By the time they climbed the broad central staircase to Northcott Abbey’s famous Long Gallery, the sinking sun was turning the hilltops a rich gold and casting long, cool shadows across the valley.
“I’ve always loved the way the light streams in the windows up here on a summer’s evening,” said Lady Seaton as they reached the brightly lit space.
“It’s lovely,” said Hero, and meant it.
Running the full length of the second floor, such galleries were a typical feature of late sixteenth – and early seventeenth-century estates. But Northcott’s version was particularly stunning: a vast, high-vaulted space with a fancifully plastered ceiling and wide, soaring windows on three sides of the long, narrow room. One glance was enough to tell Hero that her ladyship had been unduly modest; the Seatons’ collection of paintings was both large and impressive.
“This is the oldest portrait,” said their hostess, leading the way to an oil-on-oak portrait of an aged, fifteenth-century gentleman painted as if bathed in intense light against a dramatically dark sea. “Sir Walter Seaton, Baronet. My husband liked to call him a privateer. But if you ask me, he was a pirate.”
“He does rather look like a pirate,” agreed Alexandrine Bonaparte.
Hero studied the long-dead baronet’s sun-darkened, white-bearded face and rich velvet robes. “But a very successful one.”
“Oh, he was very good at what he did,” said Lady Seaton.
She kept up a running commentary as they moved slowly past the rows of dead Seatons, ladies in crespines and high-waisted velvets with detached sleeves gradually giving way to their descendants in snoods and narrow gowns with V-shaped waists. Hero was careful to affect an expression of intense interest and murmur appropriate compliments. But the truth was, she wanted nothing more than to rush through these earlier portraits. The woman she was looking for would have been painted much later, in the late seventeenth or maybe even the early eighteenth century. It was only with effort that she kept her gaze from straying down the gallery.
“It’s hard to believe women actually used to shave their foreheads and eyebrows, isn’t it?” said Lady Seaton, pausing before a trio of eyebrowless sixteenth-century ladies with complexions so white they could have come only from makeup disastrously mixed with lead. “How did they ever think it looked attractive?”
“And those towering headdresses,” said Alexandrine Bonaparte, studying one portly matron’s elaborate, sail-like confection. “It makes my neck ache just looking at them.”
“Yes, but I must admit I do like a man in doublet and hose,” said Hero, shifting to an early seventeenth-century portrait of a dashing Lord Seaton in a plumed hat.
The other women both laughed and continued on.
After what seemed like forever, hose began to give way to breeches, and ruffs disappeared in favor of broad linen and lace collars. And Hero felt herself tensing as she searched each heavy, gilded frame for the unknown woman with a silver and bluestone necklace.
And then she saw her.
Long necked and regal, she’d been painted at a time when it was fashionable to have one’s portrait done in a style known as “romantic negligence” or “undress.” Thus, instead of the stiff court dress typical of the age, she wore a loosely draped, white satin gown over a deep blue underdress with voluminous pleated sleeves and a wide neckline scooped low to reveal the upper swells of her pale breasts. Traditionally, such portraits showed their subjects with short strands of pearls nestled at the base of their throats. But this woman wore a thick chain of curiously wrought silver from which hung a gleaming triskelion superimposed on a smoothly polished bluestone disk.
Hero had no need to compare the painted necklace to the one she’d tucked into her reticule. They were identical.
“Who is this?” asked Hero, pausing before the painting when their hostess would have moved on.
“That’s my late husband’s great-great-grandmother, Guinevere Stuart. She was said to be a natural daughter of James II.”
“And she married a Seaton?” said Hero.
“Actually, it was her granddaughter Isabella who married a Seaton.” Lady Seaton indicated the portrait that hung beside Guinevere Stuart’s, of an auburn-haired girl captured in the first blush of youth and beauty.
Hero kept her gaze on the portrait of Guinevere Stuart. “That’s an interesting necklace she’s wearing.”
“Isn’t it? They say it was a wedding gift from her father. According to the legend, it was once worn by an ancient Druid priestess and possessed special powers.”
“Special powers?” said Alexandrine Bonaparte. “Sounds fascinating. What sort of powers?”