Priceless

by Olivia Darling

  He arrived on her doorstep just after Tom left with Katie for their holiday. He was carrying the accordion case in which he had secreted The Virgin for its trip to Italy all those months before.

  • • •

  Serena had been right. The painting of Ricasoli’s The Virgin Before the Annunciation that had sold through Ludbrook’s had not been the original but her own clever fake. However, the painting that had been submitted to a barrage of carbon dating tests was the original. Evgeny Belanov knew nothing of the switch. The oligarch had never even known that there was a painting to switch with his priceless chattel. As far as Belanov was concerned, Yasha and Leonid had spent the three weeks between the Virgin’s purchase and her arrival on his yacht taking the scenic route across Europe. He knew nothing at all of the house in Tuscany and Serena.

  “But you commissioned the painting for Belanov.” Serena was confused.

  “I’m afraid I lied to you about that,” said Yasha. “Your painting was always for me.”

  “And Leonid? He was Belanov’s man.”

  “Leonid’s nobody’s man. And everybody’s. The money I gave him to help me out was enough to convince his wife to give him one more chance.”

  “And you trusted him to keep quiet?”

  “After I saw the way he was around your daughter, yes. Besides, he has as much to lose now as I do.”

  And so Yasha explained to Serena how he had bided his time, keeping her painting hidden away until the right moment had come. He said he had always known that Belanov would not want to keep the Ricasoli for himself. Yasha’s own upbringing made it easy for him to understand the richer man. It didn’t matter that the Ricasoli Virgin was unique, one of a kind, priceless. Yasha knew that Belanov would eventually look at the painting, just fifteen inches square, and think he wanted more for his money. No matter how precious, one small painting would start to look like a very bad deal when Belanov could have a super-yacht or a dozen houses in its place.

  “I knew he would sell it. So I made sure I advised him on the sale. For security and his privacy, I told him that the Ricasoli should be viewed in a bank vault. I took the original into the bank vault in my faithful accordion case, but it was your painting that went into the safe.”

  “But why did you take the risk? Why were you involved in the first place?”

  “Belanov was the only person standing between my brother and jail. The night the painting was sold, my brother was discovered in the animal hold of a 747 from Moscow. Hardly the safe first-class passage for him that my client promised as part of my commission for The Virgin’s sale. Still, my brother lived. When the police turned up at my gallery that night, I was certain they would have far worse news.”

  Serena listened in disbelief.

  “So now the saga is almost complete. Belanov has exchanged what he thought was a real Ricasoli for nearly a hundred million pounds, which is what he really wanted in the first place. My brother is no longer in danger of spending the rest of his life in a Russian jail. And I still have the real Virgin.”

  He tapped the accordion case.

  “Would you care to come on a musical tour of Europe with me?” he asked Serena.

  A week later, they were back in Italy, at a tiny church in a village near Naples.

  The priest welcomed them warmly. Yasha had called ahead to let him know that they would be arriving, with a gift for the priest and his congregation. Like Robin Hood, Yasha had decided it was time to redistribute some wealth.

  In the welcome coolness of the sacristy, Yasha opened the accordion case once more.

  “It is a very good copy.” The priest nodded when he saw the painting. “Thank you for offering it to us. I am very glad to accept. When I heard that The Virgin had been rediscovered, I prayed with all my heart that she might find her way back to us. This church has never quite forgiven itself for letting her go when times got hard in the eighteenth century. But times are still hard, and not even the Vatican could have paid the price they wanted for her this time. A hundred million, you say?”

  “Ninety-nine million, five hundred.”

  “Silly money.”

  Yasha and Serena murmured sympathetically.

  “Still, there is something of the original’s spirit here in your copy,” the priest continued. “And I know that she will make people very happy indeed. Shall we put her back in her place?”

  Yasha and Serena followed the priest to the tiny chapel off the main body of the church, where The Virgin had spent her early years. Yasha smiled to himself as the priest told them that the original had been slightly bigger. He really did have no idea that what he was holding was the real thing.

  At last Serena saw how The Virgin was supposed to have looked. In the quiet light of the candles, the gold leaf that surrounded her head seemed to glow with an inner light of its own. There was a magic here that was lost when you saw the painting under the bright lights of a gallery.

  “Thank you,” said the priest. “For bringing our lady back to us. Would you like to stay for lunch, perhaps? There is enough for all.”

  Yasha answered for them. “That’s very kind,” he said, “but we have a plane to catch.”

  Serena gave him a quizzical look. He explained once they were outside.

  “I do not want to waste a single moment of my time with you with a priest sitting between us. There’s a good restaurant in the village if you’re hungry.”

  “Not really,” said Serena.

  “Then what shall we do?” Yasha asked.

  “I’m sure we’ll think of something. Do you think they’ll let us into the hotel room yet?”

  The room was plain but perfect, with its dark wood furniture and crisp white linen. Two single beds, placed decently far apart. (Yasha had forgotten to ask for a letto matrimoniale.) Voile curtains fluttered at the windows. There was a small terrace that overlooked the sea, which was where Yasha joined Serena now. He put his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder.

  “You can see Capri from here,” he told her.

  “I’ve always wanted to go there,” said Serena.

  “Scene of some very bad behavior,” said Yasha. “You know what Caligula did on that island? He had virgins shipped over there by the dozen to amuse himself and his friends.”

  “Tell me more. What did he do with them?”

  “Why don’t you come inside and I’ll show you?”

  Serena laughed and let herself be led back into the cool dark bedroom, full of desire and delight as Yasha spun stories about the erotic history of Italy from the Romans to the Renaissance. She had never known any man who could turn her on with knowledge.

  But as Yasha peeled Serena’s white dress from her warm and sticky body and she returned the favor and licked the salty sweat from his chest, neither of them knew just how closely they were reliving history. The narrow single bed on which they chose to express their love for each other stood in the exact spot where once there had been a screen to change behind. And as Serena cried out in her passion, giving herself up to her lover completely, her voice echoed the earlier passionate cries of an innocent village girl who had stepped behind that screen to be ruined by Giancarlo Ricasoli.

  CHAPTER 73

  The Grand Cru had another VIP on board. This one arrived quietly and in a box.

  Randon placed the little Ricasoli Virgin in the room that had once contained his erotic collection. The Virgin would be the perfect painting with which to begin the art collection for his new church, the construction of which would begin any day. The travertine marble was waiting to be transformed for the glory of God.

  Randon crossed himself as he backed out of the room and began to operate the lock. But then he stopped. He reopened the door and went back in. The room was entirely empty but for The Virgin and one other familiar item. The inro …

  Randon fingered the carved ivory. Carrie Klein had made a note of how the box opened and Randon referred to it now.

  He tipped the mementoes hidden insi
de out for one last inspection. In just a few days he would hand them over to the police. He had decided that the time had come. The builders for his masterpiece, his very own church of the rock, had been paid in advance. His lawyer was authorized to act in his absence. Randon sat very still in his sanctuary and considered the ordeals ahead. It would not be pleasant to spend the rest of his life in prison, but right now an innocent man was suffering for his sins. Axel Delaflote had already spent more than five years in jail. Randon could not allow that man to continue to pay for his crimes.

  Or could he?

  Opening the inro one more time, he tipped Odette’s heart-shaped pendant out into his palm. So shiny. Cheap as it was, he remembered how pretty it had looked as it had rested in the perfect dent between her collarbones. He held a lock of hair in his other hand. This was her hair. The lightest of the three locks. The one with the bounciest curl. He pressed the hair against his mouth and relished the silkiness as it slid over his skin. And then he was back in that room, feeling her white flesh beneath his hands. His fingers closing around her throat. Deciding in the end to use her scarf to finish her off because those finger marks might send him to jail.

  “Please, please don’t. I won’t tell anybody,” Odette begged him across the years.

  Suddenly, feeling 100 percent himself again for the first time since he’d come out of his coma, Mathieu Randon echoed her promise. “I won’t tell anybody either,” he said, and smiled.

  Poor old Axel Delaflote would have to stay in jail.

  Randon instructed his captain to sail on toward Capri.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I feel very lucky to be able to make my living as an author. Not only because I don’t have to change out of my pajamas to go to work but also because my job brings me into contact with so many wonderful people. For their advice and support with the business of writing Priceless, I’d like to thank:

  John Tiller; Robert Brooks of Bonhams; Bella Bishop of Sotheby’s; Dillon Bryden; Adam Gahlin; Victoria Routledge; Serena Mackesy; Guy Hazel; M. Finkelkraut; American history expert Peter Dailey; emergency police procedure consultant James Waller; my agents, Antony Harwood, Tony Gardner, and James Macdonald Lockhart; copy editor Justine Taylor; my editors, Carolyn Mays and Kate Howard; and the still lovely Nat Wilde, who is nothing like the character to whom he lends his name.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Thirty-two-year-old OLIVIA DARLING was born and raised in Cornwall. At the age of eighteen she met an Italian art student in St. Ives and ran away to Tuscany in hot pursuit of him. The love affair didn’t last, but Olivia’s sojourn in Montepulciano inspired a much more enduring passion for Vino Nobile. She lives in London.

  “Vintage is a wonderful, intelligent blockbuster that has it all: sex, intrigue, glamour, a page-turning plot, and lashings of champagne!”

  SOPHIE KINSELLA,

  New York Times bestselling author of Confessions of a Shopaholic

  “Champagne, shenanigans, skullduggery and grand cru sex … Vintage has three heroines you genuinely care about, love-to-hate villains, and a parade of gossipy detail. Don’t wait for the beach to enjoy this fantastic beach read; open up a chilled bottle of sparkling wine and enjoy it now!”

  HESTER BROWNE,

  New York Times bestselling author of The Little Lady Agency

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  “Lies, lust and libation fuel this early summer beach read.… Darling’s sly wit veils numerous jabs at celebrities and popular culture, and her pitch-perfect description and characterization draw readers into the complex world of vintage wine.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Intoxicating, effervescent, and extravagant … Irresistible.”

  —Reader to Reader