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Rafe watches me. It’s unnerving.
“It’s delicious,” I say, hoping to distract him. “Thank you.”
He takes up his own caviar, and I breathe a sigh of relief that those eyes aren’t staring me down for the moment.
“You liked the Degas,” he remarks. “The one of the ballerinas in yellow.”
Glad for the conversation, I nod enthusiastically. I’m dying to know how he came to have it, but I don’t know if asking him directly would be rude. He did commission Alessandro to steal the Morelli, so the Degas might have been stolen, too.
“I have another Degas I could show you after dinner,” he says.
My eyes bulge. He has more than one Degas? An authentic one?
“Are you a fan of Impressionists or just Degas?” I ask.
“I like the Impressionists. You?”
“Claude Monet is probably my favorite.”
“Why?”
“I like his landscapes. They’re beautiful places I’d like to visit. And his style makes his paintings look like something out of a dream. Who’s your favorite artist?”
His answer surprises me. “Artemisia Gentileschi.”
“Really?”
“I like her striking treatment of light and dark.”
“Do you have a favorite work of hers?”
“Judith Slaying Holofernes.”
There’s a slight darkening of his tone, almost as if he has a grudge against the painting he just named his favorite.
“Are any of the paintings in my room by Artemisia?” I ask.
“TheReclining Bathsheba, which hangs above the fireplace. The others are replicas.”
“They’re amazing replicas. How do you knowBathshebaisn’t a replica?”
“No one can know with a hundred percent certainty. I purchased it at an auction at Christie’s for forty-two million US dollars, so I am putting a lot of trust in their authentication experts.”
I nearly drop my spoon. I’m sleeping in a room with forty-two million dollars?
I can’t help myself with my next question. “If you have that kind of money, why not purchase the Morelli?”
“Because that particular Morelli was stolen from an art gallery.”
“So you only steal stolen property?” I ask.
“And because I don’t plan to keep the Morelli for myself.”
That doesn’t really clear the confusion for me. I finish off the caviar and egg before returning to the champagne. A server removes my plate and replaces it with another. I stare at it.
“Scallops on a bed of white truffle mousse,” Rafe explains.
I poke at it with a fork. I’ve never had scallops before. The server pours some kind of white wine into another glass, even though I wasn’t done with the champagne.
