Jumping in Puddles (2 page)

Bernie hailed a cab and climbed in first, treating her to a view of his enormous backside. Once she was inside, he edged closer so his thigh pressed along hers.

“Got much on at the moment? Apart from that lovely dress.” He gave a throaty chuckle.

“A few bits and pieces for Hirschfelds and Tobi Gems.”

He bent to whisper in her ear. “I was talking about your panties.”

“They are very much on, Bernie, and they’re going to stay on.”

“Spoilsport. What color are they?”

“So what caught your eye in the catalog?”

He sighed. “A couple of Cartier necklaces and a Boucheron ring. Probably be too expensive.”

“Depends who owned them.”

“True.” He grinned. “Let’s hope it wasn’t Marilyn Monroe.”

No matter how much people had been told their jewelry was worth, it was unlikely to fetch that at auction. So much depended on fashion trends, provenance, and the mood of that day’s buyers. Ellie had special interest in a particular range of jewels—the Kewen—but for all the time she’d been searching, none of the pieces had come up for auction, nor had they been passed to her for restoration. Maybe they’d never be found. It was a depressing thought.

As the eldest child she
had
to follow her father into the jewelry trade, but now finding the Kewen was her fifty-year responsibility. He’d been able to take a job at the British Museum, though he hadn’t stopped looking for the jewelry. He was just doing it from a different angle. He was too obsessed with finding the Kewen and regaining their place in Faerieland to leave the search to Ellie. Ellie didn’t dislike what she did, but it wasn’t the career she would have chosen if she’d had the choice.

She scuttled from the cab outside Dacre’s, leaving Bernie to pay the driver. Every first Wednesday of the month, the auction house held a fine arts sale, including vintage jewelry. Ellie always checked catalogs online—her father peering over her shoulder—though it was difficult to tell from a picture whether a piece was what they were looking for. They hadn’t seen anything interesting in this auction. Her father regularly sent her the length and breadth of the country on wild-goose chases, and when she returned empty-handed, he slid into a depression for a few days before his optimism returned. Ellie suspected he still felt guilty about parting his wife from her family. He loved her mother so much, it made Ellie’s heart ache for a love like theirs.

Inside the salesroom, the most valuable items were displayed in glass cases, and judging by the crowds gathered at certain points in the room, some pieces were attracting a lot of attention. After Bernie had collected his bidding number, she let him draw her over to the items he was interested in. Nothing he’d noted needed repair, so she knew this had been a ploy to take her out. Over the last few weeks, he’d been getting more and more insistent.

“Going to bid on them?” Ellie asked.

Bernie glared at her and glanced around. “Possibly,” he muttered under his breath.

“Okay, James Bond, I’m just going to have a wander and see if anything catches my eye.”

“A couple of things have already caught mine, Wonder Woman.” He stared pointedly at her chest.

Ellie turned her back on him and rolled her eyes. She worked her way around the room, peeking around people’s shoulders to run her gaze over the objects displayed. If she saw anything within her price range she could make a profit on after repair, she’d collect a bidding number. It wasn’t worth bothering otherwise.

She felt more agitated than usual by Bernie’s flirting. Usually she treated him as little more than an oversize pesky fly, but today she had that fluttery feeling in her stomach, as if she was about to sit an exam or get on a roller coaster, a mixture of anxiety and pleasure.

There were some lovely pieces of jewelry on display. A star-shaped Van Cleef and Arpels ruby ring delicately set with diamonds. She liked the Alhambra bracelets too, and that pretty pair of Georgian diamond drop earrings needing a bit of work, and—
Oh fuck
. Ellie’s lungs locked as her gaze settled on a rose-gold-and-diamond ring, the pattern of the diamonds long imprinted in her brain. She felt simultaneously hot and dizzy, and as the ground shifted under her feet, the room disappeared in a single blink.

She came round in Bernie’s arms, looked up into his concerned face, and past his to a circle of others.

“You fainted,” he said. “Went down like a stone. Are your eyes usually that color?”

Oh damn.

“Is she pregnant?” someone asked, and Bernie almost dropped her.

“I’m not pregnant. Sorry. I suddenly felt…weird. I’m okay now.”

She struggled to her feet, Bernie supporting her, and a glass of water was pressed into her hand. Ellie felt better after she drank it, though her heart still hammered.

“Shall I take you home?” Bernie asked.

“I’m fine. The auction’s about to start. You don’t want to miss your items.”

“You’re more important.”

Bloody hell
. “I really am fine, Bernie. I skipped breakfast; that’s all.”

“If you’re sure.”

Ellie pulled free and edged back to the cabinet, wondering if she’d imagined the ring. No, it was still there, exactly like the drawing in the book, the tiny diamonds arranged in faerie symbols.
Oh God
. She tugged at Bernie’s sleeve. “Can you bid on something for me?”

“What?” His eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Item one hundred and twelve. A rose-gold-and-diamond ring.”

He moved to the cabinet and checked it out. “I was going to bid on that.”

Ellie glared. “No, you weren’t. The diamonds are tiny. Nowhere near enough bling for you. Please, Bernie.”

“How much?”

Everything I have
. “Five thousand.” Though if she won it, there’d be a fifteen percent buyer’s premium plus tax. Another nine hundred pounds.
Shit
. But what choice did she have?

“Why do you want it?” he asked. “You never wear rings. You never wear jewelry, come to that.”

“It’s exactly what my mother’s been looking for. I have to get it for her.” Ellie was torn between trying to look cool about it and absolute desperation that she not miss out on the purchase. She could get her own bidder’s number, but some inner sense was telling her not to. She’d learned not to ignore her instincts.

“Is there something I’m not seeing?” Bernie frowned at it through the glass.

“It’s just a pretty ring.”

He fell silent as the auction started, and they moved to the back of the room where he preferred to stand. Ellie’s heart began to pound even harder as the auctioneer rattled through the lots. Almost every item started with a commission bid, and alongside the auctioneer, clerks sat in front of laptops communicating with Internet buyers.

Bernie made the winning offer for a Cartier bracelet but lost out on the other items much to his obvious annoyance. They crept closer and closer to the lot. Ellie had been watching the crowd, noting what they bid on. She recognized a few of the dealers. If one of them bought the ring, at least she’d know where it was, but if it went to an Internet or commission buyer, it was as good as lost again. Unless she broke into Dacre’s to check their records.
Oh God.

“Lot one hundred and twelve,” said the auctioneer, and Ellie crossed her fingers behind her back. “A pretty rose-gold-and-diamond ring. Twenty-two-carat crown gold. A large number of tiny diamonds nicely worked. Possibly Russian. I have a commission bid of two thousand pounds.”

Ellie felt sick. The bidding went up in spurts, and Bernie stayed silent. When the offers slowed and the auctioneer played with his gavel, she nudged Bernie, and he glared.

At four thousand pounds Ellie verged on throwing up. Bernie came in a four and half, and the person left bidding against him was on the Internet. When the bidding reached five and not Bernie’s bid, Ellie’s heart swapped places with her stomach. That was it. She’d lost.

She imagined herself getting arrested for breaking into Dacre’s. “Keep bidding,” she whispered.

“Five two,” Bernie called.

One of the guys on the computer nodded to the auctioneer.
Damn and blast, another bid.

“Any advance on five three?” asked the auctioneer.

“Five four,” Bernie said.

Oh God, what is he doing?
Ellie knew she needed to grab his arm and stop him, but she couldn’t. She also knew Bernie wanted her to owe him for this.

When the man on the computer shook his head, Ellie barely held back her gasp of relief. The auctioneer looked around the room for new bids, and Ellie wanted to yell at him to hurry. As the hammer came down, she squeaked. Fantastic, but apart from the extra four hundred, that was another…er…seventy-two pounds on top of the nine hundred buyer’s premium.

Bernie smiled at her. “Now do I get to see your underwear?”

She kicked him in the shin, but not hard.

“Ouch. I suppose you want me to get it for you right this minute?”

“Please. Think you can sweet talk Maureen into providing the name of the seller?”

He looked at her suspiciously. “Something you’re not telling me?”

A version of the truth might stop him asking more questions. “The ring was stolen a long while ago along with some other items.”

“Stolen?” Bernie visibly paled.

“Hundreds of years ago.”

He gritted his teeth. “It doesn’t bloody matter how long ago.
Nemo dat quod non habet
. You can’t sell what you don’t have. Any sale can be undone where it took place in bad faith.”

“But the whole thing depends on someone knowing and asserting rights in the item after it’s been bought. You haven’t bought it, so you won’t lose out.”

Bernie narrowed his eyes. “That’s cunning.”

“You wouldn’t keep it, would you, Bernie? You did me a favor.”

He might have kept it if he knew how rare it was, how important it was to her, what she’d do to get it back.

“Wait out here while I charm Maureen.”

When he emerged, Ellie held out her hand. She needed to hold the ring. Keep it close. Not let it out of her sight.
Ever. Ever. Ever.

“In Vito’s,” he said.

“Fine.” She let her hand drop.

She walked with him around the corner to the bar, convinced Bernie was going to get robbed, or a building would collapse on him, or an alien spaceship would whisk him away before he’d handed over the ring.

He sat her in the corner, and when he came back, he was carrying champagne.
Oh God. What does he want? Apart from the obvious
. He poured two glasses and held one up to clink against hers.

“What are we toasting?” she asked.

“How luscious you look in that dress. How grateful you are I bought that ring. How much you owe me.”

She counted out a hundred pounds in notes she’d been given that morning for repairing a necklace, ripped up the check Bernie had given her, and wrote one for the balance. It left seven pounds and fifty pence in her account.

“No commission?” Bernie asked.

“Don’t push it. I’m sitting here having a drink with you. That’s reward enough.”

He pouted, and Ellie smiled. She leaned forward and whispered, “Red panties trimmed with lace.”

He spat his champagne back into the glass.

“That was attractive,” she said.

Bernie wiped his mouth. “You don’t play fair.”

She held out her hand. “The ring. The seller?”

He took the envelope from his pocket, held the ring between his finger and thumb, and peered at it. She could hear her heart thumping. He stared into her eyes, and she met his gaze.

“Technically, it belongs to me,” he said, eyeing the money and check on the table.

“Stop messing around, Bernie. Stolen, remember? It’s a risk.”

“You swear this isn’t some fabulously special piece worth half a million?”

“I swear.”
It’s actually priceless, though not in this world.

He held her wrist and put the ring in the center of her palm. Ellie snapped her hand shut and almost caught his fingers.

“Whoa, Ms. Flytrap. You going all
Lord of the Rings
on me?”

“We wants it; we needs it,” she whispered and curled her body around her hand.

“You’re freaking me out.”

She laughed, but she was freaking herself out too. A wave of heat swept over her, and she pushed the ring deep into her pocket. “Who was the seller?”

“Lord Carlyle. Owns a stately heap in North Yorkshire.”

Ellie mentally filed the information, stayed long enough that Bernie didn’t feel short-changed, and caught the train home with the ring burning a hole in her pocket. But not literally. She kept checking.

Chapter Two

Jago crawled out onto the roof of the pile of crap that masqueraded as his home and a national treasure and was instantly soaked in the ferocious downpour. He gritted his teeth, brushed wet hair from his eyes, and slithered down the tiles to where the turret roof was attached to the building. The weather vane on the peak, topped by an arrow, spun in the wind looking as if it was about to rise in the air like a child’s toy. The damn thing would probably spin his way and stab him in the chest.

He scanned the roof, and his gaze snagged on a lighter-colored section that revealed the reason water currently leaked through the ceiling of the hexagonal room below. He crawled over to retrieve three slate tiles that had slipped, relieved to find none broken, and dragged himself up to jam them back into place. Only a temporary measure because this part of the roof needed restoration.
Well, get into bloody line.

Leaning back against the slope he’d slid down, he wedged his feet on the turret, looked up into a relentlessly gray sky, and blinked water from his lashes. When distant thunder rumbled, he stiffened. Up on a roof wasn’t the best place to be in a storm. But maybe he ought to wish for a bolt of lightning to finish him off. He was as crazy as Canute, the long-dead king of Anglo-Saxon times, who thought he could command the sea to retreat, because Sharwood Hall crumbled beneath him as predictably as a sand castle overrun by an incoming tide.

This place had been continuously occupied by his family for four hundred years. It had withstood civil war, idiot ancestors, two fires, two world wars, but it seemed unlikely to outlast Jago’s tenure. Throughout his childhood, his father had made him promise that he’d never sell Sharwood. It wasn’t a promise he could keep without a miracle. A lottery win, except he couldn’t afford to buy a ticket. Divine intervention, except he didn’t believe. A rich woman, except he wasn’t much of a catch. He had a title but no money, responsibility for a stately home that was no longer stately, and his career was a distant dream.