s housekeeper, shock silently coursing through him.

“So how did you stop playing?” He was surprised to hear his voice sounding so steady.

“I just… stopped,” Sara said. “When I was young, Reynard was my business manager—also my husband—and deserving of my loyalty on that basis alone. Then, as we toured, I was too scared, too innocent, too blasted ignorant to be able to get along without him. He began to take for granted I would do his bidding and eased his grip on me. He drank more, he gambled more, he was less and less discerning regarding his liaisons, and I grew less and less intimidated by him. I took over the finances, dealt with the various house managers, began to schedule my own performances, and so forth. When I had enough put by to afford it, I told him we were purchasing a modest property in Italy and finding a teacher for Polly.”

“But he became ill.”

“He was always ill, ill in his spirit, but yes, he became ill in body as well, but not before he’d gambled us right back into enormous debts.”

“Did you consider touring again?”

“I did, only briefly. A woman at seventeen is a very different resource from a woman at twenty-five, and I’d already robbed Polly of her most marriageable years, exposed her to all manner of wickedness and unsettled living. I wanted better for my daughter, and anything seemed better than facing another drunken, roaring, leering mob who excused their rudeness in the name of appreciation for art.”

She wasn’t wrong in her assessment, and that made Beck hurt for her all the more.

“So you’ve been retired now for, what—several years?” They’d come to the pond but not to the end of their discussion.

Sara smiled sadly. “I’ve been a housekeeper for several years.”

“Don’t you miss it?” Beck seated her on the bench near the edge of the water. “Don’t you miss the excitement, the adulation?”

“The stinking, yelling… No. As a musician under those circumstances, one has to learn to hold back, to not feel, or one… perishes, and not feeling takes great effort.”

He settled beside her, knowing there was more and worse to the tale but unwilling to dig for it. Not feeling did indeed take great effort, or dedication to some form of poison, to achieve.