Ashley Gardner - The Necklace Affair

"Then I do not understand why you believe I can help," I said.

De la Fontaine opened his eyes. He had deep blue eyes, and now they looked old and tired. "I want someone to know the truth. I want you to find the diamonds and make certain they are safe. If they must reside with Lady Clifford forever, then so be it."

His resignation decided the question for me. Remembering Clifford snarling at Grenville that he ought to be ashamed to interest himself in the affair, and then watching this aged, exiled man slump in defeat, angered me not a little.

"You may leave things in my hands," I said. "I might be able to find you some justice."

De la Fontaine shook his head, his ghost of a smile returning. "Do not make promises, Captain. I have grown used to losing."

I rose, made my way to the brandy decanter, and poured him another glass. We'd finish all the brandy quickly at this rate, but Grenville would be happy to know it had been drunk by two men who appreciated it.

"Why do you not return to France?" I asked as the liquid trickled into his glass. "The king is restored, the emperor dead. There is peace now."

Fontaine saluted me with his goblet before he drank. "All I had in France is gone. My daughter is here, married to her fussy Englishman, and I have grandchildren who are growing rapidly. This has been my life for nearly thirty years. I have no reason to return."

I nodded, understanding. I was much like him-except for the fact of his ancestors ruling France and having diamonds set for them by Louis XV's beautiful mistress. My ancestors had been wealthy landholders, but their little estate in Norfolk was as nothing compared to the vast acreage this man must have commanded.

Now we both had nothing, reduced to wearing secondhand clothes and enjoying brandy gifted to us by a wealthy acquaintance. Out of place, wondering how this came to be, and not knowing what to do with ourselves.

We did finish the brandy. De la Fontaine seemed to want to linger, and I let him. He asked me how I came by my injury, and winced in sympathy when I described how I'd been beaten to a bloody pulp by a band of French soldiers then strung up by the ankles. One of the more sympathetic men had cut me down after a time, but when English and Prussian soldiers had attacked the French deserters' camp, killing them to the last man, they hadn't noticed me among the dead.

De la Fontaine shook his head at my story and told me how his son had been in the infantry, dying at Badajoz. I hadn't met the young man-I'd been cavalry in the Thirty-Fifth Light Dragoons, and we'd been fairly snobbish about the infantry.

"Bad fighting there," I said. "Brave lad."

" Oui. So I have heard."

We finished the decanter in silence. When de la Fontaine made to depart, I gave him a box of finely blended snuff-another gift from Grenville. I rarely took snuff, preferring a pipe the rare times I took tobacco, but de la Fontaine thanked me profusely.

I led him back down the stairs, and we took leave of each other. De la Fontaine shook my hand in the English way, lips twitching when he saw me bracing myself for a farewell in the French way.

Still smiling, he walked down Grimpen Lane, a bit unsteadily, through the rain. I leaned on the doorframe and watched him, wondering how the devil I was going to find the blasted necklace for him.

Three days passed. I told Grenville about de la Fontaine's visit and his assertion that the necklace was his. Grenville professed to be amazed, and his anger and disgust at Lord Clifford escalated to match my own.

Grenville and I continued searching for the necklace, taking into account Lady Breckenridge's intelligence that a lady wishing to sell her jewels to pay her creditors would find someone very discreet to make the transaction for her. Her man of business, perhaps, if she could hide such a dealing from her husband.

However, when Grenville and I visited Lady Clifford's man of business, we found a dry, very exact man who seemed to march in step with Lord Clifford regarding household affairs. Ladies were fools and ought to do nothing without the approval of their husbands. In his opinion, Lady Clifford had carelessly lost the necklace and tried to pretend it stolen to shift the blame from herself.

This left us no further forward.

I could see that Grenville was losing interest in the problem. Lord Clifford's grumbles about Grenville poking his nose into other gentlemen's business were beginning to circulate through the ton. While Grenville refused to bow to public opinion-any indication that he cared about such a thing could spell his downfall-he also did not believe there was much more to be done. Though Grenville agreed that de la Fontaine's story was creditable, he also suspected that the necklace would never see the light of day.

I saw that I would be soldiering on alone. I had not yet heard from Lady Breckenridge, but I did hear again from Denis, whose carriage pulled in behind me when I left Grenville's on a wet evening three days after de la Fontaine's visit.

The rain that had begun the afternoon I'd met de la Fontaine had continued with little abatement. The downpour was not as freezing as a winter rain, but still as drenching. When the carriage halted next to me and the door opened, I could not help but yearn for the warmth of its plush interior, in spite of the coldness of the man inside.

"De la Fontaine," Denis began as soon as I was sitting opposite him, the carriage moving on its way to Covent Garden. "One of the wealthiest men in France before the terror. Now living in a back bedroom in his proper English son-in-law's house, treated like a poor relation." Denis shook his head, but no emotion crossed his face. "Not a happy tale."

"I do not remember mentioning de la Fontaine to you," I said. Not that I was amazed that Denis knew all about de la Fontaine's visit to my rooms. He kept himself well informed.

"He is quite right about the necklace's provenance," Denis said, ignoring my statement. "A heavy blow to him that he lost it."

"Am I correct in guessing that you did not know that Lord Clifford had de la Fontaine's famous necklace?" Unusual for Denis, who hired people to roam Europe looking for such things for him, the rightful ownership of which was, to Denis, a trivial matter.

"I confess that I did not." Denis's brows drew together the slightest bit, a sign that the man behind the cold eyes was angry. "Hence why I wish to examine the piece myself. I knew the de la Fontaine necklace had disappeared many years ago, but not until Lady Clifford made a fuss about hers being stolen and involved Bow Street did it come to my attention that the two were one and the same. I had not thought Clifford resourceful enough to steal such a thing, but perhaps he seized an opportunity. Or perhaps the ship's captain stole it and sold it to Clifford, neither man appreciating what it was." Again the small frown. "Clifford owes me much money and has been reluctant to pay. He might have reported the necklace stolen to prevent himself from having to sell it to pay me, or in case I took it in lieu."

"Lord Clifford owes you money," I said. "I might have known."

"Many gentlemen owe me. Including you."

I let the remark pass. It was an old argument.

"If Clifford were to sell the necklace," I asked, "or his wife were to, how would they go about such a thing? Beyond common pawnbrokers and jewelers I mean. Who would they contact?"

Denis gave me a touch of a smile. "Me. I know of no other who could discreetly dispose of so obvious a piece."

"But if they did not realize what it was?"

"They might try the usual avenues, of course, but as soon as it came onto the market, jewelers in the know would put two and two together. Most likely the jewelers or pawnbrokers would offer the necklace to me, or at least ask for my help in shifting it."