The Balmoral Nude

BURIED TALENT

Art expert Andrea Perkins reluctantly agrees to help a former and not fondly remembered lover authenticate and restore some Victorian-era drawings inherited by his wife. The artist is Cecil Fetherston, who hanged for the murder of his lover more than a century earlier.

An extraordinary new book is about to be published, connecting Fetherston, Prime Minister William Gladstone and Queen Victoria. The book is overflowing with nineteenth-century gossip, and suddenly the Fetherston drawings are very, very valuable--especially one scandalously erotic drawing of a nude couple, called The Balmoral Nude. Many are anxious to possess the drawings. Someone is desperate enough to steal them--and desperate enough to kill.