High Rhymes and Misdemeanors

by Diana Killian

Aeneas Sweet, mouth full of lemon sponge cake, eyes bulging his dismay at their reappearance, choked out, “I thought you’d left!”

  “Hello to you, too,” Peter returned.

  Sweet gulped like a boa constrictor caught breaking his diet. He said something thickly that Grace couldn’t quite decipher.

  “We came back,” Peter responded.

  Sweet’s eyes glistened. “Then you do have it? You had it all along?”

  Peter interrupted crisply, “What. Is. It?”

  Sweet swallowed down the last of his cake and said, “Are you serious?”

  Grace said, “Don’t we look serious?”

  Sweet’s glance was dismissing. “You look charming, my dear.” He returned his attention to Peter.

  A little annoyed, Grace pressed, “Is it a manuscript?”

  “Manuscript? What manuscript?” Sweet’s bloodshot eyes nearly popped out of his massive head.

  “Is it bigger than a bread box?” Peter inquired.

  The fire crackled and hissed behind the brass screen.

  “Then you really don’t know? You really don’t have it?” He seemed to deflate suddenly, a very old, very small man. He reached for his pewter mug with a shaking hand. “It was a gift. To his daughter. A set of cameos.”

  “Cameos,” Peter repeated slowly.

  “Which daughter? Allegra?” Grace questioned.

  Sweet snapped back into shape. “There’s no reason to believe he had any fondness for that child, the product of that unfortunate alliance with that slut, Jane Clairmont.” He turned to Peter. “She forced herself on him, you know. Byron was bored and embarrassed.” Heaving himself up off the couch, he limped across the room and unlocked the tall glass cabinet containing the miniatures.

  He offered a locket to Grace. She took the gold oval with careful fingers and contemplated the painted face. A rosy-cheeked child with dark curls smiled primly into history.

  “Byron had only one legitimate heir.”

  Grace handed the locket to Peter. “So which daughter?” he asked. “The math wiz? Was there another?”

  “Was there—?” Sweet turned to Grace and they shared one of those International Academic Moments.

  “Medora Leigh,” Grace explained. “Astarte’s daughter.”

  “All these women,” Peter complained, setting the miniature on the table.

  “Funny how life imitates art,” Grace drawled in a fair imitation of Peter. And then before Peter could respond to this, “If Byron and his half sister Augusta Leigh had an affair it would have been in 1813. They spent a lot of that year together, even planning a trip to Europe. The trip never happened, but then, the following year Augusta gave birth to a daughter, Medora. Medora, by the way, is the name of the heroine of “The Corsair,” one of Byron’s most popular poems. Not that that necessarily proves anything, because Augusta might simply have liked the name. Anyway, although he never acknowledged her as his or showed her any special favor, many scholars hold Medora to be Byron’s illegitimate child. Of course, the only way to prove that would be DNA testing.”

  “DNA testing!” the two men echoed in horrified tones.

  “That would be the only way of conclusively proving—”

  “Is nothing sacred?” the old man demanded of the portrait on the wall. Byron’s pale face was unperturbed.

  Grace blushed. “Well, sure. It’s just that it would solve one of the great literary mysteries of all time.”

  “She’s American, of course,” Peter remarked to no one in particular.

  “Young lady,” Aeneas Sweet said severely. “There are certain things not meant to be known.”

  Owned but not known?

  “I wasn’t suggesting digging anyone up. Anyway, Medora herself believed she was Byron’s daughter.”

  “Tell us about these cameos,” Peter said. “Where did they come from?”

  Sweet raked his hair out of his eyes. “The legend is Byron purchased the last of the collection shortly before his death. He died in Missolonghi during the Greek war for independence, you know.”

  “Yes, of a fever,” Peter replied. “He never saw any actual military service. I suppose the cameos vanished after his death?”

  “Yes. The story is that Trelawny—you’ll naturally read his journal and his account of taking charge of Byron’s effects after his death—mistakenly handed them over to Teresa, Countess Guiccioli, who hung on to them for many years. After that…no one knows.”

  “John Trelawny’s journal, Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author, was recently republished,” Grace supplied. “In fact, not too long ago there was a book about Trelawny himself, called Lord Byron’s Jackal. He’s a fascinating figure in his own right, although historians question his credi—”

  Peter interrupted, “And who was this Countess Guiccioli when she was at home?”

  Grace filled in the blanks. “She was an Italian noblewoman Byron took as his mistress in 1822. It was a huge scandal because he was living as a guest in the home of the countess and her elderly husband. She wrote a memoir called My Recollections of Lord Byron and Those of Eye Witnesses of His Life.”

  “Tripe!” exclaimed Sweet. “Whitewash! Antiseptic! Hogwash!”

  Grace clarified, “She was about sixty when she wrote her account and she was trying to clean up her reputation and Byron’s.”

  Peter put a hand to his head, as though it hurt. “What makes you think these gewgaws are genuine?”

  “They’re genuine all right.” The old man glared at him. “I thought you knew about antiques.”

  “A little.”

  “Then you must know that even without the Byron connection, a collection like this would be worth a fortune.”

  Grace stared at Peter. She couldn’t tell anything by his expression.

  “Possibly. How many pieces?”

  “Nine or ten. Ten, I think. I only saw them once for a few moments.”

  “When?”

  “When that man Dylan came here like a thief in the middle of the night.”

  “Who? Oh, Delon. He was a thief. Do you know how he came by the set?”

  “He refused to say.” Sweet added, “I’m not a rich man, but whatever that woman has offered, I can better. Maybe not by much, but I can top her.”

  “I think this is our cue,” Peter told Grace.

  “Think about it!” Sweet commanded as they headed for the door. “Whatever that woman offers you, I’ll double it!”