Property of a Noblewoman (12 page)

“So you’re not interested in estate or tax law?” he asked, smiling at her.

“Hell, no!” she said, and laughed. “I can’t think of anything worse. This case has been really interesting, but everything else I did at the surrogate’s court has been tedious and depressing.” After she ordered cheese soufflé, and he ordered confit de canard, Jane asked, “What about you? What did you do this weekend?”

“I spent the weekend with my mistress,” he said matter-of-factly, and Jane looked startled.

“That’s nice,” she said, trying to be open-minded about it, but it confirmed that this was definitely not a date. So much for Alex, and what she’d thought. And he looked innocent as he smiled across the table at Jane.

“She’s a thirty-foot, classic forty-year-old sailboat I keep on Long Island. She eats up all my money, and takes all my energy and concentration, and I spend every weekend taking care of her. I think that’s pretty much what a mistress does. And being with her is pure joy. I can’t stay away from her, much to the dismay of every woman I’ve ever gone out with. Her name is
Sallie.
Maybe you’d like to meet her sometime, when the weather gets warmer. It’s a little chilly on Long Island Sound right now.” Not that he cared. He went out on her no matter what the weather, winter or summer. Jane could see the love in his eyes, and she laughed.

“A boat is stiff competition for most women, more so than any mistress. My father keeps a sailboat on Lake Michigan. My mother says it’s the only rival she’s ever had. I used to sail with him every weekend when I was a kid.” She didn’t tell him that her father’s boat was three times the size of his. “His boat is the love of his life.”

“
Sweet Sallie
is mine,” Phillip confessed proudly, without apology or shame. He thought it best to be honest right from the first.

“I’d love to see her sometime,” Jane said easily. “I went to sailing camp for three summers in Maine when I was a kid. I was kind of a tomboy since I have no siblings and my father taught me to sail. Then I discovered high heels and makeup in high school and kind of lost interest in sailing. But I still go out on the boat with him sometimes when I go home. My mother hates it, so he always wants me to sail with him.”

“
Sallie
has broken up most of my relationships,” he said with a slightly sheepish look. “How has your parents’ marriage survived? Or are they divorced?” He was learning about her, and he liked what he’d heard so far.

“No, they’re together. I think they came to a compromise years ago. My father doesn’t ask her to sail with him anymore, and she doesn’t expect him to go skiing with her. My mom was a champion ski racer in college, and won a bronze in the Olympics, downhill racing. She still loves it, and he hates skiing, so they each do what they like to do. And they expected me to learn both, but I’m not in my mom’s league on the slopes. She skis the French Alps and goes helicopter skiing in Canada every year.”

“My mother is an artist, and she’s pretty good, very good, in fact. I can’t draw a straight line. My father was an art history professor, so I take after him. I’ve always been passionate about art, and boats.” He smiled.

“I feel that way about the law,” she said as they ate their lunch, “and championing the cause of the underdog. And I’m passionate about protecting kids. I worked for a legal coalition for inner-city kids in Detroit during the summers when I was in college, and I was a paralegal at the ACLU before I went to law school. I finally decided to stop horsing around and get my degree. It’s been a rugged three years. The surrogate’s court has been pretty uneventful compared to all that, until now. All you get to do is dispose of the belongings of people who had no one to leave them to, never thought about it, or didn’t care, and settle disputes between greedy relatives who weren’t interested in the person when they were alive. It’s not very happy work. I couldn’t do this for the rest of my life. I barely made it through the last three months. And I have kind of an unfriendly boss. I guess you get cynical and sour dealing with this kind of thing all the time, and I think she has an unhappy life. She’s never been married, and she lives with her sick mom. I think she’s a very lonely woman. She’s been nicer to me lately, but we got off to a bad start.” Harriet seemed to have more confidence in her since the Pignelli estate, but Jane could never imagine their being friends, or even having lunch together at work. Harriet kept her distance at all times and remained aloof. Jane had the feeling that Harriet had no life, other than work, and caring for her mother, at night and on the weekends.

“As I told you, I’ve been unhappy, assigned to the jewelry department,” Phillip said. “All I wanted was to get back to art. But I have to admit, this sale has made it more interesting for me. Something about it touched me.” So did meeting her, which he didn’t say. He didn’t want to sound stupid or soft, or scare her off. But Jane was very real and genuine, which appealed to him, almost as much as Marguerite’s estate and the woman who had owned the jewels, and he liked talking to her.

They chatted easily during lunch, exchanging experiences in their respective fields, and personal views on a variety of subjects, including relationships, travel, and sports. He told her how much he had enjoyed his trips to Hong Kong for work, and that now, as superficial as he had found jewelry in the beginning, and the people who bought and sold it, he had become intrigued by all things jade. It represented infinite mystery to him, and he said it was an area of expertise that few people understood and did well. And then he remembered his mother’s request.

“This probably sounds silly, but my mother has become totally enthralled by and wrapped up in what I’ve told her about Marguerite, and the sale. Maybe she feels some tie to her because they had the same maiden name, although they’re not related. But as an artist, she has a very creative mind, and is always interested in the hidden aspects of things. She has an amazing imagination, and a kind heart. She asked if she could see copies of all the photographs in the safe deposit box, just to get a feeling for her. She thought it might inspire a painting, not necessarily of Marguerite herself, but maybe someone like her. It’s hard to understand how artists work sometimes. She wanted to see the photographs not just of her, but also of Umberto, and even the ones of them at parties, all the pictures that we looked at.” It didn’t sound outlandish to Jane, and she thought his mother sounded like an interesting woman.

“Do you think she’d want to see the pictures of the little girl?” They still didn’t know who she was, or what relation she’d been to Marguerite, if any, and they didn’t know her name.

“Why not? It’s part of the mystery surrounding her,” he said simply, and Jane nodded, thinking about how to fulfill his request. “Do you want me to return the ones I have, and then you can send me the complete file, or should I get these copied and give them back to you another time?”

“Why don’t I take these now? I have to ask my boss about giving you copies,” she said, pensive for a minute. “Would it be all right if I told her you wanted to see them all again for the sale, for a last, comprehensive look? I think if I say it’s for your mother, she would balk, but if they’re for you, the sale, or the catalog, she won’t hesitate, and then I can send you the entire file, and you can copy them for your mom. I don’t see anything wrong with that.” He nodded and agreed with her, pleased. “I’ll ask her when I go back to the office. I have all of them on my computer, I just want to ask her permission to send them to you, so I don’t get in trouble later. She’s been giving me a free hand with it. But I’ve been doing it according to the rules.”

“If you send them to me in an email, I can print them up for my mother. She’s not a computer person. It would probably take a year for her to open the files.” They both smiled and she said her own mother wasn’t good with computers either, as he gave her back the photographs he had. Computer skills were not of their parents’ generation, particularly his mother who was considerably older than her parents, and old enough to be her grandmother, or even his, since she had been so much older when he was born. But he said that she was younger in spirit and had more energy than anyone he knew of his own age. “She has a sister who’s only four years older and acts like she’s a hundred. It’s hard to believe she’s almost the same age as my mom – they seem generations apart. I guess it’s all in your outlook on life, and how connected you stay to the world. I don’t think my aunt Winnie ever was. My mother says their parents were like that too, stuffy and old-fashioned and rigidly stuck in their ways and antiquated points of view. My mother is entirely different, fortunately. I never knew my grandparents, but I take her word for it, if they were anything like my aunt. My maternal grandmother died before I was born, and my grandfather when I was a year old.” And then he startled Jane by saying that he’d like to see her again sometime, maybe for dinner. He said he’d had a great time at lunch with her, and she said that she had too.

“Dinner might not be such a good idea,” she said regretfully, looking at him across the table, and wishing that she could. “I’ve been living with someone for the past few years. We’ve hit kind of a rough patch lately. He’s getting his MBA in June. It’s all he thinks about. I hardly see him, and our time together is pretty much a disaster at the moment.” She didn’t tell him that the relationship was too, which would have seemed disloyal to John. She didn’t want to give Phillip the impression that she was more available than she really was. She was still living with John. “I have lots of free time on my hands, since he’s either at the library or with his study group, but I figure things will get normal again when we graduate. I don’t think it would really be fair for me to go to dinner with someone else right now.” Phillip admired her for her honesty and the fact that she didn’t want to sneak around behind John’s back, which was clearly not her style. She was smart, attractive, and straightforward. She seemed to have it all, and he felt like it was just his luck that she was involved with someone else. The good ones always were.

“Maybe a movie sometime,” he said hopefully, “just as friends. Or you could come out on the boat some weekend in the warm weather, while he’s studying.”

“I’d love that,” she said, her eyes shining. She was grateful that he understood, and a little disappointed too that she wasn’t free, but she was glad she’d been honest with him. Now he knew. And it didn’t seem to discourage him from wanting to see her away from work. Maybe they could wind up friends. She’d had a wonderful time with him at lunch.

They left the restaurant, and he walked her to the subway. She promised to ask Harriet about sending him copies of all the photographs, and he knew she would. She was a woman of her word, and had done everything so far that she’d promised to do.

“Thank you again for lunch,” she said warmly, as he smiled down at her as they stood next to the subway stairs.

“Let’s do a movie soon. And I want to introduce you to
Sallie
, as soon as she’s presentable. I’m going to paint her hull in a few weeks.” There was always some part of her that he was working on, just like Jane’s father with his boat. She had spent a lot of weekends scraping, sanding, varnishing, and painting to help him when she was young. She knew all about men with boats, and smiled at what he said.

She went down the subway stairs then and disappeared, as Phillip walked back to work, thinking about her, and looking forward to seeing her again. He was disappointed that she had a boyfriend, but there was always the possibility, however remote, that things wouldn’t work out with them, even after graduation in June. He was willing to wait and see.

Alex called Jane as soon as she got off the subway and was walking to work.

“So how was lunch?” She had been itching to call her for the past two hours and couldn’t wait for Jane to call her.

“It was great. He’s such a nice guy. I told him about John, and he understood.”

“Why did you do that?” Alex was instantly annoyed. Clearly Jane was not destined to be a femme fatale.

“I had to. He asked me to dinner, and I told him I couldn’t. But he suggested we go to a movie sometime, and he has a boat. He invited me to go out on it with him this spring.” She was happy at the prospect, and it all sounded hopeful to Alex. She was pleased for her friend.

“That’s perfect. Don’t write him off yet. You never know what will happen with John, and this one sounds like a good man.”

“He is. His mother is an artist, his father was a professor, and he’s very knowledgeable about art. I might go to the Christie’s sale with him.”

“He seems interested in seeing you again. Today was a perfect first move.” Alex was treating it like a chess game or a battle plan to catch him, which wasn’t Jane’s style either. She had never done anything premeditated or conniving to catch a man. Things either happened or they didn’t, and Phillip seemed that way too. Alex liked to give destiny a hand to get what she wanted, which didn’t always work for her. Some men figured it out and ran like hell, and the ones who fell into her well-laid traps often turned out to be stupid and bored her.

When Jane got back to work, she had a stack of messages on her desk, of people she had to call, and two new folders of cases that had been referred to the court, all small estates. She didn’t see Harriet till four o’clock when she brought one of the completed folders back to her, after determining that the person listed was in fact deceased, just as she had done with Marguerite in the beginning. She handed the file to Harriet across her desk, and Harriet thanked her. She appeared tired and discouraged, and Jane almost felt sorry for her.

“Everything okay?” she asked hesitantly. Harriet looked as though she might have been crying, which was unusual for her. There was a vulnerability to her that Jane had never seen before or even suspected.

“More or less. Thanks for asking,” she said with tears shining in her eyes. “I had to admit my mom to the hospital last night. She has advanced MS, and she’s getting worse. She was having trouble swallowing and breathing. I may have to put her in a nursing facility now, and she’s going to hate it if that happens.” There was no way to reverse the disease, and Harriet had been caring for her at home for seven years with the help of visiting nurses. “We knew it would come to this sooner or later. She’s just not ready to face it, and I’m not sure I am either. It’s challenging, but I’d rather keep her at home with me.”