She blushed at his quiet question. “Yes.”
“Any regrets?”
Her blush deepened, but she didn’t look away. “No.”
He smiled. Relieved, she realized; he hadn’t been sure of her reply. He brushed his lips once more over her knuckles before releasing her. “Change your gown; I’m quite fond of this one, and would rather it didn’t get ruined.”
When Charlotte came back downstairs, Stuart was talking with his mother. Amelia was wringing her hands and watching the slow but steady accumulation of wooden crates and trunks in the hall. Charlotte paused. The enormity of what was at stake hit her then. There was nothing else they could do, and yet the fear returned that the thief sought something she didn’t have. All Stuart’s arguments made sense; an Italian who had been searching those crates almost surely wanted something from Italy. But what could it possibly be? The thief had opened every box and not found what he wanted. Was there some small valuable secreted somewhere? How could they hope to find it when he hadn’t been able to?
Then Stuart saw her. For a moment he just stared at her with an almost besotted expression, then blinked away and finished whatever he was saying to his mother before hurrying up the stairs to her. That look, though, steadied her in a way no words could. She didn’t have to face this alone. Someone was with her, and would be until they found Susan.
“I should apologize to your parents,” she whispered to him. “It’s a terrible inconvenience.”
Stuart was already shaking his head. “The kidnapper has been watching this house; we want him to see the wagons arrive, so he knows his prize is at hand. There’s plenty of room here, and Mother understands the important thing is to find your niece.”
Charlotte bit her lip. “I fear we won’t find it.”
He squeezed her hand. “We will.”
“But how? He hasn’t given us a clue, and I can’t think of what he might want. What will we do if we find nothing valuable? Something in one of those crates cost me my niece, and I have no idea what it was.” She closed her eyes, and felt his lips at her temple.
“Something in these crates will return your niece to you,” he corrected gently. “You must think of that.”
Charlotte heaved a sigh and opened her eyes. “Then let’s begin.”
For hours they worked. Vases, statues, sculptures, and paintings emerged from the straw, all recorded by Lucia before Benton placed them in the drawing room. Charlotte examined each piece carefully, looking for anything out of the ordinary, but it all looked the same as it had in Italy. She wished again with all her heart she had left everything behind. Piero’s bequest had been so oddly phrased, entreating her to keep every piece; had he known there was something in it that would cause her such trouble?
By luncheon one wagon was empty and another half empty, and the drawing room was growing crowded. By midafternoon, when the third wagon was emptied and they began unloading the fourth, the drawing room was filled, Lucia was complaining of sore fingers, Charlotte was ready to pitch the lot into the street, and even Stuart’s good humor had faded.
“I heard Marcella Rescati sing,” she told Lucia to break the monotony as she pulled out a heavy urn. Straw showered the floor, which was filthy despite the best efforts of the maids who swept it constantly.
Lucia’s eyebrows flew up as she noted the urn. “Marcella Rescati? La porcellina? ”
“La porcellina?” Amelia asked innocently. She had begun helping, Charlotte suspected, to hasten the process and to protect her drawing room carpet. But then she had begun admiring the pieces, more and more effusively, and was now as engaged as everyone else, even to the straw in her hair.
“The piglet,” Lucia told her. “Because she has the nose of one, and her highest register is a squeal. What did she sing?”
“Susanna, in Figaro.”
“Susanna.” Lucia flicked one hand. “I trust she was laughed off the stage.”
“No, she was very well received.” Charlotte handed her urn to Benton and glanced at Stuart. “How did you find the opera the other night?”
He shrugged, prying the lid off another crate with an iron bar. “She sounded perfectly fine to my ears.”
“Pah.” Lucia snorted. “Your English ears.”
“Charlotte’s ears are as English as mine,” he pointed out.
“She has been to Milan and Venice, and heard opera the way it is meant to be sung.”
“The English must take what they can get,” said Charlotte. “There aren’t many true opera singers about.”
“There are not many in the world. It is a gift, to sing opera, and no ordinary piglet can open her mouth and squeal it.” Lucia frowned at the small statue Amelia held up, scribbling a line in her inventory.
“Of course not. But if the closest one can get is a piglet ...” Charlotte shrugged as she wrestled with a statue. It was heavy, and she dragged it forward, kicking the straw away as she did. It caught on the edge of the crate and pitched forward; Charlotte barely caught it before it hit the floor. An edge cut into her scraped, sore hands, and she pushed it back upright with a thump, where it rocked back and forth for a moment.
“Attento!” snapped Lucia. “What good is all this work if you break things? That might be the treasure.”
Hot and dusty, her arms and back aching, Charlotte looked at the statue. It was one she particularly disliked, a smirking Mercury whose expression had always made Charlotte’s skin prickle, as if the thing were really watching her. Piero had kept it in his bedchamber, and had actually spoken to it at times. Even now it seemed to be grinning at her, mocking her, and she just couldn’t take it anymore. “This is no treasure, Lucia. It’s a forgery. Just like all these other things.”
“What?” said three voices at once. Even Benton, Stuart’s sphinx-like valet, stopped and stared at her. Charlotte dropped onto the bottom stair, too tired to stand any longer.
“Piero was a forger,” she said wearily. She flung out one arm, encompassing the clutter of statuary and other art crowding the hall. “These are fakes.”
“Are you certain?” demanded Stuart. “How do you know?”
“He told me.” Charlotte leaned against the newel post. It felt terribly good to sit down without holding something. She had had enough of handling Piero’s creations as if they were priceless masterpieces. She had never wanted them in the first place, and each one that appeared only reminded her of those years and months of her life when she had been so lonely. Stuart had named the essence of the matter last night: Piero had used her to fulfill his fantasies. He had supported her lavishly in return, but she had lived a life designed to please him, not herself. Only now, after Stuart had shown her what it was like to be loved just as she was, did she realize how alone she had been in Italy.
And she wouldn’t protect his name any longer. Piero had sworn her to secrecy, arrogantly proud even as he let people believe his art collection was real. He had probably left it to her because anyone else would have found him out and denounced him as a fraud. And because of all he had done for her, when she was in desperate need of help, she had kept his secret. But that was before. Charlotte was afraid her respect for a dead man’s request had fooled too many people, and cost her too dearly.
“What the devil!” Stuart dropped his bar with a clunk. “All of it?”
She nodded. “All of it.”
“Surely not, Madame Griffolino,” protested Amelia, holding a small marble bust close to her chest as if to protect it. “They’re so beautiful!”
Charlotte gave her a sour smile. “He had talent, but no imagination. Apprentices learn the craft by making copies, and Piero simply never stopped. All the beautiful things he wanted to possess, but couldn’t—either because they were too expensive, or too fragile, or too well known—he replicated for his own enjoyment.” She waved at the statue she had almost dropped. “Piero’s favorite piece. It stood in his bedchamber.”
Stuart frowned, stepping over packing debris to take a closer look at the statu
e. It portrayed a young man half seated, half standing, cradling a harp in one arm while he plucked it with his other hand. His laurel-crowned head was tilted down toward the instrument, but his eyes looked up, as if catching someone watching him, and the faint suggestion of a sly smile curved his sensual mouth. “I would have never suspected. Why would he create forgeries? This looks quite good.”
Charlotte pointed at the god’s arm. “Except his left arm is longer than his right. His leg is scarred, where the polishing wasn’t good, and the lyre is too small.”
Lucia threw down her pen. “Dio! The old cheat. And he gave me many things as gifts!”
Charlotte shrugged half-heartedly. “At least he did not sell you any.”
“Then you knew all along the thief would never find anything valuable,” Stuart said slowly, his expression darkening. “And he broke in repeatedly, yet you never did anything. What were you thinking, Charlotte? What did you think the thief sought?”
“I didn’t know! I suspected he wanted something smaller, easily carried away, gold plate or a jewel-encrusted reliquary. Most of these are large items, framed paintings and statues. It would be difficult to carry Mercury through the streets unremarked, genuine or not.”
Stuart continued to frown in disapproval. “You took a terrible risk.”
“Until you crossed him, he did nothing threatening,” she said sharply, pricked again by the guilt that she had ignored the thief until it was too late. He hadn’t been fooled by Piero’s counterfeits, but had stolen the one treasure Charlotte had, her niece. And unless she could produce something of genuine worth from these crates, she might never get Susan back.
“Well, what are we to do with this, then?” Stuart threw up his hands. “If you say it’s all worthless, how shall we bargain with the kidnapper?”
“Why, have it appraised, Stuart dear,” piped up Amelia. She looked around sadly, still cradling her bust of Cupid. “Hopefully some of it will turn out to be authentic.”
“It won’t,” said Charlotte in disgust. She got up and stretched, bumping into the statue whose flaws she had exposed. In frustration and anger, she pushed it over, venting her feelings on the carved marble. It wobbled, then tipped, and fell to the floor with a tremendous crash. The god’s head broke off and split in two, one half sliding across the floor into a pile of straw, the other half coming to rest at the bottom of the stairs.
Stuart drew breath as if to scold her, then sighed. “One less for the inventory,” he said, leaning down to lift the headless Mercury. He grasped it by the neck and heaved it to its feet again. “This chap’s hollow,” he said with some surprise.
“The pinchpurse,” said Lucia with disdain. “A real sculptor would never use less than a perfect stone.”
“Rather fitting, though,” Stuart said, trying to move the ruined statue against the wall out of the way. “A hollow god for a fraudulent artist.” He gave it one last shove, and more marble crumbled from the neck. Stuart brushed the rubble away as a maid hurried up with a broom, but he stood, transfixed. “Charlotte.”
“What is it?” She took one look at his expression and hurried over to peer into Mercury’s chest. Just as Stuart had said, the statue was hollow, but deliberately so. The edges of the cavity were smooth and straight; someone had bored a hole down through the middle. She leaned closer. “It ... It’s not empty!”
Cries of interest echoed in the hall, and everyone crowded around to see. Carefully, Stuart extracted a tightly rolled sheaf of paper from the hollow. It was old and yellowed, torn around the edges and well creased. He glanced at Charlotte. “Have you any idea?”
She shook her head. “None.”
“What is it, Stuart?” Amelia asked. Her face was flushed with excitement, and Charlotte realized she must have been quite pretty when young.
“I’m not sure, Mother.” Stuart carried the roll of paper into the dining room and gingerly unrolled it on the table. The paper was thin, but held together except at the edges, where small sections simply crumbled into dust.
“They’re studies,” said Charlotte, holding the edge as Stuart continued unrolling. Smaller sheets of the paper sprang loose and curled back upon themselves, and she had to keep catching the edges. They were the sort of drawings a painter would make before setting his brush to canvas, for practice or for planning. The images, though, fairly leaped off the paper, all the more so when they were life sized. Wild-eyed horses plunged over each other, their riders locked in mortal combat. Men in battle dress impaled each other on javelins, and cowered beneath shields under the hooves of rampaging horses. There were pages of arms upraised with spears, hands clasped about sword handles, headless figures contorted in death throes.
“Very brutal studies,” observed Stuart, paging through the sketches of severed limbs. “But why were they hidden? Did Piero make them?”
Charlotte shook her head helplessly. “He was a better sculptor, but he did paint. These would be made before an original painting, though, and he didn’t have the patience for that.”
Stuart cocked his head, studying the profile of a man clearly exhorting his troops to charge. “Perhaps this was to be his masterpiece? His one burst of creative genius?”
Charlotte snorted. “Who would consider that a treasure, besides Piero himself?”
Then Lucia reached between them, and put her finger on the crest of a heraldic standard. “Anghiari.”
“What is Anghiari?”
“Anghiari,” explained Lucia, giving Charlotte a meaningful glance, “as any Florentine would know, was a famous battle long ago in which the Republic defeated the Milanese army.” Charlotte waited expectantly; Piero, like Lucia, had been Florentine, and very proudly so. “The magistrati commissioned two murals to commemorate their victory: the Battle of Anghiari and the Battle of Cascina. Michelangelo would paint Cascina, although he never did. Leonardo—a Florentine himself—would paint Anghiari, but his technique was flawed, and his work was lost.”
“What do you mean, lost?”
Lucia flicked her fingers. “Lost. The paint dripped from the wall.”
As one, all four turned to the drawing again. The detail, down to the bulging veins in the horses’ nostrils, was astounding. “Do you think these are his? Leonardo’s?” asked Charlotte in a hushed voice.
Lucia lifted one shoulder. “I do not know. His cartoon was copied by many others; even then Leonardo was recognized as a great artist.”
“So this is the treasure?” Amelia clutched at Stuart’s arm, still gazing reverently at the drawings. “Goodness, how much is it worth?”
“If it is Leonardo, it is priceless,” said Lucia, seating herself.
Stuart turned to Charlotte. “Is it possible?”
Charlotte hesitated. Could Piero have come across a priceless set of drawings and hidden them to avoid sharing them? He was capable of the last part, she thought, and Mercury was an ideal hiding place. But how on earth could he have gotten the drawings in the first place? One didn’t simply walk into a gallery and purchase them. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “But I find it hard to believe. He didn’t have a single authentic piece when I knew him. Everything was a fraud.”
“Well, that explains the jewels,” Stuart muttered, letting the drawings roll back into themselves in resignation.
“What do you mean?” asked Charlotte, surprised.
He shifted uncomfortably. He hadn’t quite meant to blurt that out. “You didn’t know some of your jewels might be, ah, paste?”
Her hand flew to her throat, even though she wore no necklace. “No!”
“Er, yes. The, ah, diamond and emerald necklace ...” She continued to gape at him. Stuart cleared his throat and busied himself with rolling the papers.
“How did you know, Stuart?” asked his mother.
“When he stole it, no doubt,” said Lucia from her chair. Stuart glared at her in annoyance; he was not in the mood for her teasing at the moment.
Amelia gasped. “You stole it?”
; “Not precisely,” mumbled Stuart. “I gave it back.” He spread the drawings open again. “I for one think these may be authentic. They fit the description of a treasure, and they were hidden securely in a place no one would expect, since, as Madame da Ponte said, most sculptors use solid blocks of marble. No one would suspect anything might be hidden inside.”
“Then you have found the treasure,” said Lucia. “Of course you cannot give it to this madman.”
Amelia twisted her hands. “To whom do they belong, then?”
“To the people of Florence,” said Lucia. “It is their battle. Also, they paid for them three centuries ago.”
“I doubt they’re authentic,” said Charlotte. “I simply can’t believe it. They must be drawings from the original, and Piero may have hidden them because he planned to copy them and sell them. I always suspected he dealt in false antiquities and art, although he never admitted it.” She turned to Stuart. “And if even my jewels are fake, then I am doubly sure. He was a fraud, through and through.”
Stuart began rolling up the drawings again. “We have to be certain. Continue unpacking, and see if anything else interesting turns up.”
“What will you do?” Charlotte asked, helping him.
“I’ll see if I can authenticate these, or prove them false.” He gathered up the sheaf of papers and went into the front hall. Charlotte followed him.
“That may be impossible,” she warned him. “A good forgery—”
He stopped, and put up one hand. “It may be,” he agreed. “But we should try. Even if they’re false, we may be able to pass them off on the kidnapper as authentic; he doesn’t seem to know just what the treasure is, after all. He’s already seen most of the rest of the things, when he searched your house—and I have more to say on the subject of ignoring inherently dangerous people like burglars, by the by—and he didn’t seem fooled by it. But this he can’t have seen.”
“Then why can’t we use it to draw him out now?” cried Charlotte impatiently. “If it doesn’t matter ...”
“It matters,” he corrected her as he took his hat from the butler. “If these are authentic, they are an Italian treasure, and no one man, especially a thief, should own them. And we should know what we’re dealing with before we risk them.”
Caroline Linden Page 24