The Cherbourg Jewels (The Cherbourg Saga)

by Jenni Wiltz

Once he’d gotten over the shock and the pain, he’d realized how tragic a mistake he had almost made. What if he’d married Amanda? What if she got her hooks into his family? Never again, he thought. I will never sacrifice my father’s empire for the sake of a woman.

  He would have to marry someday, if only to perpetuate the Cherbourg name. But when the time came, in his late thirties he assumed, he’d select a willing young bride from the legions of Upper East Side debutantes presented in New York. He planned to whisk her home to San Francisco, where she’d bear his children and sit on the board of as many charities as he could wrangle, all while wearing a tidy strand of pearls and taking care to keep her hair the perfect shade of ash blonde. He never wanted to be asked about money, or lack of it, and he never wanted to feel the pain that came along with realizing he came second to a pile of dead presidents.

  He picked up the file folder the red-coated woman had left for him. It held a copy of her resume and letters of recommendation. Her credentials were impeccable, but something about her made him feel ill at ease. He closed his eyes and pictured her and tried to put his finger on it.

  Her clothes were cheap but serviceable. She wore no jewelry to speak of. But her body…just thinking about it made Sébastien smile. Those luscious curves were visible even under her coat. From her rounded calves to her plump posterior and full, high breasts, she was a beautiful woman, no doubt about it.

  But none of that was what made him nervous. No, he realized, it was her—or, to be more precise, the way she had looked at him. Her pale face, dappled with a sprinkle of freckles just beneath her eyes, had actually looked frightened at times. Her gray-blue eyes, the color of the bay on a stormy day, held onto that fear so tightly it never went away, not even when she snapped at him. Despite the cleverly applied makeup, she looked young and afraid.

  What did she have to be frightened of? With credentials like hers, she had to know he’d be an idiot not to hire her. Anything she was feeling had to result from a personal fear rather than a professional one. But she couldn’t possibly be frightened of him. They’d never met until this morning.

  He placed her file folder in his briefcase and made a mental note to contact Jake Grodin about it later. Perhaps his private investigator could dig up some more information and find out what the devil had her running scared. If she’d set out to con him, she’d find out just how unprepared for the job she really was—and then he’d give her something to be scared of.

  He looked back out his floor-to-ceiling window and smiled. That was the one thing his money could always buy—security. Anyone who thought they could take advantage of him would get eaten alive, either by his fleet of private investigators or his fleet of flesh-eating lawyers.

  Sébastien picked up her resume and smiled. “You can’t hide from me, Ella Wilcox. No one can.”

  Chapter Two

  The air in the vault was hot and sticky. Ella had been working for twelve hours straight and her blouse was soaked through with sweat.

  Sébastien had been as good as his word—he’d arranged for a car to take her from the Cherbourg Tower to her office and then to Joyeuse, his mansion in Russian Hill. She’d gotten the key to the vault from the estate manager, Yves, and set up shop about 11 o’clock that morning. With just her loupe, her digital camera and her laptop, she’d gotten through about one-third of the Cherbourg family jewels.

  She’d seen an emerald and diamond tiara that was undoubtedly Russian in provenance, and a sapphire brooch that looked suspiciously like something that used to belong to the Shah of Iran. Sébastien’s grandmother, Annaliese Cherbourg, had been a notorious admirer of beautiful jewels and her deceased husband had circled the earth to buy them for her.

  So far, Ella hadn’t found anything illegal, let alone anything that linked the Cherbourgs to the stones that had disappeared from her father’s workshop. Even though she had more than half of the vault to go through, it was already past 11 o’clock in the evening. She would have to work fast if she were going to meet her self-imposed 24-hour deadline and search the Cherbourg collection for evidence.

  The jewels were stored in their original padded velvet boxes, stacked on stainless steel shelves arranged against each wall. She worked as quickly and as methodically as she could, cataloguing each piece with a photo, an appraisal and a rubber stamp on the piece’s existing paperwork. If the receipt and certificate of provenance were from a reliable vendor, such as Harry Winston or Van Cleef & Arpels, she bypassed it almost immediately. For jewels without such documentation, however, her job became much more difficult.

  First she had to search the jewel in order to find the craftsman’s insignia, usually stamped or carved into the back of the frame. Then she had to cross-reference it with her online catalogue and try and match the jewel to a published listing of the artist’s work. If the piece had no signature, she was up a creek—it was up to her to analyze the stones, the metal and the style and then form an opinion about the jewel’s origins.

  Sometimes she had helpful clues, like the true “pigeon’s blood” red color of a Burmese ruby. Other times, she found herself stumped, wishing she had more than 24 hours. Given a few days, she could uncover much more, but in a few hours, she had no time for exhaustive research. What’s worse, none of the stones she’d seen in unmarked pieces matched the photographs she still carried with her—photographs from her father’s workshop, taken a week before the robbery.

  Ella replaced a domed necklace case on the steel shelf and leaned against it wearily. She could feel beads of sweat pooling between and under her breasts. Her body ached as if she’d been beaten up by a playground bully. “Twelve hours and not a thing,” she groaned aloud.

  It had never occurred to her that the Cherbourgs weren’t involved, somehow, in her father’s murder. Frederick Wilcox had been the best jewelry restoration specialist in the Bay Area. At the time of the robbery, he’d just gotten a big write-up in the Chronicle for the restoration of a Romanov prince’s family heirlooms. San Francisco was filled with the sons and daughters of Russian émigrés who fled the revolution; her father had always loved seeing the treasured jewels their parents and grandparents had brought with them from Russia. He labored for hours to re-set loose stones and make paste copies of stones that had been lost. He believed jewels were pieces of fire and light, and their beauty never ceased to amaze him.

  “Jewels are a collection of memories,” he’d told her. “When you look at a diamond necklace or a ruby ring, you’ll always remember what you did when you wore it, who gave it to you and why. Now imagine wearing something a hundred years old, or even two hundred. Imagine how many people lived and loved while wearing it. The stone holds onto all of it. When you wear it, you’ll feel them. If you ever feel lonely, little one, just slip one of these on.” Here, he’d handed her one of his Victorian rings, a gold band set with an amethyst and a tourmaline. “You’ll never be alone, not with all the memories to keep you company.”

  Her father’s words could still get to her, even eighteen years later.

  Ella bent her head and blinked back tears. “But I wanted you to keep me company, Dad.” Immediately, she began to think of all the things they never got the chance to do. He never met her at the finish line of her high school cross country races. She never had to explain why she came home late after a first date. She never got to wave to him in the audience as she graduated from high school and then college. It wasn’t fair. All her friends got to do those things. Why didn’t she?

  Ella reached for the fine golden chain at her neck; it dipped deep below her blouse’s neckline, holding her parents’ wedding rings against her heart. Her mother had died of cancer when she was three. The shop had been robbed and her father shot to death five years later.

  No matter how many times she tried, she could never erase the terrible memory of that night: the angry shouts, the sight of a masked man pulling a gun on her father, the explosion of red droplets that pelted her when the man shot her father in the chest. He’d collapsed
to the floor and died in her arms as she cried and smoothed his hair, begging him not to leave her alone in the world.

  The robbers had taken everything of value in the shop, tossing every jewel on her father’s workbenches into a sack and fleeing into the night. The police had never been able to solve the crime and they’d never located any of the stolen jewels.

  Neither she nor the cops could prove it, but both Ella and the investigating officer had a theory. They believed that since the stones didn’t show up on the black market, they must have gone straight into a private collection. It was the most logical explanation, but it still made her sick to think of some society woman like Annaliese Cherbourg draped in the jewels her father had given his life for. Ella had no idea what she would do if she ever found one of the jewels from her father’s workshop, but she knew she had to keep looking.

  A tear slipped down her cheek and she brushed it away. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, she commanded. You’ll never find anything if you sit here and cry all night.

  She took a deep breath and brought her parents’ wedding rings to her lips. “I’m still trying,” she whispered. “Don’t give up on me.”

  *

  It was two hours later and just after one o’clock a.m. when she found it. On the fourteenth row of boxes, three down from the top, she pulled out a small velvet container. Cushioned on the blue satin interior lay a small brooch, oval in shape with a baroque pearl drop. Unusual for a piece of fine jewelry, the main stone was an uncut ruby. Uncut stones were usually found in ethnic, natural or hippie-inspired jewelry—not attached to baroque pearls.

  Ella reached for her loupe and took a closer look at the stone. She’d always loved the dusty rose color of uncut rubies. They reminded her of a painted desert or faded rose, very lush and romantic. But when she saw the magnified stone, she gasped and almost dropped the brooch.

  She’d seen that stone before.

  Not visible to the naked eye, the stone was actually a star ruby, with imperfections called rutile needles that made it look like a star was frozen beneath the gem’s surface. Most star rubies had six rays, but this stone had twelve.

  Twelve-star rubies were exceedingly rare. Ella could still hear her father’s voice describing the unique stone. “See here, Ellie?” he’d said, pointing with a needle at the striations. “That’s called asterism, where a mineral called titanium dioxide forms thin lines within the stone that look like a star.”

  Looking down at the Cherbourg brooch, she knew she was seeing the exact same stone her father had pointed out to her years ago. “I found it, Dad,” she breathed, closing her fist over the brooch. “Now what?”

  “‘Now what’ what?” a deep voice behind her asked.

  Ella shrieked and jumped. The brooch tumbled out of her hands and fell to the floor. She picked it up hurriedly, brushing it off and replacing it in the velvet box. “You scared me,” she said, knowing she was blushing but unable to do anything about it.

  Sébastien’s face was hard and unforgiving, like a stone chiseled from the granite mountains of the Pyrenees. He wore the same slacks and white dress shirt he had earlier, minus the suit jacket. “Are we on schedule, Ms. Wilcox?”

  Ella felt her thoughts scatter in all directions. “Y-yes,” she stuttered, hoping he would just go away and let her keep working in peace.

  “What have you got there?” He bent over her to look at the jewel. “I don’t remember ever seeing that one before.”

  She was acutely conscious of his towering gaze. From his vantage point, he could definitely see down her shirt. She pinched the neck of her blouse closed. “D-did your mother ever wear it?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Do you know when your family acquired it?”

  “Ms. Wilcox,” he said, stepping back and placing one hand high up on the shelf. “I hope we’re not going to have a problem here. Your job is to tell the museum my family didn’t steal this jewelry. Are you really going to waste our time and quiz me on how often my mother wore any of these things?”

  “No, there’s no problem,” she lied. “I’m just trying to be thorough.”

  “Be fast, not thorough.”

  Anger flared in her chest. How dare he order her around? Just because he was rich didn’t mean he could control her.

  “I’ll work as quickly as I can,” she said, “but the museum expects my work to be of a certain quality and I intend to give it to them.”

  Sébastien’s green eyes flashed with fury. “I don’t care what you intend,” he snarled. “I want the job finished and you out of my house by sunrise. Do I make myself clear?”

  Ella clamped her lips shut to keep from making a sarcastic reply. As he retreated outside the vault, she glared over her shoulder at him. “Would it have killed you to offer me some water?”

  From halfway down the hall, his voice came booming back at her. “I’m disappointed in you, Ms. Wilcox. I thought you knew how to ask for what you wanted.”

  Even though he couldn’t see it, Ella performed an angry salute. Then she turned back to her work, more aware than ever of how little time she had.

  *

  Sébastien left the vault and went upstairs to the kitchen where he found his housekeeper, Gertrude Müller. A grey-haired drill sergeant, she ran Joyeuse as if she were in charge of a military incursion. She bossed around everyone as if the house were her own, including Sébastien, his mother, the valet, the cook, their personal physician, and the rest of the staff.

  Ordinarily, he would never have allowed anyone on his payroll to talk back to him, but he knew how hard it was to find people who could tolerate this family. His mother was absent-minded and strong-willed, a dangerous combination. The various aunts, uncles and cousins who drifted by from time to time would have walked out with the silver had Frau Müller not taken it upon herself to manage everyone in the house with a will of iron. With never a hair out of place or a button unbuttoned, Frau Müller viewed life as black and white: her way or the highway.

  “Frau Müller,” he said.

  Gertrude was making her final rounds before taking to her room for the night. Despite the very late hour, she was still dressed in a plain black housedress with a gray cable-knit cardigan buttoned over it. She adjusted her iron-rimmed glasses before speaking. “Yes, sir?”

  “I want you to take a tray down to the vault. The girl the museum sent over is finishing up her appraisal for the exhibition on Saturday. I just checked on her and she appeared very…hot.”

  Frau Müller raised a steely grey eyebrow.

  “Overheated,” he snapped. “You know what I meant.”

  He stayed in the kitchen long enough to see Gertrude nod, then retreated upstairs to his suite. He wasn’t accustomed to blushing but he could feel his cheeks color beneath his daily accumulation of stubble.

  Hot was exactly what he’d meant, in more ways than one. Without the cheap, bulky jacket, Ms. Wilcox was indeed as he’d pictured her: soft and curvy, rounded in all the right places. He’d watched her bend over to pick up the fallen brooch, eyeing the lush curve of her rear and the way her tight jeans clung to her body. Her cream-colored blouse, soaked through with sweat, had revealed a generous bosom with pert pink nipples he’d been able to see through her thin bra. Despite the heat, he’d noticed, her nipples had perked right up as soon as she’d seen him.

  This is the last thing I need, he thought, trying to calm the rush of blood that occurred when he pictured her hardened nipples. She’ll finish her job and she’ll go away. Desirable or not, she was salivating over that brooch. Like all the rest of them, she just wants my money.

  He tried to comfort himself by replaying the scene in the vault over and over again, looking for the greed in her eyes as she visually devoured his mother’s brooch. But just like in his office, something wasn’t right. It wasn’t greed, he finally realized. It was the fear again. She was hiding something…but what?

  Sébastien unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it onto the back of a chair. He
stripped off his shoes, slacks and underwear, more than ready to slip into bed and get some sleep. He’d put so much effort into this exhibition that he hardly had enough energy to fantasize about having a woman in his bed, let alone procuring a real one. There was no shortage of willing women among the city’s society belles and hangers-on, but no matter how many of them he escorted, he always felt he was missing something. They soothed his body and stroked his ego, but nothing they said or did made him feel any better about himself.

  Briefly, an image of Ella Wilcox flashed through his mind. He dismissed it. Yes, she was attractive—more than attractive, actually—but she had a job to do. Besides, with the strange way she’d looked at his mother’s brooch, he wasn’t totally sure she wouldn’t make off with it when she was done.

  Sébastien sighed. Greedy museum contractors were just one more thing a Cherbourg always had to be wary of. But it was too late to do anything more about the girl tonight. Let her finish her chores and be escorted off the premises in the morning. Then he’d figure out what, if anything, she’d stolen. He had her address from her resume. If anything was missing, he’d have her arrested so fast her head would spin.

  This exhibition will go off without a hitch, he vowed. If I have to move heaven and earth to make it happen.

  Chapter Three

  Ella had just finished inspecting the fifteenth row of stacked jewelry boxes when she heard footsteps echoing in the hallway. They were coming towards her. Immediately, she pictured Sébastien coming back to prod her onward or ask why she wasn’t finished yet.

  I’ll never finish if you don’t leave me alone, she thought. Ella set her lips in a snarl and spun to face him.

  But it wasn’t Sébastien. It was a short, older woman with grey hair twisted into a bun. She wore thin wire-rimmed glasses that made her brown eyes look bigger than they were. She held a tray of refreshments, including a glass of water and small pot of tea.

  “Sébastien said you’d like something to drink,” the woman said, setting the tray down inside the vault on one of the stainless steel shelves. “I’ve brought you some water and some Earl Grey tea.”