The Pearl Brooch

by Logan, Katherine Lowry

  “What does it say?” Meredith asked.

  “If my English/Gaelic dictionary is accurate, the gist is that MacKlenna gave a box of brooches to Seamus Digby to keep safe from the evil force.”

  “Elliott believes he can feel it sometimes. What else?”

  “If the holder ever feels the force, he’s instructed to give away a brooch to a trusted clan member to disperse the power.”

  Meredith hugged her elbows, running her hands over her upper arms. “This is giving me chills.”

  “Sophia is obviously a more experienced traveler than we are.” Pete lowered the footrest and went over to the coffee pot. “You want another cup?”

  “No. I’ve had enough.” While Pete made coffee, she got up to gaze out the window. “We’ve got to find Sophia.”

  “If Kenzie can find a pattern in the portraits, we’ll find her.”

  “Why don’t you talk to Matt? He might know an appraiser who can answer questions about the paintings. Elliott has connections, but I’d rather not talk to him about this yet. The more information Kenzie has, the easier it might be to find a pattern or clue. You never know.”

  Pete stirred sugar into his cup. “I can’t get involved in this, Meredith. Elliott told me to leave it alone until JL and Lawrence are out of danger.”

  She turned around and leaned against the windowsill. “I’ll take care of Elliott. If you need authority to take the lead on this, I’ll give it to you. It’s now your job. Work it out, but keep me posted.”

  Pete dropped the stir stick in the trash and returned to the recliner. “No. Give it to David. If Elliott gets pissed, he won’t fire David, but he might fire me.”

  “He can’t. You own part of the company.”

  “He’ll try. And besides, David is president of the corporation. We’ll work together. But keep in mind, this might be expensive, time-consuming, and invasive. We’ll be diving deep into that gray zone. He needs to take the lead.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m too close to it. I don’t want my feelings for Sophia to get in the way.”

  “Okay, if that’s the way you want it, but I want Matt in on it too.”

  “No problem. I’ll talk to David first and go from there.”

  “I have a question. Why aren’t you giving her time to come home?”

  Pete drummed his fingers on the chair’s padded armrest for several moments. “For the past five years she’s taken a two-week vacation every summer. She never tells anybody where she’s going, only that she’ll be back in two weeks. She’s now two days past her return date. It’s going to take us a couple of weeks to figure this out, gather a party of adventurers, and arrange for wardrobe, weapons, and money. That’s four weeks. How much time needs to pass before we know for sure she’s in trouble?”

  “What about a soul mate? Has she ever brought anybody back with her?”

  “She’s not married and doesn’t seem to have a significant other.”

  “She’s time-traveled more than we have. Why didn’t her brooch bring her back this time? It seems like the more we learn about the brooches, the more questions we have.”

  “I haven’t seen or talked to Sophia in twenty years. All I remember about her art are silly caricatures she drew of her classmates, some futuristic paintings, and paint splatters with hidden messages. But, based on my limited investigation, she’s spent her career painting like the Old Masters. So why go back to visit Picasso? The only thing I can figure is that she’s still interested in modern art, artistic innovation, futuristic painting.”

  Meredith shrugged. “What’s your point?”

  “It’s possible… I know it sounds crazy, but it’s possible she’s gone to the future to see the evolution of art a hundred or more years from now. She could return and start a new avant-garde art movement in the twenty-first century. Think about that.”

  Meredith gave a delicate shudder. “I’m not sure I want to. How could we ever prepare for a trip to the unknown?”

  Pete shrugged. “It’s what we do every time we travel. We don’t know for sure where we’re going or what life will be like. As an infant, Kit traveled more than a hundred and fifty years into the future. Why couldn’t Sophia?”

  Meredith’s eyes seemed to plumb his. He held steady. He wanted an honest reaction, her first thoughts. Would it be doubt or possibility? Her eyes widened.

  “We can’t rule it out, can we?” she said.

  The door flew open and Elliott stormed in. “My daughter-in-law just told me to go home. I was in the middle of a conference with the staff about Lawrence’s treatment, asking if this was the best facility for his care. She wheeled in, interrupted the conference, and ordered me to go home. She said my health was in jeopardy. My health! There’s not a goddamn thing wrong with my health.”

  His eyes flashed from Pete to Meredith. Then he leveled his fiercest glare on Pete. “This is a goddamn fucking conspiracy.” To emphasize his statement, he made stabbing motions at the floor with his index finger. “Ye’re trying to win Meredith’s support to go back for yer lady love.”

  Elliott was showing all the warning signs of a volcanic eruption. “Let me tell ye right now, it’s not going to happen. Not now. Maybe not this year.” He whirled and slammed the door behind him on his way out.

  “What the hell was that about?” Pete asked.

  Meredith pushed to her feet and headed toward the door. “His tantrum doesn’t change anything. Pull a plan together. I probably won’t be much help right now, but I’ll sign off on anything you or David need. Elliott turns seventy next month, and he’s afraid the family will open the gate and shove him out to pasture. Plus, James Cullen will graduate early and go to law school, and I doubt he’ll ever come back to live at MacKlenna Farm.”

  She shook her head. “JL’s babies keep Elliott relevant. I don’t know what happened in the NICU, but I doubt it was as horrible as he described.” Meredith swung open the door. “I’ll check in with you later.”

  Pete raked his fingers through his hair. “Aw, shit. What the hell did I just do?”

  20

  Paris (1789)—Sophia

  As the sun turned orange in the peaceful western sky, Sophia finished sketching the girls on canvas and dismissed them for the day. They hurried inside the Hôtel de Langeac with their heads together, laughing, reminding Sophia of her art students in Florence, except the two girls running off in tandem weren’t sharing text messages and Instagram photos.

  She stretched her arms over her head, chalk in hand, and smothered a yawn. If not for her bum knee, she’d run through a quick ten-minute Tai Chi routine. But she did have a bum knee, and her mind had already moved on to thinking about the elements in the portrait’s background. Whatever she painted had to compliment, unify, and enhance the portrait.

  The Grille de Chaillot, the customs gate at the corner of the Hôtel de Langeac facing the Champs-Élysées, was a possibility. The stone support columns in the gate were the same color and texture as the stone bench in the garden and would draw the elements together. Plus, the gate would always remind Jefferson of Paris.

  Several times during the afternoon thoughts of him crept into her mind. Watin’s comment about Jefferson’s jealousy disturbed her. She didn’t know whether it was true or not, but she wasn’t going to dwell on it. Becoming emotionally involved violated her number one time-travel rule: Never, ever—again—fall for a man living in another century. After her time with Leonardo, it had taken months to regain balance in her life. And this time it wasn’t just an irresistible man playing with her heart, but two charming young women as well.

  She sat back, lifting her injured leg, pointing and flexing her foot, feeling the stretch while she studied the portrait’s underdrawing. Tomorrow morning the girls would sit for her again, and she’d add the details of their faces. Then, as soon as Watin arrived, he’d apply a layer of varnish to keep the chalk from bleeding through the oil paint. When the varnish was dry, she’d paint over the underdrawing.

 
; “I’d like to see the portrait,” Jefferson said, interrupting her musings.

  Her hand moved unconsciously to her neck to conceal the startled jump of her pulse, as she whipped her head around in Jefferson’s direction. The late afternoon sun glinted off his red hair and sent her artistic heart rate soaring higher. She reached for a piece of chalk, desperate to capture his muscular physique filling the doorway and brimming with his unique brand of magnetism. His eyes creased deeply at the corners as he gazed at her.

  “You surprised me. Are you in a better mood?” she asked glibly, both to lighten the moment and lower the sudden rise in her temperature. The seconds stretched out to occupy the silence between them. From the puzzled expression lingering around his eyes, her question confused him. She tried again without the glibness. “Last time you poked your head out the door, you all but growled at us.”

  He descended the low steps and crossed the garden toward her—all six-two of him. “Mademoiselle, I do not growl, and you will never see me ruffled.” His swagger was all rough and tough and rugged, yet slow and deliberate. And after a struggle, she finally concluded that even if she broke his gait down frame by frame, it was unpaintable, because it was more than motion. It was the essence of Thomas Jefferson expressed in movement.

  Now she doubted she could truly capture him on canvas. How could she paint him, because, as Maria Cosway wrote in her final letter to him, Remembrance must be ever green? Sophia mentally went through her color wheel. Green represented life, renewal, vitality, nature, ambition. He was surrounded by a green aura. Her sketch of him standing in the vineyard was the man she was beginning to know.

  “You can look,” she croaked out, then cleared her throat. “But you can’t comment. That’s the rule. I don’t want your comments or opinions influencing my concept.”

  “I commented on your other sketches.”

  “Those were sketches. Paintings are different.”

  “Maybe my comments will improve the painting.”

  “That’s rather egotistical, don’t you think?”

  “How so? You’re painting my daughters. Who would know them better? You or me? I have pieces of their mother’s jewelry I would like them to wear.”

  “Well, here’s the thing,” Sophia said. “Women have traditionally been painted while wearing expensive fabrics and stunning jewelry. Not because of their vanity, but because their portraits were painted for the male viewers. The women are passive, powerless objects subject to the controlling gaze of males. Husbands and fathers have wanted affirmation of their own status, which is borne out by the wife or daughter’s clothing and jewelry.

  “That’s not what I paint. I want these portraits to empower Patsy and Polly. If they wore their mother’s jewelry, you would notice that first. I want you to see them as loving, intelligent, and inquisitive young women.”

  He remained standing there, silently, blocking out the sunlight. She could barely see his expression, but there was something hesitant in the way he stood, arms folded, gazing down at her, something expectant, or perhaps it was simply indecision. He moved to stand alongside her. Now the sun flashed on his face, his strong jaw, the curve of his ear, the knot in his cravat, stark white against his ruddy neck.

  The box of chalk slipped off her lap, landing at his feet. He picked it up and hesitated a moment before handing it to her, his warm fingers touching hers briefly before he drew them back. “No comments, then. But I have one question. Why don’t they have faces?”

  “I’ll draw them tomorrow before Monsieur Watin varnishes the canvas. I want the girls to be fresh and bright-eyed before I sketch them.”

  He glanced around the small courtyard, too small for anyone to hide. “Speaking of the monsieur, where is he?”

  She waved her hand, making light of the disappearance. “I sent him on his way. He has a business to run, and I kept him here too long.”

  Finally, she got an eyebrow twitch out of Jefferson.

  “But what about you?” she asked. “You seemed rather irritated when you returned from your meeting. Did it not go well?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he picked up an errant piece of chalk almost completely hidden in blades of grass. “I was only there as an observer. Lafayette’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was the assembly’s first order of business.”

  “Were any of your suggestions included?”

  “It was impossible to identify a specific one, other than the provision to have an amending convention. But all in all”—he paused and tugged at his chin—“the whole outline of the assembly’s priorities represent a superb structure to use going forward.”

  He sat on the bench and lounged against the tree trunk, again tugging at his chin. “During the next several weeks, members of the assembly will review the texts of the Declaration of Independence and charters from Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Maryland.”

  She stopped what she was doing, picked up a piece of paper from the salon table situated next to the easel, and sketched him leaning against the tree, his fingers at his chin. As she sketched, she replayed his last statement. Assembly will read charters…

  “So what are you saying?” she asked. “Now that the American experiment has passed the laboratory stage, it’s worth studying?”

  He squinted, his crow’s feet on full display. “Mademoiselle, your political insight continues to astound me. You’re as versed in American politics as you are in what’s happening in France. How is this possible?”

  “Women have brains, you know, but as of yet they haven’t turned the world upside down and stripped men of the power to which they believe they’re entitled.” She cocked her head and studied his quizzical expression. “Haven’t we had this conversation before?”

  “Have we?”

  “Yes, and while we’re talking about Lafayette’s ‘Rights of Man and Citizen—’”

  “Were we talking about Lafayette?” He rested his right foot on the bench and propped his wrist on his knee, his long fingers playing what could only be the fingerboard of an imaginary violin.

  Was he teasing her? His eyes were shaded, so she couldn’t tell. “We were talking about rights,” she said. “And it’s my opinion that women, as citizens of America, should also have the right to vote.”

  “Ah. You go too far, mademoiselle.”

  “You think the privilege of voting should extend only to men, some of whom are just plain idiots. If there’s to be a vote, it should be fair, and extended to all adults subject to the government in question.”

  “Women are incapable of making political decisions. And if they were enfranchised, they might take it into their heads to run for office, an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I.”

  Her mouth fell open. She wanted to scream or bop him over the head to beat some sense into him. “You don’t have to look any further than your own daughter to see how silly that is. Patsy is intelligent, politically aware, and conversant on a multitude of topics. If she were given the right to vote, she would do so with an informed mind.”

  He tilted his head and gazed at her with intense focus. “Perhaps it would be acceptable in Paris, where women hunt pleasures in the streets and forget their nurseries. American women, on the other hand, are content with the tranquil amusements of domestic life. And they’re too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics. They’re content to soothe and calm the minds of their husbands when they return ruffled from political debate.”

  “God forbid that women ever extend themselves beyond the domestic line. You’re a brilliant man, Ambassador. But your idyllic domestic ideal of American women contradicts your concept of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Women and people of color deserve equal rights. You think they don’t have the brains to think critically, but it’s only because they lack education. Reading expands one’s mind. Granted, no amount of reading and learning will turn a person into a prolific writer like you and Hamilton, but education and reading can teach peopl
e to think critically and be good decision-makers.”

  “The obstacle to a good education is women’s inordinate passion for novels. The result is a bloated imagination, sickly judgment, and disgust towards all aspects of the real business of life.”

  “So women shouldn’t read books?”

  “They should be taught to play the fortepiano, draw, dance, read, and such things as will make them worthy of the love of their friends. Along with the more mundane tasks of cooking, cleaning, and needlework. Above all, women should be taught to be industrious. Their entire regime of study should be to ready them for marriage. They have a single purpose in life, marriage and subordination to a husband. For the past five years, I’ve had to invest almost womanly attention to the details of the household. I find it perplexing, disgusting, and inconsistent with business. It’s emasculating to attend to every facet of running the residence, no matter how small, to make sure there is no waste. Women are taught to do this, and they do it well.”

  “So the minister to France has been forced to do women’s work.” Her heart was now hammering in her rib cage. It was so easy to get angry at him. He was an eighteenth-century man, and he would never see a woman as an equal. His attitude was immovable and unchangeable. She turned back to her sketch and tried to work, telling herself it really didn’t matter.

  But it did.

  She couldn’t change history. She knew that. This wasn’t her battle. Her causes were in the twenty-first century. She could participate in the Women’s March and send money to save the whales, but she couldn’t fight for Patsy and Polly’s right to vote in the new democracy, and as frustrating as that was, it was the way it had to be. She couldn’t judge Jefferson by the standards of her time. To lift him out of the context of his century and bring him into hers would be like trying to plant cut flowers.

  She softened her tone and asked, “Do you ever wonder what people will think of this experiment in democracy in two hundred and fifty years?”