A Fresh Perspective, A Regency Romance (24 page)

As usual, Reed looked the perfect English gentleman. No different, and yet everything was different. He had taken a seat to one side of the podium. His face was in profile, his attention focused on the painting as the monotonous, repetitive drone of bidding began.

Megan paid the auctioneer’s rattle no mind. The drone of her own repetitive thoughts consumed her. Who was this stranger she had once called friend? Was he the same man for whom she had so long pined? How could he put a price on their friendship? On the expression of her love for him in the gift she had given him? Why would he expose her, through her work, to public humiliation? How could he withhold so much from her, when she had believed he might tell her anything?

The hammer banged down on the auctioneer’s podium with the same sharp force of her pain, anger and hurt. Reed Talcott, whom she had trusted above all others, seemed turned into a cruel, unusual and completely heartless creature.

The auction was an entirely foreign ritual, Reed decided. The regular bidders, as with natives in any foreign country, had a language all their own. Bored looking creatures, they stood or sat near the podium, evidencing little interest in the proceedings. They exhibited the most profound disinterest when bids were fiercest. A gentleman in the third row’s every yawn raised the bid. The crowd looked, Reed decided, like nothing so much as row upon row of restless, clever children, who with the wink of an eye, or the jig of an eyebrow, meant to win from him, his life.

Little was said as bids were made--the room did, in fact, fall into a pensive, rain-battered hush during each negotiation. Fans were stilled for fear their movement indicated a bid. Mr. Christie called the going price at an astounding rate. A raised eyebrow here, a waggling finger there, an occasional bored wave of an auction guide at the back of the room, and the bids rose and rose again until Christie settled the business again and again and again, with a smart rap of the hammer.

The oil paintings went, then furniture, brought in one piece after another on the shoulders of four brawny men. A hundred pounds here, seventy-five there, as much as five hundred to pay Talcott debts from the French commode. The bronzes went next, every crack of the hammer a blow to Reed’s heart. Then china, Lady Talcott’s Cortauld silver, Lord Talcott’s choice wines. Pounds, shillings and pence the money added up, a long line of scratches from the bookkeeper’s pen. All debts would be met. The event might be deemed a unequivocal success. Yet Reed felt diminished with every sale--as if pieces of him were torn away--as if with the sale of every painting a favorite view had been closed away forever from his sight.

With every call for higher bids the dark, rain-pressed closeness of London crowded in on him. The fresh air, open skies and flowing waters of the Lake District seemed distant indeed. The vistas and views of his very soul seemed threatened. As if to echo the feeling, rain pelted against the windows above with increasing energy.

Reed had to remind himself continually of his goals and changing perspective, of his hopes for a bright future. Exhausting effort. Time flowed differently for him in the auction room, as if everything around him sped by at a dizzying rate while his own thoughts and movements had been slowed to a snail’s pace.

As the watercolors sold, he began to feel light-headed and breathless. Dark spots danced before his eyes. Loath to fall into a dead faint in front of his peers, he moved, as inconspicuously as possible, to the back of the room, tally sheet in hand, self-esteem dragging about his boots. He could no longer bear to face the crowd that bid on his lifetime’s accumulation of beloved treasures. It had been hard watching the bronzes sell. It was a brutal punishment to see his landscapes lifted to the podium’s easel one after another. He halted his retreat near the door.

From this distant vantage point, he could see most of the rostrum and the top half of each painting as it was carried to the display area. Here he could lean against the wall and breathe a bit of fresh air from the doorway. He could hear well enough too, though the rain seemed bent on reaching a crescendo above them.

Christie had warned him that paintings were not bringing much. “Great Britain has been flooded with French, Belgian and German collections thanks to Napoleon. Be prepared for the worst.”

Reed had believed himself prepared, and the worst was not as bad as it might have been had there been fewer bidders, but to see the Ruisdael go for thirty-five pounds left him speechless. That the authenticity of one of the Poussin’s should then be questioned by one of the serious bidders right in front of the rostrum and the hammer close on seventy-two pounds when he had expected it to go for ten times that much, left Reed stricken. Closing his eyes, he braced himself against the wall and reminded himself that the paintings would buy a slate mine and fruit trees and hops to make beer.

A tap on the shoulder and someone asked in an undervoice, “You all right, sir?”

He opened his eyes. A slender, bespectacled attendant whose name Reed could not for the life of him recall, gave him an understanding smile. “How are you holding up? Auctions are generally a nerve-wracking experience for those whose goods are involved. An awful sensation--to have strangers haggling over one’s things.”

“Yes. It is, but I am fine,” he said thinly. “No, that’s a lie.” He pressed his fingers to his temples. “I am anything but fine. Completely rattled, in fact. Thank you for asking, Barnaby is it?”

“Yes, and forgive me if I seem to pry, sir, but have you eaten today?”

“Eaten? I have had the odd bite or two.”

“Perhaps a sandwich to take the edge off?”

“Thoughtful of you. . . ,” Reed was touched by the man’s consideration, “but it would not feel right, leaving.”

As if to substantiate his fear, a brilliant flash of lightening lit up the window-framed sky above their heads. Thunder rumbled the very foundation of the building.

“Five minutes, sir,” Barnaby suggested reasonably. “What can five minutes hurt?”

With a sigh, Reed nodded. It would feel good to sit quietly for five minutes to collect himself.

“Lead on,” he said.

Barnaby efficiently beat a path through the crowd to the door, throwing glances over his shoulder now and again to ascertain that Reed was following. The room was jammed, the air very close. It was a great relief when at last they broke through the crowd at the door.

Nonetheless, it was with a restless graciousness that Reed accepted Mr. Barnaby’s hospitality. “It feels strange,” he said, as Barnaby poured them each a mouthful of brandy and spread a clean bit of paper for the sandwiches. “Strange to sit in a quiet place eating roast beef while within shouting distance my fate is decided by the pounding of an auction hammer and the bored finger waggles of complete strangers.”

“I can well imagine,” Mr. Barnaby parceled out his sandwiches and waited a trifle expectantly for Reed to partake.

Reed bit into the one that looked like roast beef on a bun. “Mmmm.” He chewed vigorously, the food completely tasteless to him. “Lovely bread,” he said when the bite had been swallowed and sat like a great wad of raw dough in his stomach.

Barnaby smiled. “Fresh. Sandwiches are always best when made on fresh bread.”

Reed forced himself to bite and chew. He nodded pleasantly at Mr. Barnaby’s small talk, but halfway through the bun he rose abruptly, saying, “I do thank you, Mr. Barnaby. . .”

Barnaby rose, hastily wiping crumbs from his mouth. “Want to get back, do you?”

“Am I too predictable?”

“No, sir. Everyone reacts differently to the auctions. Some sit in Mr. Christie’s office and weep. Some do not participate in the sale at all, their primary interest the money, which they pop by to collect when we are done. But I will not keep you. Would you care to take the rest of the sandwich with you, sir?”

Too touched by his concern to refuse, Reed picked up the remainder of the man’s kind offering and bit into the bread and beef more from a sense of duty than appetite. Cheeks bulging, teeth hard at work, fresh bread clinging like a limpet to the roof of his mouth, he returned to the auction room. To his surprise, Mr. Barnaby abandoned his fresh bread sandwiches and followed him.

Another watercolor had taken its place on the display easel. Reed could not see from the crowded doorway, but he heard Christie reading the description from the auction guide. “Charming watercolor study. Not the work of a master, but nicely framed. The frame itself is worth a starting bid of at least five pounds.”

Megan wanted to sink through the floor. Nice frame? She wanted to wail. Was that all the man could think of to say about her watercolor. Not the work of a master! Of course it was not the work of a master! It was the work of an idiotically infatuated young woman who had foolishly tried to express her love in a sunset view from Yat rock. Megan’s skin burned with humiliation, her heart filled with the weight of anger and anguish.

Beside her, Giovanni leaned forward for a better look at the painting. “Your painting, is it not?”

Megan nodded.

The first half of Reed’s beef sandwich had become an indigestible lump in his stomach, the second half, of which he had rashly bitten off more than he could successfully chew, sat like a wad of India rubber in his mouth. He wanted to flee the room again, this time sweeping his treasures into his arms as he went. Which of his lovely paintings was so casually dismissed as of little more worth than the frame it was housed in? Chewing broadly, with the jaw swinging languor of a cow masticating its cud, he stood on tip-toe to peer between a gentleman wearing a top hat and a woman with too many feathers.

Good God! His sandwich stuffed mouth dropped open, spilling bits of bread. Megan’s watercolor! What in blazes was her painting doing in the bidding? He had no intention of selling her work. How could such a thing have slipped by him?

He wanted to shout, to stop Christie, to inform him the sale of this painting was a mistake, a dreadful mistake--the crowning disgrace in a day of debasement. “No!” he cried at the top of his lungs. But with his mouth still fighting food it emerged a muffled, “Dough.”

Mr. Barnaby took a good look at him. “Something wrong, Mr. Talcott?”

“Dat painding ith nod for thale,” Reed said, spitting bread.

Barnaby’s brows rose. “Not for sale? Are you sure?”

“Yeth.”

From the rostrum, Christie was repeating his request for a five pound bid. “Will no one give me a bid of five?”

Someone near the front took him up on it.

“Dough, dough,” Reed shouted, bread still firmly stuck to the roof of his mouth. The gentleman with the top hat turned, frowning, while the woman with the feathers covered her ears with a squeak of protest.

Barnaby tried to deter him as he squeezed between the two. “Not that way, sir! Far too crowded.”

Reed ignored him, the only thought in his head to get to the front of the room to halt the sale.

“Will someone give me six?” Christie called.

Reed waved his auction catalog above his head as he wound his way through the crowd. “The painding,” he shouted. “Ith nod for thale.”

Christie seemed unable to hear him above the noise of the rain, but spying the waving catalog, he pointed the hammer in Reed’s direction, saying, “The bid now stands at six. We have a rather anxious bidder at the back of the room. Yes, I see you waving, sir.”

The crowd chuckled, drowning out Reed’s attempt to shout again.

Dear God! What a nightmare! By his own hand the bid continued! He had to get to the front of the room. He had to get the bread off the roof of his mouth.

“Another bidder,” Christie intoned majestically. “We have another bidder. Six pounds two shilling. And another six pounds seven. Anyone care to make it an even seven?” The bid progressed, no more than a shilling or two at a time, but faster, nonetheless, than Reed made his way through the crowd. Trapped behind a wall of broad-shouldered young men, he tapped one on the shoulder. “Pleathe, led me path.”

The young man turned to face him with an expression of outrage and an overpoweringly rum-scented, “Hands off the coat, if you please.”

The wall of backs, four of them, turned. Reed found himself the center of unfriendly attention among the young men, who by their solidarity of spirit would appear to have shared a bottle or two. His polite, “Gennlemen, I musth path,” met with a wall of laughter and the suggestion that they should take the rude lisper outside and pummel him.

Megan wanted to throw her skirt over her head and run from the room. The auctioning of her watercolor was an excruciating business. Not only was her poor painting unable to command a decent progression of bids, but the crowd had become so restless some sort of a brew-ha-ha had broken out at the back of the room.

“What is that noise?” Aunt Win leaned back to enquire.

“It is a rudeness,” Giovanni replied in a low voice. “This person with the glasses is a rudeness as well.” He waved a dismissive hand at the podium, where a bespectacled gentleman was trying to interrupt Mr. Christie’s bid announcements. His frantically whispered consultation with one of the attendants in the midst of Mr. Christie’s acceptance of another meager raise in the bid won him a frown from the bookkeeper, staying hands from the removers and a severe shake of the head from Mr. Christie himself.

Megan shook her head as well. It was the end of enough, she thought. She would never forgive Reed this humiliation.

Reed succeeded in seeing Mr. Barnaby reach the rostrum only because two of the broad-shouldered young men had picked him up with the clear intent of following their harsh words with equally harsh action.

Christie’s raised voice stopped them.

“I do beg everyone’s pardon,” he announced. “It is not at all my custom to interrupt the progress of the bidding once begun, but I have just been informed that this painting is here in error. Mr. Talcott?” He peered out over the crowd, bringing his spectacles down from his forehead in order to do so.

Reed had succeeded in loosening the bread from the roof of his mouth, but it was not so easy to free himself from the gentlemen he had unwittingly offended. As nonchalantly as he could manage with four great beefy hands hoisting him from the floor Reed waved his auction catalog vigorously, and called out evenly, “Here, sir.”