Property of a Noblewoman

by Danielle Steel

  “Of course not. She’s been very helpful. I’ve only seen her twice at the bank,” he said, brushing his mother off, but she had an odd feeling that she was on to something.

  “Sometimes that’s enough.” She smiled directly at him, not wanting to tell him her own suspicions about her parents lying about Marguerite. “Anyway, see what she’d be willing to let you have. I’d like to see all the photographs if I could.” She was very definite about it, which made him curious. He knew her well too.

  “Is there some deeper reason?” he asked candidly.

  “No. I just have strong feelings about this woman, of sympathy and compassion. She must have been so lonely, and it’s amazing that she held on to the jewelry for all this time. It must have meant a great deal to her, or the man who gave it to her. It seems like a powerful love story somehow.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it that way. The jewels are just very beautiful, and worth a great deal of money,” Phillip said honestly.

  “I’ll bet that’s not why she hung on to them, or she would have sold them long ago, particularly if she needed money.” Her circumstances sounded so sad when Phillip had told his mother about her. And now, like him and Jane, Valerie was haunted by her. That much made sense to him.

  “Are you at all intrigued by the coincidence of your maiden names?” It wasn’t a loaded question, just a direct one.

  “Not really, although I suppose that could be some kind of bond.” She looked vague as she said it, and then got up to take their teacups into the kitchen, and turned the conversation to something else. She hoped that her request would be fruitful and the young clerk he had mentioned would give him copies of the photographs. She didn’t dare bring it up again, or alert him to what she wanted to know. She wasn’t even certain what she was looking for, since she had never seen a picture of her oldest sister, but she hoped there might be some kind of clue, if they were related somehow. You never knew. And she had felt compelled to ask. She had thought of nothing else since the day before. And Winnie’s vehement denial of the possibilities she had proposed to her only made her want to know more. She wanted to actually see Marguerite di San Pignelli now, in the only way she could, in the contents of the safe deposit box.

  The next morning, before meeting Jane for lunch, Phillip sent an email to Cartier in Paris, to inquire about their archives. He knew that they saved working drawings of all the pieces they made, particularly the ones for important people, or unusually beautiful orders that had been placed. Cartier prided themselves on their archives. And he explained that Christie’s would be selling several of their more important pieces from the 1940s and 1950s, which had belonged to the Countess di San Pignelli. He gave them Umberto’s name as well, and said he believed that they had lived in Naples and Rome between 1942 and 1965, from when Marguerite had arrived in Europe until her husband died. He doubted that any of the pieces had been commissioned after that. And he said he wanted to know everything about them, who they had been commissioned by, when, and for what reason. The original prices would have been interesting to know too, although they would bear no relation to their current value. And the origin of the stones would be helpful to them too. Anything that Cartier could provide would enhance the catalog and create further interest in the sale. He asked them to email any available information, and said he would also be in Paris in late March for an important jewelry sale being run out of Christie’s Paris office. He said he would be happy to meet with the director of their archives at that time.

  He sent a similar email to Van Cleef and Arpels, and had enough time to return a few calls, before Jane arrived. He was finishing his last call, to make an appointment for an appraisal, just as Jane was walking through the impressive lobby, with three-story ceilings and a huge mural, and getting in the elevator to meet him in the jewelry department on the sixth floor. She was a little awestruck when she arrived. She had expected it to be an ordinary office building, and Rockefeller Center was anything but that. It had been home to Christie’s for eighteen years. A young woman in a simple black suit and a string of pearls called Phillip in his office and told him that there was a Miss Willoughby waiting for him in the reception area. Phillip smiled and left his desk instantly.

  He came out to meet her, happy to see her, and escorted her back to his office, which was handsome and had an enormous desk.

  “So this is where you organize all those important jewelry sales,” Jane said with a soft smile. It made it all seem very real suddenly being there.

  “Some of them. I don’t make the decisions here, I just implement them. And we have offices all over the world.” He told her about the upcoming Paris sale then. Some of Marie-Antoinette’s jewelry was going to be auctioned off by a family that had owned it since the Revolution. They had offered to sell it to a museum, but they wouldn’t pay enough, so it was going to a public auction, along with other important pieces, many of them historical. Paris had seemed like the right venue for the sale. There were often equally important sales in London, and some in Geneva, but New York was the venue for most of their important sales. He explained to Jane that whatever the location, there would be people bidding on the phone, and in the room, from around the world.

  “It’s very exciting, especially when the bidding gets hot, and there are several active bidders determined to get the same item. That’s when the price goes sky high. It all depends on how badly someone wants it. Jewelry is very emotional, but the really big prices are in art. That’s not just about passion, it’s about business and investment. Art is perceived as a better investment than jewels. But things can get pretty heated at our jewelry auctions too. The Elizabeth Taylor sale in 2011 went right through the roof. It was the highest total for any collection we’ve ever achieved before or after. There was a lot of mystique to the woman and her jewels. There are only a handful of people who create that kind of excitement and demand, like the Duchess of Windsor. You could sell one of her handkerchiefs and make a fortune.” He smiled at Jane as he explained. “I had just started here, and was still in the art department during the Elizabeth Taylor sale. We sold a number of her paintings too. She had some fabulous art, most of it given to her by Richard Burton. It was a tumultuous relationship, but he was very generous with her. She was the kind of woman who inspired that. Even the sale of her clothing brought in a huge amount, as though women felt that if they could wear some item of her wardrobe, they could ‘be’ her, or inspire the same kind of love and passion she did. It’s all part of the magic of an auction, which is why we want to make Marguerite di San Pignelli’s sale as personal as we can. The provenance, and who owned it previously, is very important to a lot of buyers.” Jane was riveted by what he had said. He made auctions sound almost magical. It was all new to her.

  “I’d love to come to the sale,” she said softly, as he led her out of his office.

  “I told you, you can sit in the room if you like, or with me at the phones and hear what’s happening with the bidding. It can get pretty crazy, especially at these big prices.” They were still working on the estimates they were going to put on the pieces, but the final results were always hard to predict – it all depended on how much a buyer wanted a piece, or better yet two or several buyers, determined to get an item at any price, to create a bidding war. The seller and the auction house always hoped for that, and the bidder who ultimately prevailed, no matter what the cost. Phillip would love Marguerite’s pieces to draw that kind of interest, and the more they could put in the catalog to add to the excitement, mystique, and hype, the better it would be for the sale. And even though the sale was only to benefit the state of New York, Phillip’s innate professionalism made him want the results to be exceptional. The pieces they were selling deserved it.

  He explained all of it to Jane as they went through the lobby, left the building, and walked two blocks to the restaurant. It was a tiny place, but cozy, pretty, and warm. He had asked for a quiet table, and Jane settled back against the banquette and smiled at him. Everythi
ng he had told her had been interesting, and had helped to put her at ease with him. This was obviously not a date, and Alex had been right, she had nothing to feel guilty about. This was all about the upcoming sale that they were both involved in. She felt foolish now for having been worried about it.

  “So how did you spend your weekend?” he asked.

  “I went to the movies with a friend,” Jane said benignly. “And did some review work for the bar exam, and worked on my final paper.”

  “That doesn’t sound like fun,” he said, looking sympathetic. She seemed like a serious person, and he admired her for what she was doing, and had done very well, with the Pignelli estate. “What kind of law do you want to go into?” he asked with interest.

  “Family law. Child advocacy. While parents are battling in a divorce, sometimes people forget what’s best for the child. All these tug-of-war arrangements, joint custody where a child switches homes on alternate nights, or every few days, or flip-flops week by week so both parents feel they’re ‘winning,’ can screw the kids over in the end. I want to start there, in a family law firm, and see where it takes me after that. Foster care, working with indigent kids. There are a lot of possibilities.”

  “So you’re not interested in estate or tax law?” he asked, smiling at her.

  “Hell, no!” she said, and laughed. “I can’t think of anything worse. This case has been really interesting, but everything else I did at the surrogate’s court has been tedious and depressing.” After she ordered cheese soufflé, and he ordered confit de canard, Jane asked, “What about you? What did you do this weekend?”

  “I spent the weekend with my mistress,” he said matter-of-factly, and Jane looked startled.

  “That’s nice,” she said, trying to be open-minded about it, but it confirmed that this was definitely not a date. So much for Alex, and what she’d thought. And he looked innocent as he smiled across the table at Jane.

  “She’s a thirty-foot, classic forty-year-old sailboat I keep on Long Island. She eats up all my money, and takes all my energy and concentration, and I spend every weekend taking care of her. I think that’s pretty much what a mistress does. And being with her is pure joy. I can’t stay away from her, much to the dismay of every woman I’ve ever gone out with. Her name is Sallie. Maybe you’d like to meet her sometime, when the weather gets warmer. It’s a little chilly on Long Island Sound right now.” Not that he cared. He went out on her no matter what the weather, winter or summer. Jane could see the love in his eyes, and she laughed.

  “A boat is stiff competition for most women, more so than any mistress. My father keeps a sailboat on Lake Michigan. My mother says it’s the only rival she’s ever had. I used to sail with him every weekend when I was a kid.” She didn’t tell him that her father’s boat was three times the size of his. “His boat is the love of his life.”

  “Sweet Sallie is mine,” Phillip confessed proudly, without apology or shame. He thought it best to be honest right from the first.

  “I’d love to see her sometime,” Jane said easily. “I went to sailing camp for three summers in Maine when I was a kid. I was kind of a tomboy since I have no siblings and my father taught me to sail. Then I discovered high heels and makeup in high school and kind of lost interest in sailing. But I still go out on the boat with him sometimes when I go home. My mother hates it, so he always wants me to sail with him.”

  “Sallie has broken up most of my relationships,” he said with a slightly sheepish look. “How has your parents’ marriage survived? Or are they divorced?” He was learning about her, and he liked what he’d heard so far.

  “No, they’re together. I think they came to a compromise years ago. My father doesn’t ask her to sail with him anymore, and she doesn’t expect him to go skiing with her. My mom was a champion ski racer in college, and won a bronze in the Olympics, downhill racing. She still loves it, and he hates skiing, so they each do what they like to do. And they expected me to learn both, but I’m not in my mom’s league on the slopes. She skis the French Alps and goes helicopter skiing in Canada every year.”

  “My mother is an artist, and she’s pretty good, very good, in fact. I can’t draw a straight line. My father was an art history professor, so I take after him. I’ve always been passionate about art, and boats.” He smiled.

  “I feel that way about the law,” she said as they ate their lunch, “and championing the cause of the underdog. And I’m passionate about protecting kids. I worked for a legal coalition for inner-city kids in Detroit during the summers when I was in college, and I was a paralegal at the ACLU before I went to law school. I finally decided to stop horsing around and get my degree. It’s been a rugged three years. The surrogate’s court has been pretty uneventful compared to all that, until now. All you get to do is dispose of the belongings of people who had no one to leave them to, never thought about it, or didn’t care, and settle disputes between greedy relatives who weren’t interested in the person when they were alive. It’s not very happy work. I couldn’t do this for the rest of my life. I barely made it through the last three months. And I have kind of an unfriendly boss. I guess you get cynical and sour dealing with this kind of thing all the time, and I think she has an unhappy life. She’s never been married, and she lives with her sick mom. I think she’s a very lonely woman. She’s been nicer to me lately, but we got off to a bad start.” Harriet seemed to have more confidence in her since the Pignelli estate, but Jane could never imagine their being friends, or even having lunch together at work. Harriet kept her distance at all times and remained aloof. Jane had the feeling that Harriet had no life, other than work, and caring for her mother, at night and on the weekends.

  “As I told you, I’ve been unhappy, assigned to the jewelry department,” Phillip said. “All I wanted was to get back to art. But I have to admit, this sale has made it more interesting for me. Something about it touched me.” So did meeting her, which he didn’t say. He didn’t want to sound stupid or soft, or scare her off. But Jane was very real and genuine, which appealed to him, almost as much as Marguerite’s estate and the woman who had owned the jewels, and he liked talking to her.

  They chatted easily during lunch, exchanging experiences in their respective fields, and personal views on a variety of subjects, including relationships, travel, and sports. He told her how much he had enjoyed his trips to Hong Kong for work, and that now, as superficial as he had found jewelry in the beginning, and the people who bought and sold it, he had become intrigued by all things jade. It represented infinite mystery to him, and he said it was an area of expertise that few people understood and did well. And then he remembered his mother’s request.

  “This probably sounds silly, but my mother has become totally enthralled by and wrapped up in what I’ve told her about Marguerite, and the sale. Maybe she feels some tie to her because they had the same maiden name, although they’re not related. But as an artist, she has a very creative mind, and is always interested in the hidden aspects of things. She has an amazing imagination, and a kind heart. She asked if she could see copies of all the photographs in the safe deposit box, just to get a feeling for her. She thought it might inspire a painting, not necessarily of Marguerite herself, but maybe someone like her. It’s hard to understand how artists work sometimes. She wanted to see the photographs not just of her, but also of Umberto, and even the ones of them at parties, all the pictures that we looked at.” It didn’t sound outlandish to Jane, and she thought his mother sounded like an interesting woman.

  “Do you think she’d want to see the pictures of the little girl?” They still didn’t know who she was, or what relation she’d been to Marguerite, if any, and they didn’t know her name.

  “Why not? It’s part of the mystery surrounding her,” he said simply, and Jane nodded, thinking about how to fulfill his request. “Do you want me to return the ones I have, and then you can send me the complete file, or should I get these copied and give them back to you another time?”

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bsp; “Why don’t I take these now? I have to ask my boss about giving you copies,” she said, pensive for a minute. “Would it be all right if I told her you wanted to see them all again for the sale, for a last, comprehensive look? I think if I say it’s for your mother, she would balk, but if they’re for you, the sale, or the catalog, she won’t hesitate, and then I can send you the entire file, and you can copy them for your mom. I don’t see anything wrong with that.” He nodded and agreed with her, pleased. “I’ll ask her when I go back to the office. I have all of them on my computer, I just want to ask her permission to send them to you, so I don’t get in trouble later. She’s been giving me a free hand with it. But I’ve been doing it according to the rules.”

  “If you send them to me in an email, I can print them up for my mother. She’s not a computer person. It would probably take a year for her to open the files.” They both smiled and she said her own mother wasn’t good with computers either, as he gave her back the photographs he had. Computer skills were not of their parents’ generation, particularly his mother who was considerably older than her parents, and old enough to be her grandmother, or even his, since she had been so much older when he was born. But he said that she was younger in spirit and had more energy than anyone he knew of his own age. “She has a sister who’s only four years older and acts like she’s a hundred. It’s hard to believe she’s almost the same age as my mom – they seem generations apart. I guess it’s all in your outlook on life, and how connected you stay to the world. I don’t think my aunt Winnie ever was. My mother says their parents were like that too, stuffy and old-fashioned and rigidly stuck in their ways and antiquated points of view. My mother is entirely different, fortunately. I never knew my grandparents, but I take her word for it, if they were anything like my aunt. My maternal grandmother died before I was born, and my grandfather when I was a year old.” And then he startled Jane by saying that he’d like to see her again sometime, maybe for dinner. He said he’d had a great time at lunch with her, and she said that she had too.