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"Well, Miss St. James, how much for thepainting?”
"It’s not for sale,”shesaid.
"Everything is for sale. Name your price, I’llpayit.”
"This painting ispriceless.”
He scoffed. "Priceless? I refuse to believe it means anything to you. You don’t even know who he is, do you? Besides, your card iswrong.”
"I disagree,” she said. "My assistant is very thorough in her research. The painting is clearly marked 1938 and the artist is undoubtedly AnthonyDevas.”
"That’s not what’s incorrect. The subject of the painting is the problem. He’s not an ‘unknown man.’ I know that because Iknowhim.”
"Youknowhim?”
"His name is Malcolm Arthur Augustus Fitzroy, thirteenth Earl ofGodwick.”
Mona covered her mouth with her fingers, silencing her gasp. Finally. At last. She knew his name. Malcolm Arthur Augustus Fitzroy. The Earl ofGodwick.
"You know this forcertain?”
"I know this for certain,” themansaid.
"How?”
He turned and looked at her directly in the face. He had a commanding air to him. Commanding and powerful. A man used to havinghisway.
"Because my name is Spencer Arthur Malcolm Fitzroy, and I’m the fifteenth Earl of Godwick. That ‘unknown’ man on your wall is mygrandfather.”
"Malcolm is yourgrandfather?”
"He was, yes. Although he died long before I was born.” The man’s handsome brow furrowed. "Did you say your namewasMona?”
"Yes,” she said. "You’re Malcolm’s grandson.” She knew she was repeating herself, but she was in too much shock to staysilent.
"How did you come across this painting?” the Earlasked.
"How did you know I had it?” sheasked.
"I asked youfirst.”
"I won’t answer until you answer,”shesaid.
"TheSunday Timeshad an article about a lost Picasso painting found in America. A painting of a woman in red and blue. There was also a photograph of the interior of The Red, with a familiar painting in the background…a painting that once hung in Wingthorn Hall, my family’sancestralhome.”
"I found it rolled up in the post of my bed,”shesaid.
"A brass bed. An antiquebrassbed.”
"Yes, it is. But how—” She hadn’t told the newspapers the bed was brass. She’d only said "my mother’soldbed.”
"My grandfather was the last of the great English rakes. His sexual appetite was legendary and his prowess even more so. He refused to marry, to settle down, to do his duty by his name and family. Instead he spent nearly every night in brothels with ‘his darling whores,’ as he called them. That’s all he spent his money on—prostitutesandart.”
"I can think of worse ways to waste one’sfortune.”
"Hardly wasted. The art he purchased saved the family fortune. The economy was in tatters after the war. But art—great art—always goes up in value. Only the Queen has more money than wedonow.”
"Malcolm was a very wise man then. And I have to admire an artlover.”
