Phaedra strolled along them, peering in. Randall Whitmarsh accompanied her, pointing out the coins bearing the likenesses of Julius Caesar and Tiberius, and the little flat glass bottles.
“Here is the great find,” Matthias announced. He opened a drawer, lifted out a cloth-wrapped bundle, and began unwinding the material.
A little bronze statuette emerged, of a nude goddess in a relaxed stance.
“Some boys were diving in the cove and there she was at the bottom in the sand. She must have been there for fifteen hundred years. She is Greek, I am sure. Classical period. Probably part of a hold of Greek loot on its way to feed the collectors of imperial Rome.”
Whitmarsh lifted the statue. “No doubt a ship went down offshore here. There is probably more where it sank, if it could be found.”
“The water gets dangerously deep fast,” Matthias said. “If there is more it will not be found until the tides do their work. I have carefully removed the barnacles that grew on her, and she polished up wonderfully.”
Elliot took the statue in his hands. “It is beautiful. Do you intend to sell it?”
“I have not decided. If so, Whitmarsh here could flog it for me in Rome. Eh, Whitmarsh?”
“Or I could flog it in London,” Elliot said. “You would get a better price there, wouldn’t you?”
Matthias smiled with a tutor’s indulgence. He slid the statue out of Elliot’s hands. “And taint your blood with trade? I could not allow it.”
“There is no trade if I merely refer a collector to you. Easterbrook might even be interested.”
The men began debating its time of creation and its value. Phaedra wandered away to finish her little tour of the glass cases.
Matthias’s collection was very eclectic, like that of a schoolboy who brought home bits and pieces of the world that fascinated him. One case contained pottery shards of little value but fascinating, primitive decoration. Swirls and geometric shapes crowded the reddish surfaces. A fine, intact Greek drinking cup held pride of place in another case, displaying the god Dionysus in a ship in its round, shallow interior.
She moved on past old daggers and bits of incised Roman armor, to a case holding other metal objects. This case was locked, and she saw why. Strewn inside were gold and silver and enameled items, some classical but others from later times, when the Normans and the Saracens were in this land. Tiny images of Roman gods vied with dense interplays of lines and arabesques for her attention.
The whole case glittered. Purse clasps and ear bobs and strands of glass beads.
“I have decided that I will keep my little goddess,” Matthias announced. “Where should she go, Miss Blair?”
Phaedra made suggestions for spots to display the little bronze nude, but her thoughts remained on her host’s varied collection. She wondered if he knew anything about old cameos.
That afternoon Mr. Whitmarsh decided he wanted to go fishing so the gentlemen walked down the hill to hire a boat after the town’s siesta. That left Phaedra with Signora Roviale and Mrs. Whitmarsh.
The ladies sat in the drawing room and tried not to bore one another. When Mrs. Whitmarsh excused herself to go write a letter, Signora Roviale broached the one subject she thought she had in common with her remaining guest.
“He is an impressive man, your Lord Elliot. I am not so fond of all of Signore Greenwood’s English friends. They are too often pale and very dull in their reserve, and their wives and mistresses without color and depth too. But Lord Elliot is both handsome and interesting. Un uomo magnifico.”
“Lord Elliot is brother-in-law of a good friend of mine, and escorts me at her request. I am not his mistress, however.”
“Veramente?” She gave Phaedra a cool examination. “Perhaps, if you wore more attractive garments…Matthias says you are not in mourning and here black is more common among old women…and your hair, my woman could dress it so you do not look like a child, or a puttana.”
“Puttana” was a word Gentile Sansoni had used during his interrogation. It meant whore. Since Signora Roviale was not married to Matthias she was drawing a very fine line.
“I choose my dress and hairstyle for good reasons, signora. It means I am not encumbered by servants and hours of preparation before I start my busy day.”
“Ahhh, capisco. I understand.” She gestured expressively, her hand making a wide arc that included them both, and the house. “But your day is empty now, not busy, no? We have nothing to do while these Englishmen fish like peasants. I offer the loan of my servant, so you will remain, how do you say, not encumbered.”
“I am quite content, thank you. As for filling my empty day, I will go to my chamber and read, if you will excuse me.”
“You can read another time. I think you are a woman who already does so too much.” She rose and beckoned Phaedra to follow. “You may be content in your dress, but Signora Whitmarsh is not a happy guest. She thinks you are a witch trying to enchant her husband, and you are so unusual she does not know how to compete. She is mad to think it, but I can see her suspicions on her long face. We will make you presentable and ordinary for dinner tonight so she does not sit there like a dark cloud.”
Rebelling at being coerced but unable to form an excuse to thwart her hostess’s plan, Phaedra stood. Signora Roviale linked her arm through Phaedra’s and firmly led her up the stairs.
Elliot stripped off the shirt now damp from sea spray. He handed it to the servant to wash, then groomed himself for dinner. The fishing excursion had been good sport, made more jovial by the wineskins that Matthias had thrown into the boat.
He stepped out on the balcony and listened. No sounds came from Phaedra’s chamber. Assuming that she had already gone below, he made his way to the drawing room. The whole party had assembled, except the one woman he looked forward to seeing.
He wondered if she had used his absence to slip away. He cursed his negligence. The relaxing combination of sun and sea, the low arousal that would not cease, had made him forget the reason she was with him in the first place.
He spoke with Whitmarsh and Greenwood. With each passing minute his suspicions about Phaedra’s escape increased. He was about to ask Signora Roviale about Miss Blair’s activities today when Whitmarsh suddenly stopped talking and stared past Greenwood’s shoulder. The expression on Whitmarsh’s face made Elliot look in that direction too.
Greenwood turned his head. “Oh, my. Is that our Miss Blair?”
Apparently it was, but this Miss Blair did not look much like the one Elliot knew. The black robes were gone, replaced by an azure dinner dress with ivory lace and short gigot sleeves. Its satin sash hugged her midriff and its neck and shoulders revealed a lot of white, dewy skin. The elegant, firm swells of her breasts rose above the décolleté.
Her hair had been dressed too. No longer streaming free, it formed a style thick with coils and braiding that appeared very fashionable. She sported a bit of paint on her face, or maybe the attention aimed at her merely caused her to blush.
“She is even more beautiful than her mother,” Whitmarsh muttered. “If she can look like this, one wonders why she hides herself in that nun’s habit.”
Elliot knew why. The reason filled the drawing room. Silence fell as men eyed her and women assessed her. He walked through the stunned party to spare her from being a spectacle any longer.
“You look very beautiful tonight, Miss Blair. Let us find you some wine.”
She fell in step with him while he led her toward the servant with the glasses. The party returned to its conversations.
“Signora Roviale did this to me. It is her dress,” she said. “The woman is implacable. There was no way out.”
He handed her a glass of wine. “You were kind to indulge her.” He tried like the devil not to let his gaze linger on the white expanse above the dress. He wanted to lick and nibble the creamy skin all along the azure edge.
“It took hours. I had forgotten that part. And these stays—well, you can imagine how my poor body
did not like that.”
Not really. He could imagine her in chemise and stockings, before the stays, however, and after, before the pretty dress was donned.
“I expect with practice it all gets easier.”
“There will be no practice. As soon as dinner is finished this experiment will be over. I merely pray that I do not faint first. I cannot wait to be relieved of this torture. It is unbearably hot, for one thing. The Arabs wear flowing clothes in hot climates for a reason, I have discovered. Furthermore—”
Suddenly in mid-sentence her harangue halted. She flushed furiously, as if she saw in his eyes what unfolded in his imagination, of the dress dropping and the stays loosening and her body emerging. The dress gave a better view of that body than her black robes and he pictured her naked very clearly now.
Whitmarsh approached, oozing charm. Greenwood kept an eye on Miss Blair while he spoke with others. Miss Blair took a deep breath and sallied forth to dazzle with her brilliance as well as her beauty.
When the dinner party broke up, Phaedra fully intended to escape at once to her chamber to shed her uncomfortable garments. She changed her mind when she saw Matthias Greenwood walking toward his studiolo. On an impulse she followed him, catching up as he opened the door.
“Mr. Greenwood, I wonder if I can speak privately with you,” she said.
“Certainly, Miss Blair. Please join me. My attention will be yours alone in here.”
She accepted his welcome and his offer of a chair beside his desk. Perched there under his tutorial scrutiny, she felt a bit like a student petitioning a don.
“Mr. Greenwood, at home I have been speaking with people who knew my mother. I have some questions about events at the end of her life. You knew her too, and your name came up several times. There are others who have suggested you may be able to help me.”
“Others?”
“Friends of hers. Women who have helped me piece together who attended my mother’s salons and such.”
“I will aid in any way I can, but I was not a close friend. My duties at university meant that I saw her infrequently.”
“I understand. However, it is your relative distance that may have enabled you to see more clearly than her closest intimates did.”
He appeared skeptical, but willing. “What information do you seek?”
“You may find my questions a little bold.”
He laughed. “I would be disappointed if they were not. If you are searching the world for answers I hope the questions are not the middling sort.”
His good humor made it easier. She decided to start with the boldest question of all. “Did you ever suspect that my mother had a new lover the last years of her life?”
For all his demands for boldness, the question embarrassed him a little. The chiseled angles of his face softened into something approaching chagrin. “I had no real cause to think that. However…well, Drury was ever-present when I first met your mother, and much less present the last year or so.”
“Do you know who the other man was?”
His eyes warmed with sympathy. His small smile was that of an uncle for a favored niece. “I do not even know there was one. Are you so certain there was?”
“My father thought there was.”
“Men can be wrong about such things. Passion cools, distance grows—he could have misunderstood.”
She knew that was possible. Matthias was not the only one who had said as much. Several of her mother’s friends had suggested the same explanation. She rather hoped that was the answer herself.
“Was there anyone whom you considered a likely possibility?”
He shook his head. “Is it so important to know the name, or even if the suspicion is correct?”
“If it had been a normal affair, I would say not.”
He waited patiently for her to continue, neither encouraging nor discouraging further revelations with his comforting demeanor. She understood why Elliot liked this man. There was something to Matthias Greenwood that inspired confidences and trust. He possessed a solid openness that refused even slight dissembling.
“My mother bequeathed me a cameo,” she said. “Her will said it came from Pompeii. She intended it to provide me with some security, and I always assumed it would as well. However, before my father died he claimed it was a fraud, sold to her by this other lover.”
A frown formed. Concern entered his eyes. “Are you dependent on the value of this cameo?”
“My financial situation has become more complicated of late. I might need to sell it. However, if it is a fake—”
“It will be worth a mere fraction of what she thought and probably what she paid. Nor can you sell it at all unless you know for certain, unless you want to risk being a party to fraud yourself.”
“Exactly.”
“I see your dilemma. I am dismayed that your legacy is in question. If an admirer took such ruthless advantage of Artemis, the scoundrel should be hung. She was nothing but generous to all whom she met, but—well, perhaps too trusting and too slow to see that there were those who would use her.”
He glanced an apology for this mild criticism.
“She did perhaps trust to a fault, Mr. Greenwood. And her generosity means that she left little besides that cameo. I suppose I could keep it as a memento, but if it symbolizes the theft of both her affection and her funds it will have no sentimental value for me.”
“I would ask to see the cameo in an attempt to lay your concerns to rest, but I regret that I cannot claim expertise in such things. We could show it to Whitmarsh, of course. He is better schooled in gems than I am. However, it would make more sense to ask the experts at Pompeii—” His frown cleared. He chuckled. “Which is why you are in Italy, isn’t it? Of course. I see.”
“Do you think they will be able to give me a secure answer there?”
“As secure as is possible. As you may already know, opinions can vary. I will write to the superindendent, however, to smooth the road for you. He has been involved in the excavations for twenty years, and can speak to your item’s provenance as well as its visible signs of antiquity.”
“I appreciate your willingness to help me. I wonder if I can impose on your kindness a bit more. I fear that it means asking for speculations that you may not want to make.”
“I am not too good to gossip, Miss Blair. Up to a point.”
She suspected she would broach that point, and perhaps step over it. “If in fact this cameo, real or fake, was given or sold to my mother by a man during the last years of her life, can you think of any man in her circle who would have had access to such things?”
His hawk eyes turned hooded and his sharp gaze looked inward. He pondered her question at length. She thought she saw him picking through memories of salons and dinner parties long ago, examining faces and recalling conversations.
“I do not have a name for you,” he finally said.
Disappointment stabbed, but not very deeply. It would have been nice to have the whole mystery explained today, but she had not really expected that to happen.
“However, perhaps…” The hawk gaze flashed inward for another moment. “You see, I am remembering a gem said to come from a cache in Pompeii, only it was not owned by your mother. I recall its availability being discussed during one of those salons that she liked to hold. It could be the same one you now own, or a different one.”
“Do you remember what was said?”
“Not much. I had no interest in it. I cannot even place this conversation in time very well.”
She looked over her shoulder to the glass cases. “I would have thought you would be very interested.”
“Not in this. I realized at once that its provenance was shaky. Anything removed from Pompeii is stolen property. There can be no documentation of its discovery there because that would reveal it as stolen.” He shrugged. “There are those who do not care about such niceties, and others very quick to believe whatever tales are spun, of course. Thus do bad dealers make th
eir fortunes.”
“Do you remember how this cameo was available? Was someone selling it?”
He tapped his fingers on the desk and thought hard. “It was so long ago…I do not want to impugn…”
“You will impugn no one. Nor will I. I will make no accusations unless I am certain of all the facts. There will be no gossip, no slander or libel. I merely want to know in which direction I should perhaps go.”
“I do not remember the particulars at all. However, there were several dealers who fluttered around Artemis Blair. Two were often present those last years. One, Horace Needly, has a solid reputation but, of course, one never knows when it comes to trade. The other I had less faith in, mostly because he avoided conversations with scholars like myself. That made one wonder if his own expertise could stand scrutiny.”
“What was his name?”
“Thornton. Nigel Thornton. Personable fellow. Successful too, as I recall, but his rarities were of a middling sort.”
“I thank you for both names. I will see what I can learn when I return to England. You have been a great help and I am grateful.” She rose to go. He smiled warmly, clearly pleased to have been of service.
“Mr. Greenwood, forgive me, but—wasn’t there at least one other dealer in her circle then? Mr. Whitmarsh. You said the other day that he flogs antiquities in Rome and—”
“That was good-humored jabbing among friends, Miss Blair. Since he came to Italy he has been known to pass along an item or two that fell into his lap and that he no longer wanted for himself. Nothing more. I have done it too. It is hardly dealing.” He spoke indulgently while he escorted her to the door. “Nor did he engage in such trade while in England, not even in a minor way. It would not do, would it? He is a gentleman, after all.”
“Hurry. I cannot wait any longer. Faster.” A deep groan followed Miss Blair’s exhortations. “Oh, yes. Finally, yes.”
Elliot stood outside on the balcony with his back rested against the building’s wall. He laughed to himself at the moans coming through the door beside his. Phaedra being relieved and released of stays and satin sounded much like a woman being relieved and released in other ways.
Lessons of Desire Page 8