An Artful Seduction Read Online Free PDF Page A

whiskey. “Perhaps. But she’s also a beautiful woman. Well-shaped, too. Even a monk would notice those breasts.”
    Grayson raised his glass, ignoring the comment as if he hadn’t noticed Eliza Somerton’s beauty. But the problem was he couldn’t stop thinking about her. She had stood in his drawing room minutes before and glared at him with willful defiance and stubbornness. Yes, he’d noticed her beauty and her breasts.
    Damn. Why couldn’t Jonathan Miller’s daughter be a homely, chicken-breasted widow?
    “Ah, you’ve noticed, too,” Brandon said.
    “What warm-blooded man wouldn’t?” Grayson snapped.
    The truth was that working with Eliza Somerton was going to test his self-restraint, but Grayson’s goal was more important than a tempting bit of flesh. After years of wanting justice for Miller’s crimes, the perfect opportunity had presented itself. Eliza Somerton was the key to finding her father.
    Nothing more.
    …
    “He wants you to help him find a thief?” Amelia dropped her brush on the workbench and wiped her hands on her apron.
    “Not the thief. Just the stolen Rembrandt.” Eliza picked up the discarded brush and set it in a glass jar of turpentine. It was full of other brushes waiting to be cleaned.
    There, in the back workroom of the shop, canvases leaned in stacks around the perimeter of the room. Chloe was busy organizing shelves lined with art supplies, glass jars, oil paints, and cakes of watercolor. The odor of turpentine and drying paint permeated the space.
    Amelia removed the kerchief that covered her hair and tossed it on the table next to a bowl of red and green apples. She had been painting a still life of the bowl of fruit and wore an old gown and paint-stained apron.
    “He knows who we are. He wanted to know father’s whereabouts, but when that failed, he bargained for me to help him,” Eliza said.
    “He thinks you know how to reach father’s friends?” Amelia said.
    “By ‘friends’ he’s referring to the art brokers who sold father’s forgeries. It’s been years, but I have an idea where to start.”
    “What if you don’t succeed and the Rembrandt is never recovered?” Amelia said.
    “Huntington promised to return the Jan Wildens painting. He knows about you and Chloe, but thankfully, he believes the forgery is my work, not yours,” Eliza said.
    Amelia frowned. “How is that good? You are not guilty.”
    “I don’t want you or Chloe involved in this mess. You are both beautiful, young ladies and I want you to meet fine men and marry.”
    Amelia’s lips puckered with annoyance. “I don’t want to marry now, and Chloe is too young.”
    Chloe set down a jar and whirled around. “Don’t answer for me, Amelia. I want to marry a rich lord of leisure who can afford to buy me a new dress every week.”
    Amelia rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous, Chloe. Gentlemen of the ton marry for title or money or both and we have neither.”
    “But Papa was a knight,” Chloe argued.
    “That was before,” Amelia admonished.
    Eliza watched her sisters. They were so different in their coloring—Amelia with her striking auburn hair and Chloe with her fair beauty. Amelia was the painter in the family and she had the talent and patience to create carefully crafted forgeries. Chloe was impulsive, free-spirited, and obsessed with men, but she was skilled with a burin and engraved her own original landscapes.
    Eliza, for all her love of art, had not inherited the ability to create masterpieces, but the shrewdness to run a business and accurately keep the books and account to the last shilling. They often bickered, but each other was all they had left in this world.
    And her sisters were her responsibility.
    Eliza stepped forward to end the argument. “Huntingdon is coming to the shop tomorrow. Amelia, you must hide all of your questionable work. Only your originals and Chloe’s engravings should be displayed in the workshop.”
    “Where will you take Lord