An Artful Lie by Holly Newman EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author: Holly Newman
- Language: English
- Formats: PDF / EPUB
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Genre: Victorian Historical Romance
- Price: Free
- File Size: 2 MB
THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ART EXHIBITION
“Bella!”
Lady Isabella Blessingame turned from her study of the large
painting Waterloo: Final Defeat of the French by George Jones to look about
for the source of the voice. She’d heard that the crowds in The Great Room
of the Royal Academy of Art had been large every day, though this year’s
exhibition had been open since late April and it was now June. It would be
hard to find anyone in this mass of people that came from all walks of life.
“Bella!” she heard again, then she saw a hand waving at her. She smiled,
and despite herself, her eyes watered as memories flooded her mind. Blasted
nuisance. They did that at times, her memories, calling forth powerful
emotions, try as she might to keep them in the past.
She threaded her way between knots of people to meet the Dowager
Duchess of Malmsby. Trust the Duchess to shout at someone across a
crowded room. Done by anyone else, it would be considered bad ton—
dreadfully vulgar. Lady Malmsby was a force unto herself. She smiled at the
memories of spending time with Lady Malmsby and her granddaughters.
Bella hadn’t seen the older woman since she’d left the Villa de Fiori two
years ago, a little more than a month after her husband, Sir Harry
Blessingame, had been killed.
Lord William Candelstone, the Duchess’s son-in-law and a spymaster for
the crown, had briskly decreed the time for grief was later, when the war with
Napoleon was at an end. He’d pressed her into continuing her cryptography
work and completing Harry’s spy work. Numbly, she’d complied for a year,
until the day after the Battle of Waterloo.
At the time of the battle, she’d been in Brussels with many of the
international diplomatic denizens who weren’t in Vienna. There were spies
everywhere, some for Napoleon, some for the Alliance, some for neither side
but gathering data for whoever crossed their palms with gold.
Her assignment from Lord Candelstone had been to provide cryptography
to captured French communications for Wellington and his generals, and to
observe and report on Vizconde Miguel Carrasco-Torres, the Spanish envoy
to Brussels, and to Bella’s consternation, quite a lecherous man.
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