The Art of Seduction (25 page)

“You know I know what I'm talking about, Emma. I'm never fooled when it comes to art.”

She slapped his face. The smack resounded through the chamber.

Enraged, she flew into him, beat him with her fists, used her nails as claws to scratch at him. His face bleeding, he grabbed her wrists and twisted them to make her submit. Then, as she lost her strength, he let her drop to the floor.

“You wasted your time, Emma. You can't take Mason's place. Not in the art world. And not in my heart.”

With that, he turned on his heels. As Mason jumped back to hide behind a column, he stormed past her and out of the house.

E
mma lay crumpled in a heap on the floor, sobbing as if her world had just come to an end—the kind of wrenching sobs a woman succumbed to only when she thought herself alone. Even a few short weeks ago, Mason would have left without a word, satisfied that justice had been done. But she'd changed; her heart had opened, softened. As the wracking cries filled the empty hall, she felt neither anger nor reproach. And strangely, given the fact that weeks before this same woman had tried to kill her on this very spot, no fear.

Quietly, Mason went into the room and stood looking down at the duchess. Her shoulders were shaking with the force of her outpouring of grief and despair. Crouching, Mason touched her gently.

Emma shot up, startled. Her eyes were red and her face was streaked with tears. “What are
you
doing here?” she hissed.

“I'm sorry, I—”

“You heard all that?” Emma looked about wildly. “Well, I hope you're happy.” She shrugged Mason's hand off and pushed herself to her feet. “I've lost everything. Everything I ever wanted or hoped for. And you…You've won.”

Mason stood. “I don't feel like such a winner.”

“You've won the only thing that matters to me.”

Mason just looked at her and said, “We're so much alike, you and I.”

“I'm nothing like you,” Emma shrieked. “Nothing! Haven't I just admitted it? I'm not an artist. I'm nothing but a cheap copier of artists.”

Mason said, “When I first saw you, I thought you were the luckiest woman in the world. I wanted everything you had. Money. Position. Respect. Confidence. And to get it, I pretended to be something I'm not. My impersonation is really no different from yours. We're both imposters. So you see, we're not so different after all.”

“Don't talk like this. I want to despise you. I
need
to despise you.”

“You're right to despise me. What I did was despicable. I wanted something I wasn't supposed to have, and I didn't care how I got it. And I've hurt so many people in the process. But I, too, want to make things right. And the first thing I can do is forgive you.”

“
You
forgive
me
? Why, you arrogant little doxy! I don't want your pity!”

“I don't pity you, Emma. I understand you. I know why you did what you did. After all,” she added softly, “I love Richard, too.”

Suddenly, Emma crumbled. She burst into tears, hiding her face in her hands. Her heart aching, Mason went to her. But when Emma tried to fight her off, she ignored her, pulling the sobbing woman into her arms and holding her until she went limp, crying on Mason's shoulder. Mason gave her the time she needed, stroking her back, murmuring soothing words, feeling herself close to tears.

When Emma had finally quieted, she straightened up and fished a handkerchief from her sleeve, wiping her eyes. “Why are you doing this? After all I did to you…I wanted to kill you!”

Mason reached forth and straightened a lock of hair that had fallen onto Emma's brow. “Because I think Richard is a deeply scarred and trapped man who doesn't know how to free himself. I feel his pain, but he won't talk about it. He won't let me help him. Whatever it is, it's twisting his mind. If it goes on, I'm afraid it will destroy him. I have to save him. And I need you to help me.”

“Me?” Emma sniffed. “Even if I wanted to, how can I possibly help you?”

“By telling me what you wouldn't before. What you know about his past.”

“He'll hate me if I do. That doesn't matter now. But he'll hate you just as much for going behind his back.”

“That's a chance I'll have to take. Whatever happens, whatever the consequences to me, I have to help him. While you and I are here talking, the only thing he's thinking about is how to steal my paintings back from the French government. Something he doesn't understand and can't control is driving him to do this, and it's going to end up killing him. Don't you see, Emma? We have to help him. I believe we can. Who better than the two women who love him? Don't you want to save him from himself? Isn't that more important than anything?”

Emma was staring at her as if she'd never seen her before. Finally, she said, wondrously, “You really
do
love Richard, don't you?”

“Of course I do.”

“In all the years that I've loved him, I always thought of myself, of what I wanted. I never once stopped to think of what I could do for him.”

“You can do something now.”

Emma turned and took a few thoughtful steps. “I always thought I loved Richard more than any other woman ever could. I thought he was mine by right. But the truth is, I
wanted
him. I wanted him back. But you
really
love him.”

Mason followed, taking the woman by the arm and turning her to face her. “Emma, please, for God's sake, help me to help him!”

Emma studied her for what seemed like ages. Finally, she sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

Mason stepped over to the side bar filled with crystal decanters and poured a brandy, then took it and handed it to Emma. “Just tell me your story. Tell me everything you know about him.”

Emma took a sip and gave a small self-deprecating laugh. “I'm not accustomed to telling the truth.”

“Neither am I. We're sisters under the skin.”

“More so than you know. Very well.” Emma sat down and Mason sat beside her. Emma's eyes glazed over as she thought back for a moment, then took a breath and said, “I may be as rich as Croesus now, but for most of my life I've been poor. Poor the way someone like you can't even imagine. The kind of poverty that sinks into your bones and wipes out your spirit. I left the East End of London when I was seventeen and went to St. Louis, hoping to move in with my father's sister. But when I arrived, she wasn't one bit interested in taking me in. So I pushed west to seek my fortune.”

“That must have been hard, a woman alone.”

“No, actually, it wasn't so bad. It was rather a lark, if you want to know the truth. I had what westerners call grit, and I also had a talent. I could draw. Sometimes I sketched local news events that were made into woodcuts for the newspapers. But mostly I did caricatures of patrons in saloons. They got a good laugh out of those and paid pretty well, too.”

“How did you meet Richard?”

“One day I was working in a saloon in Crede, Colorado, and I noticed this handsome young cowboy staring at me. Now, this happened all the time when I was working in mining towns, but what was different this time was the fact that my admirer was looking at my drawing and not at my body. He was absolutely fascinated with what I was doing.”

“Richard? A cowboy?”

Emma smiled, her face glowing in remembrance. “He rode shotgun for Wells Fargo. And did he cut a dashing figure. I'm talking tall in the saddle! A fast draw and a straight shooter who stepped out of the way for no man. He was all rough edges in those days, but I fell in love with him on the spot. How could I not? Besides everything else, he had this incredible respect for my work. It was so flattering.”

Mason shifted in her chair. This was hard to hear, but she had to hear it. Everything.

“The other thing we had in common,” Emma continued, “was that we were both from England. He came west as a child with an older sister, who I think died along the way. He never talked about that part of his past with me. But soon after being on his own, he was adopted by a man who became a kind of substitute father for him. That man,” she said, turning to give Mason a steady look, “was Hank Thompson.”

Mason remembered the picture she'd seen of Hank with a small boy.

“Hank's a respected businessman now, but he wasn't then. He was a swindler, a con man, a gambler, and everything else bad you can think of. He trained Richard, taught him to gamble, even sent him back to England to school to put some polish on him. Richard thinks he did it with his best interest at heart, but I think it's because Hank wanted to use Richard, and he realized a sophisticated man of the world would be more valuable to him.”

“But how did he become an art thief?”

“I can tell you exactly because I was there when it happened. It was eighty-three—no, eighty-two. The spring. There was this Denver silver king who'd just built the town's showiest mansion. To top it off, he'd bought himself a Delacroix painting, which he'd hung with great fanfare over his mantle for all of Denver society to marvel at. Hank got the idea that he would steal that painting. So he had Richard and me invited to the party he was giving to show it off. I can still see the moment Richard laid eyes on the painting for the first time. He'd never seen anything so beautiful before. It was as if he'd just touched the hand of God. He didn't move for I don't know how long, just stood there, staring at it. Finally, I pulled him away. Someone might remember how much time he'd spent looking at it later, after it was stolen.”

“So you stole it?”

“Well, yes and no. The problem was not stealing it, it was getting away with it, because it was large, and there were only so many ways of getting out of a town like Denver. Richard said, ‘If only there was some way of copying it.' I looked at the painting and, I'm not sure why, but I just had the sense that if I memorized it, every detail, I could paint one just like it. I told him I wanted to try. The next day, he bought a canvas and paint kit, and I set to work. I closed my eyes and concentrated; then I opened them and started to paint. Within a fortnight, I had made a copy that not even Delacroix's wife could tell from the real thing. Because you see, I do have this gift for mimicry. Anyway, a few nights after it was finished, we sneaked it into the mansion and replaced it for the genuine article. As far as I know, that silver king never did find out he had a fake on his wall. He's probably still showing it to people to this day. Hank sold the real one to some South American cattle king.”

“So it was Hank's doing.”

“Hank may have got him started, but Richard carried on. He loved it. Everything about it. The research, the excitement, the intrigue. Steeping himself in the history of art. He had no qualms about the robberies because he always felt that he was liberating the paintings from people who wanted to horde them for themselves, that he was doing the world a service by keeping the paintings in circulation. Also, it just gave him an excuse to be around the art he loved so much. After the first job, Hank wanted him to quit.”

“Why, when it had been his idea in the first place?”

“Because that wasn't the direction he had in mind for his protégé. Hank always had this dream of becoming a Wall Street tycoon. He used the money he got from selling the painting to buy himself into a high-stakes poker game. In the course of it, he won himself a copper mine in Montana that, shortly after, struck a mother lode. After that, he went legitimate and started grooming Richard to be his right-hand man. Every so often, he'd send him away to school, and this is when he decided he needed a year at Oxford. But it didn't work. Richard stayed there just long enough to learn how to pass himself off as a cultured gentleman, which he could use in his career as an art thief.”

“And you were part of that career.”

“I was an
integral
part of it. Even while he was going to school, we'd spend his holidays bouncing around Europe pulling heists. We used the same method that had worked in Denver. Conned our way inside, chose the target; then I copied it, and we substituted the copy for the real one. Oh, what times we had! I loved it almost as much as Richard did. We were a team, we were doing something delicious. In those days, Richard loved the fact that I was such a proficient forger. He respected me for it. I really believed he loved me. Hank hated the fact that we were doing this, and hated me in particular for ‘leading him astray.' But even though Richard bowed to Hank in just about every other way, he stood his ground on this one issue. He liked being an art thief. And I think he'd still be doing it if it hadn't been for a couple of things that happened at the same time.”

“What things?”

“The first had to do with a trio of stolen Poussins. Our broker in that deal was Dimitri Orlaf.”

“The count?”

“Count!” Emma gave a brittle laugh. “No account is more like it. He was born even poorer than I was. He had his coat of arms made up by the same counterfeiter who supplied my phony family tree. The world of high society is filled with frauds, deary. Anyway, Orlaf took possession of the goods and stored them in a dock warehouse the night before they were bound for shipment to a buyer in Stockholm. Somehow, the police got wind of the transaction. To protect the operation, Orlaf destroyed the evidence. He set fire to the warehouse, and those Poussins went up in flames.”

“So that's why he hates Orlaf so much.”

“Yes, and it's also why he hates
me
so much. I was at the warehouse that night, and I threw the match on the paintings after Dimitri soaked them with kerosene. By the code of our profession, we did what we had to do. I didn't even know who Poussin was and, frankly, couldn't care less. But Richard was crushed. To him, destroying those ‘irreplaceable masterpieces' was a crime against humanity. He never forgave himself, and he certainly never forgave me.”