The Pearl Read online

  “What did you do?”

  “I left. Couldn’t face her. Later that night, I called her. She didn’t pick up so I left a message calling her a pathetic chav, a shameless social climber who didn’t deserve to lick the bottom of my brother’s shoe. Didn’t take that well, did she? I knew she’d be angry, but I didn’t think she’d be so vindictive.

  “She called Charlie crying and told him a sob story about how I’d broken up with her because she wasn’t good enough for our family. Charlie fell right for it, little idiot. She asked him to come over and talk to her in person about it.

  “A few hours later I get a text message from her that says, I did a little more than just lick your brother’s shoe. She’d attached a picture of him asleep in her bed.”

  “My God…” Regan shook her head. “I’m almost impressed.”

  “Gets worse,” Arthur said. “After he woke up, she told him he had to go, because what I said about her was true, that she wasn’t good enough to be with a Godwick. She laid it on very, very thick. Genius maneuver on her part. Not only did she fuck my brother, she turned him against me. Bad enough I insulted her, but I’d also ruined his chances to be with her.”

  “You never told him what you’d overheard? What she said? Never mentioned the picture she’d sent you of him sleeping?”

  “Of course not. He would have been crushed to find out she was just using him to get back at me. He’d never been with a girl before, either. You’ve seen what a wreck he is right now. Can you imagine how bad it would be if he knew?”

  He was sick at his stomach just thinking of it.

  Regan picked up the sugar bowl, sweetened her cup. “If I were you, I’d tell him. Then I’d punch him in the face for fucking my girlfriend the day I’d broken up with her. Would do him a world of good.”

  “I would never—”

  Regan leaned forward. “Do you want to know why he behaves like he does? I’ll tell you whether you do or not.”

  She sipped her tea, set her cup down. Despite himself, he leaned forward in his chair.

  Regan continued, “Until you’ve fought, you can’t make up, can you? What do you think he’s been doing when he goes drinking and whoring and brawling outside pubs at four in the morning? He’s trying to pick a fight with you. One good row would clear the air. Instead of treating him like a poor wounded lamb, a victim, treat him like a man, like an equal. Call him out. Have a duel. Bloody his nose at the very least, and you’ll have your brother back.”

  “Physically assault my own brother? You don’t know anything about it, anything about us. You don’t know anything about my family.”

  She sat back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest, legs crossed, everything crossed as if to X him out. “I don’t know anything about your family?”

  “Your turn in the dock. What did the Godwicks ever do to you, Regan? Steal your parking space? Outbid you on some priceless painting? Or are you pissed that Mum married a man with a title and money like you did, except she’s happy and you’re a miserable b—”

  “Bitch?”

  “Widow. I was going to say a miserable bitter widow.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “Enjoy Lord Malcolm,” Arthur said. “I hope he’s as fun to have in your bedroom as I was.”

  He tossed the linen napkin on the table and stood up, started to leave.

  “You want to know what your family did to me?” she said, freezing him in place. She met his eyes. “Do you know the name Hannah Howell-Griffiths?”

  He furrowed his brow. “Hannah? Your mother?”

  “Right. My mother. And you selfish, entitled bastards killed her.”

  * * *

  Arthur’s blood went cold. He couldn’t feel his feet. Everything in him wanted to deny what she said, what she was about to say…but he could see that, whether it was true or not, Regan wasn’t lying. She believed it.

  “There’s a letter,” she said, “in the top of my desk. You’ll know it when you see it. It’s been read a billion times. It’s got my name on the envelope. Bring it out here.”

  He stared at her a moment longer, but then did as she said.

  In her office he went straight to the desk, opened the drawer and there it was—a plain white envelope with Regan written on it in a woman’s shaky hand.

  The urge to tear open the envelope and read the letter was almost overwhelming but he carried it back to her.

  She pointed at the chair. He sat down again.

  He thought he’d die in those five seconds it took for Regan to slip the letter out and unfold it.

  “My Darling Regan,” she read, her voice steady but cold.

  You’re too young to understand what’s happening right now. I need to tell you a few things before I’m gone. My own mother died when I was about your age, and every unanswered question in my heart is an open wound.

  It’s no one’s fault that I have cancer. I was dealt a bad hand of cards just like my own mother. That’s life, I’m afraid, and a lesson you need to learn. But I also want you to know that I did literally everything I could to save myself so I could watch you grow up. I’m afraid “literally everything” won’t be enough.

  Regan cleared her throat.

  There is a clinical trial in America for people with my sort of cancer. I was accepted into the trial, but as it’s in New York, I needed money for the airfare and a few months of funds to cover a long recovery. We didn’t have it, not even close enough to get me halfway there. Desperate, I went to see Lord Arthur Godwick—

  “I never—”

  “I know she means your grandfather, not you.”

  “Sorry. Go on,” he said.

  …I went to see Lord Arthur Godwick who my father told me on more than one occasion I should go to if I was ever in need of help. He couldn’t tell me why there was a connection between our families, only that he was certain the Godwicks would help if I gave them his name. Lord Godwick agreed to see me at his private home, Wingthorn Hall. The meeting was short and pointless. Even though I told him my name, my father’s name, and that I had a young daughter at home, that I needed only a modest loan so I could possibly live to see you grow up, he refused me.

  I begged him, on my knees. I reminded him that my father was a friend of his family, and that even his least valuable painting hanging on the walls of his picture gallery could mean the difference between life and death for me.

  He sent me away and told me to never show my face there again.

  And now I’m in hospital and there’s no chance anymore. But I did try, my darling. I did try everything I could for you. Please forgive me for not being there to see you grow up. And whatever you do, stay away from the Godwick family. No matter what your grandfather believed, they cannot and should not be trusted. My life was worth less to them than the price of one of their precious paintings.

  Regan slowly folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope that had gone soft as cotton with age and a thousand readings.

  “There’s more,” she said, “But I’ll spare you the rest where she tells me how much she loved me.”

  Arthur buried his head in his hands, his elbows on the little tea table. Slowly he looked up. “Why us?”

  “She guessed my grandfather had done something for your family years ago—a gift, some good deed during the war. Something that meant we were owed a favor,” Regan said. “He was wrong.”

  “Doesn’t matter though, does it?” Arthur sat back in his chair. “Your mother was right. Even our least valuable painting could have paid for her to travel first-class around the world ten times over.”

  “He tossed a dying woman, a mother with a young child, out on her arse for the price of an airplane ticket and three months in a cheap hotel. She died two weeks after she wrote that.”

  Regan blinked and a tear fell down her face. Or started to. As soon as it left her eye she swatted it off like it was a fly that landed on her and not proof of her humanity, her deepest hurt.

  �
�I’m—” he began.

  “Don’t say you’re sorry if it won’t bring her back.”

  And so Arthur said nothing, because nothing could bring her back.

  “I had no grand plan to avenge her,” Regan said. “But when young Master Charles Godwick was suddenly in hock to me up to his eyeballs, I remembered a conversation I’d had with your mother at your sister’s wedding. A conversation about art. My favorite paintings. Her favorite paintings…”

  “She told you their favorite painting in the house was the portrait of Lord Malcolm’s.”

  “She didn’t say why,” Regan said, “only that if the house were burning down, that was the only painting she’d risk her life to pull from the fire. Now every time I see him hanging on the wall of my bedroom where I’ve been fucking his great-grandson, it makes me feel a little better. Petty revenge, yes. But not for a petty crime.”

  Arthur couldn’t begin to think of anything to say to her. What could he say? That it wasn’t his fault? Not his doing? True but useless. He might as well toss money onto her mother’s grave.

  “Get out,” she said coldly, quietly, which was so much worse than ordering him out screaming and shouting. “Get out of my hotel. You and everyone else with Godwick blood in your veins are forever banned from The Pearl. It will not be your playground anymore. And I will keep that painting of Lord Malcolm. Your family’s attorneys can pry it out of my cold dead hands. If your father’s anything like his father, I’m sure he’ll have that arranged.”

  She picked up her teacup again, took a sip, then set it on the saucer and continued: “You act like I’m some sort of monster for taking one painting from your family, meanwhile your family took my mother from me. This is rather a moot point considering everything that’s happened between us, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say it—fuck you and every Godwick who’s ever walked the face of this horrid little Earth.”

  Now her tears did fall and she let them, hot angry tears. She stared at him through them, like a veil.

  “It’s my fault,” she said. “I never should have…what is it they say about sleeping with the enemy? This was a mistake, and it was my mistake. You were attractive and desperate, and I was lonely and bored.” She wiped her eyes and sighed. “Your brother will survive whatever your parents do to him, and he’ll be the better for it. You’ll see.”

  “Of all the awful things you’ve said to me, that’s the only thing that hurts,” he said quietly. “This happened between us because you were bored? Insult me all you want, but don’t lie to me. You were dripping wet the first time I touched you.”

  “Why shouldn’t I lie? You won’t even admit you like it.”

  “I admitted it. Eventually. I know it took—”

  “This is why you won’t tell your brother what really happened with you and Wendy, isn’t it? You’re too embarrassed to tell him that it all started when she mocked you for being a submissive? Your brother is destroying himself with self-loathing and all you care about is your worthless male pride.”

  “You don’t care about Charlie,” Arthur said. “If you did, you wouldn’t have backed him into a corner he couldn’t escape.”

  “He could have escaped by being honest and accepting the consequences for his actions.”

  “Why should he when you won’t.”

  She looked at him like he’d grown a second head.

  “You can try to hate me, hate us, all you want, but I know the truth,” Arthur said. “You hate yourself. You hate yourself for being just like us, Lady Ferry. And you hate yourself for giving up on your art and your freedom and choosing money over your own happiness. You’ve been a rich widow for six months and you’re still working a job you hate, still wearing a watch over your tattoo because Sir Jack made you, still wearing the pearls your dead husband made you wear instead of picking up a bloody paintbrush and daring to do something that makes you happy instead of wallowing in your self-pity.

  “If you want me to, I’ll apologize on my hands and knees for what my grandfather—who died before I was born, let me remind you—did to your mother. But if you want someone to blame for your own misery, go into the bedroom and look into your psyche mirror, Regan. You chose it, remember? Nobody else but you.”

  “Are you finished now?” she asked. She sounded tired. “Because I am.”

  For a terrible moment, he was back in the river again, in that ice-cold water and drowning. He wanted to love her, he realized just now, far too late. He wanted to love her and would never get the chance.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.

  She picked up her teacup, brought it to her lips. “It’s for your own good,” she said. “Really.”

  She sipped her tea and looked away into the distance. That was the last he might ever see of her. She stared off at the silver clouds over London, and just like the woman in the painting, she sat there, dressed in blue, drinking her tea all alone.

  Part II

  8

  Judith Slaying Holofernes

  Arthur was gone and Regan was alone and that was exactly how she wanted it.

  There was a little tea left in the pot. No use letting good oolong go to waste. She poured the rest, added milk, added one lump of sugar and drank. Regan coughed, unable to get the tea down for some reason. Her throat was tight. Obviously, she’d been outside too long in the brisk air.

  A tear streaked down her cheek. The cool air, again. Time to go in for the day. She’d leave the tea things for later. She’d leave everything for later.

  Regan rose from the table, shocked by how tired she felt all of a sudden. Arthur’s fault, she decided. She hadn’t meant to tell him about her mother and what his grandfather had done to her. But what was she supposed to have done when he sat there smug and steaming, furious at her for daring to suggest she knew anything at all about his family?

  Oh, she knew everything there was to know about the Godwicks. Everything that mattered. She’d done the right thing by sending him packing, by reneging on their agreement. Charlie didn’t deserve to get pulled out of the fire, and Arthur certainly didn’t deserve her.

  When she closed the terrace doors behind her, the pictures rattled on the wall. She hadn’t meant to shut the doors so hard. Arthur somehow brought out the worst in her.

  Especially in bed. For all the years of her marriage to Sir Jack, she’d survived sleeping with him by retreating into a fantasy world where she was in charge, where no man ever told her what she could and couldn’t do.

  Only with Arthur, it hadn’t been fantasy anymore. During their nights together, she’d let herself live out her dreams, her deepest fantasies. She never should have let that side out to play. After all, look what had happened. She’d started to care for the stupid boy. For a Godwick, of all people. She was starting to care for a Godwick, all because he’d made her dreams come true. Those dreams should have stayed dreams. Instead, they’d turned into nightmares.

  She went straight up to her bedroom, threw herself across the bed and closed her eyes. It had begun when she’d brought the first red ripe strawberry to his lips, and he’d eaten it out of her hand. That willingness…that trust…giving so much of himself up to her…

  That was the first time she’d felt something for him other than loathing and vengeance, something like tenderness.

  And then he’d shown up at her door in uniform, looking like every delicious dream she’d never let herself have…and when he’d waltzed her out of the hunt ball to make love to her so roughly in the smoking lounge…

  And finally, worst of all, when they’d found the book lying open to the painting of the woman in the pearl necklace, and Regan worried there’d been an intruder, Arthur transformed in front of her eyes from whore to hero, searching the penthouse with no weapon other than a kitchen knife, and sleeping on her floor to guard her all night…

  What would her mother think of her, sleeping with a Godwick, giving him her body? Bad enough. But giving him her heart? A true betrayal.<
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  She’d always admired the art of the Italian Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi. Her most famous work had been an oil painting titled Judith Slaying Holofernes, a graphic rendering of the Biblical story of Judith, a brave and beautiful widow, who’d played seductress to the enemy general Holofernes, tricking him into lowering his guard so that she might cut off his head and save her city.

  Imagine if instead of Judith killing General Holofernes, she’d fallen in love with him. Judith would never have done something so stupid. Sleep with the enemy? Maybe…but never fall for him.

  And neither would Regan.

  Banishing Arthur and his whole wretched family from The Pearl was the right thing to do. Keeping the painting was the right thing to do. Making Charlie suffer for his actions was the right thing to do. Never seeing Arthur again, never calling him Brat again, never coming on his cock again, never feeding him out of her hand again, never letting him take her pearls off her neck and slip them one by one into her cunt again, never letting him protect her again, dance with her again, touch her again, fill her with his come again…

  That was the right thing to do.

  She knew it was right, even if the very thought of never seeing him again made her want to sleep until the end of the world.

  Emotions exhausted her, which is why she tried never to have them.

  She’d simply take a little nap and when she woke up, she would feel fine. She’d put Lord Malcolm’s portrait into storage and never give the Godwicks another thought.

  * * *

  When Regan opened her eyes again, it was dark. She smelled incense and woodsmoke. She rose from her bed only to find the bed was gone, and she lay instead on a pile of silk pillows. A rustle of heavy fabric and a woman appeared, an older woman, with lines deep as furrows on her face. She carried a dripping candle in her hand.