Book Details
- File Size: 329 KB
- Print Length: 133 pages
- Publisher: Lavender and Chamomile Press (April 19, 2014)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00JT6ZNGC
|
Book Description
Publication Date: April 19, 2014
Five hundred years can confuse identity. An old chalk drawing of a girl, Maria, the daughter of a Chianti vintner leaves a Swiss art collector, Claude Beauvin entangled in a Renaissance love story from the past. The drawing is currently owned by a reclusive young widow, Andrea Garibaldi-Chase, who puts the drawing up for auction. With smoldering rumors that Leonardo da Vinci is the artist of the portrait, history is set on fire by a New York art dealer, an art history professor, and an intellectual property crimes investigator from INTERPOL who are all caught up in the drawings history. It's not until after the auction that Beauvin learns who the girl really was, what influence she had over da Vinci and the centuries since, and how his growing feelings for Andrea transcends time and identity.
Blurb:
Five
hundred years can confuse identity. An old chalk drawing of a girl, Maria, the
daughter of a Chianti vintner leaves a Swiss art collector, Claude Beauvin
entangled in a Renaissance love story from the past.
The
drawing is currently owned by a reclusive young widow, Andrea Garibaldi-Chase,
who puts the drawing up for auction. With smoldering rumors that Leonardo da
Vinci is the artist of the portrait, history is set on fire by a New York art dealer, an
art history professor, and an intellectual property crimes investigator from
INTERPOL who are all caught up in the drawings history. It’s not until after
the auction that Beauvin learns who the girl really was, what influence she had
over da Vinci and the centuries since, and how his growing feelings for Andrea
transcends time and identity.
Excerpt
“Good night, my love. I’m leaving now.” Claude
Beauvin bid farewell to his wife, Ghiselle, in his native tongue of French,
although he was actually a Swiss.
“Good luck, Claude,”
Ghiselle answered while planting a soft kiss on her husband’s lips. Her accent
was a little more clipped than his.
Claude grabbed his
luggage and walked down the path from his chalet on the hill to the Audi
waiting in the driveway. He would rather, for the comfort, drive all the way to
New York, but
instead a coach seat was waiting for him at the airport in Bern.
Claude and Ghiselle
were not wealthy, but they both knew it was the world in which they wanted to
belong.
Now, if he was clever
enough, secret enough, bold enough, the lifestyle that they had dreamed of
would be theirs. Claude slowly guided the Audi up the highway along the
lakeshore, and then north to Bern.
The purpose of his trip
was to see the portrait of a young girl that was owned by a woman in New York. The girl in
the portrait was drawn in profile, set against a plain, caramel background and
dressed in a silk brocade houppelande.
She wore her auburn hair in a single braid cascading down her back, wrapped in
a ribbon that began as a woven net at the back of her head; typical of feminine
couture at the close of the fifteenth century. Rumors were circulating that the
current owner of the drawing was considering selling it at auction.
With the drawing’s age
estimated at five hundred years, and its condition flawless, Claude knew there
was a possibility the bidding could rise toward six figures. Such a price was
entirely out of his reach. Claude thought he was the only one who knew that the
drawing was more than what it appeared. If any others knew of his potential
discovery, the price of the drawing would rise beyond his hopes and all would
be lost.
Two years ago Claude
had once traveled the short distance to Paris
to see the drawing. He had a keen interest to purchase the portrait, even
though he did not have the tantalizing suspicions he had now. However, his
efforts had failed; Claude was never closer than across the room in which the
drawing was placed on an easel in the salon of an art dealer who represented
the seller. The sale was quick, and the drawing was spirited away by a woman
whose manner was reclusive.
A glimmer of Claude’s
secret of the portrait’s true nature had come to him shortly after the sale. It
had appeared that Claude’s suspicion was gaining credibility. Since then he had
made quiet inquiries and had been in contact with another art dealer in New York City. Claude did
not know the dealer well; in fact, they had never met. After two years of
intense investigation, Claude was not certain he had masked the realization of
what he was going to see. Scruples were a dangerous article. Often, in the
business of valuable art, one’s poor scruples were another’s daily trade.
Claude did not even offer his true identity.
Instead, Claude
invented an identity which was passed off as part of an obscure, old family in Switzerland of
a vague Russian heritage.
The dealer, Everest
Cooper, was sufficiently impressed and not too curious. Claude’s ability to feign the Russian accent,
filtered by his natural French into English, was convincing enough to the
American. Relnikov was the name Claude had given to the dealer; Ivan Relnikov.
Relnikov contacted Cooper first by telephone, from Switzerland, from a rented room in
the Beau Rivage Hotel in Lausanne.
An art dealer was often the subject of fraud and was sometimes left holding a
worthless piece. Relnikov decided Cooper would be careful enough to trace the
call of a new, potential client.
Relnikov’s only concession, which would be unknown to Cooper, was that
he had taken a single room, not a suite on the upper floor, since the
enterprise had its purpose in this single telephone call that did not last more
than fifteen minutes. He revealed none of his suspicion to Cooper on the
telephone. Claude was so careful with his secret about the drawing; he had not
fully apprised Ghiselle of all of his suspicions.
“Mr. Cooper,” Relnikov said, with a heavy
accent into the phone that was wired to its base by an uncoiled cord. This was
his second contact with the art dealer. Their earlier conversation was easily a
year old. “I’m so pleased to have reached you again,” he said when Cooper’s
voice first came on the line. “My name is Ivan Relnikov. I am a private
collector of the Italian Quattrocento
period. We have spoken once before, some time ago. I have a proposal for a
piece which has recently come to my attention.”
“Mr. Relnikov, I’d be
pleased to help you within reason, of course.”
“Please, just call me Ivan. I am of an old
fashioned Russian family, but we are not as formal as you might expect.
Private, but not… what is your American sense of it, a snob?”
Cooper laughed on cue.
It was exactly what Cooper was and Relnikov easily guessed it. The laugh was
not genuine. Worse, it was poorly feigned.
“I understand, Ivan,”
the name was emphasized, further expressing Cooper’s airs, “your inquiry will
be treated with proper discretion. What
is the piece in question?”
“It is a portrait of a
young girl in profile. The Bella…”
“Yes, I know the piece,
The Bella Principessa.”
“I see I have found the
right agent for my inquiry.”
“I don’t believe it is
on the market, however...”
“Yes, I have heard
rumors that the owner is considering an auction, but
I would prefer a
non-competitive private sale. Can I see the piece in person?”
“Your visit could
certainly be arranged. Where may I call
you after I have made the arrangements?”
“May I return a call to
you; say in one week, Mr. Cooper? I may be difficult to reach. I travel
frequently.”
“That would be
acceptable, Ivan.”
Claude
looked out the window of the hotel room still clutching the phone in his hand.
Cooper would have to be handled with great care.
About the Author:
Richard Heket is a published writer of poetry and short
fiction in a variety of periodicals. He is also a competent artist in oil,
acrylic, ceramics and freelance graphic design. He has completed several novels
of historic fiction of which, Bella Gioconda, is the first to be published.
Richard was raised in Los Angeles,
California and attended Brigham Young University
on a writing scholarship. After a full career in manufacturing quality
management, working in the U.S. and twenty-one other countries in North
America, Western Europe and Asia, Richard is now fully devoted to writing
novels, poetry and children’s illustrated stories.
Purchase Links:
A task made harder by an ex-husband desperate for control; a paedophile on early-release in the community; and a psychic who knows more than seems possible.
.jpg)
