Page 93 of A Baby for the Duke

Leonora stood in front of it, unable to move.

“Your Grace,” Mr. Gedge said at her elbow. “Lot one hundred and four. It goes up at half past three.”

“Does it?”

“There has been some interest. Not a great deal, if I am being honest. It is not a name.” He coughed. “It would go for a quite reasonable price.”

Leonora looked at four feet of open gate.

“Mr. Gedge,” she said. “Where does a woman stand if she wishes to bid on something without her husband knowing what it is?”

CHAPTER 32

Mr. Gedge, it seemed, had strong views on the subject.

“A lady may bid,” he said, in the tone of a man who had been waiting some years to be asked. “There is nothing whatsoever to prevent it. It is only that nobody does. So when one does, four hundred people turn around.”

“And if I did not wish four hundred people to turn around?”

“Then you instruct a person to bid on your behalf, and the person stands where he can be seen and you don’t.” He glanced at the picture and then briefly at her. “It is usually a solicitor. I have been known to do it myself, for a consideration.”

“Would you do it for me?”

“I would.”

“For a consideration?”

Mr. Gedge shook his head. “For the pleasure of seeing lot one hundred and four go to somebody who stood in front of it for four minutes and did not once ask who painted it.”

“And what does one pay for four feet of a garden by a man nobody has heard of?” Leonora asked.

“That is a delicate question.”

“Mr. Gedge, I have been married for five weeks and I have not yet spent one shilling of my husband’s money on my own account. He has bought me a great deal. I have bought nothing. I am extremely bad at this. You will have to be vulgar with me.”

Mr. Gedge permitted himself the ghost of a smile.

“Twelve guineas would take it,” he replied. “Fifteen would take it against a man who wanted it. Twenty would take it against a man who wanted it and had been drinking, which at a sale beginning at half past three is something one must consider.”

They agreed on a limit in the space of a minute. Leonora set it at a figure that made her feel slightly sick, and Mr. Gedge wrote it in a little book without comment. Then she went back downstairs and found her husband being talked at by a man about drainage.

“There you are,” Colin said, with an expression of profound relief.

“You looked as though you were enjoying yourself.”

“That gentleman has told me about a ditch in Berkshire for eleven minutes, and I have been unable to stop him because I made the tactical error of feigning interest.” He snatched two glasses off a tray. “You stayed up there a great while after I was carried off.”

“I did.”

“And?”

“There is a hare in a back room, painted by a man nobody has heard of, and it is the best thing in this house.”

“I said that to you an hour ago.”

“You said it about the hare, and you were right. I have gone up and looked at the hare and found that you were more right than you knew, because it is hung eleven inches too low, which means Sir Hugo hung it himself and hung it for a man sitting down.” She took her glass. “He used to sit in that room and look at his hare. Nobody was ever meant to see it but him.”

Colin was quiet for a moment.