Pansy and Baldwin aren’t speaking to Nell or to the press. Their complete silence is an indication of the depth of their disgust. Partly over the supposed “controversy” this sheds on May Quincy’s relationship with her brother-in-law. Partly over the public way it’s been latched onto and dragged through the press. A researcher from Kenyon College had called them all, trying to gain access to the journal. After that, Baldwin sent Nell a curt email filled with words like “unacceptable,” “scandal,” and “Kardashian-esque.” The last one had made Nell smile. Baldwin does keep up with the times.
Though she suspects it’s the windfall coming her way that is unacceptable to Baldwin.
The jewelry auction is held every fall, allowing plenty of time for Russian oligarch buyers and threadbare British aristo sellers to make their respective transactions before the holidays. They use these auctions as if they are their own personal eBay—a tidy transfer of assets from the land-poor to the newly flush. She’s been told there’s likely museum interest in the Moon.
She’s ensconced in a luxe little conference room reserved for VIP consignors overlooking the auction floor, when the head of the jewelry department knocks on the door and peeks her head in. Today she is wearing a shroud of black layers from her chin to her flat boot–clad feet. Her pale, almost-white hair is tied back with a leather strap, and she has no makeup on her grave Flemish angel face except for a glowy sheen high on her cheekbones.
She hands Nell the glossy catalog; it’s a luxurious hardcover coffee table book, a first for her department, and she asks if Nell needs anything, clearly juggling a long to-do list.
Just a new stomach to deal with her nerves and a high bidder, Nell thinks.
She’d been encouraged to stay home by nearly everyone, including the Flemish angel, but in the end it was her father who convinced her to come to New York, making the once-in-a-lifetime argument. Of course he’d insisted on meeting her here; she suspects he couldn’t resist the glamour of the event. Louis is here, too, claiming he was needed in his role as estate attorney, but she suspects he also wanted to witness the spectacle as much as she did.
Nell had reintroduced them over dinner last night, and she was relieved when they’d discovered a common affection for Cleveland sports teams and red wine.
They’re side by side, hidden behind the skybox’s one-way glass window, looking down on the crowd, scanning. She feels the sharp crackle between her and Louis, heightened by the energy coming off the room. She knows he’s looking for the Mahj, too.
Nell actually points, hitting glass, when she sees Reema Patel walk in. Being a curator at a museum with one of the largest endowments in the country means she’s recognized on auction floors the world over. She’s greeted by a small clutch of attendees—air-kisses and handshakes all around. Right behind her, a young, slick-looking Indian man in large aviator sunglasses enters, talking on a gold-plated cell phone. His wrinkled suit looks expensive, as do his scuffed loafers and tousled hair with manicured stubble. He’s handsome enough to be a Bollywood star, but his artful dishevelment marks him out as living in the West. The Indian men she’s previously encountered have been meticulously groomed.
“Gotta be,” Louis says, chin up once sharply.
Just last week her father had forwarded her a link about the Mahj gate-crashing the Royal Enclosure at Ascot and being denied by security, yet another confirmation of his nostalgic tendencies despite his youth.
Nevertheless, his playboy habits and ability to attract the paparazzi have made him something of a media darling. Many in the crowd unashamedly take pictures of him with their cell phones, and a few lean in for selfies.
He’s been banned from the big auction houses and has taken to enlisting proxies and aliases. So it’s with some confusion that Nell watches the head of the jewelry department, the Flemish angel, rush across the room to shake the Mahj’s hand, as excited as a six-year-old meeting Santa. The Mahj is off his phone, and he removes his sunglasses with a courtly flourish as Reema Patel formally introduces him. The department head, uncharacteristically red-faced with excitement, shows them both to prime seats located side by side in the front row.
“The hell?” Louis says.
Reema Patel is scanning the room. When she looks up at the bank of skybox windows, she smiles, assured and only slightly frosty. Nell reminds herself that Patel can’t see through the one-way glass, because it’d been awkward when Nell had told her the Moon was going to auction. Patel had been professional and formal, but clearly disappointed and disapproving. Nell notes a slightly triumphant swish of that black hair as Patel now takes her seat next to royalty.
Nell wants to call the Flemish angel back and ask what’s going on.
But there’s no time, as the auction begins right away. Lesser modern lots go for over their estimates. Bidding’s energetic on the floor and topped up by the phones and the Internet.
When the white-gloved auction house assistant brings the Moon of Nizam onto the stage, a hush falls over the room. On a large screen behind the auctioneer, a projection of Ambrose’s journal entry looms over them all. The portions pertaining to Ambrose buying the piece from the maharani are highlighted, his old-fashioned fountain pen script as romantic as the pressed violet Nell had found next to his name.
The auctioneer is droning on about the gemological specifications of the necklace, carats and clarity. And when it comes to provenance, he says, “Former property of May Quincy, wife of industrialist Ethan Quincy, as given to her by her brother-in-law, Ambrose Quincy, and consigned by their granddaughter.”
It’s then that Nell really feels the truth of it. For of course the auctioneer meant that Nell is Ethan and May’s granddaughter, but all she hears is that she is May and Ambrose’s.
“Shhh.” Louis hip-checks her, his nose practically against the window.
“I didn’t say anything.”
Bidding has started at one million and is ramping up in hundred-thousand-dollar increments.
There’s an out-of-time feeling. And Nell knows then that when Loulou wrote her will, she made a very specific choice.
“We’re at the reserve now,” Louis says, his eyes never leaving the crowd. “It’s going for sure.” He jostles her elbow.
This wasn’t a mistake. She believes it then. It wasn’t a dotty, demented old lady with too much stuff on her hands. And Nell’s known all along it wasn’t an oversight or sloppiness on Louis’s part. It’s an apology, an offer of restitution, an attempt at absolution, and a chance to right a wrong. And as Nell watches the price increase on the floor, she knows it was meant to be a debt repaid.
The auctioneer has close to ten million on the floor. The Internet bidders have dropped off. The phone bidders have gone silent.
Loulou had to have known more than anyone what was between May and Ambrose and exactly where Nell’s mother, their daughter, fell in the course of it. Loulou had been the repository of not only the heirlooms, but of the secrets, too.
It’s then that the Mahj raises his paddle.
“Would you pay attention?” Louis gestures toward the floor.