Chapter 4
My brother Julian had loved Camellia’s mother.
Vivienne.
I did not know.
Camellia did.
Of course.
Our engagement had been built on top of a history she never mentioned.
Vivienne was eighteen.
Julian nineteen.
They wanted to leave New York together.
My father opposed it.
Not because Vivienne lacked status.
Her family had enough.
Because Julian was expected to take over one branch of Ashcroft.
Marriage to Vivienne would shift his loyalty.
My father believed.
Julian disagreed.
Young men always believe love makes politics irrelevant.
Old men always believe politics makes love negotiable.
Both can be wrong.
Eleanor Fairbourne witnessed the entire collapse because my mother asked her to document the family during that year.
Not officially.
For herself.
Then Julian disappeared from Ashcroft.
Vivienne married someone else.
And Eleanor’s archive vanished from our home shortly afterward.
I looked at Camellia.
“Your mother bought it by coincidence?”
“No.”
Finally.
“Why?”
“Because she wanted the drawings of Julian.”
That hurt more than I expected.
“She never stopped loving him?”
Camellia looked down.
“No.”
Vivienne spent decades preserving images of the man she lost.
Then after Eleanor died, she acquired everything to ensure those drawings never entered Ashcroft hands.
Not blackmail.
Protection.
Of herself.
Of Julian.
Of the story.
Then she died.
Camellia inherited the archive.
And saw opportunity.
My father’s studies.
My mother.
Old captains.
Rooms.
Faces.
A visual history nobody else possessed.
She could have returned it.
Instead, she turned it into aesthetic capital.
Used Eleanor’s technique.
Used Mavis’s hand.
Built a reputation.
Then entered my life.
I looked at her.
“Did you meet me because of this?”
She said nothing.
That silence hurt.
Then:
“At first.”
There it was.
A relationship with a contaminated beginning.
Maybe real later.
Still contaminated.
Mavis watched both of us.
Quiet.
Then she said:
“There’s one sketch Camellia never let me see.”
Camellia’s head snapped toward her.
Good.
Another secret.
“Which?”
“The last one my mother ever made of your father.”
Mavis looked at Camellia.
“She keeps it somewhere else.”
May you like
I turned toward my fiancée.
“Where?”
