Property of a Noblewoman

by Danielle Steel

  They had been unable to have children for the first fifteen years of their marriage, despite many attempts and several miscarriages, and had finally given up and decided that their relationship was so strong and meaningful to both of them that perhaps they would be happier without children, and had finally accepted their inability to have them. And six months later, when his mother turned forty, and his father fifty, she had gotten pregnant with Phillip, and this time the pregnancy went effortlessly to a successful end. They called him their miracle child, doted on him, and included him in the magic circle of their deep affection for each other. He had grown up bathed in the warmth of their love and approval, and every relationship he had as an adult fell short of the generosity of spirit and sheer joy he had seen between his parents, and he wasn’t willing to accept less. And unless he had a relationship like theirs, he had no desire to settle down, and was comfortable alone. Maybe too comfortable.

  His mother had been concerned, for several years now, that his standards were so high, and his idealistic vision of them so strong, that he would wind up alone when no one measured up to his parents’ marriage. He didn’t seem worried about remaining a bachelor and often said that he would prefer to be alone than with a woman who was less than what he wanted. And his mother had suggested to him that he was looking for a female with a halo and wings, which was certainly not who she was. But it was how Phillip viewed her, and he stubbornly refused to tolerate any woman’s flaws. And by now, he liked his own habits. Adjusting to someone else was not his strong suit. As a result, he spent a lot of time alone on his boat, working diligently on it during the weekends. For now, Sweet Sallie was enough for him, or so he claimed. And solitude didn’t scare him. He liked it.

  On Sunday afternoon, after two good days of sailing in bright sun and strong winds, he drove into the city, to have dinner with his mother at her apartment, as he often did on Sunday nights, when neither of them had other plans. She liked to stay busy. She readily admitted that she was a terrible cook, and reminded him regularly of one of her many human failings that he chose to overlook. When he came to the apartment to have dinner, she would go to a nearby delicatessen and buy all the things he liked, and they would sit at her kitchen table, talk about her current work, her next gallery show, his discontent with Christie’s, or anything else of interest to him. She was more like a friend than a mother to him now, was seldom critical of him, made intelligent suggestions, and at seventy-four was the most youthful person he knew, with an open mind, a deep knowledge of art she had always shared with him, and fascinating creative ideas. She was never afraid to tackle difficult or controversial subjects, and sometimes preferred them. Valerie had always encouraged her son to think outside the box and explore new concepts and ideas. She hoped that he would meet a woman who would challenge him, enough to conquer his own fears of winding up with the wrong woman, but so far he never had. She thought his expectations of a woman were unrealistic, but she hadn’t lost hope for him yet, and hoped the right one would come along and shake him up a little. And he was young enough that there was no rush. But she was also well aware that he had gotten set in his ways, and enjoyed his own company too much. Lately, he had gotten lazy about dating. And his obsession with his boat didn’t appeal to many women, as she pointed out to him.

  “Why don’t you go skiing, or take up some sport where you’ll meet women?” she prodded him occasionally, and he just laughed at her. She didn’t like interfering in his life, but was sorry to see him alone, and didn’t want him to stay that way forever.

  “I’m not trying to meet women, Mother. I meet women every day.” The kind who sold the gifts men had given them when the marriage or affair ended, and had little respect or affection for the sentiment behind the gifts. They were only interested in the money they would get from selling them at auction. Or he met women who worked in the other departments at Christie’s, who were sometimes a little too serious for him. He had gone out with one who was extremely knowledgeable about gothic and medieval art, and his mother had thought she seemed like a member of the Addams family when she met her, but didn’t comment. Phillip had come to that conclusion too and stopped seeing her shortly after. He had been without a relationship for a year now, since the last one. And most of his friends were married by now and having first or second children. He preferred women his own age to younger ones, and many of them were married.

  In the meantime, he had Sunday-night dinner with his mother whenever she wasn’t too busy to see him. He enjoyed her company, and they often laughed at the same things. And he always relaxed in the comfortable chaos of her apartment. All her life, she’d had the ability to turn her surroundings into a magical world. She and Phillip’s father never had a lot of money but were comfortable enough and had never lacked for anything; nor had their son. They were satisfied with what they had. Her circumstances had altered considerably three years before, from the insurance policy her husband had left her that she had known nothing about. It had dramatically changed her bank account, but not her life. She still enjoyed doing all the same things, and had never felt deprived by their lack of fortune. She intended to leave most of the insurance money to Phillip one day. She was careful and responsible with it, and hoped it would be useful for him, perhaps to start an art consulting business or a gallery of his own. She had mentioned it to him several times, but he wanted his mother to benefit from the money first. He thought she should travel, enjoy herself, and see the world. But she was too busy painting, and still studying, to venture far from home. “I’m having too much fun to go anywhere!” she would say, laughing at him, with her big bright blue eyes, and nearly unlined face.

  She was still energetic, lively, and beautiful at her age. She was blessed with a youthful look and spirit. It was easy to see why her husband had been in love with her till the end. She was an enchanting woman full of mischief and charm, with a mane of once pale blond hair that was now snow white, and she often wore it loose down her back, as she had all her life.

  By contrast, her older sister by four years, Winnie, was her opposite in every way. They were the yin and yang of life, but best friends nonetheless. While Valerie had never been concerned with the absence of luxury in her life, Edwina, Winnie, had thought of nothing else, and, like their parents, had worried about money and the possible lack of it, since she was a young girl. Born the year after Pearl Harbor, Valerie came into the world on the cusp of a more prosperous time. Winnie was born in 1938, nine years after their family had lost everything in the stock market crash, and she was a child in the years of the Depression and remembered their parents’ constant discussions about money. Their family had had a considerable fortune, and both their parents came from aristocratic ancestors, but lost almost everything they had. Winnie’s answer to their financial insecurity was to marry a young man from a wealthy family, and she had lived in extremely comfortable circumstances all her adult life. And when her husband died ten years before, he had left her a considerable fortune, and she still worried. Valerie had simply never cared about money, and always thought that whatever they had was enough.

  Winnie and Valerie both remembered their father as a kind, though serious and somewhat chilly and austere man. He was a banker and was conservative about money. Losing their fortune had sobered him, and Valerie’s recollection of him was of his being at the office most of the time. And her memories of their mother were of an ice-cold woman, whose approval she could never win, no matter what she did. They had had an older sister who died of influenza in Europe at nineteen, whom Valerie didn’t remember, as she had died a year after Valerie’s birth. Winnie, on the other hand, insisted that she had some vague memories of her, and made excuses for their mother’s coldness by saying she had never recovered from their sister’s death. She would never speak of her first daughter as the younger girls were growing up, and they had rapidly understood that the subject was taboo, it was just too painful for her.

  Winnie had been born when her older sister was fourteen, a
nd her arrival had come as an awkward surprise to her parents, which her mother had grudgingly adjusted to. But Valerie’s birth four years later was simply too much for their mother. She was forty-five years old and seemed embarrassed to have a baby at that age, rather than pleased. Valerie had felt unwelcome in their midst all her life, until she married Lawrence and escaped the family she had nothing in common with. But Winnie was just like them, serious, austere, nervous, humorless, critical, and most of the time cold. She was a dignified woman, always concerned with doing the right thing, but never a warm one. There was nothing spontaneous about her, and she had grown up to be just like her mother. Valerie loved her sister anyway, and had managed to forge a strong bond with her. Valerie spoke to Winnie almost every day, and listened to her complain, often about her daughter Penny, who was more like Valerie than her own mother.

  Penny was an attorney, with three children of her own, who Winnie thought were rude, unruly, and undisciplined, and she had never liked her son-in-law either. Winnie needed an orderly, peaceful life, unlike her younger sister Valerie, who was open to all possibilities and led what Winnie considered a bohemian life, as their mother had said about her too. But Winnie was more tolerant of her than their mother had been. Valerie had never been able to scale the walls her mother built around her, and eventually gave up, long before she died. She had never approved of her youngest daughter and made that clear. And with a husband and child she adored, Valerie had stopped caring about her mother’s disapproval years before. She didn’t miss her when she died, although Winnie had mourned her for years, and spoke of their mother as if she had been a saint. And Valerie understood even less, when she had her own child, how her mother hadn’t been able to view her arrival as an unexpected blessing rather than a curse.

  Valerie’s family had been a mystery to her all her life, even Winnie, of whom she forgave much even now, and she often made jokes about having been switched at birth at the hospital with some other family. The greatest difference between them was that Valerie was a warm, loving person, and her parents and even her sister were ice cold. She thought of it as unfortunate for them, and was grateful that her son had inherited none of their traits. Nor had her niece Penny, who was a very sweet girl and a very successful lawyer. She was ten years older than her cousin Phillip, and they were good friends, more like sister and brother since both were only children, and she often called her aunt Valerie for advice, rather than dealing with Winnie, which was always a no-win for her, in the face of her mother’s criticism of everything she did, including a law degree from Harvard, which her mother thought was inappropriately ambitious for a woman. Penny was a better mother than Winnie claimed. Her philosophies about childrearing were similar to her aunt’s. Winnie was hopelessly old-fashioned in her outlook, whereas Valerie was full of life and always willing to embrace anything new.

  When Phillip arrived for dinner on Sunday night, Valerie was cleaning her brushes and had just finished painting. She was working on a portrait of a woman that had a mystical quality to it, and Phillip stood staring at it for a long time. Valerie had real talent as a painter, her gallery shows got good reviews, and all her pieces sold. She was represented by a respected gallery near her apartment in SoHo. They had lived there for as long as Phillip remembered, long before it became fashionable. And she enjoyed how lively it had become, and all the young people who lived there. She compared it to the Left Bank in Paris.

  “I like your new painting, Mom,” he said admiringly. It was a subtle change from her previous work. She was always pushing herself to grow as an artist, and studying new techniques.

  “I’m not sure where I’m going with it. I had a dream about it the other night. The woman in it has been haunting me. It’s driving me crazy,” she said with a broad smile, looking happy and untroubled. The smell of her paints was heavy in the apartment, it was a familiar part of the artistic ambiance around her, along with the bright fabrics and interesting pieces she and his father had collected over the years, some pre-Columbian, others European antiques, some from India, and a number of paintings and sculptures by her artist friends. His father had thrived on the eclectic people she drew to them, and had enjoyed meeting most of them. He had called it a “modern-day salon,” like those in Paris in the twenties and thirties, or the entourage around Picasso, Matisse, Cocteau, and Hemingway or Sartre. She also collected playwrights and writers, anyone who was steeped in the arts, or creative in some way.

  “I’m sure you’ll solve it,” he said, referring to the painting. She always did. She put a great deal of thought into her work. They chatted easily while she spread out all his favorite food on the kitchen table. One of her greatest joys in life was spoiling him, in whatever way she could, even with a simple dinner in her kitchen. He was touched by the effort she made.

  He complained about the jewelry department at Christie’s again, and she reminded him that it was up to him to make a change, and not just sit there stagnating, waiting for fate to take a hand. And then he told her about the collection of jewels he was going to see that week, and how impressive they appeared to be from the photographs he had seen.

  “Who did they belong to?” she asked with an interested look.

  “Some countess who died penniless with a fortune in jewels, and no heirs,” he said, summing it up for her from the little he knew himself.

  “How sad for her,” Valerie said, sympathetic for a woman she didn’t know, as she pushed her mane of white hair back with a graceful hand, and they sat down to dinner together. And eventually she got around to asking him if he was dating anyone special at the moment. He shook his head.

  “Not since the last one I broke up with almost a year ago. I’ve just had casual dates since then. She hated my boat. I think she was jealous of it.” His mother grinned at what he said.

  “I think I would be too. You spend more time on that boat than with anyone you’ve gone out with. Women are funny about things like that – they expect you to spend time with them too.”

  “Oh, that,” Phillip said, and laughed. “I will spend more time when I meet the right one.” His mother gave him a cynical glance, and he looked sheepish for a minute. “What’s wrong with spending weekends on a sailboat on Long Island Sound?”

  “A lot, in freezing weather in the winter. You have to do other things too, or you’ll wind up alone on that boat forever. I was talking to your aunt Winnie about going to Europe together next summer, by the way,” she said, as she handed him a platter of tomatoes and mozzarella with fresh basil leaves on it. “But she’s not an easy person to travel with,” Valerie said about her older sister.

  “Are you going?” Phillip was curious.

  “I don’t know. I love Winnie, but she worries about everything and complains all the time. And everything is scheduled down to the last second. I like trips to be more free form, and make decisions as I go along. That drives Winnie nuts, and makes her anxious. We have to stick to her schedule at all times. It’s a bit like enlisting in the army. I think I’m getting too old for that,” she said, smiling.

  “Or too young. I wouldn’t enjoy that either. I don’t know how she doesn’t drive you insane.” Phillip had kept his distance from his dour old aunt for years.

  “I love her. That helps make her more tolerable. But traveling in Europe with her might be too much to ask.” She had done it before, but always swore she wouldn’t do it again, and then she did, mostly out of pity for Winnie, who had no one else to travel with. Both women were widowed, but Valerie had a much larger circle of friends, many of them artists, and in a wide variety of ages. Some of her friends were Phillip’s age, and others were even older than she was. Valerie didn’t care about their age as long as they were interesting, intelligent, and fun.

  Phillip left shortly after dinner, and went back to his apartment to catch up on some work. His mother hugged him warmly, and he had a feeling she was going back to work on the painting of the mysterious woman after he left, and he wasn’t wrong. Mother and son kne
w each other well.

  “And good luck with that woman’s estate this week,” she said to him as he was leaving. “It sounds like her jewels would make an impressive auction, particularly if you tell something about her story in the catalog.” She was right, of course, along with using photographs of the countess wearing some of the pieces, if they had any. It would certainly be more interesting than the heading that the jewelry was being sold by the surrogate’s court of New York, which they would have to say too.

  “Property of a Noblewoman,” he said to his mother, quoting a typical catalog description, and she smiled.

  “I like the sound of it already. Good luck,” she said, and kissed him.

  “Thanks, Mom. I’ll call you, thanks for dinner.”

  “Any time,” she said, and hugged him again, and a moment later he left. And just as he had suspected, the moment the door closed behind him, she went back to work. She was determined to get further insight into the woman she was painting. Maybe the subject of her canvas was a noblewoman too, she thought to herself, and smiled again. Her work always had a certain mystery to it, and told a story, but sometimes it took her a while to figure out what it was.

  Chapter 5

  JANE ARRIVED AT the bank before Phillip on Tuesday morning. It was pouring rain, her umbrella had turned inside out as soon as she left the subway, and she was soaked. She felt like a drowned rat. He looked no better when he arrived. He had forgotten his umbrella in the cab he had taken from Christie’s, and he was ten minutes late. Traffic had been awful.

  She saw him glancing around the lobby of the bank when he got there, trying to figure out who she was. She was talking to Hal Baker, and had spotted Phillip immediately in a dark suit and a Burberry raincoat. She noticed how tall he was and how businesslike he appeared. He looked more like a banker than an auctioneer. She had forgotten that he would be doing an auction immediately after. She was wearing boots and a down coat that had soaked the water up like a sponge, and black jeans and a heavy sweater. It was windy and cold outside despite the rain. Spring seemed like it was an eternity away, and New York was chilly, wet, and gray.