Chapter 1
They say the Hope Diamond is cursed.
I didn’t believe in curses, or that was what I told myself as I stood on the curb in McPherson Square outside the sprawling McLean mansion in one of the most fashionable neighborhoods in the nation’s capital.
I shifted from one foot to the other as traffic whizzed around me and stared at the redbrick home spanning a third of a city block.
I’d read about homes like these, driven or walked past them, but I’d never seen a marbled vestibule that echoed with each step, sat in a drawing room decorated with a master artist’s paintings and chandeliers made of crystal imported from somewhere in eastern Europe.
I’d never smelled the mingled scent of Moroccan leather and fine tobacco or felt a velvet-soft Turkish carpet beneath my toes.
Such luxuries were reserved for the likes of the women I would not and could not ever be.
They were reserved for the likes of Evalyn McLean.
A passing car honked, startling me from my thoughts.
It was now or never. My pulse thrummed in my ears as I crossed the street and strode along the front walk to the door.
I didn’t have time to consider whether I should stay or flee, back to the safety of my workshop and cozy redbrick home across town in the neighborhood where I’d lived my whole life.
The door whisked open in an instant.
A rather short, stout butler with eyebrows raised in a question stood before me in pristine black-and-white livery. “Good afternoon. How may I help you?”
“I’m Elisabeth Beaumont,” I said, clasping my handbag a little more tightly. “With Beaumont Jewelers. I believe I am expected.” I wasn’t expected, but showing up unannounced didn’t open doors on this side of town.
“Wait here a moment, won’t you please.” He closed the door, leaving me on a narrow stoop.
I rehearsed the lines I’d practiced in my head a thousand times already. Gérard Beaumont, my father and my boss, was unwell and had sent me in his stead.
The door opened again. “Mrs. McLean will see you in the drawing room. Follow me.”
As I stepped over the threshold, someone shouted, “Careful!”
I leapt out of the way as two servants hefted an enormous rug rolled into a tight tube over their shoulders and staggered under its weight across the foyer. An equally harried maid pushed a shiny new Hoover vacuum cleaner after them.
“Look out below!” a young boy shouted from the top of a staircase before barreling down the stairs with all the manners of a baboon.
A woman dressed like the butler, who was likely the nanny, clambered after him. “Vinnie!” she shrieked. “You come back here right now!”
The little boy had to be Mrs. McLean’s son.
He raced through the hall and a nearby doorway without so much as pausing, his laughter and whoops of glee echoing in the vast cavern of the seemingly endless rooms. The sensation of stepping into the middle of a play—an actor without lines and without direction—swept over me, and suddenly I wished I hadn’t come.
The butler noticed my awkwardness. “You’ll have to forgive us, ma’am. We’re hosting a party this evening, so we’re attending to some last-minute chores.”
I imagined the diplomats, politicians, and tycoons who’d likely been invited to the party.
Perhaps even the president and his wife would be in attendance.
Evalyn McLean knew everyone who mattered, and her parties were legendary.
I’d heard she hosted thousands of guests every year and spent tens of thousands of dollars on making each experience unforgettable.
It helped that both her maiden name and married name were known all over town and beyond.
We passed a handful of guards and wound through a series of immaculate rooms and finally stopped in a drawing room decorated with an array of luxurious wooden and silk furnishings.
Antique lamps stood prettily on end tables that flanked the sofa, and a large potted palm tree posed as a centerpiece beneath a magnificent skylight made of stained glass.
I was shown to a chair and offered a refreshment that I refused.
I wasn’t interested in food or drink. My appetite had shriveled since the accident months before and had yet to return.
My usually voluptuous frame had grown thin, my face wan, the shine of my pin-straight hair dull.
All color and sensation had drained from my world that horrible, fateful day.
“Mrs. McLean will be with you in a moment.”
I sat on the edge of the sofa cushion, restraining my natural inclination to fidget, forcing myself to appear as if I were confident.
I shouldn’t be here.
A woman dressed in the now-familiar uniform appeared, pushing a tea cart. “Would you care for tea and cake, ma’am? Or lemonade?”
Again, I refused. I wanted to meet Mrs. McLean briefly, to introduce myself, to appeal to her to rehire Beaumont Jewelers and be on my way.
It was getting on in the day. I’d nearly lost my nerve and had let the hours slip from morning to late afternoon as I’d listlessly cleaned the workshop, sweeping, stowing tools, and organizing our book of receipts.
By three o’clock, I’d finally accepted that I couldn’t put off the house call any longer.
With Father unable to work, our bills had begun to pile up with nary a commission in sight.
Beaumont Jewelers was near to closing for good, and everything we’d worked for would be lost, our home included.
At least this was the lie I’d told myself, but I knew the truth.
I could approach a number of wealthy women who would entertain my request for work or clamor after a new beautiful piece from my father’s workshop, but there was only one place I could go for answers.
Answers to the searing questions I could no longer ignore.
I squeezed my eyes closed against the rush of instant emotion and the desperation that had suffocated my days and dominated my nights.
When minutes turned to half an hour, my unease propelled me upright onto my feet to walk around the large room.
I pretended to admire the tapestries and porcelain trinkets and the exquisite carvings in the wood paneling, but the truth was my eyes roamed over the beautiful things without really seeing them.
Movement in the doorway drew my gaze; one of the guards I’d seen in the front hall was watching me.
What was this world of valets and butlers, maids and hired guards?
When I was certain I’d been forgotten, the stout butler from earlier returned, followed—at last—by his mistress.
“Mrs. McLean, may I introduce Miss Elisabeth Beaumont of Beaumont Jewelers,” he announced.
Forgetting my manners, I didn’t offer a polite greeting but simply stared at the most renowned socialite in Washington.
Evalyn McLean was stunning in long white gloves and a navy, floor-length gown with a drop waist, covered in glittering beads.
I took in her ivory skin and bee-stung lips, her dark curls pinned in an elegant chignon.
Though not beautiful, there was something attractive about her presence and demeanor.
More distinctly, she was wealthy as sin, so her assets were enhanced to their fullest potential with creams and powders and fine clothing.
Her most striking feature was her clear, curious blue eyes framed by a quizzical brow as black as coal.
My gaze dropped lower, to a pair of perfect collarbones and another of the reasons I’d dared to pay her a visit: the Hope Diamond.
If legend was to be believed, the most notorious gem in the world brought bad luck to those who owned it.
Perhaps even to those who merely looked upon it.
Father had forbidden our family from working for the McLeans for that very reason—to steer clear of the diamond and all within its orbit.
Though I’d always teased Father about his silly superstitions and the “feelings” he had about potential clients, his intuitive notions had proved correct more than once, the most terrible among them that night six months ago.
I shouldn’t be here.
And yet I couldn’t tear my gaze from the diamond.
The awe-inspiring blue gemstone was nestled in a cradle of bright, cushion-cut diamonds of the finest clarity and dangled from a necklace composed of equally perfect diamonds.
Mesmerized, I stared at the piece with wolfish intensity.
The stone was darker than I’d imagined, a deep-sea blue tinged with steel.
It didn’t seem evil—it was exquisite—and I longed to touch it.
To feel its heft in the palm of my hand, to slide it beneath my magnifier and turn it this way and that while I counted its facets and searched for flashes of red hidden within its depths.
I wanted to search it for answers. Was everything they said about the stone true? Perhaps this object of desire, beauty, and bad luck truly was responsible, at least in part, for the incessant ache in my chest as I lay awake in bed each night.
“Why, you’re a woman,” Evalyn said, surprise lifting her voice into a question. “I was expecting someone else. A man in fact. Was it Pierre? Or Julien maybe. Something French.”
I froze at the mention of his name. Felt myself hurtling back in time to when all had been good and right in the world, and it seemed as if I’d had my whole life before me. Now, I hovered somewhere between waking and oblivion, a mere shadow without solid form behind it.
When Evalyn’s expression turned to one of impatience, I blinked. “Yes, ma’am.” I cleared my throat. “That is to say, my father is Gérard Beaumont. Your jeweler, ma’am.” I left out the part about Julien accompanying him and his short-lived time as her employee. I couldn’t bear to say his name aloud.
She frowned. “Your father never returned my call. That was months ago now.”