For her, and for so many of her companions, the troupe provides a sanctuary from the outside world. Protected by the lights, make-up and costumes, none of them notices what is going on underneath their very noses. But when something tragic happens in the town within days of Pippa's arrival, she is forced to start examining her old life and looking forward to a new one, no matter what the cost Under a Brighter Sky: A gripping family saga of love and rivalry.
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A powerful saga about the search for love. A gripping wartime saga of love and madness. A passionate saga of torment in post-war Britain. An evocative saga of love and war. Riches of the Earth: A compelling saga of love and war. The Woman Who Drew Buildings: A moving saga of secrets, family and love. As he had recently learned, a young woman inherited this apartment from her grandmother on June 11, Talk about rotten timing.
That was where Fitch came in. In addition to tracing the provenance and rightful ownership of each work, Fitch would also oversee laboratory testing to verify age and authorship. What are you waiting for? The lawyer gestured listlessly, as if opening a crypt was just another day at the office. Fitch stepped inside, resting the heel of his cowboy boot on the decades-dusted parquet floor.
He wanted to savor the moment, since this was the kind of once-in-a-lifetime treasure hunt every art investigator dreamed of. More than that, he wanted to honor it. Fitch knew he was about to take a breath of history itself. And he wondered … whose lungs last pulled oxygen from the air of these rooms? Whose fingertips had last brushed across these chairs or drawn closed the draperies? With an excited outburst of French, Jean-Louis flung open the drapes. And just like that, a beam of morning light split the dim room, illuminating every corner.
Millions of dust particles twirled in the sudden air current. In his agitated state, the curator stumbled, then gasped in horror. Fitch tossed his employer a pair of white cotton gloves, then shoved his own hands into an identical set. A random lottery had given the Michel-Blanc first access to the apartment. Fitch knew why Jean-Louis was so twitchy. He was right, of course, but only if he found it to be authentic, and Fitch knew signed-and-dated Rembrandts from that period were exceedingly rare. Fate had smiled on this private collection.
Fitch set up his camera and reminded Jean-Louis not to move anything until he had documented its location. He threw open those drapes as well, flooding the area with sunlight and exposing an even larger jumble of tapestries, oil paintings, figurines, and what looked like a carved frieze from the Middle Ages. Within the first hour, Fitch found three of their items: He could barely compose himself enough to hand the drawing to the solicitor for verification.
You know that, right? The curator nodded, wiping tears from his eyes. He patted Fitch on the arm. You are the best and I will be patient. Once the crating process had begun and Jean-Louis was overseeing a team of museum workers, Fitch wandered off to continue his search.
Fitch wandered into a breakfast nook off the vintage kitchen and winced at what he saw—a jumble of unframed canvases leaned against a window seat, a particularly unkind way to store paintings. Luckily, the apartment had been nearly airtight all these years, and the drapes had been drawn, which cut down on light damage, moisture, and dust accumulation, though Fitch knew unframed canvases were vulnerable to warping in the best of environments.
He lowered himself to one knee for a closer look. Carefully, Fitch slipped a gloved finger between two canvases, separating them. He began to divide each canvas from its neighbor, one after the next, making quick mental evaluations of each work. There were watery French country fields, seascapes, and studies of Paris street life through various decades.
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Though they were important and worth further study, Fitch was on the clock, and so far there had been no sign of any cartoons, kimonos, or mysterious female nudes. The very last canvas was larger than all the others, perhaps forty-by-forty inches. It was draped with an old embroidered bedsheet, and when he gently pulled at the linen he found the painting was faced away. Its back was covered by a layer of coarse muslin, frayed and tearing along the tacked-down edges. Fitch leaned closer, frowning, his brain suddenly humming with alarm.
One touch of the muslin and his heart skipped a beat. He had only seen the back. He had to be fucking crazy to be thinking what he was thinking. With the benefit of better light, Fitch confirmed that his sanity was intact—there were, in fact, similarities. Not in his line of work. First, he took a few photos to document exactly where the canvas had been found and in what position.
Then, with a gloved finger, he pushed back a corner of the ragged muslin and turned on the flashlight app from his phone. Peering underneath, he saw how the canvas was supported by strainers of ancient olivewood and held together mortise and tenon joints—an exact match to the others. His hands trembled slightly as he turned the canvas to face him. It was upside down. He set it upright. The shock of what he saw sent him back on his heels, his breath coming fast. In the bottom right corner was the familiar mark of an L and an A done in a bold cursive hand.
Even today, the artist, muse, setting, and date were a mystery. He shoved the printed list back into his pocket and tried to get his brain and his breath to slow down. Fitch recognized the boudoir, too, with its wide windowsill framing the sea, the rugged stone walls, and the unvarnished oak of the simple bureau. But it was the subject he knew best of all—her tumble of sun-streaked blond hair, her smoldering, powder-blue eyes, the sleek curve of her shoulder. And there was the fantail birthmark on the side of her right breast, exactly where it should be. That mermaid-shaped mark had inspired the only name by which this outrageously sensual muse had ever been known.
The Siren leaned back on her hands at the edge of an unmade bed, as if the painter had caught her in the process of pushing herself to stand after a long and luxurious rest. Her full breasts and slightly rounded belly were gilded by the sun. Her lean legs stretched out before her as she gazed directly into the soul of the artist. Any shred of doubt Fitch might have been harboring was gone.
And of his muse. This painting was as technically brilliant as the other five, to be sure. The colors were as luminous and rich. The wash of light and hint of movement were the same. And yet … this painting was more than the others. The sum of all its elements had created something tangibly alive. This is … this has never been seen before! So if this canvas had been hiding for seventy years in an abandoned Paris apartment, how many more were hidden away and forgotten?
And where on earth could they be? His eyes flashed in comprehension as he did the math in his head. Billionaire London art collector H. Winston Guilford was unabashedly fixated on The Siren, and had spent the last twenty years acquiring all five paintings in the series. He would surely offer an obscene amount of money to get his hands on the sixth. Fitch popped to his feet, the thrill of the chase already rushing through his veins, a plan already forming in his mind.
He would run tests on this painting while it was still the property of the Michel-Blanc. And if he got extremely lucky, he would find something he could use as leverage with Guilford, something that might convince that crusty old bastard to let him take the rest of the series into the lab—and perhaps even to public display. Fitch carried the painting to the solicitor, making a mental note to cancel his return flight to the States. It could be a while before his boots once again roamed the blue-skied streets of Santa Fe.
What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
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The world would split open. A large, masculine hand ran up the bare flesh of my thigh. Tomorrow you will choose your first protector. Piper Chase-Pierpont placed a white-gloved finger on the musty diary and slid it to the far edge of the museum workroom desk, providing some distance between herself and the devastatingly erotic secrets of a woman long dead. She needed to think. She needed to figure out how to handle this unexpected development, this sudden twist of truth. Obviously, the first shock was that these diaries existed at all.
She wanted to wolf down a Three Musketeers bar, though she knew it would only disrupt her endocrine system with free radicals, preservatives, and high-fructose corn syrup. She needed a little fresh air. She tried to calm herself. What am I supposed to do with this stuff?
Through the broken lenses of her glasses, Piper glanced at the clock on the basement workroom wall. It was after 1 A. What city wants to learn that their most beloved and righteous folk heroine spent her youth as a high-class hooker and accused murderess? Not Boston, Massachusetts, that was certain. Maybe she should just pretend she never found the journals.
She could simply take the diaries and run. But how would she live with herself? Piper was a senior curator at the Boston Museum of Culture and Society. Her job was to interpret history, not shove it in a shoebox and hide it under her bed. It felt as if the two-hundred-year-old words had been written just for her, Piper Chase-Pierpont, Ph.
It had been seven in the evening. A Friday in midsummer, which meant the rest of the staff had long ago gone home to their lives. Piper had been soaking it all in, desperately hoping a theme for the exhibit would gel in her mind. The Fall Gala was only three months away, and that made her nervous.
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She began to chew on an ink pen. But this time, the pen snapped. Foul-tasting ink trickled into her mouth. One violent shake of her head and her glasses went flying. Piper jumped to her feet and lurched toward the restroom, stepping on her glasses in the process. Piper smiled to herself at the irony.
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Despite her years of experience and a doctorate from Harvard, she had only luck to thank for this particular bonanza. And now there they were, three small, innocent-looking journals bound in cracked brown leather, their powder-fine deckle edges ragged with age, their pages packed with historical dynamite. She considered her options. Piper had barely been able to read those words alone in her basement workroom in the middle of the night. No way was she about to share them in a 9 A.
The thought made her shudder. Besides, at home she could apply cold showers as needed. Piper frowned, suddenly aware of the appalling lack of professionalism in that line of reasoning. How could she even think of doing something so outrageous? What if she got caught? She tipped her head and wondered. The night security guard was on his way! Oh, the heck with it! And her decision was made. Piper shoved herself to a sudden stand on bloodless legs, nearly toppling over. She stomped her feet to get the circulation going, shook her arms and hands, rolled her head from side to side.
Get the journals and get out of here. Footsteps came down the hall. Right now, she just had to get them home and get them copied. Piper gathered all three journals into one big sheet of acid-free paper, and shoved the entire bundle into her brown leather messenger bag. It made her cringe to handle them like that, but there was no time for delicacy.
She staggered toward the travel trunk still lying on its side, righting it. Then she plopped down amid her notes and sketches, pretending to be lost in thought, only this time without a pen.
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She probably looked like a madwoman. If she was lucky, she looked like the same nerdy, workaholic curator she always had been, just a little, well, nerdier. Everyone else just called it what it was—a flop. Piper was savvy enough to understand why the trustees had approved her idea for the Harrington exhibit. Second, the subject matter would offend no one.
The security guard cleared his throat. Was he on to her? She pushed herself to a stand, still wobbly from the restricted blood flow. You know how I can be. Well, I should probably get going home now. She turned off her desk and worktable lamps. She limped toward the door. Sitting for too long in one position can compress the arteries, thereby preventing nutrients and oxygen from reaching the nerve cells.
Half the lights are out in the parking garage—budget cuts and all. Maybe this was what happened to single, lonely, pornography-stealing women about to turn thirty. Piper and Melvin remained awkwardly silent on the elevator ride and through the garage, their footsteps echoing in the emptiness.
She flung open the passenger door and placed the messenger bag on the floor. Without warning, Melvin smacked his hand on the roof of her Civic. Piper was so startled that she nearly jumped from the pavement.
She panted, clutching her car keys to her chest. Suddenly she pictured her criminal trial in great clarity—her mother in a front-row courtroom seat, her shoulder bones rattling as she sobbed, her father shaking his head in disapproval if he could even bring himself to witness the public shaming of his only child , and the jury box? Hairspray and baby oil! I tightened my arms about his neck and cried out at his entry, my sob of aching satisfaction disappearing into his hot mouth.
No wonder it was taking Piper forever to copy these diaries. Her priority needed to be copying each page, not reading for her own titillation. Each second she wasted put the fragile paper, leather, and ink in further peril. Piper suddenly felt evil feline eyes boring into the back of her head. In response, the Divine Miss M. Back to the task at hand. The original journals had to be returned on Monday to the museum documents room, where they could be stored properly. Clearly, there was no time for diversion.
Piper carefully lifted Volume II from the glass surface and forced herself to concentrate. Though she followed document-handling protocol to mitigate damage, each turn of a page had resulted in some additional injury to the journals, the paper tearing slightly along the hand-sewn spine. The pages were brittle with time, pockmarked by insects, and weakened by mold and mildew. Yet it could have been far worse, she knew. Ophelia Harrington had meant business when she packed these away in the false bottom of her trunk, a task that she accomplished on or after April 16, , the date on the London Examiner news sheet used to wrap them.
Nearly six layers of newsprint had encased each volume. In addition, the trunk itself had offered a good deal of protection from humidity and light. Whoever built the travel chest had been a master craftsman, fitting the seams so tightly that the secret compartment and its spring release were invisible even upon close examination. She cautiously turned the page, lifted the journal, carried it to the glass plate and turned it over for copying.
This stuff was addictive! Historical and sexual C-4! Piper, on the other hand, lived in a time where she could be anything and do anything she wished. And what had she done with thirty years of freedom? Traveled when she could. Tried to please her parents. With the discovery of these journals, Piper had to face the fact that compared to Ophelia Harrington, she was in danger of becoming a dried-up, frustrated, bitter, and boring woman.
It would have been hard not to in their line of work. He was made for TV. A real-life Indiana Jones with a brilliant mind, a sharp wit, and a devastatingly fine … Forget it. Had he ever married?
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Had a woman ever captured his mind and heart the way archaeology had? If so, who was she? And in how many ways was she the complete opposite of Piper?