Page 93 of The Art of Theft
He opened the handkerchief to reveal two small puff pastries. “This one has chocolate inside. This one, pâté, in case you are still refraining from sweet things.”
“I am,” she said, eating the pâté puff in two bites. Then she took the chocolate puff. “But tonight I’ll make an exception.”
He looked at her, not speaking. He was a man who exerted a pull simply by standing still, a viscerally physical presence. Beneath the black cashmere wool of his evening jacket, and his still-pristine shirt, his chest rose and fell.
She had used to wonder what it would be like to lay her head upon his chest, to feel each expansion of his lungs. At the time she’d had to imagine the texture of his skin and the contours of his musculature. Now she knew how he felt to her fingers and her lips. But she still had never laid her head on his chest.
She lifted her gaze. Their eyes met.
Whenever they’d been in such proximity before, she’d always wanted more—everything that was forbidden to her. Perhaps it was the fatigue at last catching up with her, but this moment she was... content to stand close to him, doing nothing but that.
He folded his empty handkerchief and put it back in his pocket. “Good night, Holmes.”
“Good night, Ash,” she murmured, and watched him walk away.
She entered her room, closed the door, leaned against it, and ate the chocolate puff in the smallest bites possible, thinking, as she did so, not of more and more and more chocolate puffs, but of him.
Of them.
?Over a late breakfast, Charlotte read about the gas explosions at Château Vaudrieu. Apparently the guards had first thought they were bombs, which prompted them to prevent the guests from leaving, in an attempt to locate the perpetrators. Once it was clear they were but gas explosions, all was well—or as well as could be with gas explosions.
Some at the château suffered minor injuries. But Herr Albrecht, the owner, was now on hand and all would be well. No mention was made of the château’s electrical plant, which obviated most of the need for gas. Or the ball’s hosts, Madame Desrosiers and her brother Monsieur Plantier.
Excellent fiction, better than some of the stories Livia had made her read.
Mrs. Watson and the maharani, still veiled, came in and sat down at the breakfast table. Charlotte slid over an envelope. The maharani, through her veil, perused its contents.
“Thank you, ladies.” She looked at Charlotte. “Obviously no contingency plan was needed last night, but I’m still curious as to what it would have been.”
“The Van Dyck that I saw in Château Vaudrieu on the night of the reception was a forgery.” Charlotte took a bite of her plainboiled egg. “The folds of Mary’s robe depict a brachistochrone curve, the path of fastest descent of a bead sliding from point A to point B under uniform gravity and with no friction.”
“A what?” said Mrs. Watson and the maharani together.
Charlotte took out a pencil and drew a quick diagram to show the ladies what a brachistochrone curve looked like, set against two other lines of descent, one straight, one polygonal. “This is more or less what I saw in the forgery, with three shadowy dots representing the three beads rolling down each line at different speeds.”
Mrs. Watson and the maharani glanced at each other, as if Charlotte had spoken in Etruscan.
“Van Dyck died in sixteen forty-one,” she explained further. “The brachistochrone curve wasn’t developed until more than fifty years after his death. Therefore the painting cannot possibly be authentic. Lord Ingram and I believe that the painting’s owner put it up for sale under duress. In that case, it made every sense that the owner would have hired an art forger and given the fake to Château Vaudrieu.
“So our ally called on the owner and asked to have the original by this afternoon—or risk exposure that he tried to sell a forgery at a respectable venue. But of course, given that there is no longer a need for the original, our ally has sent a cable first thing this morning and told the owner that he could keep his heirloom.”
“I see,” said the maharani, shaking her head a little.
She rose, went to the fireplace, and burned the incriminating letters. When she returned to the breakfast table, she took out an envelope of her own and set it before Mrs. Watson.
Mrs. Watson looked in the envelope and immediately pushed it back toward the maharani. “I said I wouldn’t take anything from you.”
The maharani wagged a finger. “No, you said we would discuss payments after I had what I want. And now I have it.”
“I didn’t do this for payment,” insisted Mrs. Watson, now looking insulted.
The maharani leaned toward her. “I know that. And I am grateful. But remember what you told me all those years ago? That women should be valued for their work and that women, especially, should not devalue the work of other women. I do not have twenty thousand pounds, but I can still defray your expenses and remunerate everyone for their time.”
“But—”
“Set an example for the young lady, Joanna. If you don’t let me pay you, I’m sure she won’t let you pay her. And everyone’s work here, especially hers, should be fairly compensated.”
Mrs. Watson, who’d made a point of teaching Charlotte not to let herself be undervalued, could not argue with that. She accepted the envelope.
