Chapter 7
Late that afternoon, accompanied by Mary, Celeste entered the viewing rooms of the celebrity painter whose work she admired and who’d recently enjoyed wide public acclaim for his series of vignettes featuring a beautiful society matron. For Celeste to view them in the company of her maid and on the eve of her marriage would not be considered beyond the realms of respectability. Her conversation with her secret admirer, however, might well be. For what Raphael had requested of her would require a level of coquetry and skill she feared she did not possess.
The smell of turpentine and oils struck Celeste with force as she raised the pink and green striped skirts of her fashionable chintz à la Française to step across the threshold and into the long gallery, which was located in a
