A Calculated Risk by Katherine Neville (best time to read books .txt) 📗

you if you haven’t got. Now you know my grand secret—which even Zhorzhione does not know.”

“But how can you bid at an auction if you haven’t any money?” asked Pearl.

“It’s like magic,” said Lelia with a smile. “We buy this piece of property with borrowed moneys—and after that, we all become rich.”

“We’re buying a piece of property? Like an apartment building or ranch or something?”

“Non,” said Leila, putting her finger to her lips. “It is a belle île that we buy—and then we go to live there, in the pays des merveilles.”

“We’re buying an island in wonderland?” Pearl said in disbelief.

“Oui,” said Lelia. “You are fond of the Aegean, I hope?”

Lionel Bream could not believe his eyes when he looked out across the room and saw Lelia von Daimlisch sitting in the audience. He’d seen the name Daimlisch on the attendance list, of course, but never imagined it would be Lelia. He hadn’t seen her in years.

When he was a young man, she’d made his reputation in the auction business, though no one knew it. She’d come to him in confidence with her massive collection of jewels and asked how they might be disposed of. She didn’t want to deal with anyone, she told him, who wasn’t “sympathique.”

Though Lionel never learned how it was that Lelia had fallen upon such hard times, even his young and untrained eye had recognized at once the value of the jewels. Some were recorded in the Romanoff inventories—believed lost forever after the revolution. Though he knew little of Lelia’s past, he certainly knew the heritage of the jewels in her possession. And that was all that mattered.

It had taken years to auction off the jewels with any sort of discretion. Leila hadn’t wanted it known that she was the source of that incredible flow of gems. Above all, she’d desired to keep knowledge of it from her husband, who was quite ill at the time. Undoubtedly she needed the money and hadn’t wanted him to know its source, but Lionel hadn’t felt it his business to pry into personal matters, when so great a gift had been laid at his feet. To auction off the Daimlisch bequest was more than any auctioneer might hope for in a lifetime—and Lionel had been still a young man, a junior in the firm.

Shortly after her husband’s death, Leila had disappeared from view. Perhaps this, too, was for financial reasons. Lionel heard her name spoken from time to time, but had never again called upon her. He felt it inappropriate to remind her of their former connection, and the situation that apparently had driven her to sell the jewels.

Now that he recognized her in the audience, his mind raced back to the time when he’d first met her. She’d been the great beauty of her day—and he, a young boy really, had fallen in love with her. She’d possessed such an air of tragedy, yet with humor underneath. He remembered the way her eyes twinkled when she looked at him, as if only they two shared a secret both magical and special. She had everything that young men, in those romantic days, believed women should have: tristesse, drama, and enormous beauty.

Lionel saw Lelia looking at him from the audience. In her eyes was the same secret twinkle, and he felt sure she remembered him—though he’d grown older than she in the interim, and his hair was thin and gray. Suddenly, as he looked down from the platform, he was overcome with a sense of his own past. He longed to sit at tea in the Plum Room of her exotic flat, and hear her play Scriabin on the old Bösendorfer, as she once did. His eyes became misty thinking about it and—in an unprecedented gesture—he stepped from the auction platform and strode into the audience where she sat.

“Lelia,” he said softly, taking her hands in his.

On her right hand she wore a paste copy of the Falconer ruby, surrounded by black sapphires and diamonds, the original of which he’d sold to William Randolph Hearst in 1949.

“I can’t believe you’re here again at last,” he told her. “How we’ve missed you.”

“Ah, mon cher Lionel,” she said, pronouncing it “Leo-nail,” “I too am so happy, happy, happy. I have come to see you do the beautiful auction—which I have never seen before.”

It was true, thought Lionel. She’d never attended a single auction where her jewels had been sold. She’d asked only that the checks be deposited to her account so she might not have to know the price for which she’d exchanged each of the “little brothers and sisters.”

“But what are you doing here, my dear?” he asked her in an undertone. “You know this is a very strange auction today.”

People had been turning in their seats to catch glimpses of the woman that the famous Lionel Bream had delayed the start of the auction to greet personally. Though Lionel was certain no one here today would recognize or remember Lelia, he saw them all ogling the knockoff of the Fabergé emeralds she wore about her neck—copies of the ones he’d sold to King Farouk in 1947.

“I wish you to make the connaissance of my very dear amie—Mademoiselle Lorraine,” said Leila as Lionel formally kissed Pearl’s outstretched hand.

“I’m honored,” he said, “and Mademoiselle Lorraine has the honor to be a friend of one of the truly great ladies of our century. I hope you cherish her friendship—as we all must who’ve known her.”

Pearl nodded and smiled; she knew that something was going on in the room around her—the way people looked at them—but she wasn’t sure what.

Just then, Lelia rose and wrapped her arms around Lionel, giving him a big bear hug. People murmured in the row behind them. Pearl wasn’t sure—but she thought she saw Lelia whisper something in the auctioneer’s ear.

“You know I’d do anything for you,” Lionel said. “I hope you’ll not make such a stranger of yourself—now that you’re here in our lives once again.”

Giving