that. They left.
When they were gone and Arthur and Regan were alone again, she looked and him and said, “Tell me everything about that painting of Lord Malcolm. Now.”
Back in her bedroom, Regan stood at the fireplace while Arthur sat on the edge of the bed facing her. She still held the book in her arms, clutching it to her chest like a child, one finger in the page as a bookmark.
“I guess it starts twenty-five years ago, when my parents met,” he began. “My mother owned a gallery in New York in the nineties—The Red. The way she tells the story, she had a dream about a man with black hair and black eyes in a three-piece suit who told her to check the bed knobs in the brass bed in storage at the gallery. She did, and inside the bedposts were a few paintings. One Picasso, some sketches, but also Lord Malcolm’s official family portrait.”
They both glanced toward the portrait on the wall.
Arthur continued, “Finding a lost Picasso worth millions rolled up in the post of an old bed is the sort of thing that makes international news. My father saw the story in the paper. It included a photograph of Lord Malcolm’s portrait, too. Dad hopped on the first flight to New York. Mum refused to sell the painting to him. No matter how much he offered, she wouldn’t accept it. Said she’d never give the painting up. Where she went, it went—the end.
“She was young and beautiful, and he was, well, my father. He picked Mum up, threw her over his shoulder, and carried both her and the painting out to his car. He said he intended to marry her, and that everything she owned—including the painting—would be his, and all that was his would be hers. They eloped. Nine months later my sister was born.”
“What was Lord Malcolm to her?”
“She said she’d dreamed about him.”
Regan opened the book again to the page of the Cassatt pearl necklace painting. She shook her head, then slammed the book shut and tossed it onto the bed.
“I dreamed about David Cameron giving me a haircut once,” she said. “If I had a painting of him, I’d give it away. Why was she so attached to a painting of a dead lord she’d never met?”
“You’d have to ask her that.”
She pointed at him. “I’m asking you.”
Arthur thought about what to tell her that wouldn’t sound completely mad.
“Mum has nicknames for us all,” he said. “My father’s her Sun, my sister’s her Moon. That’s what she always called them, her Sun and her Moon. And me and Charlie are her Morning Star and Evening Star.”
“Very sweet. What’s your point?”
“I remember when I was little, and we were out star-gazing and she showed me the Evening Star. Then she showed me the North Star and I asked who that was? She said it was Lord Malcolm, but she didn’t say why.”
“Malcolm?”
He met her eyes, nodded. The whisky in her glass was shaking. “You’re scared,” he said.
“Terrified. And you’re not, which scares me even more. There’s more, isn’t there? In your texts, you told Charlie that your parents joke about the painting being haunted. All because your mother had one dream about Lord Malcolm?”
Arthur studied the floor. “No,” he finally said. “Not just that.”
“Well?” She raised her hand, waiting not very patiently.
“There’s an old family story about Lord Malcolm. His mother forced him into a marriage he didn’t want. The second his wife was gave him an heir, he ran off with some girl he was lusting after. Her father followed them and caught them in bed together—so he shot Malcolm.
“That should be the end of the story, but it’s not. While he was dying, he allegedly sold his soul to the devil—not to avenge his own murder, but to get revenge on his family for forcing him to marry someone he despised. The other rumor is he sold his soul so he could keep on whoring after he was dead. Maybe both. Maybe neither. It’s all third- and fourth-hand gossip.
“Anyway, the bed he died in was the bed my mother found the painting in. The bed she was sleeping in when she dreamed about him—supposedly.” Arthur sighed. “And…”
“Go on. Tell me everything.”
“You’ll think we’re all starkers.”
“You’re a Godwick—I already do.”
“He seems to interfere, for lack of a better word, with the family sometimes. For good. Only for good so far. My father didn’t know what to get Lia for a graduation present.