A Fresh Perspective, A Regency Romance (23 page)

There was a matching sense of urgency in the viewing rooms. Here, paintings and tapestries had been hung, rugs unrolled, furniture and
objet de art
beautifully arranged and displayed, with an oddly insensible juxtaposition and the omnipresent lot numbers to remind one that the arrangement of each room was a fleeting thing. These were temporary gatherings of a number of beautiful objects in one place before they were carried away by a host of new owners. The press of the crowd soon separated them from her Aunt Win, who had proclaimed her intention to immediately seek out the china to be auctioned.

Megan was in no hurry. In a swimming sort of daze she wandered the viewing rooms. At more than one point, she clutched Giovanni’s arm for support. Everywhere she turned she recognized plunder from the Keep: russet hued rugs, furniture, artwork and bric-a-brac.

“Lady Talcott’s silver,” she said sadly. Carefully tagged and numbered, the glittering silver looked all wrong spread about on a sideboard rather than in neat rank and file in the butler’s pantry at Talcott Keep.

“You are certain?” Giovanni asked.

“Yes. There is no mistaking that centerpiece. I have always admired it enormously.”

“So, it is not just Reed who is forced to sell his possessions,” Giovanni said.

“No. This is dreadful. You see before you the treasures of Talcott Keep. I feel as if I have come to walk about on a dear friend’s grave when no one ever bothered to tell me there had been a funeral.”

Hardest to bear was the sight of Reed’s personal treasures: his collection of bronzes, his landscapes, the stunning tapestry of Narcissus and Echo.

“See. It is you.” Megan pointed out the Narcissus who looked much like Giovanni. She choked on the words in saying, “It is the most beautiful tapestry. . .”

“But who is this?” Giovanni indicated the fading figure of Echo. “I have no one to pine for me so faithfully.”

“Do you want such a transparent creature?”

“There is something very seductive, I think, in a creature so devoted,” he said.

Megan smiled. “Would that Narcissus had only noticed that seduction before Echo had all but disappeared.” She wistfully touched the tapestry for what she was sure must be the last time. “Come,” she said. “Let us look at the bronzes. There are two I would be sure are not to be sold.”

The lovely little family of bronze women, soon to be orphaned from one another, had collected a crowd of interested onlookers. A great many were jotting down lot numbers. 

“What heartbreak it must be to part with these,” Giovanni said softly. “They are marvelous!” He examined them carefully, one by one.

Megan examined the collection with even more appreciation than Giovanni. To her profound relief, two from the collection were notable for their absence. The bronzes of passion personified: the lovers, and the satyr pairing, were not to be sold.

“Nutmeg! Is it you?” Reed quietly addressed her, Reed, looking strained and awkward, bravely putting on his best face, voice cool, collected and as gentlemanly as always.

“Reed, how good it is to see you!” Giovanni turned from his examination of the collection and with the typically overblown level of theatrical Italian passion, used Reed’s extended hand as a lever to draw him into a back pounding embrace with robust kisses on each cheek.

Reed’s subsequent palming of Megan’s hand and his chaste peck on her cheek seemed disappointingly understated.

“How are you? I did not expect to see you here today!” He spoke with a formality to which she was wholly unaccustomed.

“I can well imagine you did not,” she said with contained heat. “You did not, after all extend an invitation. Perhaps you would have preferred I did not come.”

He made a face. For a fleeting instant his pain in the day’s proceedings was evident. “I am sorry, Megan.”

“I am sorry too,” she said, awkwardly gesturing toward the bronzes. “To see all of this. . .” her voice faltered. “Your mother’s silver, the landscapes. . .”

“I know.”

“Why did you not tell me?” She asked very low. “I thought you could tell me anything.”

He exhaled heavily, gaze darting through the crowd, as if he sought escape from her question. “Devilishly difficult, don’t you see? Things have been happening rather fast, Megan.” He spoke with a polite uneasiness, as if she was, in Giovanni’s company, a little known acquaintance whom he had forgotten how to address. “I was unsure exactly what our circumstances were until the day I left the Lakes.”

“You knew and did not say a word?”

“Right.” He would not look her in the eye. “I thought it prudent to inform my parents before anyone else.”

“Of course.” She implied her understanding when she did not understand at all. That he had cut himself off from her in this, the most trying time of his life, wounded her deeply. The distance between them had never seemed so great. “Have you been in London long?” Her tone echoed his: awkward, distant and polite. Exchanges between strangers, not dear friends.

“How long?” It was another question he would rather not have been dealt. She could read it in his eyes. “Long enough to make arrangements for today. Too long, not to have contacted you, I know, but I hope you will understand, there was a great deal of difficult decision making to be done and I have been at a bit of a loss as to what to say to anyone. There is limited potential in responding to the expected How-do-you-dos. I am well enough other than that I have no money and am forced to sell everything I have ever possessed of any value.” He presented the tragedy of his dilemma as if it were of no great moment. Laughing awkwardly, glances uneasy, his hands spoke with greater emotional eloquence than his tongue, touching first upon his forehead, then his mouth and finally settling themselves in hugging his own shoulders.

His jovial approach won a chuckle from Giovanni. Megan could not laugh. “We would have found something to say to one another, I wager,” she said, pain undisguised. “We have always managed in the past.”

“Yes.” He frowned, fingering his neck cloth as if it were too tight. He looked about the room. “Do you mean to bid on my bronzes?” He directed the question at Giovanni.

“I do,” Giovanni admitted, waving his list.

The gulf between them seemed to widen. Determined to bridge the gap, Megan strove to find common ground. “I was just saying to Giovanni that a few of your bronzes are not up for auction.”

“No,” he said and at last he looked her directly in the eyes, the intensity of his expression lending added weight to his words. “There are two I could not part with, no matter how dire my circumstances.”

In his eyes she saw, unveiled, his troubled hope that she would understand and forgive him his slights. She read too, profound sadness touched by fear, even panic as his gaze roved from her to Giovanni and back again.

“Reed!” she said softly, reaching for his hand, hoping in that simple gesture, to convey a world of meaning. “You have changed.”

He blinked and squared his shoulders, guarding his expression. “Not me, Megan, only my perspective. I ran into Harold Burnham yesterday. He tells me you turned down his proposal of marriage.”

“Yes,” she murmured, and might have gone on to tell him that he and his mother were convinced she had been posing in the nude for him, if only to relieve some of the seriousness in his expression, had not Giovanni leaned close at that point.

“This must be very difficult for you,” he observed.

Reed ran a nervous hand through his hair. “Wearing in the extreme.”

He looked drawn, Megan thought, tired and drawn and yet stronger than she could recall him ever having looked before.

“Do you know, there is something profoundly liberating in giving up the trappings of one’s life,” he said. There was energy to his statement, a sparkle in his eyes that surprised her, given the circumstances. “My difficulties have forced me to reassess all that I am, all that I value.” He looked directly at Megan again. His gaze left her breathless. “I begin to believe these hardships may be blessings in disguise.”

“Blessings?” Megan would never have anticipated such a remark. “What do you mean?”

Reed’s attention wavered. Something over her shoulder caught his eye. “Forgive me, but I shall have to explain later. It looks as if the auction is about to begin. Thanks again for coming.” He clapped Giovanni on the shoulder and was gone.

Megan wanted to object, to shout out at the injustice of this--the unfairness. She wanted to sit down in one of Lady Talcott’s overstuffed Queen Anne chairs and weep, but she could not, would not break down before the surging crowd of people--each one of whom hoped to carry home some token of the Talcott’s dispersal of wealth at a fraction of its true value--good fortune found in another’s misfortune.

Feeling dizzy, stomach in knots, Megan leaned on Giovanni’s arm and allowed herself to be led inexorably toward the auction hall. The sight of something most unexpected stopped her.

Megan let go of his arm, eyes locked on a landscape that had been placed in the corner of the room least favorable for viewing. Lot ninety-seven. She could not believe her eyes to see it hanging there. With a sense of disbelief she rifled through her auction catalog. Lot Number ninety-seven, it read, a watercolor landscape, artist unknown, nicely framed.

“Coming?” Giovanni asked.

Numb, Megan backed into Giovanni.

“You all right?” His voice was soft with concern.

“How could he?” she asked breathlessly.

“How could he what?”

“Sell it.”

Giovanni, standing behind her, leaned down to her eye level, his cheek brushing hers. “The painting?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“There is something special about this painting? I do not recognize the artist, but the frame is very nice.”

“Are you sure you do not recognize the artist?” she asked.

He cocked his head, studied the painting intently, let go his hold on her and crossed the space between them and the watercolor to get a closer look. He turned to look back at her with dismay. “It is yours? The brushstroke and handling of light and shadow looks very much in your style.”

“Yes. I painted it. I never dreamed Reed thought so little of it that he would sell it this way.”

Giovanni frowned. “I would not have believed Reed Talcott capable of such an ungentlemanly act, myself. But do not despair. I shall buy the painting, no matter the cost.”

She tried to respond with a lightness she was far from feeling. “Thank you, Giovanni. I should think it will come cheap in an auction where masterpieces are to be had.”

“The true value of art, carra, is in the eye of the beholder,” Giovanni said, so gently she could not help it, a tear came to her eye.

Chapter Twenty-Four

R
eed stood beside the podium watching bidders push into the crowded auction room. These men and women, he could not help thinking, held his future--the future of his entire family--in their pockets. That they unwittingly wielded such power over him left him with the oddest inclination. He wanted to look each and every one of them in the eyes.

The company was mixed. David Garrick the famous actor was present, as was the Marquis of Stafford, along with his good friends the renowned collectors Caleb Whiteford and Julius Angerstein. There was a thick sprinkling of the beau monde present and one of Christie’s employees was pleased to point out to him a representative for the Prince Regent. George was presently collecting French furniture. There were half a dozen excellent pieces on which his representative was expected to bid.

Oblivious to his intense regard, carefree enough with their responsibility to talk and laugh and enjoy the event, the bidders took position, either seated along benches before the podium, or standing around the perimeter of the room. There, quizzing glasses raised, they continued to examine the enormous oil paintings his father wished to dispose of, in this, the only room with walls of an adequate size for viewing them.

The extensive heights of the ceiling rose in the center of the room to an octagonal tower of sooty, rain-peppered windows that might have allowed light into the room was there any to be had. But there was none. The mood of the weather, in keeping with Reed’s own, was decidedly overcast. The rain showed no signs of diminishing. It did, in fact, pelt the windows above him with increasing vigor. Two brass chandeliers had been lit to illuminate the place.

Too many bodies in too confined a space set the ladies fans fluttering like birds on the wing. The place smelled less of beeswax and polish and more of a melange of perfume, pomade, body odor and wet woolens. The event, he had been informed by an attendant, was far more of a crush than anticipated. The bidding was likely to be lively.

At the rostrum, the bookkeeper dipped his pen in readiness. The auctioneer, Mr. Christie the younger, took up the hammer and rapped for silence. Reed’s nightmare began in earnest.

Megan sat on one of the hard wooden benches beside Giovanni and stared at Reed as the room fell into an uneasy silence broken only by the buzz of occasional voices, the click of heels on the wooden flooring, the distant scrape and bump of furniture being moved on the floor below, and above everything, the spit of rain on the windows. There was something unreal about the moment, the roomful of people and what they had gathered to do. Even more unreal was the idea that one of Megan’s own watercolors was soon to take its place on the podium, just like the oil that was dexterously removed from the wall and transferred to a stair-step raised platform where two attendants displayed it on an enormous easel.

The bidders on the benches around her, crowded hip to hip, immediately engaged in an exercise of neck craning. As most of the men did not bother to remove their hats, nor the women their bonnets, a great deal of shifting about was required in order to obtain an unobstructed view.

“Can you see?” Giovanni asked solicitously.

“I see,” Megan murmured, her eyes not on the painting but on Reed. I see, she thought, but I do not comprehend.

From the row in front of them she heard Aunt Win say to Mrs. Blaynay, “There! That is Reed Talcott. Looking cool as a cucumber. The gentleman in mahogany superfine with the high, white stock.”