Priceless (45 page)

CHAPTER 63

I
n the run-up to the sale of
The Virgin
, the staff in the Old Masters department at Ludbrook’s were working flat-out, liaising with potential buyers and arranging last-minute private viewings for the kind of people who had shopping lists that read: Chelsea mansion, football team, priceless Renaissance painting. People flew in from all over the world to look at the most extraordinary painting to be offered for sale in a century. One Russian tried to stop the painting from going to auction at all, by offering a million over the high estimate if he could take the picture away with him right then.

The day before the sale, Carrie Klein decided she had to see
The Virgin
one more time. She slipped into the Ludbrook’s gallery unnoticed, wearing a pair of big dark glasses and a Ferragamo scarf over her hair. It was a rudimentary but effective disguise.

The painting was torturing her. It haunted her waking hours and her dreams. Nat Wilde was gaining so much
publicity for its upcoming sale. It drove her nuts to see him quoted in all the papers. Especially since the attention could all have been on her. She wanted to reassure herself that she had made the right choice in telling its owner that she couldn’t agree with its attribution. There was something not quite right about it.

If the painting were real, however, that would be equally tragic. The estimated price for this painting would almost certainly mean that it would end up in the hands of a private collector and be lost from public view for decades. A number of museum curators had expressed their interest, but none had the means to save the painting for their nation. None at all. The annual acquisition budget of all the museums combined would not stretch to the amount of money Ludbrook’s hoped to bring in with this single sale.

Carrie positioned herself in front of the painting. It was late in the day, and she found herself alone—free to take a really good look, and she did. That little voice was with her again. Instinct.

There was something very modern about the way the woman looked. Knowing. An artist who understood the female heart had executed this painting, Carrie decided. Ricasoli was not known for his well-developed feminine side. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed it when she’d first seen the photographs of the newly rediscovered work. It seemed so obvious now. It was almost as though this were a different painting from the one she’d seen on the news a couple of weeks before.

“What’s your secret?” Carrie asked the girl in the picture. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“Good question,” said a voice behind her. “What are you doing here?”

Carrie turned to find Nat Wilde behind her.

“I’m looking at your painting. It’s on public view, isn’t it?”

“Not for much longer,” said Nat, echoing Carrie’s earlier thoughts. He too knew that this painting would disappear into a private collection. They were quiet for a moment, both contemplating this work of art.

“Anyway, congratulations,” said Carrie. “It’s quite an honor to be asked to sell something so amazing.”

Nat shrugged as though it were an everyday occasion at Ludbrook’s.

“I do hope you’re not too disappointed to have missed out,” he said. “The owner wanted experience, I suppose.”

Carrie looked down so that he wouldn’t see her smile. He obviously didn’t know she’d had first refusal.

“You know,” he said then, “I do believe that this is the first time you and I have found ourselves properly alone since that rather lovely evening at Claridge’s.”

Carrie pursed her lips. “Is it really?”

“I think of it often,” he told her. “I suppose I should feel honored that you chose to sleep with me one more time before you set about trying to muscle in on my patch.”

Carrie shook her head. “I don’t particularly want to think about it,” she said.

“I have wanted to tell you ever since how amazed and delighted I was to discover that the mousy little Carrie Klein who worked for me all those years ago turned into such a beauty.”

“Save your flattery,” said Carrie.

“Why? I’m feeling particularly generous tonight.”

“That’s a first.”

“Well, I have reason. You have to admit that it’s going to be a long time before you’re able to match tomorrow’s sale. Maybe you never will. Maybe you will just have to
give up and head back to NYC with your tail between your legs. Leave London to the big boys …”

Carrie snorted.

“But while we’re alone, I have to ask the obvious question. Why did you do it, Carrie? Until that night, I thought that I must have been your sworn enemy for having taken your virginity under false pretenses. Though I still maintain that had you asked if I was married, I would have told you.”

“That’s kind.”

“Why, after all those years, did you come back to give me a second bite at the cherry, as it were?”

Carrie knew what Nat wanted to hear. He wanted to hear that he had been on her mind constantly since that dreadful day back in 1990 and that she had spent many sleepless nights since then dreaming of what might have been. She tilted her head to one side and let her eyes drift lazily over his face. The gray eyes, the well-shaped lips, the square jaw. In two decades he had hardly changed at all. He would be considered attractive in any era, in any part of the world. She decided she could be forgiven for having wanted to taste that mouth just one more time. To have wanted to prove to herself that he had wanted her too.

Bored of her hesitation, even if she had filled it with a long admiring look at him, Nat raised his hand. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me if you’d find it embarrassing.”

“Not at all,” said Carrie. “I’m more than happy to let you know what was going through my mind. Why don’t you let me whisper it? I’d hate for your security guards to be eavesdropping on my big admission.”

With his hands in his pockets, Nat leaned forward obligingly. Such intimacy. She would say something flattering, of course.

Carrie whispered, “I think I wanted to know if my
first fuck with you was my worst fuck ever because I was a virgin, or simply because you’re a selfish, clumsy lover. And I’m afraid to report that it’s the latter.”

Nat’s mouth dropped open.

“Good night.”

Carrie turned and left, leaving Nat gaping after her. She knew she’d struck a low blow and it was a small victory, but it felt like a good one.

CHAPTER 64

N
at had to recover from Carrie’s blow to his ego pretty quickly. After all, he had bigger fish to fry.

The sale of Ricasoli’s virgin had been dubbed the “sale of the century.” Nat Wilde was interviewed about the painting for several news channels. “Undoubtedly,” he told the pretty blond from
Sky News
, “this is one of the most important paintings to be sold through Ludbrook’s since the auction house held its very first sale in 1708.”

The painting had drawn huge crowds (though not quite as big as the crowds that had been drawn by Mathieu Randon’s museum-quality smut). Soon the other paintings in the sale started to seem like nothing more than garnishes to the main dish, though there were at least five other works that would break though the ten-million barrier if they had been priced correctly.

Adrenaline was high throughout the building as the day of reckoning drew near. Nat Wilde felt like a rock star
as his colleagues buzzed around him, all of them sure that he was going to turn in the performance of his life.

Two days before the sale, Nat had handed his lucky tie to Sarah Jane and instructed her to try to do something about the gravy stains upon it.

“Should I take it to the dry cleaner?” she asked.

“Absolutely not.” Nat was horrified. “They might lose it. Just dab something on it. Make it look reasonable. You know what to do. You’re a clever girl.”

Sarah Jane said she would do her best. Then she went straight to Lizzy to ask what she thought should be done.

“I don’t know.” Lizzy shrugged, and was glad that since she was no longer Nat’s office concubine she no longer had to care.

Sarah Jane walked away from Lizzy’s desk looking so nervous, you might have thought she had been asked to sponge clean a Caravaggio (a request that was made of most new recruits to the department as a joke).

“Don’t worry about it,” Lizzy called after her. “Though your entire future at Ludbrook’s depends on it.”

Of course Sarah Jane’s attempts to clean Nat’s lucky tie ended in disaster. Having spent the best part of the afternoon online, Googling stain removal solutions, she had finally decided on a mixture of hand-wash liquid soap and cold water. In theory, it should have been fine. In practice, even though Sarah Jane applied the solution with a gentle hand and dried the tie flat between two sheets of plain white blotting paper pinched from Nat’s desk, it didn’t work at all. The stains were gone but in their place were several lightened patches that were somehow more noticeable and looked far worse than the original marks.

“It’s a disaster,” Sarah Jane was crying as she brought the tie back into the fine art office.

“It’s only a tie,” said Marcus.

“Only a tie?” echoed Lizzy, hamming things up. “That is the tie that Nat has worn for every single auction he’s conducted since 1989. Without that tie, Nat is like a warrior going into battle without his armor.”

“He’s like Luke Skywalker without his light saber,” suggested Olivia.

“He’s like Harry Potter without a wand,” Lizzy continued. “He’s … he’s … he’s nothing.”

“You’re not helping,” said Sarah Jane.

“I’m not trying to,” Lizzy assured her. It felt good. Though Lizzy felt less good when she realized that Nat was “comforting” Sarah Jane in the way he used to “discipline” her behind the closed door of his office when he thought that no one was listening. Sarah Jane emerged after fifteen minutes looking flushed and happy. “He says he’ll wear it anyway,” she said, and smiled. “He knows I did my best.”

But Nat did not wear the tie. For the first time ever he looked at the Hermès bunny rabbits and felt something approaching revulsion. At last the scales had fallen from his eyes. His beautiful tie had become nothing but a ratty piece of cloth. It was so horribly frayed and filthy, it ought to have been consigned to the dustbin a long, long time before. The tie was twenty-eight years old. There were staff in his department who had not been born when Nat first wore those bloody rabbits. Nat was keeping the damn thing for sentimental reasons only, and there was absolutely no reason why he should be so sentimental. He was a grown man. He was one of the best auctioneers in the business—in the
history
of the business—because he had worked hard and had a natural talent. His success
did not reside in his bloody tie, and that night Nat was determined to prove it.

In the top drawer of Nat’s desk was another tie. Like his lucky tie, it was from Hermès. It had been a birthday gift from Sarah Jane. It was red with a pattern of pale blue monkeys, which really shouldn’t have worked. However, as with all Hermès ties, it did. Nat had yet to wear it, though Sarah Jane had worn it, and nothing else, in the Polaroid picture that she’d slipped into the box as a birthday card.

With the very happy image of Sarah Jane in that photo in mind, Nat tied his new tie around the collar of a blue and white striped shirt. It was the perfect combination. He slipped on his beautifully cut jacket and stepped out into the main office of the fine art department. A hush fell over his team as they regarded him. They knew at once that something was wrong, though it took a couple of seconds for them to work out exactly what. Sarah Jane was the first to realize because, of course, she recognized her gift around her beloved’s neck.

“You’re wearing—” she began.

“You’re not wearing your lucky tie!” Marcus interrupted. He looked panicked. Almost distraught. “Where is it? What’s going on? For heaven’s sake, Nat! This is the most important night of the year!”

“Calm down,” said Nat. “It’s really no big deal. The success of this department can’t really be down to a scrap of silk, can it?”