and testament, which explicitly stated that Archibald Burley was given leave to choose any five objects from the earl’s extensive collection of exotic artefacts.
“Any five objects he so desires,” stressed Walter Beachcroft, “without let or hindrance.”
When Archie took his leave a short while later it was, much to the relief of the new owners, with five small dusty antiques of negligible interest. Had George and Branca known the true value of the items Archie selected, fits of apoplexy would have ensued all around. As it was, their ignorance allowed them some measure of insulation from the stinging reality. Taken together, the objects Archie chose amounted to a very tidy sum that would allow him to set up in the antiquities trade.
Nor was that all.
In truth, the far greater portion of Archie’s now-considerable fortune was already safely stashed in six large tea chests that had been safely deposited in the vaults of Lloyd’s Bank, and another delivered with his cases to King’s Cross Station a week earlier. After his summary eviction from Lord Gower’s London residence, Archie paid his mother a visit and bade her farewell, leaving her with a Lloyd’s Bank book for an account containing five hundred pounds in her name. Then he kissed her good-bye and caught the evening boat-train to the continent. Visits to Paris, Cologne, Vienna, and Rome were followed by more lengthy sojourns in Prague, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Cairo. At each stop along the way he acquired objets d’art and exotica that would form the basis of a collection of almost legendary proportions to tantalise the jaded palates of London’s elite collectors.
Archie’s only contact with England during his sojourn abroad was in the form of a letter from Beachcroft, the solicitor, informing him that the earl’s estate had been sold to a sugar magnate. George and Branca Gower had taken their fortune and returned to Lisbon, where, presumably, they would live out their days in comfort and ease at the expense of their late relation.
On the second anniversary of the Earl of Sutherland’s death, an extremely dashing tycoon answering to the name Archelaeus Burleigh, Earl of Sutherland, arrived in London. The dark, distinguished young lord took an apartment in an expansive Kensington Garden mansion. In the weeks and months to follow, the wealthier citizens of the metropolis would be buzzing about the rare and exquisite antiques this knowledgeable and well-spoken gentleman could produce from his seemingly inexhaustible store. Tales circulated about the earl’s extensive connections with the aristocracy of Old Europe and the royal palaces of the Middle East, which were the principal sources for the wondrous items he traded. These objects did not come cheaply.
Certainly, the fine rings, bracelets, and necklaces; jewelled pendants, statuettes, daggers, and diadems; carved reliefs from attic friezes and pediments; intricately decorated red-and-black amphorae, bowls, lamps, beakers, and urns, and all the rest carried breathtaking price tags. But then where else could one obtain such superb specimens?
“Beauty is all too often fleeting in this world,” Lord Burleigh was wont to remark. “I live only for one thing—and that is the pursuit of beauty that outlasts the ages.”
This sentiment, and much else about the young aristocrat, mightily impressed his clientele, which now included a growing number of marriageable young women. As word of the eligible bachelor of Sutherland spread, his wealth grew—and grew in the telling—until he could not attend an evening performance at Covent Garden or the Proms without attracting a bevy of beautifully groomed and gowned young things. The situation did not go unnoticed. As one mildly envious onlooker was heard to opine, “I say, the Earl of Sutherland must love his gardening.”
“How so, Mortimer?”
“Why, to be surrounded by such a profusion of ravishing flowers he must work those beds like a very slave.”
“Quite.”
The young earl himself appeared to enjoy the feminine attention, yet remained slightly aloof from it, maintaining an air of mild amusement at his own apparent availability. And, while he displayed no favouritism in his choice of companions, being seen in public with a different beauty every night, there was one who began to emerge from the pack: a willowy, blonde lovely named Phillipa Harvey-Jones, daughter and sole surviving heir of prominent industrialist Reginald Harvey-Jones, a man in the chase for a knighthood if ever there was one. Reggie, as he was known to friends and admirers, enjoyed the reputation as a bruisingly tough businessman whose only pleasure in life was doting on his daughter.
Naturally, when her name began to be linked with the dashing Burleigh’s,