Chapter 4
I buried my face in my hands as I rode home from Evalyn’s, mortified I’d behaved as I had.
It seemed my father wasn’t the only one who was fragile.
I hadn’t managed to secure another meeting with Evalyn or talk about a schedule of any kind.
I also hadn’t discovered a single thing about Julien’s time at the McLeans’ save the fact that he’d sold several of our pieces to Evalyn’s friends, and they all recognized our name.
Once the chauffeur dropped me at home, I slipped out of my still-damp clothes.
Stomach churning from the alcohol I wasn’t used to drinking, I took some bicarbonate of soda and wandered into the workshop barefoot, my nightgown billowing around my legs.
The rain brought chilly spring temperatures, and had I been a child, my father would have scolded me for walking through the workshop without shoes.
But I wasn’t a child, and my father wasn’t here beside me.
He was gone, retreated into the corners of his mind, and I was alone.
More alone than I ever thought possible.
I drifted from workstation to station like a ghost, floating aimlessly, the day replaying through my mind.
The women draped over the furniture in their jewels and dresses, more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen, cheeks flushed from the sherry.
I could still feel their stares upon me as they evaluated me, weighing my worth and excluding me from their conversations.
I cringed at the humiliation of nearly fainting and the shock of speaking so openly about Julien.
Unsettled, I scoured the floors and windows and tidied the two workstations, each fit with a floor lamp and table, a jewelry saw, pliers of various sizes, a file and buffing rags, as well as an open-flame jeweler’s lamp and a mounted magnifying glass for peering carefully at our works in progress.
I did a sweep over the station with a metal roller comprised of a crank and a system of gears, used to compress and flatten molten metal.
After, I cleaned the area around the soldering station and organized the rolltop desk and its dozens of locked wooden drawers where ring mounts, gemstone dust, webbed gold, necklace chains, and lockets were categorized and stored.
When I was satisfied my mind had quieted, I sat in the worn armchair and leaned my head against the cushion.
In an instant, I saw Julien’s crooked smile, the mischief that danced in his eyes—and then flashes of that terrible night.
The car screeching away in the dark. An image of his broken body.
The blood and the confusion of what came next.
And the small crack in my composure that had opened for the first time that day widened another inch.
My heart beat raggedly in my chest, my eyes burned, and I jumped to my feet, shoving down the dark that roared inside me.
I paced, stroking the scar on my hand until my heartbeat ebbed into a steady, softer rhythm.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be pursuing work with Evalyn after all.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be seeking the truth about the hit-and-run that killed my brother.
It had been ruled an accident after all, even if the coward who’d hit him had left him there without stopping, without making sure Julien was all right.
I shook my head. It didn’t matter if his death was an accident.
I had to understand what he was doing all those weeks he was mostly absent from the workshop.
Why he’d spent so much time at the McLeans and, most of all, why he’d become so agitated and erratic those final weeks before his death.
My instincts told me there was more to understand, that the moment he’d begun work for the McLeans, his fate had been sealed.
If I was wrong and my time at the McLeans’ was a waste of time—an unnecessary risk to my own safety—at least I’d know the truth.
I inhaled a deep breath and opened the sketchbook I’d abandoned months ago.
I sifted through the my drawings, some fully formed and others too ambitious so they’d been forgotten.
When I neared the end, a large, well-shaded sketch of the Hope Diamond filled the page.
The diamond looked more oblong on the page than it was in person, but the necklace itself was surprisingly accurate.
As a girl, Father had taken me on his knee nightly, told me many stories from his home in France and stories about famous gemstones.
The Hope Diamond had captured my imagination.
What could a curse mean after all, and who would be brave enough to wear the stone?
I’d longed to meet such a person. I’d never seen myself as brave, but I wanted to be that kind of woman.
I reread my notes about the diamond in the margins.
The stone had belonged to a French gem merchant named Tavernier in the seventeenth century and was originally 112 carats.
At the time, its cobalt hue was considered bad luck in India, so the merchant easily acquired the diamond for a bargain and carried it back to France where it was sold to King Louis XIV, forever famous for his love of power and beauty.
I turned the page, reading on, realizing I’d forgotten how much of an interest I’d taken in the stone before Julien had met the McLeans.
I knew a bit about King Louis XIV; he was something of a favorite of Father’s.
The Sun King had been ahead of his time, using collected tax money to distribute an allotment of food for all in his kingdom, including the poor.
He also loved gemstones and art and his beloved Versailles with its vast gardens.
He valued reason and knowledge in a way that had never been seen in a French monarch.
The classical period, they’d called it. Though Father was an ardent citizen of the Republic, he admired those qualities in the long-deceased king.
I remembered Father remarking on the fervor the stone had created when it had arrived in the kingdom, showcasing some of the first brilliant cuts ever made to a gemstone.
It was a story that Father had loved and had retold many times, his voice hushed.
“A jeweler is a storyteller, chérie,” he’d say. “This is what gives the stone its true value. The wearer becomes a part of that story and sees a reflection of the person they long to be in a gem’s facets.”
It was my father’s love of story that had sparked his interest and his superstition around many famous gemstones from the Koh-i-Noor to the Black Prince’s Ruby. But his heritage as an ardent Frenchman put the Hope Diamond at the center of his fascination and imagination, as did its legendary curse.
I wondered what secrets the Hope held and where it had disappeared to during those two decades after it was stolen from France during the Revolution.
I traced the sketch with my fingertip, picturing the diamond at Evalyn’s neck, and wondered if she believed in the curse.
My disquiet returning, I flipped to a clean page and chronicled all that had happened that day: the names of the women I’d met, their appearance, their jewelry, and anything I remembered from their snippets of conversation, Evalyn included.
One day soon, the information might be useful.
One day soon, I’d find a way to see Evalyn McLean and the Hope Diamond again.