Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 128742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 644(@200wpm)___ 515(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128742 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 644(@200wpm)___ 515(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
“Yikes.”
Lee glances at me over his shoulder. “Yikes indeed.”
“Excommunication hasn’t stopped them from name-dropping like they’re doing Christmas at Sandringham,” Jamie says derisively. “To hear them tell it, it’s all a simple misunderstanding that’ll be cleared up any day now. Never mind a series of poor investments and fraud investigations has left them near squalor. I’m surprised they’ve kept the estate this long.”
“Well, now we have to take a look,” I say, sitting forward to poke my head between their seats. “Can we go to the estate sale? Just for a few minutes?”
“Yes, can we, darling?” Lee bats his eyelashes.
“Right. Hang on.” Jamie makes a sudden U-turn. “If you both promise to behave yourselves.”
Lee’s quick to quip back. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
8
JAMIE PARKS HIS JAGUAR BESIDE A BENTLEY AND A BEAT-UP Volkswagen coupe on the gravel car park in front of the manor house. It’s astounding, this place. Four stories of ornate original architecture surrounded by green lawns. A pond on the east side is ringed by willow trees dipping their limbs in the still water.
“Are you serious?” I mutter the exclamation to myself, though Lee hears me and chuckles.
“Shoulders back, chin high. Act like you belong.”
“People actually live like this,” I say in continued astonishment. I’ve seen these places in movies, but they’re so much more elaborate and impressive in person.
“It’s all right,” Jamie says dismissively.
A young woman in a blue pantsuit approaches with a blinding white smile to hand us each a registry of items available for sale. She escorts us around the west side of the main house, through a river stone–paved garden, until we reach a brick courtyard where tables are set out to display silver serving sets, jewelry, books, paintings, and the various collected possessions of one of Britain’s once-great families.
It’s sort of depressing.
Like picking over a corpse.
Jamie is unfazed. Immediately he’s on the scent of a cute brunette admiring the vases and candleholders. In seconds, he has her twisting her hair around her finger and leaning on one hip. Incredible.
As he’s been doing most of the morning, Lee has his head bowed over his phone.
“George?” I ask while we peruse a table of carved jade candleholders.
Lee nods absently.
“Did he shave that horrid mustache?”
“What? Oh, no, luv, this is a new one.”
“A new what?”
“A new George.”
“What happened to Mustache George?”
“Too clingy.” Lee picks a couture silk kimono-style robe sheathed in plastic off a clothing rack. Then he sees the price tag and throws it down like it tried to bite him. “New George is more chill. A go-with-the-flow kind of bloke.”
I shake my head. “I swear, everyone in England is named George.”
We drift over to another table. Most of the stuff arrives at a weird intersection of seventeenth-century English country and eighties Miami drug dealer. Then I spot a hardbound encyclopedia of the trees of France and decide, well, no sense letting material go to waste. I have my research project to think about, and this estate could provide ample inspiration.
I browse the stacks of leather-bound first editions and obscure volumes about the most random of topics. From the history of English carpentry to great ships of the empire. Modern fashion to mapmaking. I find a leaf pressed between the pages of an account of an early expedition to Greenland. Minutes later, my arms are full, and another attendant of the sale offers to set my shopping aside for me while I continue browsing.
“I won’t be mad if you want to slip a few rubies in your pockets.” Lee sidles up to me in front of several paintings propped up against the brick-faced wall of the servants’ entrance to the kitchen.
“Is that the good crystal I hear clinking around in your pant legs?” I tease.
“Did you see those porcelain goose things?” He makes a gagging noise. “A thousand pounds. What on earth possessed these people?”
Most of the paintings are what I’d imagine as fancy British interior design: Hunting horseback behind a pack of dogs. Landscapes. Still life and gardens. But then a small portrait in an ornate frame catches my eye. It’s of a young dark-haired woman looking off her shoulder. Her eyes are a deep chocolate brown. A simple gray dress covers her slight frame and drapes over the side of the antique chair she’s perched on.
Lee whistles softly. “They’re tossing the ancestors out with the old linens. This is dreadful.”
My gaze remains glued to the painting. The girl is around my age, maybe a year or two older. She appears preoccupied. Not lost in thought but as if listening to a conversation just out of frame. That look you get when people are talking about you like you aren’t in the room. She’s trapped in this pose, though she doesn’t know why. Doesn’t know how she found herself here or what else her life might have been, might still be, if she had the nerve to decide otherwise.