Chapter Two
Two
Rose Novak, the maid of honor, felt a pang of wistfulness as her friends Emily and Griffin kissed on the Grand Staircase of the Chicago art museum, amid cheers, raised cell phones, and applause.
What would it be like to have a man kiss you like that? A good man. Rose had dated plenty of the other kind.
Daniela Huerta, the short, dark-haired bridesmaid next to Rose, leaned closer. “I’m so glad I didn’t have to wear shapewear.” The bridesmaids, as well as the bride, were wearing medieval-inspired green gowns with scooped necklines and bell sleeves. Naturally, Rose loved the witchy vibe.
“Me too,” Rose whispered. Being on the plump side, she probably would have, if they’d been given some kind of spaghetti-strap slip thing. “The last time I did, I had so much trouble getting out of it, I accidentally punched myself in the face.”
Daniela snorted. The just-married couple finally came up for air.
Rose stepped forward to give her best friend her bouquet back, murmuring, “That was beautiful. And you look perfect.”
Emily’s gown had a black bodice and lavish gold embroidery. Only a few people knew that green and black had been the colors of Griffin’s noble house, back when he’d been a knight in the early fifteenth century.
Emily gave her a quick hug. “You’re the best maid of honor ever.” Behind her, Griffin nodded, beaming.
Rose’s heart warmed. It always felt good to be able to help.
A petal had fallen from Emily’s floral crown onto her dark brown hair. Rose was wearing her own chaotic light brown curls in an updo, out of the way. She plucked the petal out of Emily’s tresses and tossed it in the small tote bag she’d turned into a wedding emergency kit.
“Go to the reception hall,” Rose told Emily. “We’ll all follow you.”
“Right, right,” Emily said, adorably distracted.
“But I’m hungry now,” a small boy’s voice wailed behind Rose. She turned to see the five-year-old ring bearer on the verge of treating his father Marcus, the best man, to a meltdown.
Rose hustled over to the kiddo. She pulled a packet of cheese crackers out of the emergency kit, caught Marcus’s eye with a questioning look, and waggled it. He nodded gratefully, and Rose crouched down to get the boy’s attention.
“Here you go, buddy,” she said. His face lit up as he grabbed them.
“Nice save,” said a groomsman in a green doublet—the one Rose had been determinedly ignoring all day and all through the rehearsal and dinner yesterday.
She didn’t exactly look at Aaron Coleman as she rose to her feet again.
Of course, she hadn’t been able to avoid a couple of glimpses of him.
He had close-cropped brown hair and a strong nose and jaw, and he was eight years older than her age of thirty-three.
Hilariously, his age and his occasional dad jokes had made her think he might be more dependable.
“You can’t ignore me forever,” he said.
“Apparently not.”
The year before, a life-sized stone sculpture had gone missing from the museum, for the simple reason that Griffin had happened to be that sculpture, and had come back to life.
Aaron, an FBI agent with the Art Crimes division, had gone undercover to investigate—which had included pretending to date Rose.
When she’d found out, she’d been crushed. She’d hoped that she’d finally found a great guy who liked her just for who she was. But part of her hadn’t even been surprised.
Aaron sighed. “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry I led you on. It was the job.”
“I’ve dated liars before.” She crossed her arms. “You’re not better because you’ve turned pro.”
Guests filed around them, including Jason Yun, a senior curator at the museum and Emily’s boss’s boss, wearing a navy tuxedo. Emily’s wedding, with a bunch of museum people, was not the place for Rose to have it out with her fake ex.
Aaron said, “I really did like you. Okay?”
She scoffed. Easy to say, since he lived in D.C., so he couldn’t date her, anyway. He just wanted her to make him feel better. And honestly? That wasn’t her job. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the auburn hair of her younger brother, Ryan. He was chatting with Daniela.
“I…I have to talk to my brother about something,” Rose told Aaron and walked away.
Ryan was also a groomsman, and he knew about Griffin’s true identity. The two had become friends when he’d tutored Griffin through community college algebra. As she reached him and Daniela, she realized they were looking at a large painting in a fancy frame.
It was a portrait of a gentleman. His hair was dark and thick, and he had short sideburns; his intense brown eyes, under straight brows, commanded her attention.
If a man had stared at her like that in real life, she wouldn’t have known if she was going to get lectured or get lucky.
Maybe both? It might be worth sitting through the first thing to get to the second.
“Who’s this?” she asked Daniela.
“We just acquired it from a private collection. I was telling Ryan I’m going to be working on it next.” Daniela worked in Paintings Conservation.
“He looks so familiar. Is he famous?” Rose glanced at the museum label. Portrait of Henry Leighton-Lyons, Duke of Beresford, England, 1818.
Daniela shook her head. “The artist is,” she said at the same time Rose read the name: Walter Wilke.
“Oh yeah,” Rose said. “He did The Sleeping Duchess.”
In that painting, a woman in a filmy pale pink gown lay on a bed with her eyes closed and her arms flung above her head in blissful abandon. Rose knew from art history class that in its time, it had caused a scandal. The woman looked like she’d just had very good sex.
Rose added, “I had that poster in my dorm room.”
“So did half of all college girls,” Ryan teased.
“Still have that Pulp Fiction poster?” she teased back, and Daniela smirked.
“Yeah. I’m a man of culture.”
Rose looked back to the painting in front of them. “I’ve definitely seen this before.”
The duke, wearing a black suit and some kind of man-scarf, stood next to his desk.
One of his hands gripped the handle of a walking stick; the other rested on what looked like a fancy compass on a stand, with ornamental details and a blue stone embellishment at the bottom.
Behind him stood cases filled with books and other objects.
A drawn velvet curtain revealed distant hills and trees.
“What do you have to fix?” Ryan asked Daniela. “It looks fine.”
“At one point, it was stacked against another painting.” She waved her fingers gracefully near the border. When Rose squinted, she could make out a few faint lines. “Plus it’s dirty.”
Rose looked again at the museum label. “It says he was an amateur astronomer who founded the World Astronomical Society.” She thought a lot about the stars and planets herself, though not in a scientific way. “I thought dukes just went to parties and counted their money.”
Ryan shrugged. “I guess if you’re a duke, it’s easy to study whatever you want.”
Rose felt a little ache in her chest at that. Ryan had gone to Northwestern, planning to double major in mathematics and physics. Their parents hadn’t left them a lot of money, but thanks to his good grades and near-perfect test scores, scholarships had covered most of his tuition.
But he’d struggled with addictions, and before his senior year, he’d dropped out. After breaking into his drug dealer’s girlfriend’s apartment, he’d gotten a three-month jail sentence—way too harsh, in Rose’s opinion, since he’d been trying to steal back money the dealer had stolen from him.
Now Ryan worked for a furniture moving company. There was nothing wrong with that. Their parents had worked hard, honest jobs, too. But at one point, he’d hoped for so much more.
“This guy lived a good long life, especially for those days,” Daniela commented. Rose looked at the label again. He’d lived from 1782 to 1864.
Ryan said, “We should get going.”
He was right. The gallery had cleared out, and members of the wedding party shouldn’t be MIA at the reception.
As they started walking again, Daniela said to Rose, “I meant to tell you before, I love your necklace.”
“Thanks!” Rose touched the pendant she’d discovered at an antique stall at a street market. “It’s a moonstone.”
“I thought those were white.”
“They usually are. Blue ones are rarer.” Especially ones like this. A four-pointed star seemed to glow within its depths when it caught the light.
“Does it mean anything?” Ryan asked.
Rose had already told Daniela that she dabbled in magic. It hadn’t been typical bachelorette party talk, maybe, but Rose had always been kind of an open book.
“Some people think moonstones help couples reunite, but that doesn’t apply to me. And some people call it the traveler’s stone, but I’m not planning to go anywhere soon.” She shrugged. “I just bought it to wear on the full moon.”
“You said the full moon was good luck for a wedding, right?” Daniela asked.
“Oh, yeah. A full moon is so powerful. And it’s especially amazing that this one is on May first.”
“May Day?” Daniela asked.
“Yes, Beltane.” Rose couldn’t resist explaining.
“It’s when the Green Man weds the May Queen.
When he first meets her, he’s been ruling over the winter by himself for months, and he’s proud and kind of a jerk, and she’s not impressed with him at first. To be with the May Queen, he has to give up his old ways. ”
“That’s beautiful,” Daniela said.
“Right? And this full moon is in Libra, which is perfect for partnerships. Friday night, which is sacred to Venus, the goddess of love.” As they reached the reception hall, she added, “I did a marriage spell for Emily and Griffin earlier. It’s probably the most magical timing for a love spell in a hundred years or something. ”
Daniela cast a curious sidelong look. “Do you ever do spells for yourself?”
“Um…yeah, sometimes.” Rose couldn’t remember the last time she had, though.