Someone was playing a cruel trick on her. Mona closed the door to the back room behind her.
"I’ll lock up now if you like,” Gabrielle said in the office doorway.
"Yes, thank you,” Mona said.
"Are you working late again?”
"Always.”
"You work too much,” Gabrielle said. "You should take time off. You know I can watch The Red for you and Tou-Tou. You haven’t taken a day off since I started.”
Mona smiled. Gabrielle was kind and they got along well, but Mona had never worked up the courage to tell her lovely assistant that she came to The Red every day because of Malcolm—because she missed him, because she was certain he wasn’t quite done with her yet. How do you tell a woman as rational and intelligent as Gabrielle that you were in love with a man who was most likely a ghost? You didn’t, of course. So Mona kept her secrets to herself.
"I’ll think about that,” Mona said. Perhaps she would take some time off. She couldn’t be held hostage by a memory all her life, could she? "Although I don’t know what I’d do with myself.”
"You will figure that out.” Gabrielle turned to leave. "Or not.”
"I won’t figure it out?”
"No, I won’t lock up.” Gabrielle looked at Mona over her shoulder. "He’s still here.”
She whispered the last words and Mona narrowed her eyes at her assistant. Gabrielle crooked her finger at Mona and Mona walked over to the door.
"Who is that?” Gabrielle whispered. "He’s been here for over an hour.” Mona peered into the gallery. A man stood in front of the portrait of Malcolm, one hand on his hip, the other in his pocket. "Tou-Tou likes him.”
The little black cat sat on the floor at the man’s feet. They both seemed to be staring at the painting.
"I don’t know,” Mona said.
"He’s terribly handsome,” Gabrielle whispered.
Mona couldn’t deny it. She straightened her red skirt and black blouse. "You can go out the side door,” Mona said. "I’ll lock up after he’s gone.”
Gabrielle smiled. She unbuttoned one button on Mona’s blouse, revealing the lace edge of her black bra.
"You’ll thank me later,” Gabrielle said before leaving Mona all alone in the gallery with the man in the suit.
After Gabrielle was gone and the gallery empty but for her, Tou-Tou, and the man, Mona forced herself to go out to him. She almost buttoned her blouse up again but didn’t. Why bother?
"Sir? We’re closing,” she said. The man didn’t look at her, nor acknowledge that she’d spoken. He had reddish brown hair, wavy and rakish, and his eyes were very dark…but unmistakably blue. Midnight blue. Lean but broad-shouldered, strong nose and strong chin and strong jaw, he was more handsome than any man had a right to be.
He looked very familiar to her, but she couldn’t quite place him.
"Sir?”
"I need to speak to the owner of this establishment,” the man said in a crisp English accent.
"I’m Mona St. James. I’m the owner.”
"Well, Miss St. James, how much for the painting?”
"It’s not for sale,” she said.
"Everything is for sale. Name your price, I’ll pay it.”
"This painting is priceless.”
He scoffed. "Priceless? I refuse to believe it means anything to you. You don’t even know who he is, do you? Besides, your card is wrong.”
"I disagree,” she said. "My assistant is very thorough in her research. The painting is clearly marked 1938 and the artist is undoubtedly Anthony Devas.”
"That’s not what’s incorrect. The subject of the painting is the problem. He’s not an ‘unknown man.’ I know that because I know him.”
"You know him?”
"His name is Malcolm Arthur Augustus Fitzroy, thirteenth Earl of Godwick.”
Mona covered her mouth with her fingers, silencing her gasp. Finally. At last. She knew his name. Malcolm Arthur Augustus Fitzroy. The Earl of Godwick.
"You know this for certain?”
"I know this for certain,” the man said.
"How?”
He turned and looked at her directly in the face. He had a commanding air to him. Commanding and powerful. A man used to having his way.
"Because my name is Spencer Arthur Malcolm Fitzroy, and I’m the fifteenth Earl of Godwick. That ‘unknown’ man on your wall is my grandfather.”
"Malcolm is your grandfather?”
"He was, yes. Although he died long before I was born.” The man’s handsome brow furrowed. "Did you say your name was Mona?”
"Yes,” she said. "You’re Malcolm’s grandson.” She knew she was repeating herself, but she was in too much shock to stay silent.
"How did you come across this painting?” the Earl asked.
"How did you know I had it?” she asked.
"I asked you first.”
"I won’t answer until you answer,” she said.
"The Sunday Times had an article about a lost Picasso painting found in America. A painting of a woman in red and blue. There was also a photograph of the interior of The Red, with a familiar painting in the background…a painting that once hung in Wingthorn Hall, my family’s ancestral home.”
"I found it rolled up in the post of my bed,” she said.
"A brass bed. An antique brass bed.”
"Yes, it is. But how—” She hadn’t told the newspapers the bed was brass. She’d only said "my mother’s old bed.”
"My grandfather was the last of the great English rakes. His sexual appetite was legendary and his prowess even more so. He refused to marry, to settle down, to do his duty by his name and family. Instead he spent nearly every night in brothels with ‘his darling whores,’ as he called them. That’s all he spent his money on—prostitutes and art.”
"I can think of worse ways to waste one’s fortune.”
"Hardly wasted. The art he purchased saved the family fortune. The economy was in tatters after the war. But art—great art—always goes up in value. Only the Queen has more money than we do now.”
"Malcolm was a very wise man then. And I have to admire an art lover.”
"Oh, he was an art lover, all right. He and his girls would put on plays for the other brothel patrons. They’d reenact scenes from paintings, the more erotic the better. His exploits were legendary. Not too many earls performed in near-public orgies.”
"A pity,” Mona said. "They should have.”
"Yes, a pity indeed. The family was always trying to tame him. Just when they thought he’d settled down after he turned forty, he fell madly in lust with an eighteen-year-old prostitute named Mona Blessey. He showered her with gifts.”
"Art,” Mona said.
"Art, indeed.” The Earl nodded. "Sketches—Degas among them. Paintings, including the Picasso you found. And even his own official portrait he ripped off the wall in Wingthorn. At age forty-one, he finally gave in to his mother’s begging and married a girl with no money who would put up with his rakish ways and not make too much of a fuss. The very day he learned she was pregnant, he left her for Mona. An Earl’s wife is a countess. My rather foul-mouthed grandfather called Mona his—”
"His cuntess,” Mona said.
"Exactly. How did you know?”
"An educated guess. Go on.”
"When Mona Blessey’s father learned where they were holed up, he traveled to Scotland and found my grandfather in his daughter’s bed. He ordered my grandfather to return to his wife and unborn child in England and let his daughter go. My grandfather refused. So the man shot him.”
"In the chest,” Mona said, remembering her dream of The Bleeding Man.
"Yes, in the chest,” the Earl said. "Do you know—”
"Keep talking. Tell me everything.”
"He bled out quickly, but he lived long enough to cough out his last words to her father. He said, ‘If I must sell my soul to the devil to do it, I will find a way back into Mona’s bed. A whore will reign as Countess of Godwick. You’ll see...’ ”