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...’ ”
The Earl paused. "He died laughing in Mona Blessey’s arms.”
Mona turned her back on the Earl. She covered her face with her hands and breathed.
"Hounded by reporters and vilified in the papers, Mona Blessey left for America the very next week. She had the bed my grandfather died in shipped along with her things. I thought that sounded awfully sentimental for a teenage prostitute. I should have known she was using the bed to smuggle the artwork out of the country. Somehow that bed ended up in your possession.”
"My mother bought it nearly thirty years ago at an estate sale. She told me that’s where my name came from—Mona was the name of the woman who’d owned the bed. Mother said she’d been a courtesan in her youth, and I didn’t believe it. Mother could stretch the truth every now and then. But in this case she was right, wasn’t she?”
"She was,” the Earl said. "And now you know the story of the painting. It belongs to my family. I’ll have to ask you to return it.”
"No,” she said, facing him.
"No? No isn’t an option. It’s my family’s painting.”
"It’s my painting. Malcolm was the rightful owner and gave it to Mona Blessey. Mona put it in her bedpost for safe-keeping. My mother bought the bed. I was conceived in the bed your grandfather died in. The bed is legally mine. The painting was in the bed and therefore the painting is mine and always will be. No court of law in America or the United Kingdom would disagree. And you know it,” she said. "Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked me how much I was willing to sell it for.”
"I was hoping to avoid a legal battle.”