Property of a Noblewoman

by Danielle Steel

  “Maybe I should cancel,” Jane said as they left the restaurant, still uneasy about the lunch. “Maybe my boss wouldn’t like me having lunch with a guy from Christie’s.”

  “If you cancel, I’ll kill you. Go. He sounds nice. And it’s none of your boss’s business who you have lunch with. It’ll be good for your ego.” John certainly wasn’t, Alex thought, but didn’t say. He had been ignoring Jane most of the time for months, and took her for granted, and that wasn’t new. Alex didn’t like the way he spoke to Jane at times, although she never seemed to notice. Alex thought he was arrogant and dismissive and full of himself. And Jane seemed to think that was okay. “You’re not doing anything wrong,” she reminded Jane again. “Have some fun for a change.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Jane said, unconvinced, but she was going. She liked him and was flattered by the invitation, whatever his motivation. “He probably just wants to talk about the sale,” she said to reassure herself.

  “Exactly,” Alex said, trying to encourage her so she wouldn’t feel so guilty. “Just remember, it’s a business lunch. Then it won’t seem scary.”

  “He wouldn’t ask me otherwise,” Jane said, sure of it now. He probably just wanted to discuss some aspect of the sale.

  “Of course not. You’re ugly, stupid, and boring. He probably feels sorry for you,” her friend said, teasing her, and they both laughed as they got to the movie and bought tickets and then popcorn and Cokes. It was a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon, and now that she’d talked to Alex about it, Jane felt better. Alex didn’t tell her that she was beginning to suspect John was sleeping with Cara, from what Jane had said. He was spending way too much time with her and the group, at the library and coming home at four in the morning or later, and weekends in the Hamptons without Jane. She didn’t want to panic Jane about him, but she was happy Jane was going to lunch with Phillip. It was exactly what she needed. A little male attention in her life from someone new, even if it was just business. And they both forgot about it, as they watched the movie. Alex couldn’t wait to hear how lunch turned out on Monday, and made Jane promise to call her that afternoon.

  While Alex and Jane watched the movie, Valerie went to visit her sister. Winnie’s cold had turned into a sinus infection and bronchitis, and she was miserable. Valerie had promised to buy some groceries for her, and turned up with chicken soup from a nearby deli, and a bag full of fresh fruit, and oranges she was going to squeeze for her.

  Winnie lived on Seventy-ninth Street and Park Avenue, which was a long way from Valerie’s cozy apartment in SoHo. Winnie had lived in the same apartment for thirty years. It was somber looking, filled with dark English antiques, and Valerie always wanted to pull the curtains back to let in the sunlight when she went there, but the tomblike atmosphere suited her sister. She was feeling terrible, and Valerie went to the kitchen to squeeze the oranges for her, and handed her a glass of fresh juice a few minutes later. Winnie had a maid during the week, but no help on the weekends, and she was completely unable to fend for herself. Valerie put the groceries in the fridge, and told her to heat the soup in the microwave later, as Winnie looked at her mournfully. The doctor had given her antibiotics, but she said they weren’t working.

  “Maybe it’s pneumonia. I should get an X-ray next week,” Winnie said nervously.

  “I think you’ll be fine,” Valerie said calmly, and handed her some magazines she’d brought her to distract her.

  “I had a flu shot before Christmas, and a pneumonia shot. I don’t think they worked,” Winnie said, looking panicked. She was going to be seventy-nine on her next birthday, nearly eighty she often said, which frightened her. She was terrified of dying, and went to the doctor all the time.

  She drank the orange juice, and then took a swig of Maalox in case it gave her heartburn. She took a dozen different vitamins every day, and still got sick. Valerie tried not to make fun of her or tease her about it. Winnie took her health very seriously, although her daughter Penny said she was strong as an ox and would outlive them all.

  “So what have you been up to this week?” Valerie asked her, trying to get her mind off her health.

  “Nothing. I’ve been sick,” she said, as they sat down in the little sitting room where Winnie watched TV alone at night. She didn’t go out as often as her sister, had few friends, and no activities that interested her, except playing bridge, twice a week. She was good at it. Valerie thought it was incredibly boring, but didn’t say so. At least it gave her something to do that involved other people.

  “We missed you at the museum party on Thursday night. We had a good table. I took Phillip.” Valerie knew that if she’d gone with Winnie, her sister would have insisted on leaving right after dinner. She hated staying out late, and said she needed her sleep. “Have you talked to Penny?”

  “She never calls me,” Winnie said sourly. Her relationship with her daughter had been strained for years, and she complained that her grandchildren never came to visit. They loved visiting Valerie and exploring her studio, but she never told her older sister, nor the fact that she and Penny had lunch occasionally so she could vent about her mother. Penny’s complaints about her mother were similar to what Valerie had felt about her own. Winnie and their mother were cold women, who always saw the glass as half empty and never half full.

  “Phillip is working on an estate at the moment,” Valerie said to distract her. It was hard coming up with subjects Winnie wouldn’t say something unpleasant about. She was constantly annoyed at something – taxes, or the fees charged by the bank, her losses in the stock market, her rude grandchildren, a neighbor she was feuding with. There was always something. But Phillip’s estate sale seemed like a neutral subject. “The surrogate’s court had him appraise the contents of an abandoned safe deposit box, and they found jewelry in it worth millions. The woman it belonged to died intestate, and no heirs have turned up, so they’re selling it all at Christie’s, for the benefit of the state.”

  “As high as our taxes are, the state doesn’t need millions in jewelry,” Winnie said sourly. “If she had all that jewelry, why didn’t she leave a will?” It seemed stupid to her.

  “Who knows? Maybe she had no one to leave it to. Or maybe she was sick or confused. She was American and had married an Italian count during the war. It’s sort of a romantic story, and a coincidence – her maiden name was Pearson, like ours. And even more so, her first name was Marguerite. Phillip asked if we might be related to her, if she was a cousin or something, but I don’t know of anyone in our family who lived in Italy or married an Italian count. She died seven months ago at ninety-one. Actually,” Valerie said, suddenly looking pensive, “that’s the same age our sister would have been. That’s even weirder.” And as she said it, she felt as though puzzle pieces were slipping into place or cogs in a machine. “I’ve never thought of it, but what if Marguerite didn’t die when we were kids, but moved to Italy and married an Italian count? It would have been just like our parents to disapprove of it, and pretend she had died. Wouldn’t that be amazing?” Valerie said thoughtfully, turning the idea around in her mind, as her older sister looked at her, horrified by what she was saying.

  “Are you insane? Mother never got over her death. She mourned Marguerite, our Marguerite, our sister who died, for the rest of her life. She couldn’t even bear to see a photograph of her, she was so heartbroken, and Daddy forbade us to talk about her.” Valerie remembered it too.

  “She might have been just as heartbroken over her marrying an Italian count. Can you see our parents ever accepting that?” And Valerie had thought it odd that when their mother died, they had found not a single picture of their older sister among their mother’s things. Valerie had always assumed that photographs of her had been put away, but if they were, they had never found them. They had no photographs of their older sister, even as a child, although Winnie claimed she remembered what she looked like, which Valerie seriously doubted. And the idea she had just come up with was fascinating to her, but W
innie looked at her in strong disapproval.

  “Are you trying to convince me or yourself that you’re an heir to that jewelry worth millions that Christie’s is selling? Are you that desperate for money? I thought you still had most of Lawrence’s insurance,” although it certainly wasn’t worth as much as the jewelry that was going to be auctioned. Valerie looked at her as though that was ridiculous, and not simply rude.

  “Of course not. I’m not interested in the money. But the story is intriguing. What was Marguerite’s middle name?”

  “I’m not sure,” Winnie said fiercely, “Mother and Daddy never talked about it.”

  “Was it Wallace? I think that’s the name Phillip mentioned when he asked me.”

  “I’ve never heard that name, and I think you’re getting senile,” Winnie said angrily. She suddenly reminded Valerie more than ever of their mother. There had always been subjects they weren’t allowed to ask about or mention, and their older sister was one of them. They’d been told all the years that they were growing up that their older sister’s death at nineteen was a tragedy that their mother had never recovered from, and they weren’t allowed to bring it up, or anything relating to her. Eventually, it was as though she had never existed. And she’d been so much older than they were that they never knew her. It was as though Marguerite had been their real child, and Winnie and Valerie were the interlopers, unwelcome visitors in their parents’ house, and Valerie even more so than Winnie, since she had been so different from them all her life, just as she was from Winnie now. “How dare you come up with a theory like that, to besmirch our sister’s memory, and dishonor our parents? They were kind, good, loving people, no matter what you choose to say about them now.”

  “I don’t know who your parents were,” Valerie said coolly, looking straight at her. “My parents had ice in their veins, and stone hearts, Dad and particularly our mother, and you know it. She liked you better because you were more like her. You even look like her. But she couldn’t stand me, and you know that too. Dad even apologized to me for it before he died, and said she’d had a hard time ‘accepting’ me, because she was so much older when I was born, which is a poor excuse for the way she treated me. I was forty when Phillip was born, and it was the happiest day of my life, and still is.”

  “Mother was older, and she went through a difficult change of life. She was probably suffering from some form of depression,” Winnie said, always willing to make excuses for her, which Valerie had stopped doing years before. Their mother was a mean woman, and had been a terrible mother, to Valerie certainly, and she was only slightly warmer to Winnie, which Winnie had decided was acceptable. But it wasn’t, by any means, to her younger sister. In fact, although she had been cold to Winnie, which was her style, she had been downright cruel to Valerie at times, in ways she wasn’t to Winnie.

  “She was depressed for my entire life?” Valerie said cynically. “I don’t think so, although it’s a good story. And I think there are some very strange coincidences here. The age of the woman who left the jewelry, the fact that our sister was a forbidden subject, and this woman who became a countess went to Italy around the same time our sister left and died a year later. And what was she doing in Italy during the war? They never told us, and we were never allowed to ask. Don’t you want to know more? What if she’d been alive for all these years, and only died recently? How many Marguerite Pearsons of that age can there be in the world? What if she’s related to us, Winnie? Don’t you want to know?” Valerie suddenly couldn’t tear her mind away from the possibilities, and she wanted answers, but all she could do was guess.

  “You want the jewelry and the money,” Winnie accused her, and Valerie stood up, disgusted with her.

  “If you really think that, you truly don’t know me. But you know me better than that. You’re just afraid to find out what they may have hidden from us. Why? What good are all those taboo subjects now? Who are you protecting? Them or yourself? Are you so frightened that you don’t want to know the truth?”

  “We know the truth. Our sister died of influenza at nineteen while traveling in Italy, and it broke our mother’s heart. What more do you need to know?”

  “There was a war on then, Winnie. What was she doing there? Visiting Mussolini?” It had always seemed odd to Valerie in later years that their sister had been in Italy during the war, with no explanation for why she’d been there. But there was no one left to ask.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care. She’s been dead for seventy-three years. Why would you even think of digging all that up now? And dishonoring our parents? The only reason I can think of is that you want to claim you’re the heir to the jewelry being sold at Christie’s. Did Phillip put you up to this? Is he in on it too?” Winnie said accusingly.

  “Of course not. I told him we weren’t related to her. But suddenly I’m wondering if that’s true. Maybe we are. Maybe she isn’t even a cousin. Maybe that was our sister who married the Italian count. We may never know the truth, but at least at our age, we’re allowed to ask.”

  “And who’s going to tell you the truth? Mother and Father are gone. We have no photographs of her. No one else would know. And I don’t want to know. We have a sister, who, we were told with absolute certainty by our parents, died in 1943. That’s good enough for me. And if you’re not after this money or jewelry that doesn’t belong to us, just let it go.”

  “It’s not about money or jewels. It’s about the truth. We have a right to that. We always did. Our parents cheated us out of love and affection and kindness while we were growing up. And maybe they cheated us out of our sister as well. If she were alive, we could have gone to find her, and met her when we grew up. Maybe she was alive for all that time. And if so, I want to know that now.”

  “You’re always demonizing our parents, and they don’t deserve that. Let their memories rest in peace. What did they ever do to you to deserve this kind of disrespect? They can’t defend themselves now,” Winnie said in a fury.

  “They didn’t love me, Winnie, and you know it. I’m not even sure they loved you, or were capable of it. But I know they didn’t love me. I felt it every day of my life until I left and married Lawrence.” She said it quietly and with enormous strength. It was the core truth of her life.

  “What you’re saying is a lie,” Winnie said, standing to face her and shaking with rage. “Get out of my house!” she shouted at her younger sister, and what Valerie could see in her eyes was fear, raw terror, of a ghost she couldn’t face and everything she didn’t want to know. Valerie nodded, picked up her coat and bag, and walked out without a word. But the voice of truth she was seeking couldn’t be silenced anymore.

  Chapter 8

  PHILLIP SPENT THE weekend on his boat, as he always did. Valerie had plans on Sunday night. She had said she was dining with friends, and he knew she had the occasional suitor, men her age who admired her, usually widowers. But she was never interested in them romantically and treated them as friends. Valerie had made it clear to him several times that the only man she had ever loved, or would love, was his father, which was easy to believe, given how happy they’d been together. Valerie went out with friends, but not on dates.

  Phillip wanted to do some work at home, but he stopped in to see her on the way to his apartment. He called first, and she was back from dinner. She made tea for them after he declined a drink, and she seemed subdued to him, and he asked her if anything was wrong.

  “No, no, I’m fine,” she said quickly, but he wasn’t convinced.

  “What did you do this weekend?” He was always concerned about her, and something in her eyes seemed sad.

  “I went to see Winnie yesterday.”

  “How was that?” He knew how difficult, and aggravating, his aunt could be. He was his cousin Penny’s confidant too. His mother smiled with a small wintry look before she answered.

  “She was Winnie. She’s sick, and she wasn’t in a great mood.” And she’d been in an even worse one when Valerie suggested tha
t their mother had never loved them, and might have lied to them about Marguerite.

  “You’re a saint,” Phillip said with feeling. He avoided his aunt whenever he could. He had given up trying to have a real or decent relationship with her years before.

  They talked about an exhibit of South American artists Valerie had been to during the weekend that she had enjoyed, and another show was coming to the Met that she wanted to see. And then she doubled back to what was on her mind. She didn’t want to say too much about it to him, and tried to sound casual when she brought it up.

  “I was thinking about your big jewelry sale again, the one of the contents of the abandoned safe deposit box. It probably sounds ridiculous, but I’d love to see the photographs you have of Marguerite – in fact, all of them. You said you were going to use a few in the catalog, but I’d really like to see them. You never know how it might inspire me – maybe I’ll get a painting out of it. The story is haunting, and the fact that she wound up so alone, from what must have been a very glamorous life when she was young, and married to the count.” She tried to make it sound artistic and historical, rather than personal, and he looked pensive when she asked.

  “I’ve only got a few of them myself, and I was going to return them to the clerk of the court at lunch tomorrow. I’m sure she’s not supposed to pass around those photographs, the surrogate’s court is responsible for them, and any papers, correspondence, or documents. But the clerk I’ve been dealing with is a very nice woman, she’s a law student, and she might be willing to make copies for you if I ask her. I’ll ask when I return the ones I have tomorrow.” The way he had said it instantly caught Valerie’s attention, although Phillip thought he had sounded very neutral about it. She knew him better.

  “Do I sense some kind of interest there, other than returning photographs to the court?” He was stunned by what she said. It was always as though she could look into his soul. It had seemed almost eerie to him when he was a boy. She always knew what he was up to, as though she could read his mind.