Chapter 1
“Paint me again. Your buyers are watching.”
I kept the brush extended.
Camellia did not move.
Around us, the gallery had gone silent.
Mavis stood beside the worktable, slowly drying her stained fingers with the cloth I had given her.
Camellia stared at the brush as if it were a weapon.
It wasn’t.
That was the point.
All she had to do was take it.
One stroke.
One line.
Anything.
She looked at the blank canvas.
Then at the buyers.
Then at me.
“I don’t perform on command.”
I almost smiled.
“You built an exhibition around performing.”
A few guests shifted.
Camellia’s face hardened.
“Mavis copied me.”
I turned toward the torn charcoal sketch.
Then the portrait hanging behind us.
Same pressure around the eyes.
Same broken contour at the jaw.
Same strange habit of leaving a small unfinished edge near the left shoulder.
I had noticed it in every painting here.
“Then show me.”
Camellia said nothing.
Mavis whispered:
“Sir.”
I looked at her.
She was staring at the finished portrait of me.
Not proudly.
Fearfully.
“What?”
Her voice dropped.
“I didn’t paint that from life.”
I frowned.
“You’ve seen me often enough.”
“No.”
She swallowed.
“That one was copied from an older sketch.”
Camellia went pale.
I turned.
“What older sketch?”
Mavis looked at her.
Again.
Always her first.
Camellia snapped:
“Don’t.”
Too late.
Mavis continued.
“A charcoal study from twenty-six years ago.”
My grip tightened around the brush.
“Of me?”
“No.”
She looked directly into my eyes.
“Your father.”
The room disappeared for a second.
My father had been dead eighteen years.
No public portrait of him ever looked like this.
Then Mavis added:
“The original was signed Fairbourne.”
Her own surname.
Camellia took one step backward.
May you like
That was the first moment I understood this was not simply stolen artwork.
Someone had been copying a hand connected to my family long before Mavis ever became a maid.
