Chapter 33 Conrad
Conrad
The Tuesday of the first week back to class after fall break, I leaned against an iron-framed window waiting for James and Malena’s American Lit lecture to finish. The chill circulating in the drafty hall fought a losing battle against the heated air pushing through the building’s vents.
“Here you go,” said Ishani, appearing out of thin air and handing me a card, a wide grin splayed across her face.
“What’s this?”
“Well, you said you wanted information on the Modiste Gallery’s latest Van Holden sale.” She tapped on the card. “That’s the seller.”
My interest spiked and I pushed off the frosty window frame. “And they just shared it with you?”
“I am Ishani Gabriella Roy.” Her shoulders rose with feigned offense and she brought her hand to the center of her chest. “If I wanted the curator to paint himself in the Pop-art style, he’d ask for my color preference.”
I rolled my eyes at the hyperbole. “And how did you actually get this?”
She grinned. “I purchased a few pieces and told them I was interested in one of the Van Holdens they’d already sold.”
“What did they say?”
“That they’d contact the buyer and see if they could broker another sale.”
I smiled. A master at getting what she wanted, Ishani knew how to play anyone’s motives against them.
“And the gallery will get paid twice if they broker two sales,” I surmised.
“Exactly, but this…” She circled back to her point and tapped the card. “They let the original seller’s name slip in conversation. At least the account name, anyway.”
“Lancaster,’” I read aloud.
“Are you going to tell me why you need it?”
“I already told you.” I ran a hand down the back of my head. Mal said I could tell Isha, and I was sure she’d keep it quiet, but at the same time, I liked sharing this secret with Mal.
“You want me to believe you plan to gift it to your mother?” She gave me a knowing look. “Next you’ll tell me that Malena is in Scroll she knew her way around an art gallery, a fashion house, and a cosmetics lab. It was easy to forget how many hats she wore when I was so used to seeing her as Isha Roy, longtime friend and occasional instigator of trouble.
“You do realize you attend a university with the best fine arts program in the world, right?” She cocked her head to the side.
“Not to mention the Roy home in Kensington houses three Picassos, four Vermeers, and seven Degas…” she listed off.
“Spend your childhood amongst gallerists and glitterati, you learn a few things.”
“Isha…” I teased. This was incredibly helpful information and she seemed excited to share it. “Are you invested in my assignment?”
“Not at all.” She craned her neck to the side to look into the lecture hall as the first few students began to exit. “She’s lovely. Headstrong. I like her.” I didn’t have to ask to know she was referring to Mal.
“Me too,” I answered quietly, leaning back against the windowsill, the wind rattling against the old tempered glass.
“I made a new acquaintance in my Advanced Linguistics class, she’s organizing this year’s Holi Festival,” Isha went on. “The Diwali party with Malena gave me the push I needed, I think.”
“She has a way of doing that.”
“Yes, well…” She released a contented breath. “I’ll see you later. Lucy and I have plans, but happy sleuthing.”
With that, she walked down the hall and out of the building while I waited for the doors to open again, because I was sure Malena would take her time leaving class. She had this adorable need to check all of her belongings five times, like her phone was going to disappear if she didn’t.
A minute later, the doors opened again, this time propped open by a student, and the rest filed out.
My eyes flew to where I knew she sat. In jeans and a soft-looking sweater today, her hair fell around her shoulders as she stood and talked to a tall, dark-haired guy.
Concern swirled in my gut, then became a cement block when I realized who it was.
The one who’d waved at her as he exited the brunch spot that day in town.
The ex.
The exception to her no-relationships rule.
My legs moved for exactly two steps before I was stopped.
James stood in my way, brow quirked. “Oh no… is that… jealousy?”
I craned my neck to look past him. “No.”
Malena didn’t date; she told me that weeks ago. Except she did. She’d dated him.
I flicked a glance at the guy in question. “Do they sit together?”
I felt like a toddler asking that question. She could sit with whomever she wanted, I knew that.
“They used to.” He glanced at them over his shoulder. “Last semester in Advanced Comp. Based on how they were acting, I assumed they were dating.”
My jaw flexed and I took a step back.
“Based on how they were acting?” The image of them together twisted in my mind. Surprisingly, it wasn’t all the things we’d been doing for the last week… but were they cuddly together? I liked to think she was only that way with me. “What does that mean? Were they noticeable?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just… I mean,” he sputtered, and my eyes stayed glued to the pair as they continued to talk. “Come on, Con.” He clasped a supportive hand on my shoulder as he glanced over to Malena. My Malena. “She’s… hard to miss.”
My head whipped back to glare at him.
“Not that I was aiming.” His smirk straightened and he threw his hands up. “Jeez, redirect that look, I’m not the ex.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, hoping to loosen the uncomfortable tightness that ran down my sternum. It wasn’t only that I was jealous…
She looked different. Bored. Polite. Not like herself.
Maybe I was biased because next to me she felt warm and bright. But from my vantage point, it was like hanging a Degas in an attic. Her normally proud stance was slightly crumpled and her shoulders sagged.
“Look, we need to talk about Mal.” James drew my attention back to him. “We don’t fuck people over, remember?”
“I know…” I trailed off. Understanding what he meant, shame whistled in my ear. Based on my track record, if I got into a relationship, I wouldn’t be any better than my dad or my brothers, I knew that.
And, apparently, James did too. Hence the warning.
For the first time, I felt the harsh sting of being categorized as the kind of guy James would keep from Isha or Lucy.
I couldn’t fuck it up if I didn’t try. Only… Mal made me want to try.
“I like her,” I admitted quietly. “A lot.”
“And she knows that?”
Why wouldn’t she? We were together all the time. If I was an outsider looking in, I’d think we were fucking nauseating. “What do you mean?”
James’s mouth hung ajar. “You’ve talked to her about it?”
“No.” I winced. We Hastings were the “sweep it under the rug” types. We didn’t talk about anything. “We’re together all the time, do we need to?”
“Jesus, Con.” James wiped a hand down his face. “That guy has been sniffing around her all semester and she’s still a free agent?”
A flame lit in my chest.
“You said it wasn’t that bad,” I whisper-shouted at him.
“I lied,” he rebutted. “I wasn’t sure if you were actually going to date her, so I was sort of on Hamilton’s side for this one.”
“Stop calling my girlfriend by a nickname.” It didn’t bother me. It was… annoying. That’s all. Besides, she had a nickname. The one only I called her by.
“So she is your girlfriend?” James crossed his arms and gave me a shit-eating grin. “You should tell her that.”
“I will.” I let out a frustrated breath. “Do you need the reminder?”
He gave me an unamused look and brought us right back to the point we were circling. “No, but that guy might.”
Fuck. I glanced back at them. “What do I do?”
“It’s pretty simple.” James waved Mal over. “First, make sure you’re not gonna be a piece of shit to her, and then don’t be.”
He went quiet just as Mal approached.
“Hey.” Her eyes bounced between me and James.
“I wanted to see something in the mausoleum,” I told her. “Come with me?”
“Sure.” We took a few steps out of the lecture hall together.
James was gone before I could ask him how the hell I was supposed to “make sure” I wasn’t going to be a piece of shit.
I didn’t plan to be. I’d never cheat. I didn’t lie…
But I didn’t want to make promises I couldn’t keep. All of this was new to me, but fumbling this thing with Mal was out of the question.
“‘Lancaster, London.’’” Malena ran her thumb over the notecard Isha had scribbled on. I told her about what Isha was able to devise on her own when we walked over here. Mal was fizzing with excitement with the news. “Does her family know them?”
We walked through the carved wooden doorway and into the mausoleum’s library. I put her bag down on the couches and she headed toward the far side wall. “Not as far as she knows.”
“You think they were members?” she speculated, tucking the notecard in her back pocket.
“Only one way to find out.” I looked up at the shelves holding members’ journals.
“There’s no list of members?” Malena followed my gaze. “Considering the wealth among those granted entry to this place, I feel like hiring someone to make a spreadsheet wouldn’t be that big of a deal. A drop in their billionaire buckets, you could say.”
I chuckled. “Not that I know of, but don’t worry, they’re in chronological order, so it shouldn’t be too hard. I’ll look.”
“And let you live out my Beauty and the Beast fantasy? I don’t think so.” She smacked the back of her hand against my chest and walked over to the ladder.
I followed a step behind her, waiting as she put a foot on the bottom rung, a hand on each rail.
“I know we’re hot on the trail of a lead.” I held it still and pushed the brakes on either side. “But that’s the second time you’ve—”
“I meant the bookshelves,” she called with a laugh as she moved up a couple of rungs, and I watched while she scanned through names. “There are journals by the Lancasters here.”
“Really?”
“1915.” She reached forward and pulled it out, dropping down a few steps to hand it to me before climbing back up. “And another from 1919, then one more in 1932.” She scanned the shelves through the 40s and 50s. “That’s it.”
She rejoined me and we began paging through some of them.
Silence descended over us as Mal started with the one from the 20s and I dived into the one from the 30s.
“Look.” She pointed to a passage, nudging my arm. She read it again and her eyes flicked back and forth to the painting in the center of the room. “Nicolas Van Holden donated The Dawn to Scroll & Ivy in the thirties.”
“So, Van Holden knew someone at Winchester,” I surmised.
“Or had a connection to the school.” Malena nodded and walked closer to the painting. It was enormous, at least twenty feet in height, and spanned the entire wall. “And invitations to Scroll & Ivy run down bloodlines.”
“So… the Lancasters would have his list or some idea of the lost works.” Malena’s eyes flickered, gaming out what we knew. “They don’t appear again after the thirties, maybe the family lost prominence and didn’t make the Scroll & Ivy cut.”
Mal pulled a notebook from her bag and walked back to the ladder. Silently, she began scouring the shelves where she’d pulled the journal, murmuring various names and scribbling them down.
“What are you doing?”
“Since the Lancasters stop appearing here after the thirties, we probably won’t find a Lancaster in the Winchester student body, but maybe one of the other families here has a connection.” She went spine by spine, getting every name. “Anyone during that time period might.”
“True.”
She stepped onto solid ground again once she’d completed her inventory, chewing her lip.
“I should probably get back, I forgot something at my place.” She turned her phone in her hand and pushed it into her bag. Closing the space between us, she looked up at me. “I’m gonna see what I can find on these families. Thank you for coming through with another clue.”
“This one was Isha.”
“Either way.” Her hands curled around my shirt, then she rocked onto her toes and pressed a kiss against my lips. “We have a lead.”
She turned to leave but I caught her wrist. “Mal?” James was right, I had to tell her what I wanted. “What are we doing?”
“You mean with the feature?”
My heart beat furiously against my ribs. “I mean…”
“Oh.” She paused and made herself busy buttoning her coat, cutting down all the confidence I’d built up in the last hour.
“We’re having fun, right?” She looked up and smiled.
“You don’t have to freak out, I haven’t gone starry-eyed after our trip to Paris.
Casual is fine with me.” She patted my chest in that way that she did when she wanted to change the subject.
“Sabrina already spoils me, I’m immune.”
“Yeah…” I stammered, swallowing against a hollow throat. “Great.”