#Hyacinth plans to get back the cash by marrying Gareth

[thekatebridgerton]

Mystery of the sexy paintings au

Today on another episode of aus I talk about with @seaowl when I am high on energy drinks

Mystery of the sexy paintings au

In which 17yo Gareth St Claire, good for nothing, except painting riske pictures that get him into trouble in the uni, comes up with a plan to con the ton into buying his amateur paintings for an exorbitant price, so he can get the cash he needs to pay for tuition. Enter, his friends/models. Who were nice enough to model for him for free.

The problem is, that the Bridgertons may have made mysterious French painter Gautier-Gautier / 17yo Gareth, rich overnight, but also, now they’re trying to discover his identity. How was Gareth supposed to know his friends attracted so many lunatics.

Sophie, he can understand, Benedict was the initial target of this whole fake art show business. Con the delusional rich guy into buying the painting of odalisque Lady in Silver (wearing a mask and a transparent sheet). But what he didn’t expect was that Benedict would fall inlove at first sight and make a shrine for the painting in his room. Benedict also makes his sister’s lady’s maid clean the shrine, who happens to be Sophie. The very same Sophie who got so fed up with Benedict’s Lady in Silver delulu after a masquerade a year ago, that she was willing to pose semi naked for Gareth and was 100% unapologetic about conning the Benedict out of millions in cash. Now she’s cleaning a shrine to the painting of her own semi naked body and this close to killing Benedict.

  Kate, well Gareth doesn’t even know why Kate agreed to let him paint her naked back and buttocks in all their sultry and exquisite glory. All he knows is that she felt sorry for him and that some guy she disliked said she was uptight and priggish and hadn’t done one wild thing in her life, so Kate told Gareth to paint her buttocks on top of a mushroom and get as much cash as he could manage from auctioning off her likeness. Gareth thinks Kate may hate him, because a furious Anthony Bridgerton saw the painting and immediately had people looking for Gautier-Gautier. Gareth knows Anthony can’t prove the naked back-buttocks model in the painting is Kate, but boy is the man trying his best to make Kate confess to her evil misdeeds. He also knows from Sophie that Anthony keeps Kate’s painting in a secret place only he can enter and that he spends way way too much time there. On the bright side, Anthony paid a lot of money for the faceless mushroom fairy, so Gareth has to thank Kate for her honorable, if spiteful gift of charity.

Penelope volunteered to help Gareth because she thought his paintings of Sophie and Kate were beautiful and she was even fine with her face being visible because in her reasoning, nobody would recognize HER wearing negligee anyway, she was a wallflower, if people saw the resemblance, well, redheads were a dime a dozen in popular paintings, nobody would think it was her. Gareth thought so too, and he was happy to help Penelope get in touch with her desirable femininity by painting her as the goddess of love. He was proud of the redhead seductress he painted. That is until another furious Bridgerton walked away from the art show with the painting AND the woman he clearly recognized in tow. Gareth doesn’t know much about Colin Bridgerton, but he looked about to shoot somebody the moment he saw Penelope, and the painting of the goddess of love that everyone was admiring. Penelope at least tried to explain, but Colin was fit to be tied. Gareth really hopes his friend is okay and not locked away somewhere being ravished by Colin Bridgerton. the man did pay an exorbitant amount of money for the painting, but Gareth is okay with accusing Colin of kidnapping Penelope if he doesn’t hear from her in a few days.   

Phillip, okay yes Gareth did it on purpose, he painted the man as a dark sexy demon wearing a loincloth, but to be fair Gareth asked for help, Phillip said no, because #thinkOfMyChildren, so Gareth had to resort to blackmail. And while, yes it is wrong for Gareth to use Phillip’s sad depressive diary against him, it was also wrong of Phillip to say no to posing semi-nude for Gareth’s moneymaking schemes. What better way to celebrate being in London for a hot widowed father than to do Gareth a favor.  In the end the bidding war among the thirsty debutantes made loin cloth fire demon the hit of the night, I mean Eloise Bridgerton probably bankrupted a few years of her allowance with how much she put on the pot to take the painting. Now Phillip is complaining that Eloise is sniffing around too much when he’s shirtless in the gardens trying to teach his kids about plants. Honestly for Gareth that sounds like the opposite of a problem, but Phillip has this thing called modesty that Gareth can’t quite get.

Look at cousin Simon and his boxing buddy Michael, they were both good sports about being part of the art show. Sure Simon almost fainted with Daphne Bridgerton began arguing with her brother about the whole ‘if you can take the mushroom fairy, I can take the semi naked warrior, so give me the money’ ordeal, because you know, Anthony was Simon’s university pal and could recognize those warrior biceps anywhere. But in the end, he couldn’t deny Daphne her wish without explaining that she was thirsting over semi naked Simon, and giving up the mushroom fairy painting that other gentlemen were eying with envy was a non negotiable. Daphne walked away with her painting and so did dowager duchess Francesca Stirling, who took one look at Archangel Michael’s painting, paid a king’s ransom for it and walked out without so much as looking around, you gotta admire a woman on a mission really.  

Lucy’s painting was probably the less risque of the lot, because while she was only a year older than him, she still wanted to participate in the gautier-gautier moneymaking scheme and help Gareth, so Gareth painted her as a beautiful mermaid, in honor of their childhood friendship. She was dressed…sort of. I mean look at Greg Bridgerton, he bought it for her didn’t he? He thinks the art looks pretty. He thinks the art looks like Lucy. And with the way Greg talks about the mermaid, Gareth wonders how the man can be so dense. But that’s Lucy’s problem to worry about.

Enter his current problem. Debutate and diamond extraordinaire, way too perceptive to be sixteen, Hyacinth Bridgerton, who apparently knows all about Gareth’s secret identity as Gautier-Gautier and is threatening to let her siblings know, unless Gareth gives her a self portrait… for free.  

An: I’m thinking about writing a drabble about this, mainly just the part of Gareth and the fabulous seven coming up with the idea and actually implementing it. tagging @sea-owl my au loving buddy who is okay with hearing me ramble