Chapter 3 #2
“I’m Elisabeth Beaumont,” I said, extending a hand, but the woman peered down at it as if I’d insulted her.
I jerked it back, realizing that women of her class probably didn’t shake hands.
I’d been raised by a tradesman and surrounded by my brother and his male friends most of my life.
What I knew about femininity and gentility was embarrassingly limited.
Given that I’d always worked behind the scenes of our business as well, I hadn’t had much time interacting with our nearly always affluent customers.
I blushed deeply, but Bea didn’t seem to notice.
She gulped down her sherry. “How did you and Evie meet? Are you a member of the ladies’ club?”
Inwardly, I squirmed beneath her shrewd gaze and her pointed questions. “I’m not a member of the club. I’m a jeweler.”
“A jeweler?” Her brow arched in surprise. “I didn’t know women did such a thing.”
“Most don’t. I’m something of an anomaly.”
“Has anyone offered you a sherry?” she asked. “Here.” And before I could reply, she reached for a glass from a nearby tray that was filled to the brim. She grabbed another for herself while she was at it.
My eyes found Evalyn, who watched our exchange with interest.
Not in the habit of drinking in the afternoon, or ever really, I hesitated before I accepted the glass. “Thank you,” I said, at least appearing to play along. I didn’t care for sherry or much for alcohol in general.
“Why are you here?” Bea asked, her brown eyes filled with curiosity. “Are you going to show us some of your jewelry?”
Even I knew such direct questions were impolite. I was beginning to see why Evalyn had made the comment about Beatrice. This woman was boorish and clearly liked her drink.
“Bea, what was the name of that fellow at the yacht club?” the woman named Sharon asked, interrupting our conversation.
After another fifteen minutes of trying to catch Evalyn’s eye, I finally gave up and took a sip of my sherry.
Heat uncurled in my chest and crawled up my neck.
I lost track of the mindless conversation and stared past the French doors at the series of enormous windows framing a lawn so beautiful, it could be a watercolor painting.
Despite the rain, the garden was vibrant with pastel-pink dogwood blooms, cheerful yellow tulips, and flaming purple blooms of carefully pruned azalea bushes.
My hometown put on its best show in the spring.
I wished, more than anything, that I was outdoors with my umbrella, strolling through the hedgerows and around the trees lush with new leaves, rather than facing what, or rather whom, sat around me.
By the time Bea returned her attention to me, I’d emptied half of my glass. She topped me off and poured a third glass for herself.
“How did you come to work for Evie?” she said.
“I don’t work for her at the moment,” I said, realizing a little too late how odd that might sound.
“Well, new friends are always welcome,” she replied sweetly, but her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
There was something about Southern gentility that I’d never quite taken to, always felt outside of, and as I studied her expression, I knew she meant the very opposite of her alleged welcome and her feigned friendliness. I preferred her frank delivery from before.
“Lizzie, are you eager to be on your way?” Evalyn interrupted us. “I’m sure you’re a busy woman and don’t have time for our nonsense.”
I shifted uncomfortably and set down the sherry. How could I broach the topic of business in front of everyone?
“Nonsense?” Bea said. “Speak for yourself, Evie.”
Evalyn laughed.
The others laughed politely, too, but I didn’t miss their thinly veiled unease at making small talk with a working woman who was clearly unlike them in every way. I was a duck in a room full of swans.
As Evalyn walked me to the door, I racked my brain for the right thing to say. To plead with her for work again might put her off me for good.
She slipped her arm through mine as if to draw me into her confidence. My gaze fell to the Hope, its glittering facets mere inches from me. How I longed to touch it, to peer into its depths, and yet the thought also did strange things to my stomach.
“Thank you for joining me today,” she said, “but I feel I must be fair to you. I have met with two other jewelers, Ralph Stein and the Druskovich family.”
“Of course, I understand,” I replied, swallowing my disappointment.
Her patronage wasn’t a sure thing, and worse, Ralph was our biggest competitor.
He’d called to the house many times since Julien’s death to offer his assistance to Father, but I knew he was also capitalizing on our loss of visibility in the jewelry world.
“I had to speak with other jewelers, of course,” Evalyn continued. “Your brother missed three appointments. Julien, was it? And your father did not return my calls. And now here we are, some months later, and they’ve sent sweet little Lizzie in their stead. What’s this about?”
I took a deep breath and pushed out the difficult words. “I apologize for the inconvenience.” I stopped, unable to continue, to say the words I was trying so desperately to avoid.
“I only employ those who are reliable,” she said. “Surely you can understand that. Why, I nearly didn’t call, but I’m a woman of my word.”
“Julien died,” I blurted. “He’s my twin brother. Was. Was my twin brother. He died tragically, hit by a car. That’s why he broke the appointments. And since Julien’s death, my father has been bedridden.”
I felt a fissure split my careful countenance, a monumental shift of something inside me.
It was the first time I’d said the words aloud: Julien died.
Julien was my twin brother. Was. My mouth went dry as a pulse of hot pain left me breathless.
And for an instant, I relished the searing sensation.
The pain was a reminder that my brother had once been here beside me and very much alive.
I squeezed my eyes closed, and the pain passed, the gray expanse of emptiness returning, echoing inside me like the lonely cry of a loon in a winter fog.
It had become an all-too-familiar feeling: sleepwalking through my days as they cycled one after another, each less remarkable than the one before it. Each another day without him.
The range of emotions that played across the woman’s face was painfully clear: surprise, curiosity, and worse, pity. “Oh dear,” she said. “I’m so terribly sorry to hear that. He was your twin?” She gathered my hands in hers. “How tragic.”
Shocked by her easy familiarity with me—and fearful a tremor would creep into my voice—my eyes fell upon the Hope Diamond once more as if it were a lodestone, a steadying point.
I focused on it, drew in a breath to calm myself.
As a girl, I’d learned blue diamonds were one of the rarest materials on earth: a stone made of coal pressed for millions of years, more deeply buried than the others.
All blue diamonds were rare, but the Hope Diamond was the rarest among the rare.
And now I was so near it, I could touch it.
How often had Julien held it? I thought of the stories I’d read about the tragic deaths, the bankruptcy, and even the end of a kingdom that had come to the stone’s previous owners and I shivered.
“Lizzie? Are you all right?” Evalyn asked. “Why don’t you sit down a moment.” She led me to a chair.
As I sat, my eyes glazed over, the room growing fuzzy, and a memory surfaced like a wrecking ball from the past.
* * *
Julien had finished his toast-and-jam breakfast in a hurry and pulled on his coat. “I’ve got to run. I have a meeting this morning.”
“Who’s the client?”
He lowered his voice. “You’ll never believe this, but it’s the McLeans.”
My brow arched in surprise. “I thought Father didn’t want us working for them.”
It wasn’t the McLeans our father disapproved of, though any resident of Washington, DC, had heard the stories about Mrs. McLean’s wild parties and eccentric nature. It was her necklace.
He shrugged. “He’s old-fashioned and superstitious. Besides, they know everyone worth knowing. It could be our big break. Might even bring us national recognition. Who knows?”
Julien had always been as ambitious as our father, so I knew there was nothing I could say to dissuade him.
“What about the curse?”
He rolled his eyes. “Do you really believe in curses?”
I shrugged. “Maybe?”
I’d never given it much thought. Curses seemed like a relic of the past. Something that outcast women from dark fairy tales inflicted upon others when things didn’t go their way. I wondered briefly why the stories about curses and their origins often featured women instead of men.
“Will you work on the Hope Diamond?” I felt my eagerness ooze into my words. “I want to know everything! About her, about the necklace, about her home. Everything!”
He laughed. “You’re more excited than I am.”
I reveled in his warm laugh and the happy gleam in his eye.
My twin brother was the sun to my moon, the charismatic, joyful half of the Beaumont siblings, while I was introspective, serious, and studious.
We both knew it, and that was precisely the reason Julien had sold far more pieces than me. I could never be a salesman.
“How could I not be!” I said. “It’s the Hope Diamond! But I’m sure her entire collection is incredible.”
“I’m sure it is. Listen, for now, don’t tell Father, all right?” he said. “He’ll make me end our acquaintance, and I really do think this could be a boon for us.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t. It’ll only make him obsess about bad luck,” I replied.
Gérard Beaumont was precise, neat, and clean, nearly to the point of madness, or so I secretly thought as I watched him wash and rewash his hands or use a ruler again and again to ensure he had correct measurements.
If he could obsess about something, he would.
It was his nature. The other larger issue was that he believed losing his wife was a stroke of bad luck, a repayment from the fates for some imagined sin he’d committed in his past. The loss of his wife had made him a more protective father than most. Should we work with a stone that was allegedly cursed, perhaps it would evoke that terrible luck again, or that was his fear.
We all knew it, even without him putting his fears into words.
Julien squeezed my shoulder. “I don’t want you worrying over nothing. There’s no curse, so put it out of your mind.”
“Of course not,” I said a little defensively as I watched him disappear through the front door.
* * *
As my eyes refocused, a decorative table with an expensive ceramic vase from the Orient came sharply into view. Evalyn was studying my face. I startled at her nearness. After all the sherry she’d drunk, she didn’t seem to notice.
“You must be devastated, you poor thing,” she said.
I realized I hadn’t heard the last few things she’d said. Numbly, I repeated, “Devastated, yes.”
Some cerebral part of me knew I was devastated, but I couldn’t pinpoint it, couldn’t reach the recessed depths of what that meant. We were still connected, Julien and I, tethered forever, even if the thread had grown thinner, harder to see in the opaque existence that had become my life.
“Look at my manners. How atrocious!” she replied. “Let’s say nothing more about it. Unless you’d like to talk about it? Sometimes it helps.”
It seemed it was she who wanted to talk about it and was a little too eager at that. I shook my head. “Thank you, I’m all right.”
“Why don’t I ring for a refreshment. You’re as pale as a ghost.”
Within moments, I held a snifter of brandy in my hands.
“Drink up,” she said.
As the liquor burned my throat, one of Evalyn’s friends stepped into the hallway. “Everything all right?” It was the beautiful redhead, Carrie Wellington.
In no mood to pretend I felt at ease, I gulped the rest of the brandy.
I needed to leave immediately. I wasn’t as ready as I’d thought I was to talk about this or to be here at the place that had marked the beginning of the end for my brother.
I’d have to talk business later. For now, I had to go.
I stood abruptly and clutched the top of the chair as a wave of dizziness gripped me.
“Oh goodness,” Evalyn said. “Let’s get you home so you can rest.”
“Thank you, Mrs. McLean,” I replied, though I knew rest would not come. I didn’t remember the last time I’d been able to quiet the tangled thoughts and memories plaguing me the moment I closed my eyes.
“It’s Evie,” she insisted. “And not to worry. I’ll have my chauffeur drive you.”
Moments later, I was pushed into a car. My head swam with confusion from the alcohol, from the memories that had resurfaced, from the awkward exchanges with Evalyn—a conversation far too personal to have with someone I’d just met, let alone a potential employer.
Most of all from the weight of all those eyes upon me and their beautiful, lively smiles while my brother lay in the ground.