Royal Pain (23 page)

The immaculately uniformed guard made very brief eye contact with Max, then opened the silent front door to the private bank. The door closed smoothly and they were alone in a small vestibule: solid wood doors behind them, solid bulletproof glass in front of them. A professional female voice came over an invisible speaker and asked Max to look into the retinal scanner to his right, which he did. A few seconds later, the glass wall in front of them split into two sliding doors that retracted into the immaculate walls.

A woman in her mid-forties, sporting a perfectly cut black bob à la Coco Chanel, a fitted charcoal blazer with matching stylish pencil skirt, and impossibly high, black patent-leather pumps that still managed to scream “your money is safe with me,” strode confidently toward them across the deep gray carpet. Bronte momentarily wondered if everyone who worked here had to color coordinate their wardrobe with the muted gray color scheme of the interior design.

“Your Grace.” She nodded slightly, extending her arm to shake hands with Max. “Therese Balderton,” she said with what sounded like a hint of a French accent. “A pleasure. And Ms. Talbott, welcome to Coutts.”

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Balderton,” Bronte replied, no longer surprised that Max had orchestrated everything down to the last detail, that this woman would know her name.

“If you will follow me.” Ms. Balderton gestured toward a door to the left of the entry. “I have the private room available with the items you requested.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it.” Max had recaptured Bronte’s hand in his and was channeling some sort of crazy excitement.

Bronte tried to get his attention as they followed the immaculate Ms. Balderton, but he was smiling at some private joke of his own and refused to make eye contact with her. Bronte finally gave up as they turned down a narrow corridor with five identical, unmarked steel doors on either side.

Ms. Balderton stopped in front of the third door on the right, shook her wrist down to reveal a chain with a single key attached, inserted it into the lock that was sunk flush into the plane of the door (there was no doorknob), and pushed into the room.

The small viewing room was approximately ten feet by ten feet, painted in the same muted gray as the reception area, with a modern circular tulip table and two chairs in the center. In the middle of the table was a large, oblong, steel drawer with two sets of white archival cotton gloves placed neatly on top.

“Do you require any additional assistance, Your Grace?”

“No. Thank you very much, Ms. Balderton.”

“As you know, simply press the red button here to the right of the door if you need anything at all or when you are ready to leave.” Then she turned to go and closed the door silently behind her.

“Well, isn’t this just a little James Bond-ish?” Bronte clasped her hands together in genuine delight.

“I am so pleased you are pleased. Are you curious?”

Bronte stalked slowly around the table and drew her hands up around Max’s neck, feeling the frisson of contact when her fingertips grazed past his hairline, along the edge of his shirt collar. She touched the ends of his hair with the tip of her index finger and felt his response as she leaned in to take his lips. “Always curious,” she whispered.

She was sure there were hidden cameras—the whole room was probably one big hidden camera, for chrissake—but all this cloak and dagger had her wanting to throw herself at Max.

“Good to know… for future reference…” he breathed between hot kisses, “if we are ever going through a dry patch… I will schedule a private viewing at the bank to get you back on track, eh, Bron?” He kissed her again with more strength than passion, then took her hands firmly in his and moved them away from his neck. “But not right now, my dear. I have some things I want to show you.”

“Oh, all right,” Bronte huffed in mock capitulation, dropping herself unceremoniously into one of the chairs and crossing her arms across her chest like a pissed-off teenager. “What have you got?”

“Put on the gloves, darling.”

Max handed her a pair of the thin white cotton gloves and put on his own. She slowly put one glove on, trying to make it kind of sexy, but Max was having none of it, and the gloves were more Mickey Mouse than Grace Kelly anyway, so she gave up and rolled her eyes at him with a smile.

She was still smiling when she realized Max had opened the safety deposit box and he was taking out black velvet boxes in all shapes and sizes.

“Good God, Max! What the hell is all that?”

“Fear not, my duchess-to-be; it is all yours—or very soon will be—to do with as you wish, at least in this lifetime. Now close your eyes.”

“Oh, Max. Please.”

“I’m serious. Close them.”

Bronte reluctantly complied. She heard Max opening and closing several of the jewelry boxes with quick snaps of the hinges. Some opened with a small unfastening snap; others creaked slightly as the little-used hinges were put into rare service.

“Aaaah. Here we are. Keep those eyes closed.”

“I said I would. Don’t push your luck.”

“Patience.”

After a few more moments, Max finished setting everything out and told her to open her eyes.

“Are you a pirate for fuck’s sake? Is that pirate booty?”

He laughed and she felt the thrum of his pleasure rise up through her own body. There were piles of gems: necklaces, rings, tiaras, long chain-mail looking things, bracelets, earrings, collars, lanyards, cuffs. She had never seen anything like it, except maybe in the windows at Harry Winston and, well, not even then.

“Holy motherfucker.”

“Yes, that pretty much says it. Welcome to the private jewelry collection of the Dukes of Northrop. I was going to choose a ring for you, and I
have
really, but then I thought it would be fun for you to see the, er, selection, as it were.”

He was fondling a sinewy bracelet that looked like it was from the 1930s and consisted of eight rows of diamonds that were somehow meshed together with an invisible filament. The effect was diaphanous.

“Maybe we will choose the same ring in any case,” Max continued, “and then I won’t have to be seen as the stodgy old-fashioned control freak who bullied you into wearing something you didn’t even like.”

“You’re not stodgy.”

“I get it… old-fashioned, freakishly controlling bully? Yes. Stodgy? No.”

“I’m not saying…” She stood up to get a better look at all the loot on the table. She tried to busy her hands with smoothing the fabric of her skirt down her thighs because what she really wanted to do was grab great clumps of jewelry and feel the weight of it as it cascaded through her greedy fingers. “This is just plain wrong.”

“What is?” he asked with genuine worry.

“This… I mean, I don’t think of myself as a greedy person—”

Max smiled suggestively.

“Well, I may be greedy in
that
way, but you know what I mean. I never thought of myself as having any sort of
lust
for objects. A great pair of shoes, some perfect little Valentino dress… okay. But even those were just diversions, really. Or comforts. But seeing all this… all this… I don’t even know where to begin. It kind of makes my blood race.”

“Hmm. I like this idea of your blood racing. Please continue.”

Bronte reached one gloved hand across the table very slowly, picking up an enormous ruby pin. The weight was surprisingly heavy in her palm. She held it carefully in the center of her left hand and then lifted it gently with her right to examine it more closely. The finely worked gold looked medieval, with cabochon diamonds and tiny seed pearls forming the perimeter of a Maltese square cross around the walnut-sized ruby.

“Odd you should pick that first.”

“Why? Was this the first piece that the first duke got from the spoils of war?”

“A little bit later than that. It was just a bauble, really. Family lore says it was a secret gift from one of the Tudors to his momentary favorite, Sophia Heyworth, who was the second duke’s granddaughter. She didn’t curry favor for long, but the wily duke managed to keep the more valuable trinkets of their short alliance.”

Bronte’s hand shook slightly as she put the five-hundred-year-old treasure back into its slightly faded, perfectly fitted, white silk cushioned safety.

“I think I might need to sit down.”

Bronte went around the small table and sat down next to Max. Shell-shocked.

“I remember the first time my father brought me here,” Max said. “Keep in mind we are sort of, well, the unintentional dukes of the family. My dad was a farmer really. It sounds ludicrous, and when you see the place in Yorkshire, you will accuse me of false humility. But seriously, none of this was ever meant to be ours. When my grandparents inherited the title in the sixties, that was absurd enough—the crusty ex-military man married to the shy, retiring princess, the unexpected second son of the second son and all that. And then when my father’s older brother died and it was my father who took the title, well, equally absurd. So here I sit, still scratching my head to some extent. I am not complaining about my responsibilities, but the weight still bears down. Do you see what I mean?”

“I guess the… well… I… I don’t think I would spend a lot of time in here, that’s for sure. I get where you’re going with the weight of history and all that, but it’s also a wonderful, albeit notorious, history to be a part of.” She smiled and the twinkle in her eye soothed him. “You are a part of all that,” she added as she gestured toward the mass of gems.

“You’re right. And now I have you to take half the burden, eh? Enough of my worry. It’s a joyous occasion and I would like you to choose your engagement ring. I’ll start to put away the other pieces, unless—” He was holding a particularly intricate diamond necklace that rested in the pleated white silk interior of a substantial black velvet case.

“There must be fabulous stories about each piece. We could be here all day.”

“Is that what you would like?”

“I guess, one rainy day I would love that. But right now for some reason, Max, it’s all making me feel a little overwhelmed.”

“I suspected as much. Let’s put everything away except the rings. That should help to narrow our attention.”

The two of them sat for a few minutes, carefully refitting the larger boxes back into the steel safety deposit box. When they were finished, all that remained were six identical black velvet ring boxes, revealing six vastly different rings. The recessed halogen spotlights in the ceiling created a sparkling refraction off the various stones.

“May I?” Bronte asked, indicating the need to take off her left glove in order to try on the rings.

“Allow me.”

Max came to her side and held her left wrist in his hand. Bronte thought he seemed like a kind, adept pediatrician getting ready to take her pulse. He removed the glove, placed it down on the table, then brought the center of Bronte’s palm to his warm lips, just as he had that first time in the coffee shop in Chicago.

It had seemed so intimate that day, so unexpected. Now it was like a brand. Still intimate but such a part of their bond, so fortifying. Her eyes closed for a few seconds as she tried to savor the feeling.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Max,” she whispered.

“Likewise,” he agreed as he pulled his own gloves off. “So, why don’t we try them all on for size, as a start.”

The rings were arrayed in no particular order, so Max reached for the closest one.

“I’m pretty sure this is an emerald from India, from the mid-1800s.”

The ornate setting was raised extravagantly high from her hand. The ring itself fit her finger perfectly, but the high setting made her think there was a secret poison chamber hidden beneath.

“I don’t think this is for me.” Bronte smiled, then took the ring from her finger and put it gently back into its box.

They continued trying on different options: a spectacular, enormous diamond solitaire (six carats? seven? she had no idea), alone and perfect in its four thin platinum prongs (it made her feel lonely somehow); another emerald, rectangular and set deep within a wide gold filigreed band (too Guinevere); two dark sapphires, nearly black, that twinkled almost malevolently, Bronte thought for a split second, in a sea of tiny pavé diamonds (she quickly returned
that
ring to its place).

The final two were a ruby the size of her thumbnail, seductive in its way, and then a canary-yellow round diamond that winked at her cheerfully between two diamond trillions. She put one ring on the ring finger of each hand, weighing them, turning over her hands, fingernails up, then fingers bent in toward her palms; hand resting loosely on her shoulder, hand stretched at arm’s length.

“I feel like a goddamned hand model, for chrissake,” she joked, but Max knew it was only a nervous attempt at levity, as he too felt the real intensity of the situation crackling between them.

“It’s all right, Bron. Take your time.”

“In this at least,” she murmured.

“I heard that.”

“Well, I think I’ve decided. Was one of these the one you chose?”

“Of course. You didn’t think I wanted you to wear those sapphire headlights of evil, did you?”

She smiled into his eyes.

“It’s got to be the canary diamond, doesn’t it?”

His smile was brilliant. He knew she would choose it. Or, at least, he had hoped to the very edge of knowing that she would choose it.

She continued, “I mean the ruby is, well, so fucking sexy. I don’t think I could see myself changing a diaper with that glowing ember winking at me.” She met his eyes with a mock smolder. “That said, maybe it winks best at diaper-changing time as a reminder of what happens after all that sexy
foolishness
. I would love to wear it—and nothing else, mind you—for some little rendezvous, but for my humdrum everyday life with you, I think the priceless canary diamond carries the day.”

Max felt simultaneously gutted and perfectly grounded. He couldn’t believe this sexy, brazen, strong, tender, crass, winsome woman was going to be the mother of his children. “You have no idea how badly I want to say, ‘you had me at diaper changing,’ but I will refrain.”