Judith Ivory (31 page)

She handed them back. “No, thank you. I’m fine as I am.”

He frowned, as if misunderstood, possibly hurt. “I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t.”

“Find yourself another protégé, dear. I had my fill with Zach and the University of Confidence Art.”

He looked puzzled. “Don’t let other people define you,” he said, thinking of her little speech about Hannah The Mule,
her belief that she was unqualified for enrollment or to sit for university exams.

She pulled a face. “Fine. I’m Queen of the May.”

“No. I don’t mean you get to say who you are. But you do get to
be
who you are. And you get to figure out who that is, no one else: You’re the only one with all the information.”

She stared at him, those large blue eyes in her fair face, as if he were certifiably deranged. Then repeated, “I don’t want a university course.”

He tapped his boot once, then nodded. He held up his palms, surrender. Then when he let his hands drop onto the seat again he inadvertently fluttered the university papers onto the carriage floor.

Emma leaned forward, at first merely to clean up the mess. The floor was strewn with things they needed, though not these. As she gathered them, she had to fight the urge to glance over what she took from under her toe. The classics? Is that what it said upside down? Latin? Something about Virgil? Greek? And a new-minded course on Russian literature. Pushkin. Though she had to be reading wrong upside down as she tapped them into a pile on her lap. The instructor for the course could not possibly be the Right Honorable the Viscount Mount Villiars.

She offered these, the collected provenance beneath them, in a relatively neat pile again, back across the space of the carriage. “Here.”

A lot of rubbish for a sheep farmer, she thought, gathered together as they should be, among the pages of a forged provenance that Zach himself had penned.

She pulled the cloak up, tucked her hair securely under the hood, then wrapped the whole thing tightly to her shoulder around her dress, in front of her face, to hide as much of her as possible. She held this with one hand and reached to open the carriage door herself. Stuart let her step out without another word of remonstrance.

It was brisk but sunny. His house was set far enough back she didn’t have to look at it. As she marched forward, though, she noted that tall, old trees overhung his property’s walk. A high hedge, an evergreen of some sort, climbed black spear-points of iron, a fence that ran along the front for more than half a city block.

T
HE
restaurant floor had a snug—a small secluded room for private dinner parties rather like those found at public houses, only ever so much more elegant. It said a great deal about what sort of business the room saw in that it contained a long blue velvet, button-tufted chaise and paintings of Bacchus and nymphs. It was also furnished with high draperies, drawn closed for the evening, a private liquor cabinet, and a large dining table with plump-cushioned, high-backed chairs. Just the place for a rendezvous. Though in this case, it was a rendezvous of three. Emma was to have dinner with Stuart, just “returned” from Yorkshire, and his uncle, who would—she hoped—either have the statue in his possession or have delivered it himself to Charlie, who’d send it directly to Stuart’s house, if such was the case. So far, no word though.

Emma was dressed in evening attire, feathers and low décolletage, a midnight blue gown that swished as she walked,
evening slippers, and sapphire earrings, paste but beautiful to her. She stared at herself in the mirror before she went down and thought, The only reason she’d ever looked this nice was to seduce someone into giving up something they would otherwise not. Deception. And she stood there wishing she were in a pair of rubber muck boots instead.

Never mind. She picked up her fan, her beaded drawstring, and a lined evening cloak and went downstairs.

Leonard had arrived early. He waited alone in tailcoat and white tie, his belly protruding from beneath a white vest. Thankfully, not two minutes later, Stuart walked into the room. He was quite the handsomest she’d ever seen him. Black evening attire, his hair slicked back—she recognized the way he combed his hair just after a bath—a white silk scarf and top hat that he removed along with his coat—always the same coat, even in the evening apparently, a favorite item, despite an inkstain somewhere near its billowing hem.

“Do you have the statue?” were the first words out his mouth, directed to his uncle.

“No. I’ll take it to Mr. Vandercamp, thank you. You needn’t worry. I visited him yesterday.” He smiled from one to the other, knowingly. “A very capable artist.”

Which meant they still didn’t have the statue. But would apparently. Charlie Vandercamp could put on an impressive show.

Emma chimed in. “There’s plenty of time. Did you bring the provenance?”

As Stuart laid his coat over the chaise, he reached into an inside pocket. He withdrew his pile of bills of sales and catalogs, handing them to Emma.

She set them down for the moment, taking a seat at the table. Champagne sat in a bucket by the table. “I can’t stay for dinner,” she said, “though thank you for inviting me.” Leonard had arranged this private gathering. “I will delight in toasting your success, though, gentlemen.”

Leonard looked disappointed for a moment, then popped the cork on his champagne. Its neck smoked as he tilted it to pour.

A moment later, they all three lifted their glasses. “Here’s to sudden wealth, gentlemen,” Emma said. “And chivalry.” She drank a sip, then picked up the provenance, glancing at it.

She furrowed her brow and set her glass down. She removed the clip that held it together and glanced through it, page at a time. Once more, she marveled at the trouble Zach would go to for some things, his thoroughness. There was a French scholar’s paper on finding the statue, in French, translated into English. Academic documents. Notes on the expedition that turned it up. Two different appraisals, eighty years apart, showing the statue increasing in value tenfold. Plus all the usual exhibition documents and transfers of ownership. She shook her head, frowning, about to begin: to chastize Stuart for not having the page they had intentionally, privately held back, all part of the game to make him look bad and woo Leonard to her.

“Is something wrong?” Leonard asked.

“It only goes up to 1873.” She looked across the cozy table to Stuart. “It’s missing the bill of sale that would make it belong to your father.”

Stuart raised his eyebrows as he casually drank some wine. “Is that important?”

“The final bill of sale would make it complete. It gives you the legal right to sell it.”

“Well, it’s mine. No one will contest it.” He threw a pull of his mouth at his uncle. “Except my uncle, and he’s selling it with me.”

Emma frowned, confused. “To whom does it belong?”

In unison, Leonard said, “Me,” as Stuart said, “Myself.”

Emma blinked at them, from one to the other. “Well, whoever you decide, you need a bill of sale that says so to offer it to a buyer—or buyers, in this case.”

“You’re looking at everything I have,” Stuart told them. “That’s all that was there or ever has been, so far as I know.”

“It’s incomplete.”

Anxiously, Leonard asked, “Does this mean we can’t go through with it?”

“Well, you can,” Emma explained, “but you’ll have to pay someone to, um, rather fix it.”

“Pay?” Leonard was crestfallen. “Much money?”

“No,” Emma said, then announced, “a few hundred pounds.”

Stuart was the one to explain. “Actually, ah, Leonard and I have had a small disagreement. It went to court. Neither one of us can lay hands on much money very quickly.”

Her eyebrows went up. “How are you managing then?”

“On credit,” Stuart said. Which wasn’t exactly true anymore on his part. All his accounts, save one, were now free-flowing—a development too recent for Leonard to know about it. It was a great burden off Stuart’s shoulders and well worth the legal costs. Leonard, however, he was fairly certain, was not enjoying such good fortune. Mounting debts, overspending, and Stuart’s own lawyers had seen to it.

“Goodness.” Lady Emma Hartley looked from one to the other, giving them a wide-eyed, tight-mouthed look worthy of a reprimanding parent: designed to make Leonard feel ashamed, even vulnerable, for such childish mismanagement. “Well,” she said, “you
are
in a bind.” She pressed her lips, then shook her head, frowning.

“I
have
the statue,” Leonard said, making it perfectly clear that their problem was due entirely to Stuart. “I can have it at Mr. Vandercamp’s tomorrow.” His expression, though, was genuinely worried. “Is the two thousand already paid out?”

She nodded. “I had to send in the policy. The money’s gone. In fact, I brought you your copy.” She went over to the pile of coats and scarves and produced a folder of papers,
pages and pages of fine print, the top page reading in scrolling script, “Cambrick’s of London.” She continued, “It’s a small company, but reputable and very cooperative, shall we say. Then I had to pay the fellows—Mr. Vandercamp and the jeweler and the man doing the provenances—a portion of their money in advance so they would do their jobs quickly, so they’d know what was coming and be able to expedite it. They’re waiting. I have it all set up to happen as quickly as possible. I’m lining up buyers for you.”

“Well, I did my part,” Leonard said staunchly, even daring a sarcastic twist to his mouth that said he was always besting his nephew.

Stuart looked down into his champagne glass. He hated this, she knew, but he did it seamlessly. He quietly took the blame.

“Never mind, I’ll help you,” Emma said. With a disapproving click of her tongue, she asked Stuart, “Do you remember whom your father bought it from?”

“A fellow in France.”

“There are a lot of fellows in France.” She shook her head, then looked at Leonard: Your nephew is hopeless, which was a favorite refrain—a now uniting theme. “Never mind,” she told them. “If we can’t trace it, no one else can either. What was your father’s name? I’ll have the last bill of sale duplicated.”

“Duplicated?”

As if laying it out for a child, Leonard explained, “Forged, Stuart. She’s going to have her man invent that last bill of sale that you lost.”

Stuart frowned, “I didn’t lose it. It wasn’t there.” He looked at Emma. “And I don’t have the money to pay for anything extra.”

“I do,” Emma said, jotting something down in a little book from her purse. “Don’t tell anyone, but I have an account here. My company wouldn’t like it. But I’ll pay for it, and
you can pay me back from the monies you receive. Just a little loan until this plays out. It won’t be long.”

“Really?” Leonard exclaimed. “My God, this is first-rate of you!” His eyes fixed on her: Here was a woman a man could count on.

“I can’t just leave you fellows in this mess. What else can I do?” She shot Stuart a reprimanding look, then settled a pleasant smile on Leonard. “I won’t have given you anything, if I abandon you here.” She sat down, opened her purse, and took out a blank bank draft and fountain pen. On the spot, she began to write them money.

Leonard was transfixed.

As she wrote, she said, “I must say, I’d hoped my gratitude would come at less bother.” She offered the wet-ink draft to Stuart—on a bogus account, of course—shaking her head. “I should have known you fellows would get yourselves into trouble. Now take this to the address here.” She tore a slip of paper from the book she’d written in. “Give this fellow what you have of the provenance. Explain the problem as I’ve outlined it. For the extra money, he’ll make it work. Tell him, if it isn’t enough, to see me.”

She stood, swilling the last of the champagne in her glass. “Now I must go,” she said. “I’m meeting clients for dinner. I’m so sorry to rush.” She smiled brightly. “But you understand.” She picked up her things.

Leonard stopped her at the door, taking her hand. “My dear Lady Hartley. If there is ever anything I can do.” He drew his brow down in such earnest gratitude. He put his card into her gloved hand. “Ever,” he said.

Yes, as a matter of fact, there will be, Leo, she told herself. She smiled gratefully, though. “No, no, you and your nephew did me a huge favor already several days ago. I only hope that my favor in return now runs smoothly from here.”

Once she’d gone, Stuart continued to play the part assigned.

“I don’t trust her,” Stuart told his uncle. “The money’s
gone. I want to ask one of my friends in the House—Motmarche knows something about art, insurance—”

“God, no, that’s all we need!” Leonard insisted. “I tell you, I saw the statue her fellow is making for someone else. It’s brilliant. And I trust her completely.”

Over dessert he mentioned, “I wish I knew this insurance company. I’d been hoping for Lloyd’s of London.”

“Oh, I know of them,” Stuart told him. “They’re smaller, but they have offices on Bond Street.”

And so it went. If Leonard voiced doubts, Stuart assuaged them. While he attacked Emma herself, letting Leonard buoy his own trust by having to buoy up Stuart’s. All the while, threatening to tell someone, the police, a Member of Parliament, a friend.

Stuart was fairly certain, though, as he picked up his coat—having suffered the longest dinner he’d ever endured—that Leonard had the picture. The nephew he didn’t like was vacillating dangerously, though still expecting half the earnings of a project he had done nothing but bollix up, while the woman he was coming to adore, the dear, clever Lady Hartley deserved something more for all her generous bother.

Emma was reading in bed when movement, what appeared to be a shadow, leaped from the balcony of the suite next door onto hers. Silently, her bedroom’s French doors opened, her light curtains billowing up into the room like caravan scarves, and the shadow entered. Wide-eyed, she drew back, taking the covers with her up to her chin. She fell back, one elbow onto the pillow. “W—who the—”

“Easy.” The voice was familiar, even reassuring. Stuart. He came fully into definition at the foot of her bed, in the glow of her bedside lamp.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered.

“I’ve had enough,” he said.

“Enough of what?” Then she realized he might not know:

“Stuart, Leonard was waiting for me in the reading room when I came in.” She let out a soft giggle. “You did a very good job at dinner. Too good: He took the suite across the hall.”

“What?”

“He doesn’t trust you.” She let out another breath of laughter. She told him, “You have to go. Now. I’ll suggest the double cross in the morning. He’s ready. I’ll push him. By afternoon, if all goes well, it will be over. Your being here is dangerous.”

His silhouette against the curtains absorbed what she said, then only shrugged loosely. He didn’t answer for a few seconds. Or didn’t in words.
He
was dangerous. His eyes dropped from hers to her mouth to her breasts, then slowly crawled back up to meet her gaze. And Emma felt like a vampire had entered the room, a bat flapping in, materializing in the form of a man, a man of supernatural beauty.

And darkness.

“I’m ti-ired”—he took his time saying it, breathing it, prolonging the syllables more for pleasure, she suspected, than any impediment—“of waiting. I wander my house alone. I can’t sleep. While all I think of is you. Emma, I’m jealous of every man who comes near you. I hate the concierge for handing you your key when you come in. I envy the doorman for watching you pass each time you come or you go. And Leonard. If he so much as looks at you, I want to kill him. Then there’s the dead husband, especially your dead husband, whom oddly enough I’d like to exhume from his grave so as to grind his corpse into dust.”

He finished, “Who cares where Leonard is? I’m frustrated from a dozen directions, and I’m here to do something about it.”

“Um”—she shook head, trying to think of an answer to this long list of complaints, while having to work at keeping her voice down—“Stuart, I’ve told you the danger of breaking from character—”

He let out a quiet rasp of laughter. “Does this strike you as my breaking from character?”

“You know what I mean. We’re supposed to be angry with each other.”

“I can work up some anger. I’ll force myself on you. You can complain to him in the morning. Say yes once, then say no all you’d like and I’ll know it’s part of the game. I’m good at games.”

Yes, she was coming to believe he was. She shook her head firmly. This was absolutely not part of the plan.

“It will work fine,” he told her. “So long as he doesn’t march in here and shoot me. So keep your voice down. If he asks, in the morning you can tell him I was a rascal, a cad. Which I am. That I had you against your will. Which you want. Say it. Tell me.” He held out his hands, as if he’d explained everything.