The Necklace Read online

  Pansy only has to throw her a bone and Nell starts considering letting go of skepticism and double thinking. The pull of going back to a time when they stood beside each other never quite leaves Nell. Even the slightest glimpse of lightness and Nell is willing to try again, is willing to believe that at least one Quincy could treat her like one of their own.

  “It is nuts, isn’t it?” Nell says.

  “I think it’s beautiful,” Pansy gushes. “So unique. That’s probably why Loulou never wore it. Probably thought it was too strange or unusual or something. You know how traditional she was.”

  They’re standing there admiring it when the back screen door opens with a grinding squeak, as if someone is fit to rip the hinges off, and her uncle Baldwin strides in, a plastic grocery bag in his hand. “Brought an impromptu picnic,” he says in a huff of exertion. “Nothing in this place.” He turns to his daughter. “What are you doing here? I’m supposed to see you at the boys’ lacrosse invitational this afternoon.”

  “But she did leave her jewels to me, you know,” Pansy says. It’s then Nell can see the argument, and it’s not a bad one—sloppy drafting, mistaken intent, maybe a little dementia. Pansy wouldn’t have a hard time getting an ambitious young attorney to take the case and make it for her—the potential upside might be huge, and there’s publicity, getting known for a level head during a high-profile case, a connection to the Quincys. All boons whether they win or not. “You offered it to me,” Pansy says, all lightness gone.

  “She quite specifically left the jewels in the safe-deposit box to you,” Nell answers, trying for reason. Neither of them provide context for Baldwin, but he doesn’t seem to need it as he is rooting through cupboards for plates for the leftover fried chicken and grocery store potato salad he’s brought. Like all Quincys, Baldwin’s love of leftovers gave him a little puritanical thrill of thrift.

  “You were trying to give it away.”

  Nell is aware that both of them have started self-consciously arguing in front of Baldwin as if they are in front of a judge.

  “She’s already taken it to the museum,” Pansy addresses her father. All pretense of him being uninterested is gone.

  “I was being responsible,” Nell says.

  “When were you going to tell us about it? After you found out what it’s worth?” Pansy says.

  “Clearly, we need a professional inventory,” Baldwin says.

  “I’ll be ordering one soon as executor,” Nell says, reminding them both of her role.

  “Reema Patel called me,” Pansy continues to her father, excluding Nell. “Told me some member of my family she’d never met before came down to the museum. She wanted to make sure everything was aboveboard.” Pansy turns to Nell. “Quite frankly, she wondered if you weren’t some imposter trying to use the Quincy name.”

  Nell buries her sheepish feelings. Of course this is precisely how she’d felt. “As executor, I don’t need to clear every move I make past you. And I’m not hiding anything.” She opens one of Baldwin’s grocery bags on the counter to focus on something to do.

  “If you’re going to be high-handed, this is going to get old fast,” Pansy says.

  “I’m not being high-handed.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me what it was?” Pansy says, ramping up now. “Reema started angling for me to bring it in, made suggestions about getting it in the conservation lab. I’m sure she wants to get big donors down there with it, too.”

  “You wish,” Nell says.

  “Girls,” Baldwin says, taking the bag of food out of Nell’s hands. “I’m afraid I stand with Pansy on this one.” As if he needs to say that he stands with his own daughter.

  Nell wants to remind them that it’s her gift and she is the executor, but politics win out.

  “Come on.” Baldwin gives Pansy a significant look, and a whole conversation passes between father and daughter. Then he ushers her out of the house, the two of them in close whispered conversation. Nell hears “Not now” and “Come to the house.”

  THE GYMKHANA

  May lagged upstairs, ensuring they arrived late to the hunt club. Ethan drove onto the polo field and parked next to the other cars so they could “ride the bumper” as spectators. Loulou and Dicky and their friends tromped over the grass to shake hands and say hello. Some greeted Ambrose with forced cheer. Some waited to be reintroduced, as if they’d never met.

  The hem of May’s long white pleated dress dragged in the sodden grass above her saddle shoes. Loulou’s friends reached in the neckline of May’s blouse to lift the Indian necklace for inspection, touching it and stealing sideways glances at Ambrose.

  When May joined him after her hellos, he couldn’t resist. “It looks good on you.” He nodded toward the lace collar of her white voile blouse.

  “If you’re going to comment every time I wear it, it’s going to get tiresome.” She crossed an arm over her waist.

  “Why? Are you going to wear it every day?” He wanted it back, the way she used to be light with him.

  He thought he’d embarrassed her. She ducked her head, looking at the ground. Then she reached behind her neck to untie the gilded cords, returning the necklace on the spot.

  “May . . .” Ambrose said. It hadn’t been so easy to rile her before. Now, she reacted to his every word. “Don’t.” He reached out to stop her hands.

  She flicked off his fingers. “Maybe I’ll donate it to the cause.” She continued struggling with the knots. Ambrose didn’t dare touch her again.

  Ethan came to her side then, gave her a puzzled look, and calmly put his good hand over hers on her neck. Then he turned to Ambrose as if he’d done nothing, his hand still on her nape, and said, “This is the end of the last chukka.”

  May didn’t stop fiddling with the ties, and Ambrose could see Ethan’s grip becoming tighter. “I thought we already decided this,” Ethan said to her.

  “It’s mine, isn’t it?” she said, dropping her hands to her side.

  “What do you think?” Ethan turned to his brother. “Do you think she should give your gift away?”

  There was no way for Ambrose to safely answer this, and so he remained silent. The half-undone knot trailing down May’s back made Ambrose worry that the necklace would fall off. The horn sounded, ending the game to loud applause.

  “Missed the whole thing,” Ethan said as he steered May by the back of her neck around toward the terrace of the club for lunch.

  Dicky and Loulou were already seated at their table in an exclusive tête-à-tête. Arabella was on their right. May had invited her. And next to Arabella, leaning into her face with aggressive cheer, was Declan O’Brennan, a young lawyer Ethan had recently hired.

  The red-faced Irishman was sweating, despite sitting under the awnings, his dark suit too bulky and too businesslike for the day. He mopped his brow with a table napkin, grinning at one of Arabella’s stories. His thick, well-groomed reddish mustache only made him look more sweltering and made his face more ruddy.

  Ambrose thought the man looked like he belonged outside a west side speakeasy with a baseball bat in his hands, which Ambrose suspected provided some of the appeal for his brother. O’Brennan was younger than Ethan and a refreshing change from the ancient sages tenured in Israel’s company. Most of those old wizards spent half the day dozing at their desks and the other half explaining how and why most things he wanted couldn’t get done. Wanting a proxy and his own counsel, Ethan had gone out and hired the youngest and most ambitious lawyer he could find. Ethan said Declan was the only lawyer he’d ever met who’d find a way, who’d make it so, who said yes. O’Brennan had ensconced himself in the company with his decisive dealing with the Sandusky fire, and even Israel had been impressed. It reflected well on Ethan that he’d spotted talent in the outsider, and O’Brennan never forgot who had been his original benefactor. It meant O’Brennan was Ethan’s eyes and ears at Israel’s company now.

  Somehow Ethan had twisted enough arms on the membership committee to get O�
��Brennan into the hunt club. It surprised Ambrose that a man like that would be interested in society, would be a joiner. Then again, Ambrose never needed to worry about joining anything. His invitations came by right.

  Ambrose noted that throughout the afternoon May wouldn’t look at O’Brennan, and only addressed him when it was impossible not to, despite his many failed attempts to engage her—a pointed lack of sociability in the usually sparkling May. Even after the horse auction started and O’Brennan bought the first horse, a gelding called the Cad, May barely acknowledged him.

  O’Brennan for his part was either impervious to these slights, or alternately too busy trying to recruit Arabella to his admiration society to notice. Arabella seemed a willing acolyte. She laughed at nearly everything O’Brennan said, her eyes locked on his face in rapt attention. Ambrose suspected Arabella wasn’t genuinely interested in what he was saying, but was delighted by his gaucheness.

  And examples of his gaucheness abounded. It was whispered among the guests that though the club was dry, O’Brennan “was doing something about it.” Soon a generous silver flask circulated discreetly under the tabletops. And the man conducted his bidding with a flourish of crass bravado. He entered at the last moment, winning by a gasp-inducing, and unnecessary, one hundred dollars. And he spoke in an affected hush, as if he’d read somewhere that a gentleman was known by the low tenor of his voice. Chairs had to be rearranged to hear him.

  Ambrose could feel the tension rising between May and Ethan as each successive horse was sold and Ethan’s paddle never left the table, even for the horses Ambrose knew were a bargain. May fumbled with the necklace at her throat. When a lull of quiet settled over the table, Loulou, who never could stand silence, turned to Ambrose.

  “So tell me,” she said, “how much did you pay for that necklace?”

  Ambrose thought the question rude, even among family. “Nothing. I stole it.”

  “Yes, you’re very funny,” Ethan said, jumping in, obviously interested in this topic. “Tell us.”

  “Why do you want to know?” Ambrose challenged his brother. “Feeling the need to pay me back?” Ethan had finally deposited the check for Ambrose’s loan. Monetarily, they were even.

  Ethan poured a nip from O’Brennan’s flask into his cup. “Generous, extravagant,” he said, replacing the cork. “Little strange, don’t you think?”

  “Well, you can’t repay me,” Ambrose said, and no one at the table failed to hear the defiance in his voice. “It didn’t cost anything. I bartered for it.”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” May said, reaching for O’Brennan’s flask for the first time all afternoon. Ethan pretended to ignore her and handed it back to its owner. O’Brennan brazenly leaned across the table to give it to May with a courtly air, glad to have May receive something of his.

  “I was invited to a small dinner at a maharaja’s palace, and after dinner his son, the prince, asked each of us to tell a story. He gave us gifts in appreciation, based on how well he liked the tale.”

  “You’re like an epic Greek poet,” Loulou said, too excited. Ambrose wanted to tell her to calm down.

  “Guests performing like trained monkeys,” Ethan said. “What will they think of next in the East? Harems, pleasure palaces . . .”

  “What was the story?” May asked, kindly for once. The pleasure palace comment had displeased her.

  “I think he planned on giving the gifts anyway, but I told a little story about a man who fell in love.”

  “So novel,” May said flatly, and it didn’t escape Ambrose’s notice that Ethan glanced at her when she said it.

  “Let’s hear it,” Ethan said, throwing down the gauntlet.

  Ambrose began. “There was a young and penniless man who shared his last crust of bread with an old beggar woman shivering on the street. When the woman put the food in her mouth, she turned into a beautiful queen in flowing robes. She said, ‘Because you have shown kindness to me when you had so little, I give you this golden key. It can open any lock. But use caution, for some locks are not meant to be opened.’ The key itself was a beautiful thing, the bow inlaid with pearl and diamond and the bittings etched with ancient runes. When the young man looked up, the queen was gone.

  “His first thought was to head directly to a bank, but on his way there he came across a bakery, closed for the night. With his stomach grumbling he used the key, his heart soaring when the lock tumbled and the door swung free. He ate his fill of pastries, leaving the rest and quietly locking the door behind him.

  “In the days that followed he used his key, always at night and always taking only what he needed. He took a new suit from the tailor, new shoes from the cobbler, and a hat from the haberdasher. No one seemed to stop him with his new acquisitions during daylight, and so he became bolder. He took a bottle of fine wine, a box of cigars, and he even slipped into the museum one night and took his favorite painting straight off the wall.”

  “Don’t you just wish?” May said, a little dreamily. “I know what I’d take.”

  “Well,” Ambrose continued, a bit pointedly. “Having all he could want, the man had a thought for those who might benefit from his key. That first night he went into the bazaar and opened all the animal cages. The second night he went to the apothecary and unlocked all the medicines, placing them outside on the street for those in need. The third night he went to the jail and released all those who were falsely imprisoned.”

  “I wonder how he figured that out,” Ethan said. “Sounds like one of those know-it-all types to me.”

  “The key called to him now.” Ambrose ignored his brother. “He rarely passed a lock that he didn’t feel compelled to open. And so one night, as he walked in the city beneath the moonlight, he spied a small wooden door, carved with vines and flowers, in the side of a tall stone building. Unlocking it, a flight of twisting stairs led him high until he reached a tiny chamber where a woman lay sleeping—a woman so beautiful that even the moon wondered at her beauty. Around her chest, three thick steel bands encased her heart. She awoke and they instantly fell in love.”

  “Isn’t that how it always works?” asked Arabella.

  “They lived in bliss, unlocking doors by night and sleeping in each other’s arms by day. But gradually she began to complain that the metal binds around her heart were tight and constricting. She asked him to unlock them. He agreed, as the steel cage around her chest had begun to scrape him, too, cold and unyielding. When the man put the key in the lock he heard a loud crack, like the snap of something breaking. ‘Don’t mind it,’ she said. ‘It’s only the old tumblers in the lock, unused to being opened.’ But with the first turn of the key, the definite sound of steel snapping unnerved him. ‘Go ahead,’ she now begged. When finally he unlocked all three bands, the woman’s face turned pale, but she smiled. She began to gasp for breath, yet joy lit her eyes. The man scrambled to reattach the steel bands, thinking she was dying, but it was no use. His love morphed before his eyes into a bird with scarlet plumage and a gold-feathered crest and flew away into the night without a look back. Bereft and heartbroken, he put the steel bands on himself, locked his heart tight, and threw the key into the river, where it lies even to this day.”

  “Oh bravo, most Gothic,” Loulou said.

  “That’s it?” Ethan blurted. “I prefer happy endings.”

  “It was a happy ending,” May said quietly.

  To his embarrassment, Ambrose blushed. “Believe it or not, my story wasn’t the worst one.”

  “Maybe we should do that next time I have a party,” Arabella said. “Tell stories for prizes.”

  “His story wasn’t that good,” Ethan said.

  “Kinda artsy,” O’Brennan said, as if his review mattered.

  “I’d have loved to have been there,” May said. “To travel.”

  It was what Ambrose wished she’d said before he left, wished she’d agreed to when he’d asked. “You will,” Ambrose said, trying to be expansive, but even he felt the weakness in
this promise. He nodded toward his brother; including Ethan in the exchange seemed the best course. “You should take her.”

  “He doesn’t take me places,” May said. “I’ll just have to go off. If I wait for him, it’ll never happen.”

  Ethan seemed to come alive then. “I’m not sending my wife to India. The trip over there would have you in fits. I can just hear it now.” He adopted a whiny, nasty imitation of a female voice. “Ethan, I’ve lost my tickets. Ethan, the maid has lost my dress. Ethan, they expect me to eat potted meat.”

  Ambrose craned his head around May to look at his brother full in the face. He thought the comments unwise.

  It was then that the last horse was called to be auctioned, a heavyweight warmblood with a rampant lion brand named the Ragman.

  The crowd, worn out from the bidding and with empty pockets, was bored and ready to move on to the afternoon dancing; plus, the horse looked powerful, a handful. In deference to her hostess, Arabella threw in a low-ball bid when the audience began to fidget. An uncomfortable shuffling and averting of eyes ruffled around the terrace as everyone wished the situation finished.

  “Don’t you dare,” Ethan said under his breath to May, who was reaching for a paddle, but he was looking at Ambrose when he said it.

  Ambrose thought he might dare. Ethan had been grating on him all afternoon. Ambrose might end the auction decently, he thought. He might please May by buying the horse and thereby donating to her cause. She seemed to be having a difficult time this afternoon. He might not want to borrow a horse from his brother ever again. He might not want to be in his brother’s debt, even in the smallest way. Yes, he might dare.

  When Ambrose raised his number, Arabella threw her napkin at his chest from across the table in mock outrage. He was glad for this comic relief, as he’d entered the bidding directly against her. But her joke let him know she didn’t mind being outbid, and she didn’t raise her number again, either.