Based on information they had uncovered from the coded dossier, Lady Kingsley had tracked down a safety-deposit box in London that contained a thick stack of letters addressed to a Mr. Frampton. The letters were from the diamond dealers, each agreeing to look at Frampton’s artificial diamonds.
“You see,” Lady Kingsley had said excitedly at their meeting in the morning, “that’s how he got the diamond dealers to cough up the money. I think in the beginning he might not have been thinking about extortion, but merely wanted to see if the synthesized diamonds were truly indistinguishable from the real thing. And then, once the synthesis process proved a failure, he looked at the few replies he’d received, and some of them were sloppily written and could be interpreted to mean the diamond dealer was willing to deal in artificial diamonds. Our man, ever the criminal mind, decided to contact even more diamond dealers. The letters were separated into two groups, and the ones who were not careful about how they responded became his targets.”
For Vere, however, the most crucial piece of the puzzle still remained missing: the true identity of the man now known as Edmund Douglas. Until Freddie and Angelica mentioned their own investigation, he’d never thought to pursue that particular line of inquiry. Now he could have slapped himself for overlooking such obvious and important clues.
Sometimes it was better to be lucky than to be good.
Cipriani was about seventy-five years of age and lived in a large flat in Kensington. Vere had expected a place overflowing with art, but Cipriani was a ruthless curator of his own collection. The parlor where he received them had a Greuze and a Brueghel and nothing else.
Angelica described the painting she and Freddie had seen in the vicarage at Lyndhurst Hall—Vere had not paid any attention to it, apparently. Cipriani listened with his hands tented together.
“I do remember. I bought it from a young man in the spring of ’seventy.”
Twenty-seven years ago.
“Was he the artist?” asked Angelica.
“He claimed that it had been a gift. But judging by his nervousness while I assessed his painting, I would say he was the artist. Of course, there was also the coincidence that the artist’s initials were the same as his.”
Vere hoped his best vapid expression was enough to hide his excitement. He further hoped either Freddie or Angelica would inquire after the young man’s name.
“What was his name?” Freddie asked.
“George Carruthers.”
George Carruthers. It might be a pseudonym, but at least it was a place to start.
“Have you ever come across him or his works again?” asked Angelica.
Cipriani shook his head. “I do not believe so. A shame, rather, as he had more than a modicum of talent. With proper instruction and dedication, he could have made some interesting art.”
The subject of George Carruthers exhausted, Angelica and Freddie talked with the old man on the latest developments in art. Vere did not fail to notice the way they glanced at each other—he could only hope that he hadn’t interrupted their very first instance of lovemaking.
He smiled inwardly. He had always wished fervently for Freddie’s happiness: not only for Freddie’s sake, but for his own, so that he could one day live vicariously through Freddie’s domestic bliss.
Presupposing that he himself must always be on the outside looking in. That his own life would remain barren of the kind of contentment he so easily imagined for Freddie.
He remembered the way his wife had looked at him the day before, above the banks of the River Dourt: as if he were full of possibilities. As if they were full of possibilities.
But his mind was already made up. It was time she understood.
When they rose to bid Cipriani good-bye, Vere suddenly remembered that there was something more he wished to know, a question that no one else had asked.
So he did the asking himself. “Mr. Carruthers, did he say why he was selling his painting?”
“Yes, he did,” replied Cipriani. “He mentioned he was raising funds for a venture to South Africa.”
Chapter Seventeen
Her bed was crimson Italian silk. Against this sumptuous backdrop, Angelica stretched, immodestly, deliciously. Part of Freddie still felt he should avert his eyes. The rest of him not only could not look away, but reached out a hand to caress the underside of her breast.
“Hmm, that was splendid,” she said.
His cheeks grew warm. He leaned in to kiss her again. “The pleasure was all mine.”
And how.
“Can I make a confession?” he asked.
“Hmm, you never have confessions to make. This I must hear.”
He cleared his throat, embarrassed now that he was about to volunteer the information. “I was not that interested in the provenance of the angel painting.”
Her jaw went slack. “You weren’t?”
“Your oldest friend asks you to paint her in the altogether. You are terribly tempted but not sure how to say yes. Wouldn’t you find a seemingly legitimate inquiry so that you may exchange favors?”
She sat up straight, a rich cascade of crimson silk held to her breasts. “Freddie! I never guessed you to be so sneaky.”
He flushed. “I’m not—not usually, in any case. I just wanted to be a little less transparent.”
She hit him lightly on the arm. “Oh, you were opaque enough for me. I had quite despaired of how I would ever make myself understood.”
“You could have just told me.”
“If I could, I would have done it ten years ago.” She kissed him where she’d hit him. “It was probably best I didn’t: You viewed me as completely lacking in feminine attributes.”
“That is not true. It was more the case that I never thought about your feminine attributes. I mean, you were—and are—my oldest friend. You didn’t need breasts and buttocks to matter to me.”
“That is a sweet thing to say, although my breasts and buttocks might dissent.”
He smiled.
She snuggled closer to him. “Did you ever think that I was too critical? Or had too many ideas about how you should do things?”
“No, never. My father was too criticaclass="underline" He put me down because he enjoyed it, and because I didn’t quite know how to fight back like Penny did. Your suggestions were always rooted in a sincere interest in me. And it was never a condition of our friendship that I must do as you said: You gave your advice and I was free to take it or not.”
“Good,” she said.
He hesitated.
She peered at him. “There is something else you want to say, isn’t there? Go ahead; I’d like to hear it.”
He kept forgetting how well she knew him. “I was thinking that there was a time when I felt you were too ambitious for me. You were constantly telling me that I needed to paint faster, and exhibit, and establish a large body of work.”
“Ah, that. That was when I was unbearably jealous of Lady Tremaine. I was trying to make you see that she didn’t know rose madder from crimson lake, while I was an expert in both art and the art world.”
He truly had been blind. It never occurred to him that her seemingly frantic drive to propel him toward artistic prominence had anything to do with hidden desires of the heart. He lifted a strand of her hair. It would seem he had not done it justice in his painting: There were shades of auburn too.
“Before Lady Tremaine left for America, she’d hoped I would find solace in your arms. But when you came to comfort me, I all but chased you away.”
“I don’t blame you. I was very rude about it.”
“When you married Canaletto out of the blue, I couldn’t help but worry that my conduct that day had something to do with it. Just know I’ve always regretted my abruptness.”
She shook her head. “My inability to handle my disappointment without doing something stupid was not your fault, but my own shortcoming. In fact, this time, I was determined that should you turn me down, I was absolutely not going to do anything foolish—like sleeping with Penny, for instance—to soothe my bruised vanity.”
“Penny would be traumatized. He still thinks of you as a sister.”
She chuckled. “I would be traumatized, too.”
She lifted her arm and set her hand down atop a small framed picture on her nightstand. Absently she twisted the frame this way and that, and he saw that the frame contained a pencil drawing of her face he had sketched many years ago and given her as a gift. The art critic in her should have found too many defects in the sketch, which lacked both technique and composition, and seemed to have only a great earnestness to recommend itself.
He’d always loved and cared about her, but now his heart was filled with tenderness, so much that it was almost painful. “I’m glad you came back,” he said, tracing his hand across her cheekbone.
“So am I,” she said, her gaze direct and clear. “So am I.”