Read False Picture for Free Online Page B

watercolour. Hamilton had liked that picture, but she hadn’t really looked at it for years, and wasn’t sure now that she cared for it.
    â€˜I’ll get rid of that for you, if you like,’ said Piers. ‘Genuine Victoriana, but not particularly good. Should fetch a good few hundred, maybe five on a good day.’
    Here was someone who knew about pictures. ‘How about a Millais, a portrait in oils?’
    â€˜What?’ He swung himself into a chair and put his feet up on the coffee table. Patched jeans, ripped T-shirt, untidy black hair streaked with grey, a nose pushed to one side. Total charm. Total tomcat. It had been a disastrously unhappy marriage, but they’d made their peace after she’d married Hamilton and he’d adopted Max. Piers was someone she could rely on … unless she came between him and his painting.
    â€˜Who’s putting a Millais on the market? They don’t come up often. Is it a good one? He did a lot, and some are better than others. It depends on the sitter, partly. Male or female, famous or obscure. And there are some fakes around, naturally.’
    â€˜I haven’t seen it, but I imagine it’s a good one.’
    Dark eyes sharpened. ‘Bea, what are you up to now?’
    â€˜I’m not sure.’ She folded up the packaging as best she could and stuffed it behind the wastepaper basket. Dustbin day today. Been and gone. And her correspondence with it. She looked up at Hamilton’s portrait and he looked down at her, serene, not quite smiling. She seemed to hear him say, ‘It’ll all be one in a thousand years.’ Yes, of course it would.
    Maggie came in with the coffee, almost curtseying to Piers as she laid the tray down before him. Piers thanked her, gave her a professional once-over and dismissed her with a smile and a wave of his hand.
    Bea said, ‘I’ve been trying to get in contact with Max, but he’s so busy, and of course I understand that, but …’
    Piers grunted, slurped coffee, looked at the heavy watch on his wrist. ‘The boy’s a fool. Don’t know where he gets it from. Not from me or you and certainly not from Hamilton, who was worth more than all of us put together. Right. Must be off. Can’t remember where for the moment, but it will come to me. Get me on the mobile if you need me. I’ll be in London for another week, then off somewhere, can’t remember where that’s supposed to be either, but … oh, I know.’ He grimaced. ‘Painting another of the newly ennobled for an enormous fee. Flatter his ego, hide my true feelings, and never even think that he might have paid his way into the House of Lords. Well, I leave Hamilton in safe hands.’ He stood in front of the painting, finishing his cup of coffee. ‘Bye, old man. I’m going to miss you.’
    He banged the front door to behind him, leaving Bea feeling limp. She had an impulse, which she knew to be mawkish, to kiss her husband’s painted lips, but didn’t, because she got overtaken by giggles. Hamilton seemed to be laughing, too.
    â€˜You old rogue,’ she said, and then laughed out loud. Fancy talking to a picture! It was all very well for an artist like Piers, but for Bea …? Ridiculous!
    She sat down at the card table in the window, from where she could look at the picture. Hamilton had been accustomed to play patience here, saying it helped him think. Ridiculous! But Bea pulled out a double pack of cards and laid them out. She was trying a new patience, eight across, decreasing by one card in each layer. Red ten on black jack. A lot of hearts.
    She sighed, losing interest in the game. She really must get Maggie into some decent clothes and go to the library to research Millais – and oh, what about the taxman? She couldn’t believe that she’d dumped important letters into the bin. She was supposed to be an adult, for heaven’s sake, not a toddler