The Red(67)

"A brass bed. An antique brass bed."

"Yes, it is. But how-" She hadn't told the newspapers the bed was brass. She'd only said "my mother's old bed."

"My grandfather was the last of the great English rakes. His sexual appetite was legendary and his prowess even more so. He refused to marry, to settle down, to do his duty by his name and family. Instead he spent nearly every night in brothels with ‘his darling whores,' as he called them. That's all he spent his money on-prostitutes and art."

"I can think of worse ways to waste one's fortune."

"Hardly wasted. The art he purchased saved the family fortune. The economy was in tatters after the war. But art-great art-always goes up in value. Only the Queen has more money than we do now."

"Malcolm was a very wise man then. And I have to admire an art lover."

"Oh, he was an art lover, all right. He and his girls would put on plays for the other brothel patrons. They'd reenact scenes from paintings, the more erotic the better. His exploits were legendary. Not too many earls performed in near-public orgies." 

"A pity," Mona said. "They should have."

"Yes, a pity indeed. The family was always trying to tame him. Just when they thought he'd settled down after he turned forty, he fell madly in lust with an eighteen-year-old prostitute named Mona Blessey. He showered her with gifts."

"Art," Mona said.

"Art, indeed." The Earl nodded. "Sketches-Degas among them. Paintings, including the Picasso you found. And even his own official portrait he ripped off the wall in Wingthorn. At age forty-one, he finally gave in to his mother's begging and married a girl with no money who would put up with his rakish ways and not make too much of a fuss. The very day he learned she was pregnant, he left her for Mona. An Earl's wife is a countess. My rather foul-mouthed grandfather called Mona his-"

"His cuntess," Mona said.

"Exactly. How did you know?"

"An educated guess. Go on."

"When Mona Blessey's father learned where they were holed up, he traveled to Scotland and found my grandfather in his daughter's bed. He ordered my grandfather to return to his wife and unborn child in England and let his daughter go. My grandfather refused. So the man shot him."

"In the chest," Mona said, remembering her dream of The Bleeding Man.

"Yes, in the chest," the Earl said. "Do you know-"

"Keep talking. Tell me everything."

"He bled out quickly, but he lived long enough to cough out his last words to her father. He said, ‘If I must sell my soul to the devil to do it, I will find a way back into Mona's bed. A whore will reign as Countess of Godwick. You'll see...' "

The Earl paused. "He died laughing in Mona Blessey's arms."

Mona turned her back on the Earl. She covered her face with her hands and breathed.

"Hounded by reporters and vilified in the papers, Mona Blessey left for America the very next week. She had the bed my grandfather died in shipped along with her things. I thought that sounded awfully sentimental for a teenage prostitute. I should have known she was using the bed to smuggle the artwork out of the country. Somehow that bed ended up in your possession."

"My mother bought it nearly thirty years ago at an estate sale. She told me that's where my name came from-Mona was the name of the woman who'd owned the bed. Mother said she'd been a courtesan in her youth, and I didn't believe it. Mother could stretch the truth every now and then. But in this case she was right, wasn't she?"

"She was," the Earl said. "And now you know the story of the painting. It belongs to my family. I'll have to ask you to return it."

"No," she said, facing him.

"No? No isn't an option. It's my family's painting."

"It's my painting. Malcolm was the rightful owner and gave it to Mona Blessey. Mona put it in her bedpost for safe-keeping. My mother bought the bed. I was conceived in the bed your grandfather died in. The bed is legally mine. The painting was in the bed and therefore the painting is mine and always will be. No court of law in America or the United Kingdom would disagree. And you know it," she said. "Otherwise you wouldn't have asked me how much I was willing to sell it for."

"I was hoping to avoid a legal battle."

"I'll allow a professional to make a copy of the painting, if you like. But the painting is mine."

"He's my grandfather, not yours. He's nothing to you."

"He's not nothing to me, not by any stretch of the imagination. You've never met him."




 

 

"Neither have you."

"I know him," she said. She walked to the painting of Malcolm and stood before it, staring into his gleaming dark eyes. He'd told her of a deathbed promise and that she was his way of fulfilling it. How could she have known it was his own deathbed promise he spoke of? Her mother had named her after Mona Blessey, the whore he'd loved. She'd been conceived in that bed, had slept in it all her life. She'd lost her virginity in that bed and had taken Ryan's there years later. All the while Malcolm's spirit or soul or whatever it was that survived his death, was tied to that bed or perhaps tied to the painting in the bed. When the time came when she was at her most desperate, her most vulnerable, her most willing to sell herself to save The Red, Malcolm came to her in the flesh even though he'd been dead for decades. He'd come to her in the flesh because he'd sold his soul to the devil to do it. And the devil had smirked, not smiled, because the devil does not smile.