breath as the auctioneer’s words confirmed that the moment she had been waiting for was finally here. She closed her eyes again, trying to visualise the air travelling up her nostrils and blowing her errant thoughts aside. When she opened them, the wall panel to the right of the bespectacled auctioneer was rotating in a spectacular one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn to reveal the stunning paintings, and the breath caught in her throat in awe.
She remembered the first time she’d ever seen them, or rather a print of them. Not long after she’d started secondary school, her art teacher, Mrs McLellan, had held them up as an example of how Rénard dared to push the boundaries set by his contemporaries by having a real woman as his subject rather than a goddess. The rest of the class had been lost in a fit of giggles; between the two paintings, Rénard’s Love by the Sea went from fully clothed to completely naked. But for Cally it had been a defining moment in her life. To her the pictures spoke of beauty and truth, of the two sides of every story—of herself. From that moment on, she had known unequivocally that her future lay in art. A certainty matched only by her horror when she had discovered that the original paintings were shut away on the country estate of a pompous aristocrat getting damp and gathering cigar smoke, rather than being on public display for everyone to enjoy.
Until now. Because now they were owned by Hector Wolsey junior, whose horse-racing habit had caused him to demand that Crawford’s auction house sell his late father’s paintings immediately, before they’d even had the chance to say ‘in-house restoration team’. Which meant the London City Gallery had been frantically trying to raise enough money to buy them, and had been lining up a specialist conservator to undo the years of damage. To Cally’s delight, her enthusiasm, impressive CV and her expert knowledge on Rénard had eventually convinced the gallery team that she was the right person for the job. The job she had wanted for as long as she could remember, and the break in her career she desperately needed.
Cally glanced around the room as the bids took off, starting reassuringly with Gina, the gallery’s agent, who was seated just along from her. There was a low hubbub of hushed, excited voices in every row of seats. Telephonists packed around the edges of the room were shaking their heads and relaying bids to eager collectors the world over. Within seconds, the bids exceeded the estimate in the sale catalogue, so much so that Cally was tempted to use her own catalogue as a makeshift fan to combat her soaring temperature—but she refrained, partly because she was rooted to her seat in anticipation, and partly in fear that it might inadvertently be taken for a bid. The moment was tense enough.
Unless you were Mr Drop-dead Gorgeous, Cally observed, her pulse reaching an unprecedented pace as she stole another look in his direction and caught him leaning back with a casual expression, his body utterly at ease beneath the blue-grey suit. She could do with a bit of that—composure, that was. Because, whilst she saw Gina raise her hand in between every figure the auctioneer repeated at speed, it did little to ease her nerves. Even if the gallery had promised her it was a dead cert.
But no doubt that was what Wolsley’s son said about the races, she thought, caught between recalling the dangers of trusting anything too blindly and willing herself to relax. No, however convinced the gallery team had been that they had secured enough funds, the only time you could truly relax in a situation like this was if you had nothing riding on it—as he clearly didn’t, she justified to herself. So what was he doing here when he hadn’t bid on any of the previous eleven paintings since he’d entered the room at lot thirty-eight? Just as Cally was about to make a list of possibilities in her mind, something happened.
‘That’s an increase of—wait—ten million on the phones,’ the auctioneer said uncharacteristically slowly, taking off his glasses in astonishment as he looked from the gallery of telephonists back to the floor. ‘That’s seventy million against you, madam. Do I have seventy-one?’
The rest of the auction room went ominously still. Cally felt her heart thump madly in her chest and her stomach begin to churn. Who the hell were they bidding against? According to the gallery team every serious collector with their eye on the Rénards should have been sitting in this room. Gina’s horrified expression said it all. Cally watched on tenterhooks as she looked discomposedly at the paperwork in her lap. Eventually, Gina inclined her head.
‘Seventy-one million,’ the auctioneer acknowledged, replacing his spectacles and looking back to the phones. ‘Do I have seventy-two? Yes.’ He moved his head back and forth like a tennis umpire. ‘There, do I have seventy-three?’
Gina gave a single, reluctant nod. ‘Any advance on seventy-three?’ He looked up to the gallery.
‘We have eighty on the phones.’
Eighty?
‘Any takers at eighty-one?’
Nothing. Cally squeezed her eyes tightly shut.
‘Last chance at eighty-one—no?’
Cally stared helplessly at Gina, who shook her head apologetically.
‘Closing then, at eighty million pounds.’
The sound of the hammer, and the auctioneer’s cry of ‘Sold,’ echoed through her body like a seismic tremor.
The London City Gallery had lost the Rénards.
Horror ripped through her gut. The paintings she loved were to be shipped off to God knew where. Her hopes of restoring them were dead, and the door to the career she’d been on the cusp of walking through slammed in her face. The wall panel revolved another one hundred and eighty degrees and the paintings disappeared.
There was no such thing as a dead cert. It was over.
As the people began to gather their things and make their way out into the anonymity of the London streets, Cally remained in her chair, staring blindly at the empty wall. She didn’t see the way that Mr Drop-dead Gorgeous lingered behind, and barely even noticed Gina’s whispered apology as she crept away. She understood; the gallery’s funds were not limitless. Even if they could have raised enough retrospectively, they had to weigh up their expenditure against the draw of the public. At a few million over the estimate, the paintings were such a prolific attraction they’d considered them still worthwhile. But almost double? She knew Gina had been taking a risk to go as high as she’d gone.
So, someone else had wanted the Rénards more. Who? The thought snapped her out of her paralysis. Surely whichever gallery it was planned to get someone to restore them? She knew it broke every unwritten rule of auction-room decorum there was, but suddenly finding out was her only hope. Launching herself from her seat, she rushed over to the back of the room where the row of telephonists was filing away.
‘Please,’ she cried out to the man who had taken the call. ‘Tell me who bought the Rénards.’
He stopped and turned to look at her along with several of his colleagues, their faces a mixture of curiosity and censure.
‘I do not know, madam. It is strictly confidential between the buyer and the cashier.’
Cally stared at him in desperation.
The telephonist shook his head. ‘He said only that he was bidding on behalf of a private collector.’
Cally stumbled backwards and sat down in one of the empty chairs, resting her head in her hands and fighting back her tears. A private collector. The thought made her blood boil. The chances were they would never be seen by anyone again until he died of over-excess.
She shook her head. For the first time
