Pentimento
Some things were hidden for a reason.
Twelve weeks on a wine estate. One fire-damaged Dutch portrait. A man who asks before he touches anything, and tells her exactly what he wants when he does.
The book
Thea Morrow left London with her reputation in pieces and a forgery nobody wanted to hear about. Now her mentor's studio is behind on the rent, and there is one way to save it: twelve weeks on a wine estate in the Valley, restoring a fire-damaged Dutch portrait that has never left the Marais family.
Elias Marais is precise, scarred and impossible to read. He watches her work from behind a strip of yellow tape. He asks before he touches anything, even his own painting. When he wants her, he asks for that too. In detail. His rules are few and absolute. The Manor is off limits. Nobody speaks of the night of the fire.
But Thea's work is seeing what lies beneath the surface. Layer by layer, the portrait gives up a secret painted out centuries ago, and the man who guards it begins to give up his own.
Some things were hidden for a reason. Some deserve to be found.
Condition report
- Subject
- A slow burn between a conservator and the man who owns the painting.
- Setting
- A Huguenot wine estate in Franschhoek, and Cape Town.
- Heat
- Explicit. Adult readers only.
- Hero
- Exact, controlled, scarred. Asks first.
- Heroine
- English, dry, proud of her craft.
“Do you have rules for everything?”
“Only for the things I care about.”
The Marais Collection
Pentimento
Thea and Elias, the portrait and the fire.
In the works
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About the author
Celine Ashworth writes slow, exacting romance about people who are better at looking than asking. Pentimento is the first book in The Marais Collection.
Content notes
Pentimento is an adult romance for readers aged 21 and over. It contains explicit sexual scenes between consenting adults, including restraint, blindfolding and power exchange.
It also touches on a house fire, grief, a parent's drinking and small-town prejudice.