The Lady Travelers Guide To Larceny With A Dashing Stranger. Victoria Alexander

was the only son of his youngest son.

      “We are simply pointing out that it seems the oddest sort of coincidence that you took up residence at Montague House at very nearly the same time you were publically rebuffed by Miss Pauling.”

      “It is indeed a coincidence and I was not publically rebuffed.”

      “You were according to what I heard.” Harriet shrugged. “Everyone said so.”

      “Gossip rarely has anything to do with truth,” Dante said sharply. “And I was not rebuffed as I was not especially interested in Miss Pauling.”

      Admittedly, he—along with very nearly every other single man in London—had found Juliet Pauling lovely and exciting. One never knew what to expect from her. She was adventurous and daring and exhilarating. He had indeed called on her several times but eventually realized she had her sights set on bigger fish than the untitled grandson of a marquess. Regrettably, she was as calculating as she was charming, as designing as she was delightful. Which was why it took him far too long to realize he was little more than a pawn in her quest for a title, a means to make a better catch jealous. Unfortunately, thanks to the unrelenting gossip of people exactly like his sister, his name had been linked with hers. When her betrothal to the son of a duke was announced, it came as a surprise to nearly everyone in society and to no one more than to Dante. He hadn’t thought she was quite so devious as to not give him even a glimmer of warning.

      “We shouldn’t tease you about this,” Roz said in a sincere manner he didn’t believe for a moment. “A broken heart is nothing to make fun of.”

      “It is dreadfully sad though.” Harriet heaved the sort of sigh only a romantic young woman could manage. “The love of your life throwing you over for another man even if he was the son of a duke.”

      “She was not the love of my life. Nor did she break my heart.”

      “Obviously a mistake on my part.” Amusement shone in his sister’s eye. “Silly of me to confuse a broken heart with badly bruised pride.”

      “I’m quite sure I have mentioned this before, any number of times by my count, but neither my heart nor my pride was broken or bruised,” Dante said firmly. Only to himself would he acknowledge that a broken heart was a fate he had narrowly averted and there might possibly have been the slightest bruising of his pride. “Furthermore, that was two years ago.”

      “And in these past two years you have become something of a recluse,” Roz said pointedly. “When you’re not engaged in the management of your businesses, you have buried yourself in the Herculean task of setting all in order at Montague House. You have completely ignored any kind of social encounter that wasn’t required. And those for the most part have been family obligations.”

      “For the hundredth time, sister dear.” Dante struggled to keep his temper in check. It wasn’t easy. Roz refused to accept that between Montague House and his business interests, his life was inordinately full. He had no time for frivolity and no interest at the moment in pursuing anything of a romantic nature. “I have a great deal to attend to and other pursuits are simply going to have to wait.”

      “Pursuits such as finding a wife?”

      “Exactly,” he snapped. “I have neither the time nor the inclination right now for romantic entanglements.”

      Still, responding to his sister’s obvious efforts to irritate him would not get him anywhere. Nor did it help to know she only had his best interests at heart as did his mother and every other female member of his family. None of them seemed to understand that while he had no particular aversion to marriage, he did not think it was crucial to his life. At least not currently.

      He drew a calming breath. “As you know, the family has given me three years to rebuild, or rather build, Montague House’s reputation and put the collections in order. I have accomplished a great deal toward that goal. I have recovered a number of objects that had either been lost in the attics, moved to other family properties or disappeared from the house altogether. The latter at no little expense. It has not been easy.” He absently paced the room. “The missing Portinari is the center of a triptych, essentially a three-part painting.”

      “We know what a triptych is, Uncle Dante,” Harriet said in the long-suffering manner of the young.

      “What you may not know is that Galasso Portinari was a student of Titian and a painter in his workshop. A sixteenth-century biography of Titian says he considered Portinari his greatest student and predicted he would one day surpass even the master’s skill. Unfortunately, he died quite young—plague possibly but the details on that are vague. His original work is exceedingly rare. While students of Titian’s—including Portinari—often copied his work, there is no record of more than a handful of any other original Portinaris. Therefore ours are exceptionally valuable. These three paintings are the sorts of things that will make a museum’s reputation.”

      “Then why haven’t they done so?” A challenge sounded in Roz’s voice. While not as passionate about Grandfather’s legacy as her brother, Dante had thought she was somewhat neutral on the question of the fate of Montague House. Although he now recalled there was a gleam of interest in her eyes when the idea of returning the mansion to a private residence had been raised. “It’s not as if they have just been acquired. Hadn’t they been in the collection long before the house became a museum?”

      “Yes, but previous curators apparently didn’t understand what they had. For one thing, the paintings weren’t displayed properly. They were hanging in the library on three different walls, separated by bookshelves and one barely noticed them. But they were designed to hang together to create one continuous work. When done so, one can see the continuity between the pieces, the story the painter was trying to tell. All of that—as well as the brilliance of the artist himself—is lost when they are not displayed together.” Dante shook his head. “I’m not sure even grandfather knew what he had. He had an excellent eye but he tended to buy what appealed to him rather than what might be a good investment. In fact, I’m not sure any of those we’ve employed to curate the museum understood the potential value of the Portinaris. Indeed, it’s only been in recent years that his work has been recognized. Each painting by itself is brilliant but all three together are nothing short of a masterpiece.”

      Roz frowned. “I don’t even remember them.”

      “They’re relatively small—each is a mere twelve by eighteen inches. And, as I said, they were in the library. It’s been kept clean, of course, dusted and swept and all, but little additional attention paid to it. As if valuable first editions could take care of themselves.” He scoffed.

      His sister traded glances with her daughter.

      “According to the house records, the first director started to catalog the contents of the library but then turned his attention to other matters. The second picked up where the first let off but accomplished little.” He couldn’t keep the hard edge from his voice. The lack of attention paid to the collections in the house by previous management was nothing short of criminal. One did wonder how his uncle’s solicitors—charged with arranging for the engagement of the house staff—managed to find such utter incompetents. “None of the subsequent curators did anything at all toward organizing and cataloging the books or anything else in the library.”

      It never failed to annoy him that in the quarter of a century between his grandfather’s death and Dante’s assuming directorship of the museum, no one in his family had paid the least bit of attention to what was occurring. There were gaps in the financial statements and other records that not only pointed to mismanagement but outright fraud and perhaps even theft. Much of which he doubted he would ever be able to reconcile. In many ways it was fortunate the Portinaris were overlooked. Otherwise all three of the originals might be missing.

      “So what you’re trying to say in that long and tedious way you have is that recovering the painting is crucial to Montague House.” Roz eyed her brother thoughtfully. “That this is exactly what you need to increase prestige and credibility. Essentially to save Montague House.”

      “What