A Fresh Perspective, A Regency Romance (25 page)

“Talcott? Is that you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you be so good as to come forward?”

“It would be my pleasure, sir,” Reed said. “If these gentlemen will be so good as to put me down.”

“Gentlemen?” With a negligent wave of Christie’s hand the sea of people parted. A channel opened to the podium. The rummy mountains had enough of their wits about them to return him to the floor, slightly more rumpled than he had left it.

“My thanks, gentlemen,” Reed said as he smoothed his coat and set off toward the rostrum where three bespectacled faces peered intently down at him.

“Is it true?” Christie asked in an alarmed undervoice. “You had no intention of selling this painting?”

Reed sighed with relief. “No intention at all.”

Christie leaned over the edge of the rostrum to hold whispered consultation with his bookkeeper. Rain whispered against the windows above. The bidders grew restless and whispered as well. The bookkeeper flipped the pages in his ledger, rifled more pages in the printed catalog, made pencil ticks on each of the pages and handed the books to Christie, who peered at both entries.

He stabbed at the pages with his forefinger. “My dear Mr. Talcott, it is clearly listed right here, in both books.” He waved a hand at the painting. “You see a lot number correctly assigned. We have three bidders currently committed to the purchase of the piece. Unless I am mistaken, you have yourself engaged in the bidding on this piece from the back of the room. Why did you not cry out?”

“What do they say?” Giovanni complained. “Why do they not get on with it?”

“‘Tis tedious,” Aunt Win said, fanning herself. “Much too hot for this senseless delay.”

Their complaints were echoed on all sides.

Megan burned with anger and humiliation. What was Reed doing now? Was it not bad enough that he was the cause of the fracas at the back of the room? Must he now hold up the bidding she wished more than anything to be finished? Even Christie looked put out with him. He kept shaking his head and pointing to something in his books.

“. . . regrettable indeed, you did not succeed in that endeavor,” she heard him say.

Regrettable indeed! God help her, she should not have come today.

“I do apologize,” Reed said.

Christie was polite but firm. “Your apologies, while welcome, do not change the fact that as gentlemen we can neither of us honorably withdraw from the auctioning of this piece. I am sure you must agree. The bidding is too far engaged.”

Reed was not at all inclined to agree.

“Look around you, man,” Christie advised him in a whisper. “Should this crowd turn hostile, there is no question life, limb and property would be endangered. If you are set on keeping the painting, sir, might I suggest you continue to try and outbid the others.”

This was not at all the outcome Reed had anticipated, but he had no more than a moment to be stunned. Christie rapped his hammer, consulted the notes before him and announced that the recommencing bid stood at eight pounds eleven, and did anyone care to raise the amount?

Reed turned from the rostrum to a sea of curious faces, stomach leaden with the undigested truth of what had been said to him on top of stringy roast beef and doughy bread. He had been confident he could halt the sale of the watercolor, confident it too could not slip away from him.

“Eight pounds eleven,” Christie repeated.

Before Reed could utter a word a familiar voice said firmly, “Eight pounds fifteen.”

Giovanni Giamarco sat three rows back from the rostrum; beside him, face flushed scarlet, Megan, lip caught between her teeth, eyes downcast. Pain pulled at her mouth. The sight of her knocked Reed unsteady. Lord, what must she think of him?

It was much easier to read what Giovanni thought. He wore the same expression with which he had asked on three occasions, pistols, swords or fists?

“Nine pounds,” Reed said softly to the bookkeeper.

Megan looked up swiftly. Nine pounds? Was it really Reed who had just said nine pounds? Pounds he could not afford?

“The bid stands at nine pounds,” Christie confirmed, lifting his hammer, as if prepared to strike the sale closed.

“Nine pounds five shillings,” Giovanni’s voice seemed too loud, too unbending.

“Ten pounds,” Reed’s response was as soft as the look in his eyes when his gaze met hers.

“The bid now stands at ten,” Christie informed the room. “Ten pounds. Ten pounds going once. . .” The hammer raised.

Still he stared at her, dear Reed, something in his eyes begging forgiveness. Not a stranger after all.

“Ten and one,” Giovanni said evenly.

“Eleven,” Reed said gently, beckoning to Giovanni. Brows raised, Giamarco leaned past several people’s heads in the aisle in front of him.

“I never intended to sell this painting,” Reed said. Giovanni smiled, thin-lipped. “I am not the one you should be telling,” he said in a low voice. Gaze flickering toward the rostrum he interrupted Christie’s, “Going once at eleven, going twice.”

“Fifteen pounds.”

“Fifteen pounds,” Mr. Christie intoned blandly. A gasp swept the room.

Giovanni laughed when Reed opened his mouth to increase the bid, and raised his own bid. “Double it.”

Christie’s brows rose. “Thirty pounds, sir, against your own bid of fifteen?”

“Yes,” Giovanni assured him. “And my bid goes up ten pounds every time he opens his mouth.”

“Giovanni!” Reed and Megan both cried out in astonishment

“The bid is now forty,” Mr. Christie said uncertainly. There were uneasy murmurs from the crowd.

“Stop!” Megan tugged on Giovanni’s sleeve. “Stop this at once.”

“He will be the one to stop. Not I.” Giovanni’s eyes glittered with determination. “He does not deserve your painting, any more than he deserves your undying affection. Nor can he afford it. But I can and will take you to Italy with me, one way,” he jerked his head in the direction of the painting, “or another.”

Christie was banging down the noise and calling out that the bid stood at forty, as if everyone in the room was not well aware of the fact. “Forty going once, going twice going three times and. . .”

“Forty-one,” Reed’s voice stopped the hammer.

“Making the bid now fifty-one to you, sir,” Christie waved his hammer at Giovanni.

“Let it go, Reed,” Megan called out.

Reed turned to look at her, a long look, eyes filled with sadness. “It was not supposed to be in the sale, Megan.”

“Sixty-one pounds,” Christie upped the bid. “Unless you intended every word should be counted, sir?” He asked the question of Giovanni as if such inquiries were nothing out of the ordinary.

“Lord, save me from fools,” Megan said softly. Louder she politely begged her aunt’s pardon, scandalously hiked up her skirts that she might straddle the bench that separated them, and managed, to the accompaniment of a chorus of, “Oh mys!” and “How shocking!” plus the disapproving tap of her aunt’s walking stick, to make her way over yet another bench to Reed. He looked more battered and torn than she could ever recall having seen him. The shoulder seams of his coat were ripped, the fabric severely creased, his eyes and mouth had a tight, tired look and there were crumbs on his lapel. Poor Reed. Not the English gentleman at all today. “Let it go, Reed,” she repeated.

“But. . .

“Seventy-one pounds,” she heard Christie announce blandly.

She placed a finger across Reed’s lips to stop him from speaking.

“No buts,” she said. “No bids. You cannot afford this madness. This is not a duel. Let the painting go.”

She stopped all argument, all words completely by kissing him.

A gasp went up all around the room, but Megan blocked it from her mind, blocked all but the sensation of her lips against Reed’s. She caught him off guard. His mind, it was clear, by the stiffness of his posture, and the rigidity of his response, was on anything but kisses. His initial reaction was to pull away from her unexpected assault.

But Megan gave him no quarter. Gently but firmly she grasped his lower lip between her teeth. Given time, and she was willing to give him time, his mouth softened under hers and his arms stopped their imitation of wood blocks to enfold her in their warmth, even as Mr. Christie hammered down the sale he had been attempting to end for more than half an hour. “Lot number ninety-seven,” he called, “Going once at seventy-one pounds. Going twice. Three times. Sold, to the gentleman in the third row.”

A little cheer went up from the crowd and in the fifth row, as Megan was later informed by her mother-in-law, Lord Talcott made a point of cutting through the crowd that he might lean close enough to Lady Talcott’s ear to whisper, “If I bid on your emeralds, my love, is there any chance you might stop me with such a kiss?”

“I would not count on it, my lord,” Clarissa Talcott answered coolly. “You could sooner win kisses from me in overseeing the repairs to the road leading up the hill to Talcott Keep.”

“It is about time that road had a lasting mend,” he agreed, and for the first time in thirteen years Lord Talcott sat down beside his lady wife and took her hand.

Megan’s kiss, and it was an incredibly long and involved kiss, came to an end at that point, Megan coming up for air to the accompaniment of a ripple of amused noises from the crowd, and Christie’s polite, “Too late for any more bids, Mr. Talcott. You do, I most fervently hope, accept the situation as it now stands?”

Megan smiled up at Reed. “You do,” she said.

Reed smiled back at her. “I do,” he agreed.

Mr. Christie banged smartly on his rostrum to still the chorus of huzzahs and said politely, his eyes on Giovanni. “I wish you joy in your prize, sir.”

Giovanni nodded, directed a courtly bow at Megan and Reed and thoroughly charmed the crowd, which seemed to wait with baited breath his reaction, in saying, “You will be so good, my dear friends, as to accept this lovely painting as a wedding gift, no?”

Reed smiled and sank to one knee. “We must ascertain that there is to be a wedding first,” he said as he slipped off his signet ring, and taking Megan’s hand asked, “Will you marry me, my dearest friend? I have recently gained fresh perspective on my upside-down life, and realize I cannot go on happily without you.”

A rush of shocked laughter quieted, the crowd awaiting her response.

Megan smiled. “You turned my head and heart upside down long ago, Reed. Of course I will marry you.”

He slid his ring on her finger to the approval of the crowd, whose cheers and  clapping were all but drowned out by a sudden thundering force of heavy rain on the glass roof above as he clasped her in a whirling embrace so fervent she was lifted from her feet, skirt swirling around both their legs, and sealed their future with a passionate kiss.

The End

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks to: Malcom Andrews for the inspiration I found in his lovely book, THE SEARCH FOR THE PICTURESQUE, Jane Darnell, of the Cumbria Tourist Board, for specifics on mills, mines and stone circles in the Lake District, and to Paul Doyle, of the University of Aberdeen for the calls of the coot, warbler and grebe.

Author Bio

Elisabeth Fairchild’s love of history is rooted in her heritage. Her mother was a British war bride.  Her father is a descendant of a U.S. Senator, Teutonic knights, and a Cherokee chief. As a child, Elisabeth read and fell in love with Jane Austen, at sixteen she worked in a haunted 12
^th
century castle in Denmark. She currently lives with one foot firmly fixed in the past, avidly exploring castles, country houses, Mayan pyramids and Roman ruins. Fairchild considers herself a historical mentalist with old soul insight and a phenomenal floor-to-ceiling research library.

 
www.gimarc.com/fairchild.html

Other Books By Elisabeth Fairchild

The Silent Suitor