Bloody Royal Prints (29 page)

“Yes, it was in her house, 23 Culross—in the attic, mixed with papers relating to financial matters, with Ross family names on them. There may be a problem for her with those awful Rosses, even if they're in prison or headed there.”

“All the more reason to specify her name in this contract, and get this collection, with the British Guiana, into her physical possession as quickly as possible. ‘Possession is nine-tenths of the law,' as they say,” Heyward said.

The paper expert spoke up. “The paper type looks right. I've never seen the One-Cent Magenta, but I've seen other South American British Colonials of this period, and they are printed on the same paper. If this was forged, it was done long ago, when there was identical paper stock available. The stamp is 1856, and anyone interested in stamps knows that it was discovered by a young collector some twenty years later. Nobody dreamed it was unique, and therefore valuable, for some time after that. It wouldn't have been easy to create another copy. Where would the paper have come from? By the turn of the century, British Colonial stamps were completely different, with different paper, dimensions, and perforations. It's not impossible that it's a forgery, but improbable.”

•••

Contracts written and signed, Heyward and his legal crew departed. Too excited to return to work, Jonathan called his assistant and instructed her to cancel his appointments for the day. Dinah let her coworkers at the museum know she'd be late, and called her cousin, who was busy at work in her office in Heyward's house.

“Coleman, hold your breath. We may have found a treasure at 23 Culross. It's an old postage stamp collection, certainly worth something, and it may contain what some call the most valuable stamp in the world—but it may not be if this one turns out to be the second extant copy. Just the same, it would be worth a lot. We're going to Sotheby's now.”

Coleman broke in. She'd rarely heard Dinah so excited. “Slow down. Sotheby's? Where are you?”

“Some place you've never heard of called Stanley Gibbons. It's complicated. Meet us at Sotheby's and I'll fill you in. You'll want to call Zeke at
ArtSmart
—it's a story he'll love.”

•••

Dinah, Jonathan, Coleman, the paper expert, and the two Gibbons dealers huddled around the grim-faced Sotheby's stamp expert, all staring at two small scraps of oddly shaped paper.

Jonathan was the first to speak up. “Identical. What else is to be said?”

The paper expert, also an avid stamp collector, agreed. “Everything's right: color, size—and I know the paper is genuine. This powerful magnification confirms the lettering—it's the same on both copies, down to the slight imperfection in the ‘G.' The cancellation is in the identical style, and we can get a handwriting expert to bless that, but it's obviously the same hand. The ink can be tested, but it looks the same to me under this infrared light.”

Other Sotheby's curators arrived looking worried, muttering, “What do we do now?”

The Gibbons dealers spoke in near unison: “We're prepared to authenticate this as an 1856 British Guiana One-Cent Magenta.”

Coleman started taking notes, and questioning the Sotheby's curators, who were offering confused and contradictory answers. She announced to the room at large, “
ArtSmart
has never done a story on stamps or stamp collecting, but we're going to tell the story of this great discovery. We'll have a special announcement online, and the complete story, fully illustrated, in this month's print edition.”

The Sotheby curators retreated, summoning their PR minions.

Dinah asked, “How are they going to handle this? Their seller will be devastated. They might get sued. What can they do?”

Jonathan answered, “That's their problem. Let's go see Lady Jane.”

•••

Dinah, Coleman, Jonathan, a Stanley Gibbons representative, and Heyward converged on Lady Jane's modest cottage. As expected, she was in her garden. Heyward gave her the news.

Jane was overcome. She sat down and began fanning herself. The Gibbons man told her he was confident the entire collection was worth at least £2 million, possibly close to £3 million. They were prepared to handle the sale for her. Coleman was busy taking pictures with her iPhone—action shots of Stanley Gibbons breaking the news to the owner of the rare stamp that she would publish in
ArtSmart
.

Heyward explained about the contract, handed her a copy, and said, “Lady Jane, we will get this album back in your hands today. Better yet, will you let me put it into a bank safe, the location of which only you and I will know? There must be no opportunity for any of the Ross clan to claim ownership. The lawyers have worked hard to protect you from them, but this is an unusual situation.”

“Oh, there's no chance of that. The stamp collection belonged to my nanny. It was her greatest treasure. She left everything she owned, including the collection, to me. I have the will in my safe. I'll give it to you, and you can put it with the collection in a bank you choose. But the collection disappeared after she died. I thought it had been stolen. I can't thank you enough for finding it for me,” Jane said.

Dinah looked back at Jane as they were leaving. Her face was glowing. She looked happier than Dinah had ever seen her. When she'd first seen this place and its owner, she'd thought it looked like a fairyland. She'd just seen a fairy tale come true.

Saturday, May, London

Coleman stuck to her plans and the list of things she wanted to do. She managed to slip away from Tony long enough to do her shopping. She didn't tell him where she was going, or what she planned to buy. He'd want to accompany her, and he'd try to buy things for her.

She went to Liberty, and was entranced by the fabrics. She bought samples of upholstery fabrics to take back to the decorating department at
First Home
. She bought yards and yards of delicate silks in green, blue, lavender, and pale yellow to turn into party dresses in New York. She bought another copy of her how-to book on hats—
The Modern Girl's Guide to Hatmaking
—to take home to Bethany, who, like Coleman, made most of her clothes, and would leap at the opportunity to design hats.

The hats at Liberty were less expensive than those she'd seen, but they were disappointing—pedestrian and lacking in glamour. Coleman had asked Kathy Mann if there was any place that had great hats for reasonable prices.

Kathy knew and had responded. “If you mean those grand hats worn by the Royals, no. But you can get some fashionable caps and berets and other plain hats at a place called Beret in Pimlico. After you buy them, you can dress them up. I'll give you a list of places where you can buy trimmings—feathers, flowers, beading. You'll love those shops.”

Coleman made the rounds, and bought lavishly. She could hardly wait to begin designing hats.

•••

She spent a bluebell day with Tony, a delicious day of beauty and love. Was she in love with Tony? She asked herself that every day. She supposed she was, but it didn't matter: She couldn't marry him.

Another day, he took her to Oxford to see his college, Christ Church, and the Dreaming Spires. She was as impressed as he'd hoped. She pictured the young Tony walking in that beautiful town, and wished she'd known him then.

“Did you like it here?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I liked Eton, too. I'll take you there so you can see the area and what the boys look like.”

He took her to all of his favorite restaurants. Her favorites were those in beautiful locations. The Waterside Inn at Bray was not only on the water, its large glass windows revealed swans drifting by. Tony pointed out Windsor Castle, and young Etonians in their top hats and black coats. She could see Tony the schoolboy in that attire, and thought he would have been adorable.

He took her to the French Horn, Sonning-on-Thames, where the specialty was roast duck, and the windows framed a wide spot in the river surrounded by willow trees. Another lovely day, a lovely view, and delicious food.

He flew her and Dolly to Paris for a day, and took them to a restaurant set in a grassy garden, where petals from the blossoming trees drifted into her hair and Dolly's fur and all over the table. They ate asparagus, a cheese soufflé, and strawberries. She was exhausted at the end of the day. It was a night she and Dolly spent at Tony's apartment. She rarely slept on nights in this apartment, and usually spent the next afternoon asleep in her room at Heyward's house, only getting up to go out to the theater or a concert with her family, or dinner with Tony.

Would she change anything? No, but she had the sense of the candle burning at both ends. Her dreams were a blur of unicorns and hedgehogs and badgers, of bluebells and nightingales, and soaring through a star-studded sky. She knew these were the dreams she'd take home with her, and that when she woke from them, the pillow would be wet with tears.

Monday, May, London

Dinah endeared herself to her new associates by ordering and donating all the catalogues needed for their new American collection. She called Bethany, at the Greene Gallery, and asked her to round up the rare books, and Bethany was pleased to help, and create a library to match the collection.

•••

As absorbed as she was in her work at the museum, Dinah found the time to begin her study of English food. She started with collecting cookbooks. Hatchards had a good selection, and she found older, out-of-print books at a small bookstore, Heywood Hill, located near Rachel's house. The first cookbook she looked at provided a piece of information that made her angry as a hornet: To make a house smell the way 23 Culross had when cooking kidneys
had to be deliberate
. People cooked kidneys properly all the time without causing an odor. She hoped those wretched women would be in jail forever.

•••

Her first writing for
First Home
was “Upper Crust: The Very Best Savory Pies.” She included recipes she'd found in English cookbooks, but she usually modernized them by cutting down the work required. She'd use frozen pie crust from the market, or refrigerated pie dough, instead of making the crust from scratch. She tested the pies on James, William, Hamilton—anyone available—and they gave her rave reviews.

Some of the most popular pies were crustless: crustless crab quiche, crustless shrimp quiche, crustless tuna quiche, crustless chicken asparagus quiche. Less work
and
fewer calories. She sometimes used mashed potatoes as a topping instead of crust, pointing out that the English cottage pie (made with beef) and shepherd's pie (made with lamb) both had mashed-potato tops, and no bottom crusts, and they were absolutely delicious. Ellen, the cook, was always willing to experiment and came up with great ideas.

Dinah decided her next project would be “Favorite London Soups.” She'd put together a long list of future projects, all of which excited her. She was busier than she had ever been, but found time to go shopping with Coleman, and to great restaurants and great theater with Jonathan, Heyward, Coleman, and sometimes Tony. Every day was an adventure, and she had two jobs that fit perfectly with her two main interests. Bliss.

•••

When Coleman came to 23 Culross to say goodbye, the day she was leaving London to go back to New York, Dinah said goodbye with only a few tears. She would never be as strong and certain as Coleman, but she knew for the first time in her life that she could deal with whatever came up. She would remember that angels were fearless, and try to be like an angel. She would always love Coleman, but she was sure she would never again need Coleman to fight her battles.

Tuesday, May, London

Coleman, with Dolly in her carrier, boarded Heyward's plane—the same plane that had picked her up in Paris. She'd asked Heyward if she could avoid the Omnium landing strip, and Paris. Both had associations with Tony, and she didn't want to be reminded of her times with him.

The plane took her to the airport at Nice, where she and Dolly boarded a flight to Kennedy. She'd asked for and got a window seat. She wanted to be able to stare out into the dark and avoid speaking to anyone. She was relieved when an elderly man sat in the aisle seat. He didn't say hello, or look friendly. Good. She turned her back on him, stared out the window, and thought about farewells.

Saying goodbye to Heyward hadn't been sad; he'd be in New York in a few weeks. Dinah was cheerful, and Coleman was happy for her: Their goodbyes were lighthearted. But then there was Tony. She'd told him almost daily since he'd proposed that she couldn't marry him, couldn't stay in London, but he couldn't—wouldn't—believe her. He loved her, and he was sure she loved him. She did love him. She was sure she'd never love anyone as much as she loved Tony. But she couldn't marry him. His kind of life wasn't hers, and never would be. She hoped he'd find someone else—someone who was young and adoring, someone who'd enjoy being a duchess and the mother of the heir or heirs. Coleman rarely cried, but at the thought of never seeing Tony again, or seeing him married to someone else, tears welled up in her eyes.

She felt movement in the aisle seat. The grumpy old man was leaving. Maybe she wouldn't have a seatmate. Oh, drat, someone else was taking his seat. She turned to look. Good Lord, Jeb Middleton was sitting beside her, beaming at her as if they were close friends. Was he stalking her? What a nuisance. She'd lost interest in him when she saw him drooling over Stephanie. She sighed. This would be a long trip. She'd like to snub him, but he worked for her half-brother. She had to be polite.

•••

When Coleman was in New York and looked back on her two weeks in London, she saw herself constantly busy, with her family, with work, and, of course, with Tony. Some days stood out, for good or bad. Others were a blur. She'd tried to keep a diary, but some of her entries were short.