Property of a Noblewoman

by Danielle Steel

  She wrote again after the fact, spoke in somewhat vague terms about the Germans in Italy, and that her new husband had been able, with high connections, to obtain an Italian passport for her, since they were married, which she had to use now, instead of her American one, since Italy and America were at war. She mentioned traveling through Switzerland on a diplomatic train to Rome, and then to Naples. “So now I am Italian and a countess,” she said almost playfully in another letter that had begun with “My Darling Angel.” She said that she was happy with her new husband, who was wonderful to her. She mentioned their supplies being rationed, how much she loved his home, and that the German Oberführer for the area came to visit them from time to time, and her husband felt it was wisest for them to be polite and entertain him, although they didn’t agree with his point of view or his politics.

  In July of the following year, the Allies were bombing Rome, and she wrote how frightening that must have been for the residents of the city. And Umberto wouldn’t take her to Rome anymore. A week later, in the same letter, which she continued on a different day, she spoke of the Italian government falling, and of their surrender to the Allies in September, the Germans occupying Rome again three days later. And in October, the Allies entered Naples, and the Italians joined the Allied Forces. And they had entertained the American commanding officer in their home. She said that he had been surprised to discover that the countess was an American. She mentioned various events of the war, and bombings that continued into the following year, which was 1944. She had been in Europe and married for almost two years by then.

  As she continued to read, it was clear to Jane that the letters had in fact been written by Marguerite. And through each letter was woven the thread of how much she loved her husband, and she spoke of how much she loved and missed her “darling angel.” The count had promised her that after the war, they would go to New York and reclaim her. She seemed to believe it was a certainty that that would happen, and she could not wait until that day.

  There was a heartbreaking letter several years after that, written in 1949, which made it clear that they had gone to New York, consulted a lawyer, and attempted to reclaim the child – and had been fiercely rebuffed and attacked by Marguerite’s parents. The birth certificate they had manipulated falsely for her child in 1942 when she was born would have proved difficult to discredit. They had threatened to claim that Marguerite and Umberto were Nazi sympathizers, which would not have gone well in court. And in another heart-wrenching letter, Marguerite lamented not even being able to see her when they were in New York. The lawyer they had consulted had advised them that they had no hope of reclaiming the child, or even seeing her, and suggested they contact her directly when she reached eighteen. There was nothing more he or anyone could do. Marguerite’s parents had blocked them at every turn. They had told her that everyone thought she was dead and they wanted it to stay that way. They had buried her alive and kept her child from her.

  And a letter farther down the stack, written in the summer of 1960, indicated that Marguerite had tried to follow the attorney’s advice, or intended to. She had gone to New York to see her daughter and tell her the real story of her birth, and who her mother really was. Marguerite had followed her on the street unseen, for several days, bowled over by how beautiful she was, and how happy she looked. And she realized with an aching, broken heart that to tell her the truth would rob her of the only identity she knew, and the legitimacy she believed was hers, and would have replaced it with scandal, shame, and confusion. All Marguerite had to offer her was illegitimacy and disgrace. And in the end, Marguerite had gone back to Italy without contacting her, or making herself known to her daughter. It felt wrong to her to shatter the peaceful, secure world she lived in, the respectable identity she believed was hers, and force herself on her, a mother she never knew was her own. The letters Marguerite had written after that were deeply depressed, for a long time. She had lived for the opportunity to see her daughter, and make contact with her, waiting patiently to do so for many years, when she turned eighteen, only to realize that what would have been a joy for her might be a shocking tragedy to her daughter.

  Five years later she wrote of her husband’s sudden death of a heart attack while he played racquetball, which left Marguerite alone in the world again, without the pillar of comfort and protection she had relied on for twenty-three years since she was a young girl herself. She had explained again and again over the years that having another child would have seemed like a betrayal to her, having been forced to relinquish her first one. She always said that Umberto wanted children, and had none of his own, but Marguerite felt she couldn’t do it. It was unthinkable to have another child while she still mourned her firstborn. And at forty-one, she found herself without child or husband.

  After that, she spoke of the difficulties of maintaining their estate after his death, the money they had spent in the years before. She spoke of his extreme generosity to her, and for the first time mentioned the many gifts of jewelry that she said she was saving for her daughter, when they would be reunited one day, which she still hoped would happen when her “darling angel” was older, and the truth about her birth would be less traumatic for her. And without being able to see her daughter, Marguerite never returned to the States after her fruitless visit in 1960.

  She sold their home in Naples in 1974, nine years after Umberto’s death, when she could simply no longer afford to keep the castello, and could no longer bear being there without him. The money she got from the sale allowed her to move to Rome, to an apartment, where she had apparently lived carefully for twenty years, until she became alarmed by her dwindling funds. She had lived frugally in Rome for all those years, having sold the horses, cars, and property. Umberto had had some other properties, which she had sold too. He had left her everything when he died.

  She talked about trips Umberto had taken her on, to Paris, where he had given her magnificent gifts. And throughout her letters, whenever she mentioned one of her husband’s gifts to her, she declared her intention to give them to her daughter one day. But she had still been so young at the time that it probably hadn’t seemed necessary to do anything serious and legal about it yet.

  Her letters became sadder when she got older. She wrote them less often, and seemed to have given up hope of ever meeting her only child. She mentioned that Fiona had written to her when her “darling angel” got married, and again, many years later, when her son was born. Marguerite was nearly sixty by then, and still living in Rome. She had no desire to visit the States, or have any contact with her family. The only person she wanted to see was her daughter, which she considered impossible by then. The letters made that clear. She was still convinced that her sudden appearance in her daughter’s life, after so long, would be nearly impossible to explain, and would only disrupt her life and make her unhappy. In Marguerite’s view, the moment had come and gone, and would only cause her daughter to suffer, which was the last thing she wanted, so she never contacted her, even as an adult. She believed it was too late.

  She wrote sadly of leaving Rome in the letters, which by now she no longer had any intention of sending to her daughter. They were a kind of diary she had kept over the years, of major events and landmarks in her life. She wrote to her daughter as though she was still a child. And when she left Rome to move back to New York, she felt as though she was leaving the only country that had been home to her. But at seventy, she expressed a need to go back to her roots, and believed she could live less expensively in a small apartment in New York. She spoke of that intention, and then of the apartment she had gotten, and of selling two pieces of jewelry, which she would be able to live off of for some time. She appeared to live a small, frugal life, careful of every penny she spent. There were no frills. Her fire seemed to have gone out by then, along with all hope of ever seeing or meeting her daughter. Her life was in the past. She spoke of Umberto often, nostalgic about the glorious years they had shared. And in one of her last letters
, she said that she was going to write a will, leaving all her jewelry to her only child. She said that with the exception of the two rings she had sold, she had kept all of it, as souvenirs of Umberto’s love for her, and the only gifts she had to leave her daughter.

  Her last letters became rambling, writing about the past, her bitter regrets about being forced to give up her child, the happy life she had shared with Umberto, and the deep love they had for each other. But throughout, Jane had the sense that there had always been a dark shadow over her, the absence of her child.

  She wrote of going to Paris with Umberto in her last two letters, as though they were recent trips, and Jane realized that dementia had set in by then. They were dated four years earlier, and her handwriting appeared to be shaky. She referred to her daughter as though she were a little girl, and wondered where she went to school. It was sad watching her decline in the letters, and sensing how lonely and alone she was. She seemed to live surrounded by her memories of people who were no longer with her. She appeared to be slowly losing her grip on life. But the one thing that was clear throughout was how much she had loved her daughter, and although she had never gotten around to writing the will she talked about for many years, it was equally clear that she had intended to leave the jewelry to her daughter, as the only objects of value she had. She herself was well aware that it was no substitute for the years that had been stolen from them. She never actually mentioned her daughter by name, but it was obvious that she viewed her daughter as her only heir. And in the last letter, she wrote again, for the first time in many years, about going to see her daughter, meeting her at last, and trying to explain to her what had happened, and why she had never come back or contacted her. It tormented her till the very end.

  There were tears rolling down Jane’s cheeks when she finished the last letter. Marguerite had painted a portrait of lost love, and a mother who had been robbed of her child, and had never stopped loving her for an instant. The only open question now was who that daughter was. There was no name, nothing to go on, no clue as to who or where she was. And given the age of her daughter, it was possible that her only heir might no longer even be alive.

  Jane went back to Harriet’s office at the end of the day with a heavy heart.

  “Find anything?” Harriet asked her expectantly. She was hoping for a handwritten will, slipped between the pages of the letters, that had previously gone unnoticed.

  “Lots,” Jane said sadly. “I think she had a daughter she gave up at eighteen, before she left for Europe. She never saw her again. She tried to regain custody of her seven years later, and her parents stopped her. There was something about a falsified birth certificate that named Marguerite’s parents as the child’s parents. She was going to contact her at eighteen, and went to New York to see her, and changed her mind, afraid to disrupt the daughter’s life. She never saw her again, or tried to contact her. She makes it clear that she saved the jewelry for her, and intended to write a will to that effect, but she never did. The dementia had already set in, at the end of the letters – she was in her late eighties by then. I have no idea who the daughter is – she is never named in the letters, and I don’t know where she is. She may not even live in New York anymore, or she could be dead. She would be in her seventies now herself. The story is just so sad. There’s a whole life in those letters, but nothing we can use to find her only heir.”

  “Let’s just hope she saw one of our notices and contacts us.” But it seemed unlikely to both of them. The trail was cold, and the child Marguerite Pearson had given up and referred to for more than seventy years as her “darling angel” was impossible to find without a name.

  It was all Jane could think of as she took the subway to Alex’s apartment that night after work. Alex had a date, and Jane was going to work on her final paper that she still needed to finish for graduation. But the words “darling angel” kept dancing in front of her eyes as she sat at her computer screen. Jane couldn’t imagine anything more painful than Marguerite giving up her child. No matter how much she and Umberto had loved each other, it was the absence of her daughter that had colored Marguerite’s life, and explained the tragic look in her eyes in some of the photographs. And all the jewelry she had saved for her, for so many years, was going to auction now, into the hands of strangers, instead of to Marguerite’s child. It was one of those terrible injustices and ironies of life.

  Chapter 13

  PHILLIP TOOK THE Air France flight to Paris that left New York just before midnight, and was scheduled to arrive at Charles de Gaulle by noon, local time. It would give him a late start to his day by the time he arrived in the city probably around two, after he got his luggage, went through immigration, and caught a cab for the hour’s drive into town. But he would still have time for several appointments before the end of the working day. He preferred the night flight, where he could sleep on the plane for five or six hours, and arrive in good shape. It was the one he always took when Christie’s sent him to Paris once or twice a year, or more, for important sales there.

  The plane took off on time, and he ate a quick snack of cheese and fruit, and skipped the rest of the meal, although the food was always good. Other passengers preferred getting all the perks they were offered, but a serious meal after midnight was less appealing to him than sleep. And he settled down under a blanket with a pillow an hour after they took off. The pilot had said the flight would take six and a half hours, half an hour longer than usual, due to heavy winds. Phillip was asleep before the plane set out over the Atlantic north of Boston.

  He slept soundly until the announcement that they were beginning their descent toward Charles de Gaulle Airport in Roissy, and would land in thirty minutes. He had just enough time for a cup of coffee and a croissant, and to brush his teeth, comb his hair, and shave before they arrived, and was back in his seat looking presentable and rested in time to land. It was gray and rainy, and he didn’t mind. He loved coming to Paris, whether for jewelry or art, and he was planning to visit some of his old pals from the art department when he went to London after the Paris sale. But he had work to do in Paris in the meantime.

  He caught a cab easily after he cleared immigration, and told the driver in halting French to take him to the Four Seasons on the Avenue George V. Christie’s always paid for comfortable accommodations, and after walking past the spectacular flowers in the lobby, the room he was given was pleasant and pretty. He showered, and was at the Christie’s office on the Avenue Matignon just after three o’clock. The Magnificent Jewel sale, including Marie-Antoinette’s historic jewelry, was scheduled for the following night, and his Paris counterpart, Gilles de Marigny, roughly the same age as Phillip, said that interest in the sale was high, and they had a lot of telephone bids on their books already, and every important museum in Europe had come to see the royal jewels, and would be bidding on them.

  They talked business for a little while, and about politics at the Mother House in New York, and then Phillip went to the exhibition rooms to see the lots on display. It was a very impressive sale, and made him think of Marguerite’s jewels again. He didn’t have time to call the archives department at Cartier until six o’clock. They were happy to report to him that they had made good progress on his inquiry, and had found the records of the eight pieces he had asked about, and working drawings for many of them, except those that had been purchased at the store and not been made to order for her. They said they would be happy to show him the files and working drawings the next day, which was the day of the Christie’s sale, when he knew he couldn’t get away, so he made an appointment for the day after. He was looking very pleased when he got off the phone. He then placed a call to Van Cleef and Arpels, but the person he hoped to see, who was in charge of their archives, was out of the country and not expected to return for two weeks. But they promised to send him copies of everything they found in their records about the pieces Umberto had bought from them.

  Details of the provenance and even working drawings th
at Christie’s could include in the catalog would be very beneficial to the sale, especially for serious jewelry collectors who wanted to know everything possible in an item’s history, both about the person who owned them, and about the creation of the piece.

  “Good news?” Gilles asked him as he walked into the office Phillip was using for his brief stay.

  “I think so. We just got a very interesting estate sale from the court in New York. An abandoned safe deposit box in a bank, which contained a fortune in magnificent jewelry given to its owner while she was married to an Italian count. Some beautiful pieces. Cartier has most of the drawings in their archives – eight of the items were purchased from them in the forties and fifties. There are twenty-two lots in all. We’re putting them in the May sale.”

  “Sounds like a good one,” Gilles said pleasantly. He had a pretty young wife and three children whom Phillip had met on earlier trips to Paris, but they had no time to socialize on this trip right before such an important sale.

  “I hope it will be,” Phillip said about the Pignelli sale, and then they looked over the bids for the next day that clients had placed as absentee buyers, and there would be many more on the phone and in the room. The sale was expected to bring in millions of euros and important buyers from all over the world.

  Phillip left the Christie’s office at eight, and walked back toward the hotel, then decided to keep on walking for a while. The Eiffel Tower was lit up, and there was a hint of spring in the air. He sat down at a small, busy bistro and ordered a glass of wine and a light meal, and got back to the hotel at ten o’clock, after watching the people and enjoying the atmosphere of Paris. He always loved it here. It was the most beautiful city in the world.