I squirmed uncomfortably. Jane’s face was mutinous.
The next guest, an elderly clean-shaven gentleman, burst into tears at the sight of Jane. “It’s our Queen Jane come to life again! Isn’t it, Muriel? Just look at this young lady, the spitting image of our queen.”
Unfortunately, Jane did bear a resemblance to her ancestress, small and thin and serious-looking, with straight brown hair and a smooth brow. Her scowl, though, was very much her own.
But Lady Olivia was in her element. “Yes,” she told one and all, “the presence of our very own Lady Jane Grey at the gala will add such meaning. Such life.” And in a hissed aside to her granddaughter, “Stand up straight, young lady, so that everyone can see your face. And push that hair back from your eyes!” Jane disappeared soon after that.
But she reappeared as we sat down to dinner, sixteen of us around the long, polished table. After the reverend said grace (“And God keep our great queen, the Lady Jane Grey, God rest her soul”), Jane said loudly, “I have an announcement.”
Uh-oh.
She was sitting next to me, and I saw her hands twisting agitatedly under the tablecloth. I felt sweeping sympathy; I knew it had taken every ounce of her willpower to force herself into the spotlight like this.
One of the gray-haired ladies cleared her throat. “Our Lady Jane Grey has something to say,” she proclaimed. Instantly, the table fell silent and all faces turned expectantly to Jane. I reached out and squeezed her hand.
“My— That is, Jordy and I have made an interesting discovery.”
A small part of me registered the fact that she couldn’t call me her stepmother. But most of me was sitting in terrified silence. Whatever Jane was going to say, this group would not like.
“We found some letters,” Jane plowed on. “From Lady Jane Grey to her cousin Anne, and to Sir Thomas Wyatt.”
Sir Thomas Wyatt? Oh my God, Jane must have peeked at some of the other letters. Professor MacAlister at St. Andrews would kill us.
I searched my memory. Sir Thomas Wyatt—oh yes, he had led a rebellion against Jane’s cousin Queen Mary when Jane was already in the Tower for trying to seize Mary’s crown. It had failed but had spurred Queen Mary to order Jane’s execution.
But how on earth could Jane have written to Wyatt? She was just a fifteen-year-old girl. Besides, the rebellion was meant to put Queen Mary’s younger sister Elizabeth on the throne, not Jane.
The table was buzzing. Lady Olivia said icily, “Jane, we concluded that those letters were fakes. I ordered you to destroy them.”
“No, you didn’t,” the girl said. “Besides, it would be a sin against history to destroy such valuable records. Isn’t that right, Jordy?”
Her face was more animated than I had ever seen it. I said, “That’s right.”
The man to my right, Dr. Wilmot Hendricks of Oxford, leaned forward. “My dear girl,” he said, “Jane was in the Tower at the time of Wyatt’s rebellion. Her father was foolish enough to involve himself in it, but Jane was not.”
“Then why did she write to Sir Thomas Wyatt on January fifteenth, 1554?” Jane asked, and pulled out the small notebook she’d been scribbling in. “I couldn’t read it all, but she wrote, ‘It is meet and seemly, my lord Thomas, that we should rise up as one against my lady Mary, as our hands and fortunes are joined together, through the sacred betrothal of my humble person to—’ ” Jane looked up. “That’s all I read,” she admitted. “The paper was too fragile for me to unroll it any further.”
Dr. Hendricks became agitated. “Fragile? My God, fragile? Young lady, you should never touch that sort of document outside of a conservation lab!” In his outrage, he sounded just like Dr. MacAlister.
Another man’s voice rose. “Betrothal? But she was married to Guildford in May 1553. Their wedding was in May; why does she refer to a betrothal the following January?”
Jane’s eyes met mine for a moment. “We think that Jane had a pre-contract with another man. Her marriage to Guildford wasn’t valid.”
“Another man?” said the gray-haired matron, appalled. “That is not possible! She was a virtuous young girl, a maiden!”
“Joined together with Wyatt?” shouted the Duchess of Langevin. “Sir Thomas Wyatt was married; he couldn’t be betrothed to Jane. Besides, he was twice her age!” She stood up. “What nonsense is this, Sir John? What are you putting in this girl’s head?”
John, who had been watching the scene with his usual air of detached amusement, shrugged. “My daughter is a clever scholar. But in this case, she may have been taken in by a clever fraudster.” He turned to Jane and spread out his hands. “My dear girl, it does appear that the letters are fakes. I’m sorry.”
Jane stood up, too. “They are not fakes!” she cried. “Jordy and I will prove it!” She scooped up her notebook and ran from the room.
Chapter 29
JOHN AND I were still fighting on Sunday as he prepared to leave. It had started as a reasonably calm discussion, with John trying to explain to me why Lady Olivia and her blue-haired friends were so gaga about Lady Jane Grey. “She’s our local heroine,” he explained. “People in this part of the country are raised on the legend of Lady Jane Grey, the Protestant saint.”
I supposed I could understand that.
“It’s like York and King Richard the Third,” he said. “When Richard was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in August 1485, the city fathers of York wrote in the official records, ‘King Richard, late mercifully reigning over us, was piteously slain and murdered to the great heaviness of this city.’ Just imagine the courage it took for them to write that, given that Richard’s ‘murderer’ was now their king.”
I nodded, pleased to discover that John was not as indifferent to history as he liked to pretend.
“Now, on the anniversary of Richard’s death every year,” he went on, “the town of York puts an ‘in memoriam’ notice in all the major newspapers. There’s a lot of tourist revenue in the Richard legend,” he added.
I could understand that, too. “But John, if we discover exciting new information about Jane, won’t that add to the interest? Won’t even more people want to come for the gala?”
He shook his head. “No. It’s as if you Yanks found out that George Washington raped and pillaged. Or that Abraham Lincoln liked to sleep with little boys.”
I stared at him. “You think that Lady Jane Grey having a boyfriend is on the same level as finding out that Abraham Lincoln was a pedophile? Are you crazy?”
“A great many of my constituents,” he said coldly, “are devout believers in the sanctity of Lady Jane Grey. If you try to paint her as a slutty teenager, they will be displeased. And if they are displeased, that does not bode well for my prospects in the coming elections. As you may have noticed, I am a Tory Member in a Labour district.”
“Seriously? You think if people find out that Jane was a normal girl and not a saint, they won’t vote for you in the elections?” I would have laughed except that I was so infuriated by his tone. The angrier John became, the more he sounded like a disapproving headmaster chastising a foolish teenager.
“Yes, Jordy! I would have expected you to pay at least a little attention to my political—”
“If you would ever condescend to talk to me about your work, then I would—”
We were shouting over each other, practically nose to nose in the sun-dappled morning room.
“All you care about is your alleged book!” he accused. “How much have you written? Two paragraphs? My mother wrote an entire book in less than six months!”
“And all you care about is your sainted mother and your sainted Queen Jane, when your own daughter is right under your nose and—”
“Don’t you dare lecture me about my daughter!”
“—who is practically begging you to pay attention—”
“You don’t know anything a
bout having children, and you never will!”
I turned away, trembling with anger and hurt.
John stormed out of the house and stayed in London the next weekend, which was just as well, since I had some unexpected visitors. On Saturday morning, Henry, Mary, and I had just returned from Henry’s football match when a black limousine purred up the graveled drive. Oh no—Lady Olivia?
But when the doors opened, an even less welcome figure appeared. “Jordy!”
Oh no, I thought again.
Another figure appeared on the other side of the car, beaming the toothy smile that I had seen across my desk for over ten years. “Jordy!”
Oh no.
“Marcus,” I said weakly. “And Gary. What a surprise.”
“Pleasant, I hope,” boomed Marcus Dyer, the CEO of AmCan Bank in New York and Lucian’s boss.
“Of course it’s pleasant,” smirked Gary Puccelli. He was dressed in immaculate jeans with a razor-sharp crease and a green cashmere sleeveless vest over a green-printed shirt. His bow tie was the real thing, and a stunningly beautiful scarf was tossed casually around his neck. Marcus wore the regulation khaki pants and a Brioni sport jacket. Unlike Gary, Marcus never smiled.
My lawyer had told me to have no contact with my ex-colleagues from AmCan. Common sense also told me to have no contact with them. But I could handle this. I was 99 percent sure of it. “Please come in. I guess.”
Marcus strode into the great hall and gazed around, no doubt weighing the value of its contents and comparing it (unfavorably) to his Fifth Avenue penthouse. Gary looked around with frank covetousness.
The children appeared, jostling each other to grab my attention. “Jordy,” Katherine complained, “I want to go to Annabel’s house this afternoon, and you promised to drive me.”
“Jordy,” Jane said, “I thought we were going to do some research on Wyatt’s Rebellion today. Did you know that the Wyatts were all dark-haired? ‘Hair of ebon,’ according to one chronicler. Remember, in Jane’s letter, she described her betrothed as dark-haired?”
“Jordy,” Henry whined, “I’m hungry.”
Mary tugged at my shirt. “Jordy,” she whispered, “I don’t feel so well.”
Marcus said impatiently and with his usual air of command, “Jordy, summon the nanny so that we can get down to business.”
Katherine said, surprised, “Jordy is our nanny. Well, now she’s our—”
“Never mind,” I interrupted Katherine.
Gary had pulled out his iPhone and was tapping away furiously, no doubt memorializing this moment for all of my former colleagues.
“Henry, there’s a bacon butty waiting for you in the kitchen. Mary, drink a glass of water and have some of your crackers. Katherine, I will drive you to Annabel’s in an hour if you’ve finished your maths homework. And Jane . . .” I paused, momentarily distracted. “Were they really dark-haired?”
“Yes! All of them.”
“But Thomas was married and in his late thirties at the time of the rebellion.” I paused again. “Did he have a son?”
Jane’s face lit up, and she ran out of the room.
Marcus and Gary were frankly staring. Fully composed now, I turned to them. “Gentlemen, shall we have some tea in the morning room?”
— – — – —
I assumed they were there to cajole and threaten me into taking the blame for the $72 million loss—or at least keep quiet about whose fault it really was. Maybe they’d heard rumors of a tell-all memoir on its way. But in my own home—the stately manor of Lord Grey, after all!—with the children just a few feet away, I felt calm. I didn’t work for Marcus anymore, and I didn’t sleep with Lucian anymore. I was no longer under their power.
Anyway, I knew that their concerns about my memoir were misplaced. The “alleged” book, as John had so insultingly referred to it, was barely one chapter long and so boring that I could barely bring myself to read it. Right now its chances of becoming a bombshell bestseller were about as good as my chances of becoming an Olympic discus thrower.
Marcus said, “Jordy, you must know that you will never work in New York again if you publish this book. Nor in London, nor Geneva, nor Hong Kong. Not anywhere.” His voice was eminently reasonable.
Gary twinkled at me. “And just think, you’ll lose the luscious Lucian forever! What are you going to say about him in your book anyway?”
Gary could have been ugly, with his sharp nose and jutting jaw and deep-set eyes. But he thought he was beautiful. He was always exquisitely groomed, nary an unplucked eyebrow or extra whisker to mar the perfection of his three-day-old stubble, and clothes always chosen to bring out the green of his eyes. And he carried himself like a beautiful person. He had sat across from me for nearly a decade and was the most talented trader I had ever met, perhaps because he had absolutely no conscience whatsoever.
I knew Gary had to be knee-deep in Lucian’s scheming, but he would never get caught. I said, “You’re welcome to Lucian, Gary.”
He shook his head in mock sadness. “He doesn’t swing my way, darling. But you and Lucian, you were perfect together! The quintessential New York power couple. How could you give that up?” He glanced around again. “Although I must compliment you, you do seem to have landed in the lap of luxury. But all those children! Dear God, I feel like I’ve landed on the set of The Sound of Music.”
I turned to Marcus. “Perhaps I don’t want to work in the finance industry again.”
Remarkably, I realized that I had just spoken the truth. Seeing these men—these men with whom I had worked, flirted, gossiped, gotten drunk, made millions upon millions of dollars for ten years of my life—had made me realize just how much I never wanted to go back. I smiled, suddenly feeling lighter and freer.
Perhaps my smile angered Marcus. He said sharply, “My dear girl, did you think I was only referring to finance? I misspoke. You will never work in any industry again. Of course, perhaps you are content with life as a nanny.”
I hadn’t seen Mary slip into the room, but she came to my side and leaned trustingly against my arm. “Jordy isn’t our nanny anymore,” she said softly. “She’s our stepmother.”
Marcus was expressionless. Gary leaned forward. “What was that, little girl? Speak up, precious.”
Mary shrank back against me, and I smiled slightly. “Actually, I’m Lady Grey now. You may address me as Lady Grey, not Your Ladyship, since the title comes through my husband rather than through my father.” I was proud of myself for not shrinking in the face of my former colleagues’ growing hostility. I didn’t care what they thought. The marvel was that I’d ever cared.
“Your husband,” Gary repeated. “Lord John Grey, MP?” I could see him recalculating.
“Yes.”
Gary looked at the family portrait of John and the children that hung in the corner. “Well! This is perhaps an upgrade, Lady Grey!” He pulled out the iPhone again.
“Yes,” Marcus said. “That does alter the equation somewhat, doesn’t it? Now you have no need of the money that a memoir would bring.”
“I didn’t need money,” I said patiently. “My salary and bonuses over the past ten years were enough to keep me comfortable for the rest of my life.”
They both looked disbelieving. Though Marcus had brought home $130 million in 2014, I knew that he’d still wanted enough to join the billionaires’ club; Gary, several levels below Marcus, had complained to me that his $34 million pay packet wouldn’t stretch to a half-share in a private jet as well as an oceanfront home in East Hampton. Taxes were a bitch, he had griped. Neither man had ever understood the concept of enough.
“Maria von Trapp, as I live and breathe.” Gary chortled. “I hope they showed The Sound of Music at your wedding.”
“Perhaps they would show The Wolf of Wall Street at his.”
I stood up. “This meeting is over. I
’m sorry you came such a long way for nothing.”
Marcus remained seated. “So we have an agreement?”
“No,” I said, surprised.
“But yes,” he rejoined. “Your book will be buried, and we will never trouble you and your—husband again. There is another item to discuss.”
Ah. The book was just a pretext; now we were getting to the real issue. I tensed.
“The authorities have launched a thorough investigation of AmCan Bank and our hedge fund operations,” Marcus said. “Under normal circumstances”—he waved his hand dismissively—“we would be unconcerned.”
I nodded. The government was no match for AmCan Bank and its lawyers.
“However, in the current political circumstances, the investigation is burdensome. Our lawyers believe that if you sign a consent agreement with the authorities, then we will be able to clear up this minor affair with a fine and a slap on the wrist. I have the agreement here.”
A consent agreement meant that the bank would throw me under the bus and save itself, but I wanted to hear how he would describe it. “Meaning what, exactly?”
“You neither admit nor deny the charges of securities fraud,” explained Marcus. “And you promise not to commit securities fraud again. I mean, in the future.”
“And I’m barred from the financial industry for life,” I added. Not that I wanted to go back, but still . . .
“Yes, of course. But the bank and the government would drop all charges against you. There would be no extradition, no jail time.”
Marcus watched me steadily; Gary’s ferret-like face narrowed in calculation. They thought they had me cornered.
I reached for the paper, and Marcus’s intent face relaxed into an almost-grin. Slowly, deliberately, I tore it into a thousand pieces, and we all watched the tiny scraps of paper flutter to the ground.
Marcus said tautly, “You have just made a terrible mistake.”
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