“But happy?” Maggie insisted.
He smiled and nodded. “These days, yes.” Thinking of the past, however…
Sobering, he met Maggie’s eyes, then looked across the table at Harry. “But when I was your age and younger…no.” He recalled the distinctly chilly dinners he’d endured as a boy, when his father had been alive and they’d all lived at Raventhorne House. Then after his father had died and he and his siblings had moved to live with his mother at her London house, the atmosphere about the dining table had been distinctly tense and often fraught. “In those years,” he said, “our family dinners were nothing like this—not warm at all, and we younger ones all kept quiet and hardly said a word. We kept our eyes on our plates and only spoke to answer questions an older person directed our way.”
Maggie stared at him. “That sounds awful.”
He nodded. “It was.” He forced himself to smile, even if the gesture was a touch grim. “Which goes to show that having wealth doesn’t mean”—he gestured about them—“laughter and warmth. Ease and comfort.” He glanced again at Harry, then looked back at Maggie. “The family is what makes family dinners enjoyable, and in all honesty, I envy you what you have, what you experience here every day.”
Maggie studied him for a moment, then said, “So money truly doesn’t buy happiness.”
He smiled wryly. “No, it doesn’t.”
At the other end of the table, Ellie rose. “Maggie? Papa, please don’t dally too long.”
“Oh, I don’t think we’ll dally at all, my dear.” Mr. Hinckley exchanged a glance with Morris and Pyne, then looked at Godfrey. “What say we take our brandies in the drawing room? That way, the ladies won’t sit there being bored.”
Godfrey grinned and pushed back his chair. “That sounds like an excellent idea.”
The company readily rose, and Godfrey pushed Mr. Hinckley’s chair across the front hall to the drawing room and stationed it as directed to one side of the hearth, close to the fire and angled toward the other chairs and the sofa.
Only as he moved to take the chair Mr. Hinckley indicated, the one beside his, did Godfrey realize that he’d stood and walked without thinking. Apparently, his mobility had returned.
Pleased, relieved, and reassured, he sat.
Kemp came in bearing a tray with glasses and two decanters. While the butler supplied the gentlemen with brandies and Ellie and Maggie accepted small glasses of sherry, Mr. Hinckley leaned closer to Godfrey and, lowering his voice, murmured, “Thank you for saying what you did in there. About happiness and comfort not being guaranteed by wealth.”
Godfrey met the older man’s eyes. “It was only the truth.”
“You and I know that. Ellie knows that. But my younger two as yet lack the experience to believe that.”
Godfrey looked at Maggie and Harry, then murmured back, “If so, I’m glad to have been of service.”
And, he realized, he was. Quite aside from being Ellie’s brother and sister—which would have recommended the pair to Godfrey’s care regardless—both were likeable and generous souls worthy of his protection in their own right.
“Has Mr. Cavanaugh mentioned his conclusions regarding the letters and documents about the painting?” Ellie asked.
Godfrey looked to where she sat on the sofa, then he smiled and, responding to the eager looks on everyone else’s faces, proceeded to explain just how impressive he had found the letters and documents collected by the Hinckleys’ long-ago ancestor.
Given Pyne’s predictable curiosity over how he determined whether letters and declarations were genuine or not, which Godfrey saw no reason not to sate, the exposition lasted until the tea trolley was wheeled in.
While they switched their empty glasses for cups of tea, Godfrey concluded, “I can’t stress sufficiently how remarkable it is to find a painting with such documentation so carefully gathered and preserved intact.” He looked at Mr. Hinckley. “In truth, the documents themselves are valuable in their own right, but when offered together with the painting, they’ll add significant value and prestige to the whole, at least in the gallery’s estimation.”
Mr. Hinckley inclined his head. “That’s good to know.”
Godfrey sipped his tea, then offered, “In fact, it’s almost as if your ancestor, in buying the painting, always intended it ultimately to be sold.”
Mr. Hinckley set down his cup with a clink. “From what you’ve said, I’m starting to think so as well.” He looked at Ellie, Maggie, and Harry and smiled. “That painting has been gathering dust upstairs for decades. It’s time it was brought into the light, and for the family to reap the benefits of old Great-uncle Henry’s foresight.”
Everyone smiled. Everyone agreed.
“Now all that remains,” Pyne observed, “is for Cavanaugh to view the painting, then tell the gallery it’s all above board.”
After breakfast the next morning, with a sense of excitement and expectation in the air, Ellie led Godfrey up the main stairs and down a corridor into a different wing from the one in which his bedroom was situated.
“The family’s rooms are along here.” She gestured to right and left as she continued walking along an old but fine Turkish runner. “Mama’s parlor is the room at the end.”
She led him to the door at the far end of the corridor, opened it, and continued into the room.
Anticipation rising, Godfrey followed. He’d waited more than a week for this moment.
Ellie halted in the middle of the room, facing an outer wall. She turned her head, met his gaze, then gestured to the medium-sized work hanging above a small chiffonier between two curtained windows. “This is our Albertinelli painting.”
Despite the room being shrouded in shadows, the painting captured and held his attention. He walked forward, his gaze locked on the canvas within the wide, heavily ornate frame. The frame looked to date from the same period as the painting and was very well preserved.
To his left, he sensed Ellie moving; she gripped the long curtains covering the window on that side and drew them wide.
Light spilled in, but the sky was overcast; the pale, gray light that permeated the room provided barely enough illumination for him to make out the figures in the composition.
It still held him spellbound.
Then Ellie walked around him and opened the curtains on his right, and the first wraith of suspicion writhed deep in his brain.
He stepped closer and peered at the painting’s surface.
Surely not—it can’t be.
His heart sank as his instincts pricked ever more strongly.
Never in his life had he been so thankful for the facility, learned at his mother’s knee, to conceal all emotion behind an impassive mask.
His gaze devouring the painting, he slowly reached up and removed it from the wall.
Holding the frame, he walked to the window on his right, the one admitting the strongest light. Halting before the pane, he angled the painting first one way, then the other, but he couldn’t see well enough to be certain of what he thought he was seeing.
Ensuring his features revealed nothing of his inner turmoil, he glanced at Ellie. “The light here is too poor for me to work with. Is there any room in the house with strong, even light?”