The day progressed as days usually did for young Lord Arthur Godwick, but it took a turn for the strange when a young woman in a red raincoat and red Wellington boots knocked on the door of the Godwick townhouse in Piccadilly. When he opened the door and saw her, the red coat and red boots, his first thought was “red alert.”
She was a pretty young woman, bow lips that spread into a mischievous smile like he was in trouble and just didn’t know it yet.
“Hello? Can I help you?” Arthur asked the girl in red.
“You Lord Arthur Godwick?” Her accent was decidedly East End and made the “Lord” sound like a joke.
“Guilty.”
She didn’t say a word to that, merely held out a note to him, cream-colored and on fine thick paper, like a small wedding invitation.
“What is this?” he asked. His name was written on the front of the card, but he got no answer. When he looked up, the girl in the red raincoat was already at the iron gate, then through it, then at the sidewalk and then…gone.
Bizarre. Arthur had never had a note hand-delivered to him.
Slowly he peeled back the flap and removed the notecard. Hotel stationery from The Pearl. He knew the place. His sister had gotten married there not too long ago. The hotel’s name was in all-black, with a white pearl nestled into the middle of the A.
He opened the card and read it.
We need to discuss your brother. The Pearl, penthouse at five.
No name was signed to the note, just a looping R.
Who was “R,” and what had the hell had Charlie done this time? Could be anything knowing him these days. Gambling? Girl in trouble? Punched the Prime Minister?
Fuming, Arthur trudged up the stairs to his suite of rooms on the second storey of the townhouse. His phone told him it was close to five, so he had to hurry. He had on jeans and a t-shirt but needed socks, shoes, and a jacket. He pulled them all on, grabbed his keys, his mobile phone. Into his wallet, he stuffed as much cash as he could fit. Good chance Arthur would be paying damages on something tonight. A broken vase. A broken nose. A broken heart.
Although it was November, grey with rain threatening, Arthur decided to walk across the park to Mayfair, to clear his mind before the inevitable confrontation with Charlie. If it had been any other hotel, he might not have been so worried, but the Godwicks and The Pearl had history. In Queen Victoria’s day, it served as the elaborate London townhouse of a dissipated lord who spent all his money on whores and gaming until he had nothing left but the townhouse and then he didn’t have that anymore. It was sold, turned into a seven-storey, fifty-six room hotel. A respectable looking enough place these days. White and gleaming, black awnings, fine dining. Not a tourist trap. A haven for the wealthy, the titled, usually both. The walls were dark with heavy oak paneling, the furniture Edwardian, the lights low, an antique. The fallen paradise of aging lords.
Of course, it was also a brothel. Hence the family connection. Hence Arthur’s fear for his brother.
He’d learned from his older sister Lia about the hotel’s past. She’d told him about how their great-grandfather Lord Malcolm used to frequent The Pearl in its heyday, how he lived there as a bachelor gentleman about town, and how he played there every night of his wicked life practically. That’s why she’d gotten married there, of course. She was a Godwick, after all.
Arthur arrived just before five o’clock. As he looked up and saw the black iron words THE PEARL over a set of double doors, the first raindrops began to fall. Hurrying inside, he strode across the lobby as if he belonged there. He was titled and came from a wealthy family. That’s all one needed for entrée into The Pearl though if pressed, he had the note as well, an invitation to a party he did not want to attend.
As he crossed the lobby, the gleaming golden elevators his destination, he imagined he could still smell the cigars of the thousands of lords and industrialists who’d met here, slept here, supped here, and fucked here. The fucking, of course, being the main attraction. Arthur guessed he had been summoned here to scrape his baby brother off the floor of someone’s bedroom or bathroom.
And he’d do it. He always did it. Someone had to with their parents away in New York City until Christmas. Of course, even if they were in London, they’d mostly washed their hands of Charlie. He was eighteen, they reminded Arthur. Time for him to stand on his own two feet.
But what if Charlie fell while trying to stand? Arthur would demand. Well, in that case they’d let him fall so he could learn how to pick himself up.
Easy for them to say. It wasn’t their parents Charlie called at four in the morning when he was too drunk to find a way home. It wasn’t their parents who answered the phone when Charlie was detained by the police for starting a fight in a pub. No, always Arthur. “King Arthur,” his brother would drunkenly call him. “King Arthur saves the day again.”
Arthur found a set of grand double doors at the end of the corridor. A brass plaque read Penthouse.
He took a deep breath to calm his nerves, then knocked.
The blonde who’d given him the note opened the door.
“She’s on the terrace,” the girl said before Arthur could say a single word. “With your brother.” She waved at a set of French doors across the suite then left him alone in the penthouse.
Arthur’s first thought upon seeing it was that his brother was flying in very high circles these days. He’d never seen a grander, more decadent hotel room, and he’d stayed in some of the finest hotels in the world when on holiday with his parents. The walls were gold damask wallpaper with black trim. An enormous gas fireplace with a black china marble mantel dominated the sitting room. To the right of it was a curving black staircase that led to a second level where he imagined he’d find a luxurious bedroom. Black leather club chairs framed the fireplace and above the mantel hung a painting. A painting of a pretty young woman wearing a black raincoat and holding an umbrella. The son of art lovers who owned dozens of galleries, Arthur had to glance at the plaque on the frame as he passed it on the way to the terrace. The Umbrella by the Ukrainian-French painter Marie Bashkirtseff. Not your typical bland mass-produced hotel art. A real painting, oil on canvas.
As he made his way to the terrace, Arthur walked past a golden velvet chaise lounge, but then stopped when he saw another painting propped up in the seat.
Arthur recognized it immediately. A handsome gentleman wearing a three-piece suit, with black hair and dark eyes, the subtlest smile on his lips…Lord Malcolm Godwick, thirteenth Earl of Godwick. Charlie and Arthur’s great-grandfather. The portrait was last seen hanging in the hallowed halls of Wingthorn, the Godwick ancestral estate. It should be there now, so what was it doing here?
Arthur walked quickly to the French doors and peered through one of the panes. For a split second, the sight was so uncanny, he thought the painting over the fireplace had come to life. A woman stood on the terrace, wearing a black trench coat, belted tightly at her narrow waist. Over her head was a black umbrella. Not a painting come to life. Just a coincidence. Her umbrella was being held by someone, a young man facing away. He needn’t turn around. Arthur would have known that rust-colored hair anywhere.
Arthur pushed open the door and stepped onto the spacious garden terrace. It was filled with so many green plants and small trees, it was like walking into a miniature forest. He went straight to the iron railing at the edge of the terrace to find his brother wearing an expression of pure defeat. His brother was clutching the umbrella and staring down at his own shoes.
“Charlie,” Arthur said. “What the hell are you doing?” Before Charlie had a chance to answer, he turned to the woman. “Who are you and why are you forcing my brother to hold your umbrella in the freezing rain?”
“Things aren’t what they seem,” she said. “He offered to hold it for me. Didn’t you, Charlie?”
Charlie nodded numbly.
Arthur had expected a much older woman for some reason—maybe simply because of the confidence in her voice—but no, she was young. Thirty, if that. She had chestnut-brown hair that hung in a long French plait over her left shoulder. Her face was lovely and her eyes wide, intelligent, and grey as the rain. Peach lips, full and soft. She had a white-collared shirt on under her black trench coat and against her pale olive skin, she wore a pearl choker.
Something about her, the way she looked at him, so cool and superior, convinced him he was dealing with some kind of ice queen. Who else would make an eighteen-year-old stand in a cold autumn rain holding her umbrella?
And what was she doing while Charlie held the umbrella over her head? Feeding raw meat to a raven perched on a brass ring on the railing.
“Charlie, go inside,” Arthur said. His brother didn’t budge. He stood there in his stupid skinny jeans and leather jacket that he’d probably bought with a credit card “borrowed” from their mother. “Go home and I’ll meet you there later. I’m handling this.”
“He may go, but someone has to hold my umbrella while I’m feeding the baby,” she said and smiled at the raven. Arthur rolled his eyes.
“Go on, Charlie.” He walked over and took the umbrella from Charlie’s hand, which he held with a white-knuckle grip.
As Arthur took over umbrella duty, Charlie bent his head and whispered a miserable, “Sorry.” Arthur couldn’t help it. He put his arm around his brother’s neck. Charlie didn’t return the embrace but accepted it without protest.
Charlie disappeared through the French doors into the penthouse. Arthur watched as the woman fed another morsel of meat to the raven. It took the red flesh right out of her fingers, so well-trained it ignored the hunk of bleeding meat in the butcher paper she held in her other hand.
“All right. What did he do this time?” Arthur asked. No use beating about the bush.
She smiled. “I would have thought a Godwick would have better manners. Whatever happened to ‘Hello, how do you do?’”
“Hello,” he said. “How do you do? And what did Charlie do this time and why do you have our painting of Lord Malcolm in there? Better?”
“Much better.”
“Hello.” That came from the raven. Arthur stared at it, wide-eyed.
“Did that bird just speak?”
She laughed softly. “He did.” She sounded surprised. “He’s never done that in front of anyone before though. I thought he’d speak only to me. Not that he says much besides ‘Hello’ and ‘Baby.’ This is Gloom. Gloom, this is Lord Arthur Godwick. Say ‘Hello, my Lord.’”
“Hello, Baby.”
Arthur smiled despite himself—he’d never been flirted with by a bird before—and replied, “Hello, Gloom.”
The evening had taken on a strange, dreamlike quality. Silver-grey clouds, fat as circus tents hovered overhead. The girl in the red raincoat with her summons. The beautiful woman under the black umbrella feeding raw meat to a talking raven named Gloom.
“You can pet him if you like. He’s in a good mood when he’s eating. Just watch your fingers. He’s not too picky about the sort of meat he eats.”
Arthur couldn’t resist. He raised the back of his hand and stroked the silky black breast feathers of the bird.
“The longer you wait to tell me what Charlie’s done, the more scared I get,” he said.
“I know.”
“Please?”
“Ah, well, since you said please. Your brother racked up quite a bill here at The Pearl.”
“How much?”
“A hundred grand.”
The raven gulped another bite from her fingers.
Arthur stared. “A hundred grand? You must be joking? What room costs ten grand a night?”
“It’s not merely the room. He ordered…room service.”
Arthur quietly groaned. Room service. She didn’t mean coffee, tea, and the soup du jour. She meant a girl who’d serviced him in his room. As his father had jokingly called it once—room cervix.
“And you let him rack up a hundred grand bill? Why?”
“He’s the son of an Earl. Why wouldn’t I?” She gave a shrug, careless and elegant. “We give our special guests a great deal of leeway, but when the tab hits six figures, however, we call it in. Hotel policy.”
Arthur exhaled heavily, stared up at the cloud-wild sky. It was strange, having this conversation while huddled under a black umbrella. They stood very close to each other, barely a foot apart. He could smell her scent, like rainclouds, like evening fog.
Or was it just the rain on her skin?
What I thought about The Pearl
Tiffany Reisz returns to the art world in The Godwicks series with The Pearl. When Charlie Godwick runs up a bill at The Pearl, his older brother Arthur steps in to bail him out. Not only has Charlie stolen Uncle Malcolm's portrait to pay off his "room service" bill, Arthur is now tasked with getting the painting back before their parents can discover the portrait missing.
When Arthur goes to make payment arrangements, he makes a deal with the owner, the infamous Lady Reagan Ferry. He'll have to earn the portrait back.
But Uncle Malcolm isn't going to make it easy either. His interference brings a nice gothic element to the story and the art works made things interesting for me. I absolutely adored how the paintings complemented the story. The steamy scenes are erotic perfection. What more can I say -- I loved this. Devoured it.
Arthur and Reagan's love story is terrific. 5 stars all the way.
A complimentary ARC was provided. This is my honest review.
About Tiffany Reisz
Tiffany Reisz is the USA Today bestselling author of the Romance Writers of America RITA®-winning Original Sinners series from Harlequin’s Mira Books.
Her erotic fantasy The Red—the first entry in the Godwicks series, self-published under the banner 8th Circle Press—was named an NPR Best Book of the Year and a Goodreads Best Romance of the Month.
Tiffany lives in Kentucky with her husband, author Andrew Shaffer, and two cats. The cats are not writers.
Follow Tiffany on Social Media: Facebook • Instagram
About 8th Circle Press
8th Circle Press is a Louisville, Kentucky-based publisher of literary friction. For more information, visit our website at www.8thCirclePress.com. 
