Praise for The Long-Lost Jules
“A remarkable story. Jane Hughes has taken captivating characters on an intriguing journey. There’s international flair. A fascinating glimpse of history. Strong and powerful forces vie with each other to plunge the reader into a vivid, complex, and often dangerous world.”
—EUGENIA LOVETT WEST, author of Firewall and Sarah’s War
“An absorbing and entertaining look at the worlds of English history and international money laundering, wrapped up in a long-unsolved mystery and an intense but unusual love story.”
—IRIS MITLIN LAV, author of A Wife in Bangkok
“I absolutely raced through this book; I loved the blend of historical mystery with modern-day thriller and wonderful characters! I tried to predict the twists and turns but just when I thought I had got it, something else came along to send the story down another direction. The back-and-forth deception and banter between Leo and Amy reminded me of a Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn movie.”
—ELISABETH HOBBES, best-selling author of The Secret Agent
“In The Long-Lost Jules, Jane Elizabeth Hughes has created an enthralling page-turner of a novel about international finance and money laundering that skips from England across the continent and back again. The relationship between private banker Amy and Oxford don Leo is especially engaging. This is a delight to read!”
—AMES SHELDON, author of Eleanor’s Wars, Don’t Put the Boats Away, and Lemons in the Garden of Love
“The Long-Lost Jules takes readers on a wonderful thrill ride through a fascinating historical mystery. A real page-turner, this book will make you laugh out loud; go breathless with suspense; and smile at the sweetness as a woman discovers her ability to love and care.”
—NINA GODIWALLA, best-selling author of Suits: A Woman on Wall Street
“A historical mystery brings a dashing Oxford don to mousy Amy. What follows is the slow and delicious unveiling of these intrepid characters doing their best to conceal their true natures while traipsing across Europe following their cross-over agendas.”
—MAREN COOPER, author of A Better Next
THE
LONG-LOST
JULES
Copyright © 2021 Jane Elizabeth Hughes
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Published by SparkPress, a BookSparks imprint,
A division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC
Phoenix, Arizona, USA, 85007
www.gosparkpress.com
Published 2021
Printed in the United States of America
Print ISBN: 978-1-68463-089-9
E-ISBN: 978-1-68463-090-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021903615
Formatting by Katherine Lloyd, The DESK
All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For Jerry, my best friend and husband of over four decades—and it’s getting better all the time. I could never have done this without your patience, love, and support.
Chapter 1
A shadow fell across the table where I sat, devouring a scone and a novel with equal satisfaction. Frowning and shading my eyes against the watery London sun, I looked up to see a tall, dark stranger gazing down at me.
“Hey, Jules!” the stranger said. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”
Jules! What on earth?
With some regret—this was an interesting distraction—I shrugged my shoulders and turned back to my book. “Sorry,” I said. “You have the wrong person.”
He gestured to the empty chair across the table from me. “May I?”
“Sorry,” I repeated, falling back on all-purpose Brit-speak for I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t want to talk to you. “You must have mistaken me for someone else.”
He hovered uncomfortably between a standing position and a ready-to-sit position, and I eyed him with a mixture of amusement and curiosity.
“Um . . . I can’t believe I finally tracked you down,” he said, shifting from foot to foot and trying, unsuccessfully, to look as if he had never expected an invitation to sit. “It’s such a pleasure to actually meet you.”
“Sorry, but you have the wrong person.” I tried again. “I’m not Jules.”
He shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, now lapsing into Brit-speak for You are totally wrong, but I’m too polite to say it. “But . . . well, the thing is . . . well, I believe you are Juliette Mary Seymour, and I’ve been searching for you for months. You covered your tracks very well, Jules!”
I sighed. “My name is Amy, actually, and I’ve never heard of Juliette whoever. I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to be back in my office in fifteen minutes, and I’d like to finish reading this chapter.”
He glanced at my book, a John le Carré classic, and raised his eyebrows.
I held my patience. “Look, whatever your name is, you have distracted me from my problems at work for a few minutes, and I appreciate that. But I’m not the person you’re looking for, and I’d like to finish my coffee in peace.”
“Oh? What are—sorry, I don’t mean to pry—but what are your problems at work?”
“I work with a lot of sorority-ish mean girls, and they . . .” I stopped short; why on earth was I unburdening myself to this stranger?
“And are they mean to you, Jules?” He seemed genuinely interested, but I steeled myself against it.
“Sorry, I’m trying not to be rude,” I said. “But I really have to go.”
“The thing is . . . um . . . I do apologize for bothering you . . .” Now I saw that his body was tense and coiled, like a panther that has finally cornered its prey and is determined not to let it escape. It was body language that was strangely at odds with his hesitant speech. “You see, I’m Leo Schlumberger, and I’m a historian at Oxford.”
A historian! That was the last thing I had expected. He looked more like a Mafia boss than an academic. He was tall and strongly built, with snapping black eyes and a dark five-o’clock shadow that probably appeared fifteen minutes after he shaved. His hair too was black, cut carelessly and curling against the back of his tanned neck. He wasn’t quite handsome—his features were too strong for that—but his looks were compelling. I tended to like easygoing, laid-back men—definitely not stammering Brits who apologized every other sentence.
“A historian? And why are you looking for this Jules?”
“Sorry,” he said. “That story is much too long for the remainder of your coffee break. Um . . . may I buy you dinner tonight?”
Despite my curiosity, I reminded myself that I was not the girl he was looking for. “No,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Perhaps we should stop apologizing to each other,” he suggested, and, despite myself, I smiled. “Tomorrow night, then?”
“Sss . . . no. Thank you.”
He muttered something under his breath, but it was too low for me to decipher. The language wasn’t English, though, and my curiosity sharpened.
“Really, Jules,” he said.
“Stop calling me that!”
“Sorry—Amy. The truth is, I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to find you, and it’s quite important that we—”
As his tone became more urgent, the Britishness slipped, and I heard traces of a more exotic accent in his voice.
Time to end this, I thought. I pushed my chair back from the ta
ble and stood up. “Goodbye, then,” I tossed over my shoulder as I turned to flee. “Sorry I couldn’t help you.”
“Hey, Jules!” he called after me, and I paused to look back. “It was great to finally meet you!”
Without another backward glance, I hurried away.
I was slightly out of breath when I got back to my office, having half jogged the ten blocks from the café. There were many cafés much closer to my building, but then I would run the risk of seeing one of the PYTs (my pretty-young-thing coworkers)—and having them see me eat. Frantically brushing off the telltale crumbs from my scone, I scurried back to my desk and turned on my computer.
“Amy! You missed a call from Sheikh Abdullah,” said Kristen R., queen bee of the PYTs. “He wants you to arrange a trip for his granddaughters to the Dubai Atlantis.”
I grimaced. As a private banker at Atlantic Bank in London, I was supposed to be managing the wealth of one, fairly minor, branch of the al-Saud family from Saudi Arabia. On paper, my job was to place their billions of dollars in conservative investments to preserve those billions for the generations to come, so that no grandson or great-grandson ever had to lift a finger in honest labor. In reality, the family treated me more like a combination of butler and poodle walker, calling on me to handle everything from buying them a new private jet to finding a masseuse for their horses.
Now, apparently, I was a travel agent.
“Which granddaughters?” I asked resignedly.
Kristen R. shrugged.
Kristen P. looked at me. “Amy, is that jam on your collar?”
I knew that the idea of eating anything sugary was horrifying in the PYTs’ eyes; it was akin to drinking Diet Coke (only for fat people, they agreed) or eating white bread (only for the unwashed masses). I brushed at the spot, but it stuck to my fingers and settled more deeply into my silk blouse. Damn!
The Kristens exchanged arch glances while I thought of all the clever quips I could have made if I hadn’t sworn to play nicely and keep this job. At all costs.
Kristen R. opened the Tupperware container on her desk and pulled it toward her. “Want some of my broccoli sprigs?” she offered. “I’m so full from that quinoa yesterday that I can’t eat a thing.”
I shook my head. I would rather eat the bark off a tree, I thought.
Kristen P. said, “No, thanks. I had a couple of bean sprouts earlier, and I have a hot-yoga session after work today.”
The two Matts joined in the conversation, discussing the merits of hot yoga versus spin yoga versus vinyasa yoga, and I tuned out. My coworkers were all in their mid- to late twenties, thin as rails, appalled by any foods other than tofu and sprouts, and obsessed with extreme exercise. The head of our office, Audrey Chiu, was a size negative zero, with tiny wrists and a child’s hips. She never ate lunch (or breakfast, or dinner, as far as I could tell), so no one else in the office ate either.
At thirty-four, I was the granny of the group, obsessed with scones and clotted cream. I exercised only because I absolutely had to if I wanted to keep eating. Since lunch was frowned upon and snacks were unthinkable at my office, I was usually hungry enough to gnaw off my arm by the time I got home at night—hence the hike to a café distant enough that I wouldn’t be caught eating by one of my colleagues who had stopped in for a chai tea.
In fact, I could tell that my teammates often wondered why Audrey had hired me. Not only was I older than the other vice presidents; I was also cut from a very different mold. To a man (or woman), they had all attended American or British prep schools, Ivy League or Oxbridge colleges, and Harvard Business School (or “the B-school,” as they called it, as if it were the only one). All were tall, blond, and genetically thin. I was small, with auburn hair, and slim only because of my grim hour on the treadmill every morning. Even more appalling, I had attended a huge public university, mainly so I could sit in the back of the massive amphitheater and doze while my hand, on autopilot, scribbled notes. Lecturing, someone had once said, was when information passed from the notes of the lecturer to the notes of the student, without passing through the mind of either one in between.
That was my education.
And, this being an American bank, many of my colleagues were from the wealthiest enclaves of New York and New England, while I had grown up all over the world. My playgrounds were Moscow and Amman, Riyadh and Kiev; my schools were whatever American school happened to be convenient to my father’s current dwelling.
I turned back to my computer, my stomach already growling. Damn that man for interrupting me before I finished my scone! I emailed our in-house travel expert and asked for assistance on the sheikh’s request; then, putting on my meek, demure mask, I called the sheikh to tell him that I was on the job (one of the many frustrations of living to serve the man was his dislike of email).
Then I drew a deep breath. Glancing around cautiously, I pulled up Google and typed in Leo Schlumberger.
Chapter 2
Surprisingly, there was a historian named Leo Schlumberger at Oxford, and his picture did resemble the man who had accosted me at the café. But all I could find were quite impressive academic credentials and a list of publications. Good grief! That tough-looking man specialized in the queens of Tudor England! How very unexpected. His last published work was an article on the near hagiography of Queen Katherine Parr. I pressed my lips together, trying to remember what “hagiography” meant (practically conferring sainthood on the subject, Google explained helpfully) and which one Katherine Parr was.
I couldn’t find any information about his personal life, though (why was he looking for a woman named Jules?), so I closed down Google and composed an email to my friend Rosie for help. Rosie was a computer search genius who probably could have made billions hacking into banks like mine but instead chose to use her talents at a gray metal government desk in Washington, DC. Go figure.
Hey, Rosalie,
Just met a very interesting man called Leo Schlumberger (I think). Says he’s a historian at Oxford, though he’s clearly a lunatic because he kept insisting I was Jules somebody, but still . . . Check it out for me?
Nothing else happening here. The Kristens caught me with jam on my collar and shared a broccoli sprig for lunch. I miss the Corner Bakery’s almond croissants so much!
Love ya,
Ames
Decisively, I clicked “shut down” and closed the lid of my computer. The Kristens and the Matts were organizing a trivia night at the pub after their yoga and spin classes. Matt S. sent me a dubious glance. “Amy, would you like to join us at spin?”
“Thanks, but no. I have plans,” I lied.
A palpable sigh of relief ran through the group. Aside from being uncool, I was known to be pathetically unathletic, incapable of keeping up with the PYTs at their various gym pursuits.
It was Friday, which meant Friday Fun Facts at the weekly meeting. Audrey announced, “Today’s fun fact question is, if you could be any TV or movie character you wanted, who would you be?”
“Cinderella!” cried Kristen P., dimpling.
“Ariel!” said Kristen R., whose blond hair had a slightly reddish tinge.
“Jake the Pirate!” One of the Jakes.
“Elsa!”
Dear God, I thought.
“Rapunzel!” The Kristen with hair down to her waist.
“Prince Eric!” The Jake who had a crush on Kristen R.
I shrank back into my seat, hoping no one would realize I hadn’t participated. I tried never to participate in the Friday Fun Facts, and usually no one cared enough to call me out.
But . . . “How about you, Amy?” asked one of the Matts, who had wanted to be Scrooge McDuck.
“Uh . . . Dora,” I said, without thinking.
Blank stares all around. “Dora?” Audrey asked. “Dora who?”
“Dora the Explorer. You know, with Backpack and Map?”
My voice sounded thin and scared, like a little girl’s. I bit my lip, hating the whole stupid business.
I thought of the years with my father. “Uh, no,” I stammered. “I don’t speak any foreign languages, and it’s so hard . . .” I let my voice trail away.
“Ohh-kaay, then,” Audrey said. “Let’s move on.”
So it was with a huge sigh of relief that I gathered up my things and left at the end of the day.
It was unusually warm for September in London, so I opted to walk home. My banker’s salary was just high enough to finance a tiny little flat in Knightsbridge, a few blocks from Harrods. The single room was barely large enough for a pullout sofa, dresser, and doll-size kitchen, but the location was fabulous. As I strolled along the busy streets, dodging chic foreigners and the occasional English matron (identified by her sturdy shoes), I mused on my strange encounter.
Where was he from? His accent was intriguing but impossible to place; at first I had thought mid-Atlantic, with traces of American in his British, but then, at the end, I suspected something more Mediterranean, or even Middle Eastern. Perhaps he was Mossad, chasing after my chubby little sheikh? No, that was too obvious. Turkish? Ooh, maybe French Foreign Legion? Did that even exist anymore?
And what about Jules? How on earth had he connected me to this mystery woman? I recalled how his eyes had flicked dismissively over my uncurvy body in its gray banker’s pantsuit when I stood up to leave. He wasn’t interested in me; he was interested in Jules—who probably didn’t have glasses and hair skimmed back into a ponytail and dull clothes. Probably Jules amused herself with heli-skiing and exotic travel and dressed in either French couture or fascinating, clever, ironic clothing from Notting Hill boutiques.
As I opened the door, my iPhone pinged with a new message, and I glanced eagerly at it to see Rosie’s response to my email.
Ames,
Your Leo is quite the man of interest! He’s French-Israeli [I was half-right! I gloated] and definitely a scholar of Tudor England. Grew up all over the place. Went to college at Harvard and then PhD at Oxford. What did he want?
The Long-Lost Jules Page 1
