Property of a Noblewoman

by Danielle Steel

  “But Phillip,” Valerie said, her eyes welling up with tears, which overflowed now, “that baby was me. Marguerite was my mother, not my sister, and my grandparents stole me from her, and pretended to be my parents and hated me forever because of the disgrace my birth would have meant to them. I lived a lie all my life, and was robbed of my mother, because of them. Marguerite Pearson di San Pignelli was my mother. I have no idea what to do about it, or who one tells something like that to, or even if it matters at this point. She’s dead.” She felt like an orphan again as she said it, just as she had the day she found out. “But there’s no question. She was my mother. It is the weirdest of coincidences, even more so than we ever thought it could be, or than I thought when I started to wonder if she was my sister. It was like I was meant to find her, when you got called to do that appraisal from Christie’s. She was your grandmother, Phillip. And the mother I never knew, and should have.” The tears spilled down her cheeks and Phillip put his arms around her and held her. He had never seen his mother as bereft except when his father died. Valerie cried softly as he held her.

  “Did you tell Winnie?” he asked her, and she nodded.

  “This time she believed me. She still made excuses for them and said she’s sure they thought they were doing the right thing. But keeping my mother from me all my life, treating me like an unwelcome intruder, banishing their daughter and pretending she was dead, could hardly have felt like the right thing, even to them. Winnie begged me not to make a fuss about it, or even say anything. Originally, she accused me of being after the jewelry, but in a way this is all much more shocking than wanting to be the heir to a fortune in jewelry. It’s a hideous lie propagated by my grandparents, and they must have ruined Marguerite’s life, having stolen her only child from her. And the poor woman died alone.” Valerie dried her tears and looked deeply moved by it, as Phillip thought about what she had just said.

  “I wasn’t thinking about the jewelry, just about what all this meant to your mother, and to you. I agree, it’s an awful story.” But now there was the jewelry to consider too. “The truth is, Mom, you are the heir to the jewelry. You’re her only child. And if that’s true, you should have it.”

  “It belongs to Winnie too – she was her sister. But I really don’t care about the jewelry. It won’t bring my mother back now.”

  “No, but she would want you to have it. I think there’s a reason why she hung on to it for all these years, even when she had so little money left. Either she kept it out of love for Umberto, or she hoped to find you one day and give it to you.”

  “If that were true, she’d have written a will, and she didn’t,” his mother reminded him.

  “You don’t know what she was thinking or what condition she was in, in the end. The simple fact is that these things belonged to her, and you’re her only daughter. I’m not sure what we do now. But there’s a lot more to the story than meets the eye here, other than your grandparents’ terrible behavior. Your mother left a fortune in jewels, and they belong to you.” It was an outcome he had never in his wildest dreams expected, even when he had asked her about the coincidence of maiden names. He had thought Marguerite might be some very distant cousin, but not his maternal grandmother. It was an astounding revelation, for all of them. And they couldn’t let the story lie where it had fallen. Now they had to do the right thing. Phillip didn’t know what that was yet, but he wanted to think about it and make the appropriate decision.

  When he calmed down from the shock of the information his mother had shared with him, he told her about his visits to Cartier and Van Cleef, and what he knew about the jewelry now, and its origins and the meaningful occasions on which it had been given. And he told her about visiting their home, the château, and meeting Saverio Salvatore in Naples, the current owner of the château, what a charming man he had been, and the little he had known about Marguerite and Umberto. It all fit together now, a perfect puzzle, with few pieces missing.

  “I’d like to see it one day,” Valerie said wistfully, about the home where her mother had lived for thirty-two years with the stepfather she had never known. Valerie was slowly acquiring a family she never knew she had, who even posthumously seemed more real to her than the parents she’d grown up with.

  They talked long into the night, eating in the kitchen, and putting all the pieces together as they looked at the photographs again. Valerie admitted to him as they finished the wine that she wanted to do a portrait of her mother from the photographs he’d given her. She seemed to want to cling to her now, like the motherless child she had once been, and heal the tragic losses of the past.

  Phillip was deeply moved by all of it when he left and went home that night. There was so much to think about, about the past, present, and future, and some decision had to be made about the jewelry. And all Phillip could think of was that he had to call Jane in the morning. She probably wouldn’t know any more than he did about what his mother had to do now, but clearly they had to do something. What, remained to be seen.

  Chapter 15

  PHILLIP CALLED JANE the next morning before she had time to take her coat off in her office. He was still at home.

  “How was your trip?” she asked him, obviously happy to hear from him. She had been thinking about him that morning.

  “Very interesting,” he said, feeling distracted and sounding serious. He had been awake most of the night, thinking of what his mother had told him, and what he had to do now to help her. He cut to the chase. “I was wondering if we could have lunch today. I have something I’d like to discuss with you.” Given the tone of his voice, it sounded like business, not romance, and she couldn’t imagine what it was.

  “Sure. Of course. Where would you like me to meet you?” He suggested another restaurant near his office, that wasn’t too noisy, and had good sandwiches, burgers, and salads. He didn’t want to be distracted by fancy food, intrusive waiters, or noisy customers. They agreed to meet at twelve-thirty, and he was already at the table when she got there. He was wearing a blazer and a sweater and gray slacks, and she had dressed casually as well, not expecting to have a lunch date. And she could see from the look in his eyes that he was worried about something.

  They both ordered club sandwiches, and agreed to share a salad, and as soon as the waiter had taken their order, Phillip turned to her, and told her about his trip to Europe, the visits to Van Cleef and Cartier, and the château in Naples. She was touched to hear everything he told her, and then he took a breath and decided to plunge into the deep end and tell her the rest. It was very personal and very moving, but having shared the adventure this far, he thought she ought to know.

  “Jane, my mother has been doing some sleuthing herself, and some amazing information has turned up. As it turns out, there was more than a coincidence of names here. A lot more.” He told her then what Valerie had learned from Fiona and what she had told him the night before, that he hadn’t yet fully absorbed. “It seems incredible and stranger yet that you would just happen to call Christie’s for this appraisal, and it led to my mother discovering the truth about her birth, her mother, and a whole mystery has unraveled right before our eyes. Fact is definitely stranger than fiction. And weirdest of all, my mother turns out to be Marguerite di San Pignelli’s direct heir, and Marguerite is my grandmother. Talk about strange.” He looked bowled over as he said it, and Jane was amazed. As she listened to him tell his mother’s story, the similarity of what she had gleaned from the letters had struck her, and she was stunned. “I’m not sure what we do now, or how we prove to the court that my mother is Marguerite’s rightful heir. She can’t just walk into surrogate’s court and say ‘Hi, she was my mom.’ And since her grandparents faked the birth certificate in some way, claiming her as their own, I don’t suppose that will be easy to prove either. Not to mention the fact that the auction is in two months. I’m sure it will all fall into place in the end, but I’m not sure what the next step is, and I wanted your advice. What do you think?”


  She could hardly find words to answer him for a minute, and then instinctively switched into legal gear. There was no doubt in her mind what he had to do. “You need to call a lawyer, and fast. You can’t sort this out on your own. You need to advise the surrogate’s court that an heir has been located, your mother needs to come forward officially, and then you’ll need to provide proof. How long that will take, what the steps are in the process, or what proof they will require, I don’t know. But a lawyer will. This isn’t my area of expertise. How is your mother taking this, by the way? It must be a terrible shock to discover that the people she thought of as her parents cheated her out of her real mother, and kept them separated from each other all her life. It’s really heartbreaking to hear stories like that. I know it happens, but it must be an awful feeling for her,” Jane said with compassion in her eyes. Marguerite’s poignant story, and his mother’s, had reality for her now and touched her deeply.

  “She’s very upset, and I can’t blame her. She really isn’t thinking about the jewelry at this point, just about the mother she lost, and I gather that her grandmother was never nice to her. She was a very cold woman, and I guess she always held against my mother the circumstances of her birth, unfair as that is. But in spite of all that, we have to deal with the jewelry too. It can’t be sold now that there is a rightful heir, without that heir’s permission, and my mother will have to be legally acknowledged as the heir first. And I have no idea if that will take days or months.” He looked worried about it, and so did Jane.

  “I don’t know either,” she admitted. “The timing of that could be anything, and courts never move quickly, particularly when they’re handling the estates of deceased people who can’t complain about how long it’s taking.” They both smiled at that.

  “I also don’t know if my aunt Edwina is going to make a claim on the estate. Marguerite was her sister, and she may want a part of it too.”

  “You need to call an attorney immediately,” Jane reiterated. “I can get a recommendation if you like,” she offered helpfully.

  “I have someone in mind,” he said quietly.

  “Call them today,” she urged him, as he nodded and paid the check, and then thanked her for listening, and for her good advice. It helped being able to talk to her, and he appreciated it. She was still awestruck that destiny had led her to call Phillip, and that his mother was the child whom Marguerite wrote about in her letters, and had grieved for most of her life. The force of it was overwhelming. “When Harriet had me read the letters in the safe deposit box, I was still hoping to find a will. I didn’t, they were only letters, but the whole story is there. Everything you just told me, from her mother’s side. Leaving the baby she called her ‘darling angel’ in New York, being forced to disappear, arriving in London during the war, meeting the count, marrying and living with him, and attempting to get her child back when she was seven. They did what they could, and were stymied by her parents at every turn. She went back to see her when the child was eighteen, to tell her the whole story, and once she saw her from a distance, she was afraid to disrupt her life and ruin it, and trade her daughter’s respectable life for a scandalous one, and she went back to Italy without seeing her, and eventually just gave up.

  “She wrote letters to her lost daughter for more than seventy years. They were love letters to her child. She never named her, and she always said that she was going to leave the jewelry to her. She was going to write a will, but she obviously never got around to it. And you can tell from her letters that her mind was no longer clear in the end. She was lost in the past. There is nothing in the letters that would provide adequate legal proof, except if your mother can prove that Marguerite is her mother. But it’s all there, the whole sad story from beginning to end, and some sweet times too. She was happy with the count, but the most powerful force in her life was her missing child. I still have the copies of the letters in the file. I’ll scan them for you. It’s a sad story, but it will tell your mother how much her mother loved her during all those years they lost and never had as mother and child.” She could only guess at how much the letters would mean to Phillip’s mother. They were her mother’s voice speaking to her.

  Phillip looked overwhelmed by what she had just said. And it would be an important testimony to give his mother, to know how her mother had felt.

  “I’d be very grateful to you if you sent me the copies of the letters. They might be tough for my mother to read, but maybe healing in a way too. All she knows now is from other people. Hearing it in her mother’s letters would be an incredible gift.”

  “I’m so happy I read them,” Jane said quietly, even if they hadn’t yielded a will, which would have been more useful to him.

  They went out to the street then, both of them a little dazed by what they’d shared. And to distract them both from the heavy emotions of their discovery, he decided to inquire how things were going with her boyfriend, not expecting anything to have changed.

  “Actually,” she said, smiling up at him once they were on the sidewalk outside, “some things happened that changed the situation for me. I moved out. I just moved into my own place in the meat-packing district, and I love it.”

  “Are you still seeing him?” Phillip asked, hoping she wasn’t.

  “No, I’m not,” she said quietly. “He was cheating on me, and I just found out. I should have given up six months ago, when the relationship went sour, but I thought it would work out. It didn’t. And he’s moving back to L.A. with her.” It had been a total bust, as Phillip could deduce, and he hoped it hadn’t been too painful for her. She seemed calm and philosophical about it, and even relieved.

  “Could I invite you for dinner sometime?” he asked her, just as he had before, and this time she nodded and looked pleased.

  “I’d like that a lot,” she said with a warm smile, and he promised to keep her informed about his mother’s situation, and what they would be doing to confirm her as Marguerite’s heir. He had a feeling it would be complicated, and maybe a lengthy process. And she promised to send him the copies of Marguerite’s letters that afternoon. He wanted to copy them, and read them himself. He felt enormous compassion for his mother over what she’d just learned.

  “I’ll call you,” he promised, and after kissing her on the cheek, she wished him luck. He hurried back to his office then to contact his cousin Penny. She was the attorney he had in mind. She worked for a great firm, was a partner herself, and always gave him good advice. He called her as soon as he sat down at his desk, and she walked out of a meeting to talk to him. As cousins and only children, they had always been extremely close. Penny was forty-five years old, and had three teenage children, a thirteen-year-old son, a fifteen-year-old daughter who drove her crazy, and an eighteen-year-old son who was in his last year of high school. They were the grandchildren Winnie complained about constantly to her sister.

  “What’s up? Did you get arrested?” she asked hopefully, and he laughed.

  “Not yet. I’m still working on it. Listen, something has happened, this is a biggie. Can I come down to your office and see you?” She worked on Wall Street, and her specialty was tax and estate law, so this was right up her alley.

  “When were you thinking?”

  “Now? Later? In ten minutes?”

  “Shit, I’m in meetings till six o’clock. If it’s important, I’ll ask my housekeeper to stay late and feed the monsters.”

  “It would be great if you could do that,” he said honestly.

  “See you at six then. You’re not in trouble are you? Tax fraud? Embezzlement?”

  “Thank you for your faith in me,” he said, smiling ruefully.

  “You never know. Crazier things have happened.”

  “Not crazier than what did happen. See you later. And Penny, thank you.”

  “No problem. See you at six.”

  He had three hours to wait until he saw her, and half an hour later Jane scanned Marguerite’s letters to him, and he sat at his desk all afte
rnoon, reading them, as tears streamed down his cheeks. Knowing all he did now, it seemed a tragedy to him that Marguerite had been robbed of her child. Even more so for her than for his mother, who had no idea what she’d missed. Marguerite knew exactly what she’d lost and mourned it all her life.

  The firm Penny worked at had an impressive name and a big reputation, and she had a handsome office. She had been a full partner for several years, and when Phillip walked into her office, she got up to hug him. She was a good-looking redhead, with a great figure, and a husband who was crazy about her.

  She sat back at her desk after hugging him, and he took a seat across from her and told her the whole story. His mother’s secret illegitimate birth, her grandparents claiming her as their own, with a birth certificate that had been doctored and paid for, and falsified at birth that her grandmother was her mother, their “disappearing” their oldest daughter and keeping Valerie from her, and then the coincidence of his doing the appraisal on Marguerite’s intestate estate, his mother’s guesswork, and the information the old nanny had provided her, which appeared to be accurate but was unofficial. He told her about Marguerite’s letters too, which confirmed it all in depth and her own words.

  “So what do we do now, to establish my mother as her mother’s rightful heir?” Penny thought about it for a moment, and jotted some notes on a pad, as she had done during his whole astonishing recital. But as an attorney, nothing surprised her anymore. She had heard far stranger stories, although Phillip’s was remarkable.