Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(56)

“I found out about your mother. Also tragic.”

It was Hennessy’s tragedy, though, not Jordan’s. She said, “Less tragic than a murder. My mother’s was her own fault.”

“One could argue,” Declan said, “my father’s was as well. Mm. Art and violence.” He finally turned his head to her; he looked at her mouth. She just had time to see this—to feel it, an intense and surprising and agreeable heat—and then he said, “Walk and talk?”

Hennessy would hate him.

Hennessy wasn’t here.

They began to stroll through the museum. There was something spare and unusual about it, about the morning-time wander through a museum populated with schoolchildren and retirees and locals. Time worked differently before noon when one ordinarily stayed up all night.

The two of them allowed themselves to get snagged in the net of a line for the traveling Manet exhibition.

Declan said, “I didn’t think you’d call.”

“Nor I, Mr. Lynch.”

“Oh, that reminds me.” He reached into his jacket pocket. “I brought you something.”

This was uncomfortable. Here he was doing the proper date thing, and at the moment, the other girls were quite certainly breaking into his house. “Not flowers, I hope.”

They moved a few steps closer to the entrance to the exhibition.

“Hand,” he said as the line stopped again. She put her hand out. He set his gift in the middle of her palm.

She was astonished despite herself.

“Is this really what it says on the label?” she asked.

He gave her that bland smile.

It was a very small glass jar, the size you’d find holding fancy cosmetics. Inside was a mere dusting of purple pigment, so little that it wasn’t even visible unless you turned the glass jar a certain way. A handwritten label on the outside read: Tyrian purple. A historical pigment, nearly impossible to get. It was made from excreted dye of sea snails such as the Purpura lapillus. Snails were ill-motivated pigment makers; it took an enormous number of them to produce even a small amount of Tyrian purple. Jordan couldn’t remember the precise number. Thousands. Thousands of snails. It was very expensive.

“I can’t—”

“Don’t be boring and say ‘I can’t accept this,’ ” Declan said. “It took a lot of work to find that at short notice.”

Jordan had not expected to feel conflicted about this experience. Everything about this experience was supposed to be disposable. A means to an end. Not a real date, nothing to beg the real question of would I like this person.

She hid this all behind her wide smile before slipping the jar into her own pocket. “Crumbs. I won’t, then. I’ll utter your name when I paint something with it.”

“Say it now,” he said, and he nearly let himself smile. Nearly.

“Declan,” she said, but had to cut her eyes away because she could feel herself grinning, and not the slick grin she normally gave away. Fuck, she thought.

“Jordan,” he said, trying it, and she blinked up, surprised. But of course he would call her by her first name. He hadn’t come to her from the world of forgery, of late-night grudge matches, of her introducing herself as Hennessy. He’d looked her up, and had found the full name: Jordan Hennessy.

Normally this was where she’d correct people. Tell them, no, it’s just Hennessy, really, because that’s what Hennessy would say, and they were all her.

But she didn’t correct him.

The Manet exhibition was choked with people, and as they left it, Declan and Jordan were momentarily trapped in the doorway. Suit coats brushed her hands; purses jostled her back. She was crushed against Declan and he against her. For a moment she looked at him and he back, and she saw bright intrigue in his expression and knew he saw it mirrored. Then they backed out of the room and she assembled her swagger and he drew his dull corporate composure close again.

Eventually they found themselves in Gallery 70, looking at Street in Venice, the painting she had copied before so many eyes at the Fairy Market.

Around them people moved like erratic clockwork. Jordan had spent so much time in this room copying Street in Venice that all the paintings in it felt like old friends. Eventually, she said, “When I first went looking for Sargent in a museum, I didn’t know which wing to look for his stuff in. Born in America, American wing? Lived in England, British wing? You’d think belonging in both worlds would make it easier to find the chap, but really, it was just as when he was alive. Belonging in more than one world means that you end up belonging in none of them.”

Who was she? Jordan. Hennessy. Jordan Hennessy. Both and neither.

This was a little more of her than she’d expected to give away before she came here today, but he’d given her the Tyrian purple. It seemed fair that she at least give him a little truth in return.

Declan didn’t shift his gaze from the Sargent. He said thoughtfully, “When Sargent was in Venice, he used to stay at the Palazzo Barbaro … Supposed to be a very beautiful place. He was related to the owners. Cousins, I think. Do you know this already? Don’t let me bore you if you do.”

“Go on.”

“They hosted almost continuous art salons with the greatest expatriate Americans of the time. Wharton, James, Whistler, dazzles to think of them under the same roof. But the guy who owned the place, Daniel Sargent Curtis, he wasn’t an artist. He was just a family man. He’d been a judge back in Boston. For decades, he lived a very dull, very forgettable life there, until one day, he punched another judge in the face. Wham! Imagine that other judge. Knocked off his feet by a man people barely remembered.”