A Priceless Gift: A Regency Romance by May Burnett Page B

by the time he posed for that portrait, Lady Amaryllis had been four years dead and buried. Besides, family members died all the time; it was a reality most people came to terms with out of sheer necessity. Amanda had lost a baby brother to a fever when she was still barely out of leading strings. Her parents had mourned him, though she had been too small to remember, but with five surviving children, they were luckier than most.
    She turned her back on Lucian and studied the picture of Lady Amaryllis, in a diaphanous white gown against a rose garden. The girl’s hair was also powdered, but from the smooth features and lack of curves, she probably was no older than twelve or thirteen. Painted by Mr. Gainsborough, Tennant had mentioned, though he had not named the subject. Did he even know? Mattie and she only supposed that she was the earl’s sister; the portrait was not labelled in any way.
    The brown eyes of the painted child stared into hers with youthful disdain. No shadow of tragedy troubled that smooth brow when she had posed in the rose garden in front of those white blooms, long faded just like herself. What could cause a pretty girl like that to drown in a horse pond? It made no sense. Had Amaryllis lived, she’d be forty now, likely a mother and society hostess.
    Perhaps Amanda could yet discover what had caused Lady Amaryllis’s untimely death.
    She rang the bell, and presently, the butler arrived with silent steps. “Rinner, do you know which rooms were occupied by my husband’s late sister?”
    “You mean Lady Amaryllis, my lady? The yellow room and the adjoining dressing room were hers.” He did not ask why she cared or betray the slightest surprise at the inquiry.
    “What happened to her possessions?”
    “Nothing was touched on orders of the old earl.”
    That would have been Lucian’s father. Had he been very attached to his only daughter? Amanda looked around questioningly. “I don’t think there is any picture of him.” That was rather strange, now she thought about it.
    “There was one by Mr. Gainsborough, my lady, that showed him on horseback in heroic posture. Bigger than any of the other portraits in here. The earl—the current earl—ordered it burnt.”
    Amanda blinked in shock. “Burned? It must have been worth a great deal.” Apart from the cost, it seemed sinful, almost sacrilegious, to destroy a work of art. But she must not sound as though she were criticizing her husband. Lucian might have his reasons. “When was this?”
    “A few months after he inherited the title, my lady. In 1796, if my memory does not fail me. I was only a footman at the time.”
    So Lucian had been twenty-three when he succeeded to the title. Destroying the portrait of one’s father was an impious act as well as amazingly spendthrift. She could imagine banishing a hated picture to the attics, but to go so far as to actually destroy it . . . extremely strong feelings must have been involved. She remembered Lucian’s strange resolve to let the family name die out and his indifference at the prospect of her child inheriting it. What could possibly cause such enduring hatred and anger? She would not have guessed that Lucian was prone to strong feelings of any kind.
    It might just be a question of aesthetic preferences. “Has the earl ordered any other pictures burned?”
    “No, my lady. That was the only time.”
    “What of the previous countess?” Amanda was just as glad she was long dead. A mother-in-law would surely despise her and strongly disapprove of Lucian’s imprudent match. “Is there a portrait of her?”
    “A very good one, my lady, also by Gainsborough. It hangs in the library of the London house.”
    Amanda had not noticed it there, nor had Lucian pointed it out. Well, they had both been very busy for those few days in town.
    “Show me to the rooms used by Lady Amaryllis,” she ordered.
    Rinner conducted her to a spacious and elegant set of adjoining rooms. Though they were not far