“With Jane in the room. You told me yourself you thought she was in there.”
Nina was quiet. There was no way for her to defend Caitlyn’s actions, and they both knew it.
Eric softened. He understood Nina’s life better than most. Caitlyn had grown up with them and was probably one of the few people who understood Nina and the unique stressors that came with being a de Vries. She would have seen how Nina was groomed from birth to occupy her social stations, and like her, she went along with a marriage that wasn’t arranged per se, but might as well have been. Eric had never understood why Nina had married Calvin, that sniveling horse’s ass. But then again, he hadn’t really been around to voice his concerns either, had he? Caitlyn was Nina’s compatriot, even after her own marriage ended.
“Oh, before I forget, Garrett sent this down when I gave him the last of our keys.” Nina maneuvered around several other boxes, careful not to get dust on her pressed gray pants, and picked up a large, rectangular package near the door to the storage unit.
“It’s Grandmother’s Klimt,” she said, this time not even bothering to hide her envy as she handed it to Eric.
Eric didn’t have to open the package to imagine what was inside. The painting was one of the most valuable pieces in the entire penthouse, and that was saying something. It was similar to Klimt’s more famous The Kiss, a portrait of a couple embracing done with a collage-like gold leaf technique. The story was that it was a portrait of his great-grandmother and her first husband, done before he died in the first World War. After, Annika Arendt had fled Austria and married George van Dusen—Celeste’s father. But not without taking her prized painting of the love of her life.
“We should just donate it,” he said. “I’m sure the Met would take it off our hands.”
Nina didn’t answer. They both knew he wouldn’t do it. She had seen Jane admire the painting more times than Eric.
“Garrett said she intended to give it to you and Jane as a wedding gift,” Nina said, turning back to the clothes. “Lucky you. All Calvin and I got was her spare set of Heisey glassware. And I’ll remind you that midcentury settings were not back in style yet.”
Eric snorted. “She never did like Calvin.”
“She liked his pedigree, that’s all. No one liked Calvin. No one likes him now.” Nina said it casually as she examined a few more Puccis on the rack.
Eric put the painting against the wall with the other box of things he was planning to bring back with him and returned to his boxes of books. “You know, you don’t have to stay with him. Not if you don’t want. Fuck the rules.”
“And sully our family’s sterling record? How could I?”
“That’s my job, is what you’re saying?”
All he received was a very unladylike snort. They were both aware of the double standard between the two of them, the last of the direct de Vries line. Despite the fact that Nina had always been perfectly behaved while Eric had literally deserted the family for ten years, it was Eric who had received the lion’s share of the family’s fortune and power.
“It’s all right,” Nina said as she heaved an armful of clothes off the rack and set them in the donation box. “There is Olivia to think about too. Calvin and I get along all right as long as we don’t have to spend too much time together. Not all of us are lucky in love, Eric. Which, by the way, means the ones who are should take advantage of it.”
Nina’s gray-blue eyes were large and open, without judgment. It was a welcome, unexpected sight from one of his family members. But Eric couldn’t meet them. He didn’t know what Calvin had told her about the ordeal with Janus—he was still relatively sure at this point that his cousin-in-law, desperate for entry to the illustrious society, was the one who had been keeping an eye on him and Jane for Carson. Much good it would do him. Carson hated a rat, even if he had use for one.
“Do you think Jane would want any of these?” Nina asked, interrupting his brooding. She held out a colorful, psychedelic print. “They are so beautiful, but there are really only so many costume parties one can get away with after the age of thirty.” She sighed, as if the number represented some kind of death knell. “Jane might like to do something with them, don’t you think? She’s so talented.”
Eric glanced at the rack. “You know, she probably would. I’ll bring whatever you don’t want to the apartment. Jane can go through them there.”
Nina nodded. “If anyone knows what to do with these gems, it would be her.”
Eric mumbled his agreement. He was trying not to think about Jane, though it was a fairly impossible task. It had been one week since Carson laid down his rules. One week of living with a stomping, irritable, annoyingly beautiful half-Korean who seemed intent on wearing the smallest clothes possible and reapplying her goddamn lipstick every ten minutes. She knew what she was doing. Jane always knew how to press his buttons.
But. The society. The coin that hung around his neck like an anvil. Eric had no doubt the apartment was surveilled despite the fact that Tony, his head of security, screened it nightly. This was Carson. The man wasn’t just demanding—he was obsessive. The only way out was to live the next forty-three days was exactly the way he had so far: according to the rules. Work late. Stay in his room. Above all, keep Jane safe.
He wasn’t an idiot. He knew why Grandmother had chosen the sixty days. Jane was right. In the eyes of the church, they were in fact married. The minister had confirmed it and signed the license, which was now locked in Eric’s desk at home, signed by neither the bride nor the groom. Therefore, no marriage had been filed with the state either. And in forty-three days, the entire thing would be nulled, as New York State law decreed a marriage license was valid for only two months after the date of a marriage. If the signed document wasn’t filed by then, the whole thing would be nulled.
Celeste had gotten the wedding she wanted—one last hurrah for the de Vries dynasty on her watch. The addendum to the will was her gift to Jane and Eric, allowing them to make their marriage a choice rather than a requirement. The wily old fox. She knew them both better than they realized.
Too bad they couldn’t accept the gift even if he could make it that long.
The idea scarred, though Eric knew it was for the best. He still didn’t understand why, exactly, Carson was so determined to keep him and Jane apart, but he assumed it was some kind of fucked-up penance for staying away for so long. Janus didn’t take it well when members defected. When Eric had only just joined, one member who wanted to leave was penniless a month later after his entire company was purchased out from under him. The man drank himself to death within a year.
In retrospect, Eric had gotten off easy.
“Eric?”
Eric snapped out of his thoughts. “Hmm? What’s up, Nina?”
“I said, you might want these. They look like Uncle Jacob’s.”
Abandoning the books, Eric wove his way around an Art Deco dining set and a very stiff-looking French country chaise to Nina. She pointed to the collection of tatty books and papers stacked inside another box: several yearbooks from Yale, a few framed photos, and a shoebox full of letters and postcards. The top most book was beaten black leather, inlaid with the name Jacob Arendt van Dusen de Vries in gilt letters across the front. Eric fished it out and flipped through the pages.
“A diary?” Nina asked, looking over his shoulder.
Eric nodded. “Looks that way. Huh. I didn’t realize Dad kept anything like this. I don’t even remember him reading anything besides the Times.”
Nina went back to picking through a box of handbags. “It’s not exactly Shakespeare,” she said.
“That it’s definitely not,” Eric replied.
The writing was short, terse, and utilitarian. Eric knew that in families like the de Vrieses, there were often long-standing traditions of keeping records. Dynasties knew they were dynasties. There was a strange meta-awareness in how they lived, knowing that they were more likely than not to make it into history books or catch the eye of biograph
ers down the line. Often, they obsessively recorded their lives, wanting to control the narratives that would be potentially be made about them. The victors really did write history before they won anything at all.
His grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s journals and letters were both housed at the New York Public Library archives with other parts of the illustrious de Vries family papers. When nothing had been donated after Jacob’s death, Eric had just assumed that his father hadn’t written anything.
Eric flipped through a few more of the pages. They were fairly bland accounts of business trips, a line or two dedicated to lunches or dinners with people. His mother cropped up in several of them around the time they married, but not much was said beyond the color of her dress or the time Jacob picked her up for dinner. Like so many journals of its kind, it required the reader to investigate between the terse lines for the emotion beneath.
December 25, 1987
Christmas at Mother’s. Violet brought the new baby. Eric broke several ornaments. Tried out a new gin martini recipe.
Five course meal with the Jameses on Lex. Home for three days until the next trip to Beijing. Heather pleased with her bracelet.
They were such short phrases, but Eric had no difficulties imagining the Christmas at his grandmother’s parlor. His great uncle Rufus would have been tippling too much gin, Violet would have been wrangling three-month-old Nina, and Eric, at two, would have been pulling and yanking on every shiny, priceless antique imaginable, much to Celeste’s dismay. Was it just him, or was there some humor embedded in this account? That his father had thought it important to log his toddler’s intransigence among all of the other festivities brought a hint of a smile to Eric’s face.
He read a few more pages—droll accounts of a business trip to China and Japan. Port negotiations as his father learned the family business.
Just before he closed the book, another entry caught Eric’s eye:
February 10, 1988
Home finally. Detoured to Seoul on my way back from Beijing. J was angry over some girl he met there. Had to rescue him from a hotel in Hwaseong. On the upside, hoping we can put this mess behind us at last. After all, isn’t he the one who would constantly tell us, “Ne quid expectes amicos, quod tute agere possis?”
Heather liked the jade earrings. Next time I’ll get the necklace too. They match her eyes.
Eric now speaking in full sentences. We are trying for another, but no luck yet.
Eric drifted his fingers over the final words. Short, but loaded. A brief paragraph dedicated to some anonymous friend, but he could feel his father’s frustration, clear as day. Just as he could hear the echoes of adoration in each account of his mother’s small reactions.
“What does that mean?” Nina asked, back to snooping over his shoulder, this time with an oversized cashmere sweater draped around her shoulders. She pointed at the Latin phrase Jacob had quoted.
Eric turned. “My Latin’s rusty, but roughly, I think it means something like, ‘Expect nothing from friends, do it for yourself.’”
Nina made a face. “That’s depressing.”
“Yeah, whoever ‘J’ is, he sounds like kind of a dick.” Eric rubbed a finger over the passage.
Nina cast a sly grin at her cousin. “It’s probably code for Grandfather.”
“In 1988? Years after he died?”
Nina shrugged. “Someone else, then. I still can’t believe you took Latin for four years. Grandmother was so angry at you for refusing German or French.”
“We had good tutors,” Eric replied as he went back to sorting. “There was no need.”
It was a little strange, though. Because it wasn’t that unusual for Ivy League assholes from a certain generation to quote Latin at each other. Like Rolex watches or priceless heirlooms, it was another signifier of their wealth and status—old, useless shit that no one but the rich cared about. He had thought at the time that Celeste would be thrilled he was carrying on the tradition, but Nina was right. Back then, Grandmother had put up quite the damn fuss.
For Eric, taking Latin in college was more of an homage to his father than anything else. Like the anonymous “J,” Jacob de Vries also had a penchant for quoting Latin. Virgil was his favorite. Eric probably knew half the THAeneid before he was ten. Now, of course, he realized that Jacob probably read it more out of duty to Janus. But as a child, Eric had just thought it was an interesting story about the birth of Rome.
He picked up the box of his father’s things and carried it over to the wall, next to the wrapped Klimt painting. He would take that, the first editions, and the rest with him in his car. There were some things too precious to trust to an assistant.
“Don’t forget the clothes,” Nina called from the other side. “Unless you want Bridget to send them.”
She winked, fully aware of the effect a box of vintage couture would have on Jane, the biggest fashion addict in New York.
Eric sighed. He knew the effect they would have too, but he wasn’t sure it was a good idea. Sixty days in an apartment with the woman and being unable to touch her was already the seventh circle. But what made it worse was how much it clearly hurt Jane too. His own pain, Eric could take that all day. But hers…fucking hell. That made him want to slit his wrists just to save her the trouble. Better she hated him. Better she considered him a thoughtless ass.
Still…it was like he couldn’t help himself.
“I hope you and Jane figure out a way to make it work,” Nina was saying. “If Grandmother’s sixties collection helps patch things up, I’m taking full credit.”
“I don’t think it’s going to happen.” Eric’s voice was flat. Cold.
“Calvin said something like that. I was hoping he was exaggerating, like usual.”
Eric looked up from his things sharply. “What did Calvin say?”
Nina shrugged as she examined a pair of red shoes. “Not much. Something about her father disapproving of the match. I suppose it’s understandable. Mr. Carson always scared me half to death. And he never did like Grandmother, did he?”
“Didn’t he?” Eric wondered.
Nina gave him another look. “If you’d been around for the last ten years, you would have known that. I don’t know how it started, but you should have seen them at events. Like sniping cats, always.”
Eric frowned. “Over what?”
Nina shrugged. “How should I know? Shipping contracts? Port access? Any number of things could have angered the man. Chariot Industries makes boats too, don’t they?”
Eric twisted his mouth around. “I don’t actually know.”
Nina put on a pair of green Chanel sunglasses and looked over the rims. “You should probably learn the business you’re going to head, Eric.”
Eric just ignored Nina and sidled around the mess to retrieve the box of clothes anyway.
“I really am a fucking masochist,” he muttered as he carried it to the others. Because he would take it home. He’d offer it to the woman at whose feet he’d lay the fucking world. Give her whatever he could because he couldn’t offer what he—and she—truly wanted: himself.
But as much as Jane’s luscious lips and sharp tongue made his chest ache with want, Carson’s threats were always there.
Ten days in that dungeon.
Alone.
Hurting.
By the end of it, Eric had barely remembered his own name, much less what he had done to deserve it. At this point, it didn’t matter anymore. He would do almost anything to avoid that. And he would do everything to avoid Jane receiving the same fate.
* * *
“Next time it will be her turn,” sneered Jude, his well-groomed face assuming a gargoylish form as the swinging light cast deep shadows across it. He tapped Eric’s face with the knotted rope that now made Eric flinch at just the sight of it. His whole body was on fire and had been for hours.
Please, no, he thought. Not her.
Jude’s face broadened into a wide, nasty grin, and Eric realized he ha
d spoken aloud. Then Jude nodded, Anton drew back his hand, and Eric didn’t think at all for a very long time.
* * *
Eric shook his head. In the week and a half since he’d been dropped off on the Staten Island Ferry, the memories seemed to have gotten worse, rather than better. Just the night before, he’d startled himself awake from a dream. In the room next to his, he could have sworn he’d heard Jane get up.
But no one knocked on his door. And as he began moving his boxes onto a cart to roll up to the street, he had to admit a truth. It hurt that she didn’t care enough to come in. But it was better that way too.
Part Two
Aposiopesis
Oh, kiss me, sweet nymph,
With thy poisoned lips,
With ruby’s red shade that cuts to the quick.
Oh, Dido, cry out,
Hysteria’s spout
Trapped not by deed, but words that you shout.
Oh, save me, sweet sprite
With thy hair like the night,
Like Diana, so fierce, so eager to fight.
I’d fly to the mark,
Without liquor or spark,
It’s thy light that saves me from oppressive dark.
“Memory”
—from the journal of Eric de Vries
Twelve
I sat up on my bed and blew at the bright purple polish on my toes. What had that lecture said again? Divorce law wasn’t my strong suit. Never had been.
The question on my computer’s screen flickered like a strobe light, waiting for my response. I really needed to stop staring at my computer.
I closed my eyes to focus. Profiting from matrimonial disgrace was really Skylar’s area, not mine. I hadn’t thought about this stuff since law school, and going through these questions for hours a day was making my brain bleed from boredom. I blew again, inhaled the fumes from the polish, then opened my eyes with triumph before I clicked on the correct answer.
The Kiss Plot: Book Two of the Quicksilver Trilogy Page 13
