“Oh, good Lord. Is she all right?”
“Frightened, and very angry, but unharmed. Sir—”
“I will deal with it at once,” Titus promised. “Why—”Why didn’t he tell me?he had been about to say, distress and hurt forcing the words to his lips, but that was not for Mr. Thorpe to answer, and he cut it off. “Please don’t worry. Just keep Alma safe. I will deal with everything today, and this will absolutely not happen again. Er, if you can arrange for Augustus to be taken wherever the coaches go from—”
“I have a man waiting already.”
“Thank you very much,” Titus said with feeling. “I will deal with it all, Mr. Thorpe. Excuse me.”
He hurried into the parlour, and stopped dead.
Augustus was there, visibly ruffled. An unfamiliar man—stout, in his fifties—glared at him, looking positively indignant. Nico was between them, saying something smooth that died on his lips as he glanced round and saw Titus. There was an ugly red scratch on the underside of his chin that hadn’t been there before.
They were all gathered around a painting, and at the sight of it, Titus briefly forgot everything else.
It was a small oil, the canvas perhaps fifteen inches in height and framed in a cheap imitation of ornate gilt. Itshowed a woman, her face familiar from so many engravings and prints: Marie Antoinette of France, with barely there chin, heavy-lidded eyes, lips curved in a gleeful smile. It was unfinished, with much of the background merely sketched, but the face and simply dressed hair were painted in detail, as was the astonishing necklace on her bosom.
“Good heavens,” Titus said.
“Who’s this fellow?” enquired the stranger.
“My youngest brother,” Augustus said dismissively.
“I’m Titus Pilcrow. This is my house.”
“What, the fellow who threaded the old lady’s needle?” The visitor burst into raucous laughter.
Titus had heard that vulgarity several times: it combined a reference to the Bank of England with a sexual innuendo that made no more sense than most sexual innuendoes. “And you are, sir?”
“Baynes, Chilcott Baynes. Here to see the—” He flapped a hand at Nico in a dismissive manner. “In the running, are you?”
“What running?”
“Never mind, mon ami,” Nico said. “Let me deal with this business, je vous en prie. I will be ten minutes.”
In other circumstances Titus would have gladly let him do that. Augustus was clearly in a temper, and Mr. Baynes seemed dreadful. But he needed to talk to Nico urgently, and then, there was the painting.
It was unquestionably a Le Brun—she had a distinctive style—but Titus generally admired Madame Le Brun’s work, and he did not like this at all. Perhaps it was the necklace. The thing was grotesque.
A collar of huge diamonds was clasped around the Queen’s neck, with elaborate pendants and swags of morelarge diamonds descending from it. Two great bands of smaller diamonds, three stones wide and probably the best part of a foot long, came diagonally over her shoulders and met at a huge central boss on her cleavage; two shorter bands hung from that, each ending in a blue enamel bow and massive cascading pendant. She wore a notably low-cut dress, but even so the diamonds spilled well below the top of the bodice and gleamed against her silks.
“Is that it?” he asked Nico. “Thenecklace?”
“I fear so.”
“How could she even wear such a thing? It looks like it would strangle her.”
“There was a counterweight. More diamonds. Two bands went over the shoulders and fell down her back. I doubt it was comfortable: it weighed a full pound.”
“What a ridiculous object. Nico—”
“Hardly ridiculous, sir,” Baynes said throatily. “This necklace precipitated the fall of a queen.”
“And a king,” Augustus said. “This is evidence that the Queen solicited the necklace, and perjured herself in court to avoid blame later. It is a piece of history.”
“It is a malignity,” Baynes returned hotly. “If she indeed debased herself, entrapped by the whore La Motte, did she not pay, in tears and humiliation and blood?”
Titus shot an appalled look at Nico, who didn’t seem insulted. He looked, if anything, impatient. “We need not rehearse it, monsieurs. You may not like the story this painting tells but you cannot dispute it.”