Having enjoyed Barbara Metzger’s Cupboard Kisses, I was eager to try The Painted Lady. Sadly, despite an utterly wonderful beginning, it lacks nearly all of its predecessor’s charm and substitutes in its place implausible situations and kitchen-sink plotting.

The Duke of Caswell has a deep, dark secret. He likes to paint – especially ladies in the altogether – and is a true master of the art. Because society deems painting of any sort conduct unbecoming a duke, he has hidden his activities and disguised them with a never-ending stream of mistresses and shady ladies, which are also his secret subjects. But as he paints his latest mistress by memory, he finds himself making adjustments – different hair, a straighter nose, a paler complexion. When he is finished he realizes he has painted a beautiful woman entirely unknown to him. Then his creation begins talking to him. She tells him she’s a “pigment of his imagination” and represents a part of himself that he has locked away.

I was delighted with this beginning, and could immediately imagine a dozen entertaining directions it might take. Not once did it occur to me, however, that Kasey might poll his relatives, come to the conclusion that he was insane, and commit himself forthwith to a genteel asylum run by a man who “cured” poor mad King George…for a few weeks. Disgraced after the king’s relapse, Osgood Bannister now runs an establishment that houses and soothes the most temperamental young ladies of the ton, with the assistance of his niece Lilyanne. Kasey is drawn to the restrained Lilyanne, although of course there can never, ever be a match between a duke and someone of her genteel-but-impoverished station. Kasey returns home to find he’s being investigated by the Bow Street Runners because a few of his past mistresses have vanished. Reluctant to explain his recent whereabouts, he explains that he has been courting a young woman, and uses the pretext to bring Lilyanne to town.

After that delightful start, the Painted Lady herself is all but a nonentity, and the book really suffers for it. Neither of the main characters did much to capture my imagination – for a brilliant artist, Kasey seemed needlessly bound by convention and dutiful Lilyanne left very little impression. The resolution to the crime plot is extremely unsatisfying, and mystery of the Painted Lady is never really resolved at all.

The most redeeming feature of this book is its secondary characters. Particularly sympathetic is the earthy Lady Edgecombe, an eminently sane woman deemed inconvenient by her philandering husband and confined to the Bannister asylum. While the book is too lighthearted to explore this tragedy in depth, the real-life implications are chilling. Also enjoyable is Inspector Dimm, a Bow Street Runner with the eye of a true connoisseur. However, despite these enjoyable sidelights and the author’s fluid writing style, the book is marred by its bland main characters, its kitchen-sink plotting, and the tremendous underused potential of the Painted Lady.