An Irresistible Bachelor (An Unforgettable Lady #2)(79)

Suspended with horror over the painting, she stared in disbelief at what she’d done. She’d burned a hole right through the varnish and into the paint layer. She bent down farther, hoping that closer proximity would reveal it was just superficial damage. It wasn’t. Across the face of the mirror, in a swath about an inch square, Copley’s original paint had been eaten up.

Callie cursed as she quickly looked at the jar she’d opened. By mistake, she’d picked out the strongest solvent she’d brought with her and had compounded the error by leaving the damn stuff on as she’d stared out the window. The chemical had had plenty of time to seep in, infecting a larger area than just the part she’d applied it to as it spread outward.

A hot flash ran through her body, bringing sweat to her palms and her underarms and her forehead.

She’d marred a great work of art. She’d never work again. Jack was going to kill her.

And all because she’d let herself get distracted.

Of all the stupid, neophyte—

But now was not the time to beat herself up. God knew, there would be plenty of opportunities for that as she waited in line to collect unemployment.

She needed to focus. Focus and assess the situation and the remedies. Then she would call Gerard Beauvais.

She hovered above the painting, her eyes moving desperately around from the damaged area to all the work she’d done so well.

Screw it. She needed to call Beauvais now.

Callie reached into her tool kit for his card and dialed the number on the back, praying her voice would work if he answered. And God help her if she burst into tears. Looking weak as well as incompetent would just about put the finishing touch on a total nightmare.

She got his voice mail and left him a message to call her as soon as he could.

After a couple of deep breaths, and with a resolve not to keep picturing herself careerless and tossing pizzas for a living, she bent over the painting again. The solvent’s appetite hadn’t waned. The damaged part was getting bigger.

It was like watching an evil tide.

Yeah, and that path of destruction was wiping out her professional future as well as all that paint, she thought.

She propped her head on her hands and told herself that Beauvais’s shop could do a repaint on the mirror, just as he’d done for the Fra Filippo Lippi. They’d match the paint tones and brushstrokes with as much precision as possible so that it would be virtually impossible to tell that anything had gone wrong.

Which was a cold comfort, she thought. Even if the damage was hidden masterfully, she had still irrevocably diminished the value of the painting.

Abruptly, Callie frowned. Blinking her eyes a few times, she told herself she was seeing things.

It couldn’t be.

She bent down so low she felt the heat of the chemical reaction and her eyes burned.

From out of the mess, a shape was emerging. Underneath the blistered and melting layers of paint, she could see the outline of . . . a face.

She rubbed her eyes.

No, there was definitely a pattern coming through. Behind the pale creams of the mirror’s surface, it looked like . . . the shape of a face.

Her heart started to pound for an altogether different reason than career suicide.

When the phone rang next to her, she grabbed it, hoping to pick up before anyone else did at the house.

Gerard Beauvais’s cultured tones were the sweetest sounds she could imagine hearing.

“Oh, God, I screwed up,” she began, her words running together, just like the melted paint. “I was working over the mirror and I used the wrong strength solvent and I melted part of the paint layer—”

“Okay, okay, cherie. Slow down.”

Somehow Beauvais’s calm voice reached her inner ear and she forced herself to stop jabbering.

“Now,” he said, when she had herself under better control, “tell me exactly what happened from start to finish. And what the chemical composition of your solvent is.”

After she was finished, her throat was tight as she waited for his response.

“I must know,” he said quietly. “What was underneath? In the mirror.”

“A dark figure, actually.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “In the shape of a head, I think.”

Beauvais laughed tensely. “Well, perhaps your mistake is fortuitous. Did the paint layer there react differently to the solvent than the other parts of the portrait?”

“Well, I didn’t burn any of the rest of it off, thank God, so it’s hard to say. But no, I don’t think it did. It came up easily but that could be explained by the increased strength of the solution.”

Beauvais was silent for a moment. “I must see it for myself. But do not move the painting. I will come to you tomorrow. I have family here now and cannot leave. In the meantime, say nothing to Jack or his mother. I don’t think you should go to them until we know what our plan to remedy the situation is. There is no reason to upset them, if it can be avoided.”

Callie’s breath came out in a shudder. “God, I feel awful. Jack’s going to fire me. I’m never—”

Beauvais laughed easily. “Jack is not going to fire you. And you are going to work again, trust me. The conservation science is administered by human hands and we make mistakes. There is nothing we cannot fix together, but let us not be foolish. I will call on you tomorrow and we will decide what to do.”