Priceless (21 page)

Julian exhaled. He hoped his relief wasn’t as noticeable as it felt. Nat took off his glasses and put the loupe back into its velveteen pouch.

“And if you find any more of these unexpected treasures, then I hope that I will be the first to know.”

“Well, actually …,” said Julian. He was prepared. Another painting resided in the boot of his car.

That afternoon, when Julian drove back to his Fulham flat, Serena’s painting of the Clifton Suspension Bridge remained in Nat’s office at Ludbrook’s, waiting to be photographed for the catalog. It would be in the sale, attributed to Richard Delapole.

Safely inside his house, Julian poured himself a large whiskey. Serena called a few minutes later.

“Is it in the sale?” she asked without preamble.

“It’s in the sale,” Julian confirmed.

“Oh my God! You’re kidding. You mean Nat Wilde actually thought it was real?”

“He did. In fact, he’s taken two.”

“What?” Serena shrieked. “Which one?”

“I let him see the little milkmaid too.”

“I hated that picture,” said Serena.

“It was rather sentimental,” Julian agreed. “But Nat Wilde loved it.”

“I’m going into shock.” Serena laughed. “I can’t believe he thought it was genuine.”

“He said it was an ‘unexpected treasure,’ ” said Julian, using Nat’s own words.

CHAPTER 27

T
wo months later, both of Serena’s paintings were hanging on the wall in the main gallery at Ludbrook’s. Potential buyers and interested onlookers milled around the room, admiring or disparaging the paintings on offer.

Meanwhile, in his office, Nat changed his old-school tie for his “lucky” one, the tie he always wore for auctions. It was an Hermès tie. His first-ever tie from the legendary Parisian fashion house. It was dark blue and had a pattern of tiny pink rabbits bouncing across it. The tie had been a present from his ex-wife Miranda, back when she’d considered that Nat’s propensity to go at it like a rabbit was an asset and not a liability. Fortunately the divorce didn’t seem to have diminished the tie’s ability to turn Nat into a silver-tongued salesman, but it was starting to shows signs of wear and tear. The ends were ever so slightly frayed. It wouldn’t go on forever, Nat thought.

“How’s the audience tonight?” Nat asked Lizzy.

“They seem pretty buoyant.”

“Excellent. Going to be a big night, I think,” said Nat.

And it was. Lot after lot went for more than the high estimate. Nat squeezed more money out of his audience than they even knew they had. Even the lots that Lizzy had thought might go unsold achieved very respectable prices. Lizzy could only watch in awe. Nat had the knack of making everything seem worth having.

Lizzy certainly felt that Nat was worth having. That week marked the passage of eighteen months since she had lost
her virginity to him. During those eighteen months, Lizzy had not so much as looked at another guy. As far as she was concerned, Nat was her man, even if he still wouldn’t come out and say so officially.

“It just wouldn’t look good,” he said every time Lizzy raised the subject. “Even if I don’t give you any preferential treatment, people will assume that I am. It could bring us all sorts of trouble.”

“Then perhaps I should start looking for a job at a different house,” said Lizzy. “So that it isn’t an issue. We could have a normal relationship, then.”

“No,” Nat insisted. “You mustn’t do anything on my account. You’ve got a good position here. Besides, I value your presence in the office too much. Especially under my desk.”

That was where Lizzy found herself after the nineteenth-century sale, when everyone else in the fine art department had gone home. Nat buzzed Lizzy through into his private office, with its enormous eighteenth-century desk, of the kind that generals once planned campaigns on. Nat was sitting behind it, in his reproduction chair. He could have had the real thing, but he liked a chair that swiveled and had casters so that he could scoot across the parquet floor. It was the culmination of all his childhood fantasies to have an office big enough to scoot about in. And there he was in the chair, with his jacket off and his tie already loosened, about to have another fantasy come true.

Lizzy knew the drill by now. She entered, carrying the pristine white gloves she had been wearing to handle the paintings at the auction. A bit of small talk first.

“Who did the painting of the milkmaid go to?” Nat asked.

“Yasha Suscenko,” said Lizzy.

“Ah.” Nat shook his head. “Bastard. It pisses me off so
much that some dim Russian oligarch’s wife will pay over the odds to let that shyster be the middleman rather than buy straight from me. When will they ever learn?”

“But he has an eye,” said Lizzy. “His collections are always very interesting.”

“Hmmm. Whatever you say, sweetheart.” Nat straightened up in his chair. “Ms. Duffy,” he said then. “I seem to have dropped a pen beneath my desk.”

“Let me get that for you,” said Lizzy, pulling on the white gloves in preparation. She made a meal of it. The opposite of a striptease but, to Nat’s mind, just as seductive. Lizzy adjusted the fit of the gloves finger by finger, until they were as perfectly molded to the contours of her hands as a second skin.

By the time she was under the desk in search of Nat’s Montblanc rollerball, his hard-on was already straining at the front of his trousers. Lizzy unzipped Nat’s trousers with great efficiency and released his tumescent cock. She held it in her white-gloved fingers as carefully as though she were about to demonstrate the finer points of a valuable antique. Dipping her head so that her tongue flickered across the tip while she moved Nat’s foreskin with one hand, Lizzy had barely administered two strokes when there was a knock at the door. Nat didn’t have time to say “Just a minute.” His visitor walked straight in.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything, Nat,” said John Ludbrook, the company chairman.

“Not at all, John,” said Nat. “Not at all.”

Lizzy froze beneath the desk. It was unlikely that John Ludbrook could see her. Nat’s desk was surrounded on three sides by a long mahogany skirt. Still, Lizzy was filled with something approaching terror as John Ludbrook drew out the chair opposite Nat’s and sat down so that the toes of his highly polished Lobbs were practically touching her bottom.

“Good sale?” asked Ludbrook.

“Yes,” said Nat. “I was pleased.”

Slowly, oh so slowly, Lizzy tucked Nat back into his trousers and inched his zipper shut, just in case he had to stand up.

Nat and Ludbrook discussed that afternoon’s results for a while.

“How about a brandy?” Ludbrook asked.

Damn
, thought Lizzy as Nat got up to fetch the decanter on his sideboard. Ludbrook was clearly settling in for a while.

“Cheers.”

Lizzy heard the clink of glasses.

“Now, Nat,” said Ludbrook after a moment’s silence. “This is a tricky subject but I have to bring it up.”

He paused.

“Go on,” said Nat.

“There has been talk around the house about your relationship with a certain junior member of your staff.”

“Really?” Nat sounded surprised.

“Yes. The gossip says that you have been seeing Lizzy Duffy after hours. Someone saw the pair of you walking out of Wiltons …”

“Oh,” said Nat. “Well, I can’t deny that I did take her there. But it was all aboveboard. We were just talking about her plans for the future.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Of course I’m sure. You know me, John. I won’t deny that I like the ladies, but Lizzy Duffy? She’s not my type.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Ludbrook. “As soon as I heard the rumor, I knew it had to be idle gossip. I mean, she’s rather flat-chested. What was it we used to call tits like that?” he mused. “Ah yes. Fried eggs. That’s what we
used to say. That’s exactly what Lizzy Duffy’s got in her blouse.”

“Which isn’t to say that she isn’t an attractive girl,” said Nat.

“But there are definitely better lookers in the building,” said John. “That Sarah Jane Kirby, for example. She’s one of yours?”

“Yes,” said Nat.

“Quite the little vixen,” John said, and sighed wistfully.

“Quite.”

“Much bigger breasts … Even so, it’s a terrible mistake to dip your pen in the company inkwell, if you know what I mean. It can only lead to trouble. But I trust you, Nat. I trust you to know what you’re doing.”

“Thank you, John.”

“Care to join me at my club for a spot of supper?” Ludbrook asked.

Nat glanced down between his knees to where Lizzy’s face looked up at him.

“Not tonight, John. Paperwork to get done.”

“Good lad,” said John. “Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

John left.

The moment she heard the door close, Lizzy scrambled out from beneath the desk.

“Not your type!” she wailed, pushing Nat out of the way. “Flat-chested!”

“Well,” said Nat, “you have to admit …”

Lizzy looked as though she might be about to cry.

“Darling, I only went along with it to put him off the scent. If I had leaped to your defense, he would have been immediately suspicious. You know that I think you are by far the most beautiful woman in Ludbrook’s. Now, where were you?”

“You think I’m going to get back under your desk?”

They heard the sound of footsteps approaching along the polished wooden corridor. Thinking that it might be John Ludbrook again, Lizzy had no choice but to get back where she had been. There were no decent-size cupboards in Nat’s office, and the curtains didn’t fall to the floor. With a string of heartfelt expletives, Lizzy resumed her position.

“While you’re down there …,” said Nat.

CHAPTER 28

Y
asha Suscenko collected his purchase right after the sale and carried it to his gallery with little regard for how much he had paid for it.

The painting was beautiful. No doubt about that. It wasn’t exactly to his taste, but he knew he would be able to flip it easily enough. There were plenty of people out there who liked a good sentimental servant girl. His clients might be be über-rich, but their tastes had been formed in straitened circumstances.

Yasha hung the painting on the wall opposite his desk. He often did that. Put a painting right where he could see it every time he looked up from his papers or was taking a phone call. It helped him to absorb the best qualities of the work and figure out how to sing its praises most effectively.

He poured himself a drink and sat down at his desk.
He had emails from several clients already, asking whether he’d found anything good at the sale.

Yasha had a large clientele among his fellow countrymen. He was particularly amused and frustrated by some of their requests. They would call up and demand that he find them a Caravaggio, as though they were commissioning a new Learjet. When Yasha explained that it could take years to track down the painting they so desperately wanted at that moment, they were surprised. Sometimes enraged.

“It’s not quite like the days of Catherine the Great,” he would say. “You can’t just invade another nation and loot its museums like they used to.”

Yasha had one client in particular who didn’t find that amusing. He didn’t want to wait. Not for anything. And he wanted a Ricasoli.

“You want a Ricasoli?”

Yasha’s first instinct was to laugh out loud.

A painting by Giancarlo Ricasoli was as rare and precious as a Raphael. Ricasoli was an Italian artist of the early seventeenth century, a follower of Caravaggio who had taken the skills of his mentor and used them to create a body of work that some believed to be even more outstanding. In his lifetime, Ricasoli was more notorious than famous, having been chased from one end of Italy to the other for gambling debts and other misdemeanors. He was rumored to have fathered thirty-seven children. His most recent catalog raisonné estimated that he had produced just thirty-six works of art during the same period.

“There aren’t many Ricasoli paintings in existence,” Yasha told his client. “And very few indeed in private hands. It may take decades before one becomes available for sale.”