“And the marriage was consummated?” His voice was almost conversational, but his feathery brows arched high in question.
“Yes, it was.” She would never tell him that she and Pete had consummated their marriage months before the ceremony. Many times.
He rolled up the sketches, tucked them into the inside jacket pocket, and so ended the conversation.
After the sexy picture episode, Thomas was more relaxed around her, and she was more comfortable with him. It was as if they’d had their first clumsy night together and gotten it out of the way. The sketches told him everything he needed to know about her, and if he did exactly as she’d drawn, they would have the most fantastic sex either of them had ever had. And he knew it. She could tell by the angle of his chin.
And now Pete had come to ruin her life, exactly the way he ruined it before when he failed to stand up for her. It all seemed so tied together somehow. One man married her and easily gave her up, and another man wanted her desperately and was willing to go to unusual lengths to have her in his bed.
She organized her painting supplies and washed her hands. Painting was done for the day. Fortunately her head no longer hurt. She’d used her last ibuprofen weeks ago and was grateful to have some from Pete to ease the pain. As if a pill could ease what had transpired.
Could anything?
Maybe if he had said, “I love you. I made a mistake letting you go. I’ve regretted it all my life. I’ve traveled over two hundred years to make you mine again.” Maybe that would have impressed her.
Enough to go home with him?
No. Her life was here, with Thomas, and even if Pete had thrown himself prostrate on the ground and confessed his undying love, it wouldn’t have mattered.
“Miss Sophia.”
She spun toward Marguerite who was standing at the open door. “Yes, ma’am. What’s up?”
Marguerite snickered behind her hand. Sophia’s questions often didn’t translate in any of the languages Marguerite knew. So she just laughed.
“There’s a gentleman named Matthew Kelly at the door. He’d like an appointment with you.”
“I don’t feel like meeting with anyone right now. Ask him to come back tomorrow.”
“If you refused to see him, he wanted me to give this book to you, but he asked that you not read past the marker.”
“What a strange request.” Sophia accepted the book and opened it to the marked page. There was a drawing of her and Thomas at his first inauguration. Her initials were on the bottom corner, and the caption beneath it said the drawing was the property of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation—Founded in 1923 for its dual mission of preservation and education.
She rubbed a knuckle beneath her nose, trying to express in words what she felt. Mr. Kelly must be the man who was with Pete and Jack. If he was the only one standing at the door, maybe she could get through a conversation with him.
“Is he by himself?”
“Yes, but he said if you want the others present, he would arrange it.”
“Tell him I have a few minutes to meet with him, and only him, before my next appointment.”
“I didn’t know you were expecting anyone else this afternoon,” Marguerite said.
“I’m not, sweetie. I’m just telling him that.”
Sophia remained standing, and received Mr. Kelly graciously, as if he’d come to commission a painting. With the flat of her hand, she gestured toward an empty chair. “Please have a seat. I apologize for my rudeness earlier. It wasn’t directed at you.” Matt remained standing until she seated herself. “Where are your cohorts?”
“Jack hauled Pete off to Fraunces Tavern to calm him down.”
“Getting drunk will only make him meaner.” She scratched her forehead, ashamed of herself. The Pete she once knew would never hurt anyone except a bully who deserved it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It was cruel and untrue. So what can I do for you? And how did you get mixed up with those two?”
“We have sort of a family connection,” Matt said.
“You sound more like a Midwesterner than a New Yorker or a Virginian.”
“Colorado, but my wife and I built a house on five acres at Mallory Plantation.”
“That ties you to Jack, but how did you all meet Pete?”
Matt sat back in the wing chair. “Pete’s partner at the NYPD, JL O’Grady, was the one with the amethyst brooch.”
“I knew several O’Gradys: Connor, Patrick, Shane, Jeff, and they had a sister. Are they related to this JL?”
“JL stands for Jenny Lynn. When she joined the NYPD, she shortened her name. But yes, you’ve got the right family.”
“Where’d her brooch take her?”
“Hers was broken. It carried her to California for a weekend in the Napa wine country where she fell in love with Kevin, son of Elliott Fraser. Elliott is the Keeper. As for me, I’m a lawyer, historian, and teacher.”
“How nice for Pete. He has two attorneys who can straighten him out.” When Matt grimaced, she apologized. Again. “Please continue.”
“My daughter found my wife’s family brooch, an amber, and she traveled back to 1878.”
“Amethyst and amber. I wonder what other two brooches were in that box. But what brings you here, Mr. Kelly? Not, here at my house, but here in 1790. Why’d you come?”
He leaned forward and pointed at the book in her lap. “When we discovered where you were and that you married Thomas Jefferson, we needed to find out what history you changed.”
“So I really do marry him.” Having confirmation of the marriage was…what? Surprising? Shocking? Exciting? A tingling sensation raced down her spine all the way to her toes and back up again. Mrs. Thomas Jefferson, First Lady Sophia Jefferson. Please welcome the First Lady…
It was a little bit of all three, but mostly exciting. “Why do you think my marriage changed history, or will change history?”
“We don’t know whether it did. We only know that if not for your brooch, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t play a part in Jefferson’s story. So what was his life like before you?”
“If I’m not here, then he’ll continue his relationship with Sally Hemings, his late wife’s enslaved half-sister. It lasted decades and produced six children.”
Matt slapped his chest and started breathing so hard he was going to hyperventilate if he didn’t get control of himself. Sophia reached for his hands and placed them over his mouth. “Breathe through your nose. In and out.” She hurried to the decanter on her desk and poured him a whisky. “Here, drink this.”
Matt drank slowly, and after a couple of minutes his composure returned to normal. “My goodness. I haven’t had a shock like that since I heard my daughters traveled through time. Thomas Jefferson has been on a pedestal for two centuries for his exemplary behavior in his personal life and in government. His management of Monticello is the standard for how to operate an enterprise upholding strict conservationism and fiscal responsibility.”
Sophia refilled Matt’s glass. “In the history books I read, he died bankrupt and all his slaves except Sally Hemings and her children were sold to pay his debts. The Hemings’s children were freed either when they turned twenty-one or released in Jefferson’s 1826 will. Patsy Jefferson Randolph allowed Sally to leave Monticello shortly after her father’s death.”
Matt upended his glass again. “I’ve always wondered if there had been a glossing over of his faults, but I’ve read ninety-nine percent of what’s been written about him, and he was never faulted. His positions were argued vigorously, but never his character or his passion for his country. I find this news impossible to reconcile.”
“He is the same man, Mr. Kelly. He just needs a financial planner. He’s brilliant, a prolific writer, and passionate about what he believes. And he’s lonely. Thomas is happiest when he has someone to love and is loved in return. He didn’t have a happy childhood, and he’s spent most of his life trying to recreate the emotional attachments he didn’t have as a child and young adult. The
man in my history deserves your loyalty.”
“But this enslaved woman, I can’t justify that.”
“Sally was the only woman he cared for who didn’t, wouldn’t, or couldn’t leave him, short of death. His wife and two daughters died, and Maria Cosway wouldn’t divorce her husband and run off to America with him. In my history, Sally was always there in the lonely hours.”
“Very little attention is given to his first wife, or even Cosway. But volumes have been written containing your sketches and anecdotes about your love affair and marriage. It’s listed as one of the ten great romances that shaped the world, like Ferdinand and Isabella.”
“Santo cielo!” She shivered briefly despite the heat. “I don’t want that kind of responsibility. Would you?”
“Not at all.” Matt finished the whisky and set the glass aside, declining Sophia’s offer of a refill. “It’s why I study history instead of making it. I considered politics at one time, but decided it wasn’t for me.”
“Being half of a perfect romance isn’t for me.”
“As long as you stay here, that’s what you will become.”
She glanced at the clock on the mantel. She needed to bring the conversation to a close. Before she dressed for dinner, she wanted to rest for an hour. “What else can I tell you? I’d like to get done with this so you can return home. I’m sure your family is anxious to have you home again.”
“The nice thing about traveling with the diamond brooch is you return only moments after you leave. None of our other brooches have that property. What about yours?”
“Two weeks. The brooch always returned me two weeks to the day, except this time. It’s refused to heat up again.”
“We don’t know why your brooch worked five times and then refused to work again. Some believe it was because Pete wasn’t in the right place to rescue you before.”
She burst out laughing, and a flood of emotion came pouring out. Tears streamed down her face and she laughed and laughed. Finally she got herself under control and wiped her face. “I’m sorry. That was priceless and a very interesting interpretation, but it’s hogwash.”
“We didn’t have much to go on,” Matt said.
“Then how exactly did you find me?”
“Detective work. We had photos of your five paintings from the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. So we started with the eighteenth century, since you didn’t have a painting from the seventeen hundreds. We considered the idea of a female artist. Maria Cosway came to our attention, and she was a straight shot to Thomas Jefferson. Once we got to him, we got to you.”
Something didn’t sound right. She did an instant replay. Five paintings. “How did you find my paintings? They were in a secured location that was guaranteed to be unbreakable.”
“Oh!” Matt glanced down at the carpet, avoiding eye contact.
“Mr. Kelly. How’d you find my paintings?”
He looked up, sheepishly. “You’ll need to talk to Pete. He found them.”
“The only way Pete could have found them was to search my apartment. How did he get past security? It’s a state-of-the-art system.”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
“No, I’m asking you, and if you want more information from me,” she did a come-hither motion with her hand, “you have to give me something in return.” She stood. “Feel free to call on me again when you’re ready.”
He stood and motioned for her to sit. “He didn’t know you were in Florence. He’d finished dinner at a restaurant up the street and saw a man trying to break into your studio. He stopped and talked to him and discovered he was your client. Pete made the connection, and, based on comments your client made, he became alarmed. So he entered your apartment, searched it, found the paintings, and the box the brooches were in.”
She was aghast. “I’ve never felt so violated.” She poured herself a glass of whisky and drank the whole thing. “I’ll ask you again. How’d he get past my security system?”
Matt shrugged. “That’s what he does. He designs and maintains security systems at all MacKlenna Corporation properties around the world. He’s an expert.”
Her body felt like a balloon with a slow leak. “I can’t believe it. Of all the nerve.”
“He had our partner in Tuscany contact your client and make arrangements for him to pick up his Mona Lisa. Pete didn’t want him calling the police and reporting your disappearance.”
“I guess I should thank him, then. My attorney has instructions to liquidate all my assets after a year. An agreement with my accountant to pay all my bills kicks in after a month. But I’ve never had an emergency contact. I appreciate Pete taking care of Ivan. He would have made a lot of noise and gotten the police involved.”
“I heard Ivan was very appreciative.”
Sophia shook her head, thinking about her client panicking over his Mona Lisa. “Okay, Mr. Kelly. Ask your questions.”
“This is a big one. Is there a Civil War in your history?”
“Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Iraq, Afghanistan.”
“Same here,” Matt said.
“There was another war against England in 1812, I think. I don’t know much about it, except it was a pointless war that nobody won. The White House was burned. The only other time in American history when a foreign power occupied the United States capital,” she said. “Was that in your history?”
“There was no war. The disagreement was over trade and expansion,” Matt said. “Thomas Jefferson hated the English, but he was able to negotiate a peace treaty. He did a masterful job, understood what was at stake, and agreed to meet with both Napoleon and King George. It was America’s first shuttle diplomacy. Brilliant. It’s been used as the model for American diplomacy ever since.”
She wandered over to the window and stood there, gazing out over the river as the sun began its downward slope over New Jersey. “It sounds like America is in better shape because of my presence here.”
“We don’t know for sure. We’ll need to look more closely.”
“Tell me about Mr. Jefferson’s children. What does history say happened to them?”
“I’m sorry to say, but his younger daughter, Polly, died in her mid-twenties. She wasn’t in good health.”
“Oh, no.” Pain gripped Sophia’s belly. “I was hoping I could do something to extend her life.”
Matt joined her at the window. “You’re not God, Sophia. You can’t choose who lives and dies. History has been written once. It’s not for you to rewrite it.”
“History has been written twice, and I did rewrite it, Mr. Kelly.”
“Touché.”
They stood there quietly, watching seagulls dip and rise above the churning gray water and sailing ships, breathing in the herbal essences of the flowers growing on the slope of what she considered her own private beach. She loved being near the river more now than during her childhood, which was spent not far from here.
“What happened with the women’s movement?” she asked. “Did they get voting rights before the Nineteenth Amendment?”
“No.”
“Did Thomas die before his eighty-third birthday?”
“No.”
“I feel like I’m swimming in the present yet submerged in the past. Everything that’s different is better for Thomas. He won’t be condemned because of his relationship with Sally Hemings. He’ll avert a second war with England. He’ll die leaving behind a well-managed plantation. Why wouldn’t I want this altered history for him?”
“Because it’s altered. I like the altered version too, but it’s not the way it should be. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all live an altered life that’s factored out our crap, leaving only the good stuff?” Matt asked, with a hint of a nervous laugh.
“If I marry Thomas, I’ll become a First Lady. What do the history books say about me?”
“You’ll become a beloved First Lady, a cherished grandmother to J
efferson’s grandchildren, and a prolific and extraordinary artist whose paintings are exhibited in museums all around the world. You are considered the only female Old Master.”
“Me?” she gasped. “Me?”
“You,” Matt said. “Although there are some who say you don’t qualify because you don’t meet all three criteria. You are a painter of skill, who painted in Europe, before 1800. But they argue the body of your work was produced in America after 1800.”
“What kind of paintings? Landscapes or portraits?”
“Portraits of every famous person in the late eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century.”
She chuckled. Thomas would give her what she wanted.
“As long as they consider the paintings I did in Paris, it’s good enough for me. The paintings of Thomas and Lafayette are among my best work.”
“Which is why it’s hard to deny you the honor.”
She turned to face him, the white curtains, blowing in the breeze, flapped against her. “There’s no downside to my being here.”
Matt squeezed her hands. “If you stay, Sophia, make sure it’s for the right reason.”
She squeezed his in return. “Painting immortality is a pretty good reason, Mr. Kelly.”
“I find it frightening,” he said.
“Surprisingly, after spending time with Leonardo, Picasso, Donatello, Rubens, Degas, and Jacques-Louis David, I don’t. To attain that status is an artist’s dream.”
“But is it your dream as a woman?”
“What an odd question, Mr. Kelly. I’m not sure I can separate the two.”
“I have daughters. They both have careers, but having children was always part of their plan.”
“Plans often go awry. I grew up jealous of my friends who had siblings to play with on snowy days when school was closed. I only had my dolls. I swore when I grew up, I’d have a houseful of children.”
“My wife and I have three grandchildren and another one on the way. They are such a joy.”
Sophia studied Matt’s face and stature, guessing his age to be early sixties. His skin had a leathery texture from spending hours in the sun and wind, but he had a rugged Robert Redford look about him. She would paint Mr. Kelly in a rustic setting, surrounded by books—old books, weathered like his face, a little frayed at the edges—with startlingly green eyes gazing out on the world with quenchless curiosity.
The Pearl Brooch Page 53