Lady Bagshott’s lips tightened. “Very well, but it must come straight back, or I will want to know the reason why!”
“Agreed. Now, I will need to inspect the room I am to work in. It will need good light.”
Lady Bagshott tugged on the bellpull. “My maid, Sutton, will show you.”
The butler appeared. “This insolent creature will be painting my portrait,” she told him. “Fetch Sutton to conduct her to a suitable room.”
“One with good light,” Zoë said.
“Very good, m’lady.”
The maid, Sutton, was surprisingly friendly for someone who worked for a dragon. “Oh, miss, you’re ever so brave,” she told Zoë as they climbed the stairs. “I never saw anyone get the better of Lady Bagshott like that. Only her grandson.”
“Chip off the old block, is he?”
“Oh no, miss, he’s a real gentleman. He just doesn’t visit very often.”
Zoë grinned. “I can’t imagine why.”
When Zoë told Lady Scattergood that she’d agreed to paint Lady Bagshott’s portrait, her reaction was everything she’d expected.
“What?You’re painting That Woman?”
“Yes.”
“But why? She’s a ghastly creature.”
Zoë just smiled. Lady Bagshott was indeed ghastly, but it was too late now to change her mind. She’d made a commitment. “She interests me.”
“She’ll treat you abominably,” Lady Scattergood warned her.
“She may try,” Zoë said calmly. “I’m not easily bullied.”
Lady Scattergood rolled her eyes. “I don’t suppose you got any money out of her, either. I will send her an invoice immediately. I hope you charged her the full price.”
“I told her it will cost whatever you told her in your last letter. I didn’t know how much it was.”
“At least you got that right. It’s going to be averyexpensive portrait. But, oh dear, she’s going to be unbearable now, having an original Z-B portrait of her own.”Z-Bwas how Zoë signed her work.
During the next week, Zoë went every day to Lady Bagshott’s home to paint. She took Marie with her at Lady Scattergood’s insistence. Poor Marie, it would have been so boring for her had she sat in the same room as Zoë, not understanding a word that was said, but luckily Sutton invited Marie to the servants’ area, where she was more comfortable, and made herself useful while they taught her English.
It didn’t get off to an easy start. First Zoë had to negotiate the pose in which Lady Bagshott wanted to be painted. She’d had practically half the contents of her drawing room—chairs, paintings, statues, even a large gold clock—carried up to the room where Zoë had set up her painting equipment. They argued until Zoë said, “What do you want, a portrait of you or of your possessions?”
It became clear that she wanted both, with as many of her most valuable possessions as possible, but Zoë stood firm, and they finally agreed on an elegant chair draped with a beautiful tapestry, an ornate pedestal with an imitation Greek statue on it, a carved screen and a vase of flowers. Wooden-faced, the footmen who’d lugged all the extra things up to the third floor carried them down again.
Lady Bagshott was wearing a mid-blue velvet dress trimmed with lace, of which Zoë approved. Another argument resulted in the lady wearing only one necklace instead of several: a handsome sapphire-and-diamond one, with matching diamonds in her ears and several large glittering rings on her fingers. Draped across her lap was a white fur stole, and in one hand she clutched a Bible, open as if she were reading it, while the other hand rested on an ebony cane with a gold knob.
“I don’t want the cane in the portrait. It will make me look like a cripple!”
“It will make you look like a ruler,” Zoë told her. “And as well as balancing the composition, it displays those magnificent rings perfectly.”
“Hmph!” The cane stayed.
With the setting and pose finally agreed on, Zoë got started on the painting.
Despite the arguments—or maybe because of them—she was enjoying herself in an odd kind of way. As Lady Scattergood had predicted, Lady Bagshott did try to bully her, but Zoë soon learned that the less she reacted, the harder Lady Bagshott tried.
It was quite entertaining.
