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The National Gallery, London

E velyn Sparrow never would have expected a potato to be the catalyst of her pre-wedding nervous breakdown. But then again, life sometimes delivered peculiar surprises. However, it would be a few more days until the accuracy of that statement would be fully realized.

Late returning from her luncheon hour, Evelyn hurried along the employees’ corridor of the National Gallery, the skirt of her dark-gray wool dress swishing with the rapid movement.

Upon her arrival to the conservation department’s studio, two men lifted their heads from their furrowed concentration.

“You’re late.” James Burlington frowned as he set aside a pair of pliers.

He was in the process of removing a painting from its frame.

The painting featured a heavily pregnant woman in a green, wispy, fifteenth-century dress.

The woman held her husband’s hand before her, and a mirror behind them reflected the painter.

The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck.

Evelyn disliked this painting. It had an unsettling air about it, though she couldn’t pinpoint why, exactly.

She swallowed and put her attention back upon Mr. Burlington.

He had a long, thin face with a three-finger space between his upper lip and nose that Evelyn thought made him look extra snobbish, a perfect fit with his disdainful personality.

“My apologies.” Evelyn began walking over to her desk while removing the hatpins from her green hat. Large feathers embellished one side of it. “I was accosted by a group of pigeons.” As she reached her desk and set the hat down, she stopped dead in her tracks and the blood drained from her face.

A potato—rather, half of a potato—sat squarely in the middle of her neat desk.

“What is this?” she asked quite loudly, her voice cracking. Nervous, she reached out to the potato and lifted it to study. She spun around to Mr. Burlington, holding the potato in front of her with accusation. “ What is this ?”

Mr. Burlington stared back, his mouth slightly open.

Evelyn whipped around to her other male colleague. Unlike Mr. Burlington, who was roughly the same age as Evelyn, Mr. Currow was married with two adult children, and his favorite joke was to blame them for the ever-multiplying gray hairs upon his head. “Mr. Currow? Can you speak to this?”

David Currow had paused with his paintbrush lifted in midair. But he didn’t respond, either. Instead, he exchanged a look with Mr. Burlington.

“Well?” Evelyn squeaked. Normally affable, today, she had absolutely no patience.

Mr. Currow scratched at his neck with the wooden tip of the brush.

“I believe that is a Solanum tuberosum. Or rather, the tuber of a Solanum tuberosum. It’s a starch root vegetable, otherwise known as a potato.

Quite good smashed up with butter and salt and placed over minced lamb. My wife has an excellent recipe for—”

“I do not care about recipes, Mr. Currow. In any form.” In fact, Evelyn did not know how to cook. Being the daughter of a baron, and tomorrow the wife of an earl, she’d never had a need to learn. Or a desire to.

Panic pumped hard through her veins, and she flitted about the room checking the rubbish bins for the other half of the potato while Mr. Burlington and Mr. Currow watched. There may have been a snicker or two, but she was far too focused to say for sure.

Resisting the urge to kick over Mr. Currow’s rubbish bin, she gave him a pointed look and moved onto a bin set against the wall.

This was her last day of work for the remainder of her life—not that anyone outside of her family knew this—and she was as mad as a bull staring down a Toreador.

Evelyn Sparrow was a celebrated paintings conservator.

The only woman art conservator in all of England.

The only woman employee at the National Gallery.

Tomorrow, it would all be gone. The ten years of freedom she’d negotiated in order to marry whomever her parents wished without a fight—they had chosen the Earl of Wellingham—was up.

Ten years that included university in America, an apprenticeship at the Louvre, and now her dream career of paintings conservator.

She’d thought ten years would have given her time to conquer the world, if she wanted, before being forced into the life expected of all aristocratic women. But it was only in the past year that her male counterparts had begun to take her seriously and see her as an equal.

Sort of , Evelyn thought as she heard snickering again.

Rising up to her full, willowy height, Evelyn huffed her way back over to Mr. Burlington—from where the snickering originated—and sniffed the van Eyck while the woman in the green dress mocked her with a smirk that seemed to say I have a husband and baby. I am better than you.

The painting had no starchy scent, no hint of potato anywhere.

Evelyn shot a death glare to her colleague. “If anyone would be insipid enough to use a potato on a painting, it would be you, Mr. Burlington. Where is the rest of it?”

Mr. Burlington gave a mocking gasp and placed a hand over his heart. “Your words injure me, Miss Sparrow!”

Mr. Currow laughed from the other side of the room.

“This is not funny, Mr. Burlington.” Evelyn shook the potato at him. “You know better than to use a potato on priceless artwork. You can’t possibly be that idiotic!”

Humor glinted in Mr. Burlington’s eye, which, somehow, made Evelyn even more furious. But just as her amused colleague opened his mouth to retort, the door to the studio creaked open, followed by a velvet, deep voice. “Am I interrupting something?”

Evelyn tampered the urge to react to that familiar voice. It was her client, someone she secretly hoped to see any given day. And he couldn’t possibly have caught her at a worse moment.

Evelyn resisted the urge to flush, though if she was successful or not, she didn’t want to know.

She met her client’s eye for the briefest moment before having to look away.

He was so exceptionally handsome she often felt shy looking at him.

“My apologies, Mr. McNab.” Evelyn glared down at an amused Mr. Burlington as she rested one fist on her hip.

“I was merely reprimanding my colleague for being foolish.”

Oliver McNab—or as he’d informed her several months ago, “Call me ‘Ollie,’” something she wouldn’t dare do—crossed the room toward Evelyn.

As usual, Mr. McNab looked exceptionally dashing in his three-piece suit.

Clearing her throat as he stopped before her, the faintest whisper of expensive cologne tickling her nose, she reached up to her auburn hair to make sure it was still in place.

“Fascinating,” Mr. Burlington said, evidently observing Evelyn’s nervous tick.

She saw understanding cross the man’s face and kicked him. He let out an exaggerated howl of pain.

“Should I come back later?” Mr. McNab looked between them, sounding unsure.

Evelyn allowed her eyes to sweep over his strong jaw, perfectly styled dark-brown hair, and those emerald-green eyes that haunted her. His face, his physique, were fit for a Renaissance painting. She had to look away. “No, that’s not necessary,” Evelyn reassured him.

“Why are you holding a potato?”

Evelyn tossed the tuber into Mr. Burlington’s lap, and he hurriedly caught it just before it landed in an unfortunate spot.

Evelyn frowned at him. “I cannot tell if my colleagues are stupid or playing tricks on me.”

Mr. Burlington smirked. “Oh, I assure you, Miss Sparrow, Mr. Currow and I would never dare toy with you. I would like to keep my bollocks, thank you.”

Evelyn gasped at the utterly crude word.

Mr. Burlington laughed and stood from his chair, setting the potato aside while Mr. Currow followed. The men commented it was their luncheon hour now and departed.

Mr. McNab looked down into the rubbish bin. “I don’t understand.”

Evelyn cleared her throat. “There is a prevailing, very incorrect, belief that potatoes can clean paintings. It’s a holdover from olden days, when conservation science was not as developed as it is today.

I found that potato half on my desk when I returned from my luncheon hour, and I have been searching for the other half. ”

“Did one of your colleagues use it?” he asked.

“I would hope they would know better, but I am unsure.” Evelyn swallowed and looked about the room.

What would everyone do when she didn’t show up for work tomorrow?

What would happen to the paintings here—would they be well taken care of?

Or would they be cleaned improperly and further damaged?

What about the McNab family’s artwork—would it be taken care of?

Her looming departure hit her hard again. Hot tears stung the backs of her eyes, but she forced them away. She had to finish out the day without getting upset, without letting anyone know what was going to happen.

“I suppose you’re here to see your brother’s artwork,” Evelyn said, knowing full well that Mr. McNab’s visit was purely business.

He followed her over to the paintings in her corner of the studio.

“As you know,” she began as they both studied the collection, “the fire at your pub several months ago did a number on your brother’s artwork.

But, little by little, I’ve been able to work through much of it, with the help of my colleagues when they can. ”

Mr. McNab leaned forward to study the painting she had recently finished restoring.

Art restoration was a different career path than art conservation, but they all knew well enough how to restore artwork that had been affected by smoke, soot, and water.

Earlier in the year, Mr. McNab’s affluent heiress sister-in-law—before she’d married his brother—had donated an enormous sum of money to the museum because she’d wanted “only the best” to restore her beloved’s artwork.