I wouldn’t mind it. Regan?”
She stared at the painting without speaking.
Something stirred in her. She’d looked at this very painting a thousand times without feeling anything but admiration for the technique, the colors, the details on the woman’s gown and hair.
Now Regan saw something else in the painting.
Herself.
“She has your eyes,” Arthur said. “Pale grey. A little scared, a little trapped.”
Regan was the prisoner, trapped by bands of iron and gold in a luxurious prison. Those links on the manacles on her wrist looked flimsy as paperclips. The woman in the painting had only to pull her hands apart and they would snap off. And once she did that, she would be free. She was already free. She just didn’t know it yet.
Regan glanced around the penthouse of The Pearl, a hotel girded with iron and steel and decorated with dazzling gilt and gold.
She turned to Arthur and kissed him. A soft kiss. A tender kiss. A goodbye kiss.
“Do me a favor,” she said.
“Anything.”
“When you start your tour of duty, don’t get yourself killed, please.”
He stared at her, eyes narrowed in confusion. “Wasn’t planning to. Why?”
She smiled, but didn’t answer. “I need to get to work,” she said. “I’ll…I’ll see you later.”
“Later tonight?”
“I have to do a few things first.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Soon,” she said. She touched his face and kissed him one more time. His handsome face, those eyes so dark there was no telling the pupil from the iris. Her lover. Her protector. Her family.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I will be.”
He nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow then, or whenever you’re ready.”
He took his coat off the back of the chaise, went to the door. There he stopped and turned back.
“I know you can’t make me any promises,” he said, “but I can make you this promise. I will love you forever, and you can’t stop me so don’t bother trying. I’ll love you and I’ll wait for you, but if you run from me, I’ll find you.”
“Just…let me find myself first, can you?”
“Remember when you said I belong to you?”
“I remember,” she said.
“I don’t know if you meant it, but you have to know I believed it. I’m always going to belong to you. No matter where you are, wherever you go, I’m always yours.”
She smiled. “Mine.”
“All right. What are you going to do?”
“What I should have done ten years ago.”
“Don’t be long,” he said. “I love you.”
He turned to go and Regan whispered to his back, “I love you, too, Brat.”
The door closed behind him and she was alone. Alone again. She wanted him back so badly she almost ran after him. But she would only be leaving one gilded cage to put Arthur in another.
She went out onto the terrace and found Gloom waiting for his lunch. She fed him raw fish by hand and stroked the silky feathers along the back of his elegant head.
“I have to leave, baby,” she said. “I have to fly away for a while, like you do. Someone will take care of you, I promise, but for now this is goodbye.”
He raised his head. “Bye-bye, baby.”
She laughed through tears and when Gloom flew away, she imagined he was taking her with him.
In a daze she returned to her office and picked up the phone.
“Yes, Boss,” Zoot said when she answered.
“Would you mind feeding Gloom for me? I’ll be…I’ll be gone for a bit.”
“Whatever you want, Boss. Where you going?”
“Paris.”
“Paris? What’s in Paris?”
“Art,” Regan said. “Loads and loads and loads of art.”
Part III
14
Morning Star and Evening Star
Arthur was in Hell.
Two weeks had passed since he’d last seen Regan, and she wasn’t answering his calls. He’d even gone by The Pearl twice to see if she was there. Zoot said she wasn’t, and couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say where she’d gone.
All he could do was wait while Regan did whatever it was she needed to do. Wait and hope and trust that his dead great-grandfather wouldn’t cross planes of existence to put them together just to let them fall apart.
December came and suddenly Christmas was everywhere Arthur looked. Outside the window of the Piccadilly townhouse, he spied greenery hanging from streetlamps, white lights on Christmas trees glowing through windows. His parents would be home in one week and they’d all convene at Wingthorn, now fully renovated.
Arthur tried to look forward to it, to his last Christmas with his family before he joined the army and left home for good. But he’d happily skip the whole season and all the gifts and parties if it meant knowing where