Page 39 of An Accidental Meeting
“Just so. Your cousins sent items here for safekeeping against the time they might have to escape.”
Darcy nodded. This he knew.
“During the treaty, Osmont D’Arcy sent a great many items all at once, for he intended to finally remove to England withhis family. They no longer held their estate by that time, but he managed just the same.”
Darcy recalled this vaguely from his father’s letters. He had been at university when the Treaty of Amiens was signed. Many of his friends had left Cambridge to make the journey across the channel, and Darcy had hoped to visit France over that summer. But Napoleon had never stopped rattling his sabre, and his father had asked him not to make the trip. He and Wickham had returned to Derbyshire instead.
He picked up the heavier piece of the frame and examined the end. “It is not solid,” he said. “Yet it is heavier than the wood ought to be.”
“A bit of dried cork fell out when the frame was being moved to the attics. I asked the men to store it here instead so that you might have a look at it. But Mr. Darcy, you should know that this frame was a part of that larger shipment from France.”
“They sent an empty frame?”
“No. The picture they did send was damaged by saltwater. Your father dealt with the shipmaster about it. We removed the ruined painting and stored it as well as we could to wait for the owners to come and determine what to do with it. But they never came.”
They had arranged their travel, but then Phillipe, already unwell, had entered his final illness and the family would not leave him behind. By May of 1803, England and France had again been at war.
“Do you think they were prevented?” He scratched at the end of the frame length he held. The cork had been covering something.
“Your father was quite concerned for them. The family had to be careful not to appear to have any funds of note. Had they been discovered to still own anything of value . . .”
Darcy nodded, noting that there was a faint line of glue running the length of the piece. He removed Mrs. Reynolds’s penknife from the top of her writing table and slipped the tip of it into the glue, then traced the line all the way down. It was quite faint—had he not been made suspicious by the missing bit at the end, he might not have seen it at all.
After working at the wood for a few minutes while Mrs. Reynolds observed, Darcy was able to see the glint of something. He continued, not wishing to call anyone’s attention by requesting a larger knife. Finally, he pried enough of the wood away to see what his cousin had hidden. He sat back on his heels.
“What is it, Mr. Darcy?” Mrs. Reynolds asked.
He held up the splintered wood. “Porcelain, Mrs. Reynolds.”
“Is that all? Why would anyone hide porcelain in a frame?” she exclaimed. “I thought at least there might be something of value there.”
Darcy tapped one finger against it. “Because porcelain is often used as a mould for molten metals.”
He lifted the exposed piece and hit it on the floor. The porcelain broke into several pieces, and he caught the golden hue beneath.
“Molten metals,” he said by way of explanation, holding it up for her to see. “Like gold.”
Mrs. Reynolds gasped.
Darcy examined it carefully. The gold had been melted down into a sort of thin log inside the porcelain and then slipped inside the wood. He would be able to see better once he could completely disassemble the frame. “There is quite a lot of it. The inside has hardly any wood at all.” Darcy set it down on the table and picked up the third length of wood, one of the longer sides. It too, was heavier than he believed it ought to be. He flipped it over to see another light glue line. He set it down to check the shorter bottom piece. Another line.
“Either Osmont D’Arcy did not have enough gold for the last part of the frame, or . . .” Or he had not had time enough to fill it. Such a task must have been rather arduous. He rubbed the back of his neck. Osmont had taken a terrible risk.
“It makes sense now, why the portrait was always leaning a bit to one side, then,” Mrs. Reynolds said with the satisfied nod of someone discovering the answer to a difficult riddle. “One side was lighter than the others.”
“Why was this frame around my portrait in any case?” He had been informed that the old frame had been replaced, but he had not bothered to ask about the new one. It had not mattered until now.
The housekeeper sighed. “The original frame was damaged, if you recall. One of the housemaids and one of the footmen engaged in—”
“Stop,” Darcy said, holding up a hand. “I remember.”
Mrs. Reynolds hesitated. “We hoped to have it repaired, but it turned out it could not be.”
“And so this frame was substituted for it?”
The housekeeper nodded, abashed. “I had that done right away, for the frame was already sitting in the attic and it was almost exactly the right size. You had so much on your mind already, sir. I did not wish to add to your troubles, and truly, it seemed such a little thing. If your cousins ever came to Pemberley, it would be easy enough to change it out again.”
It was a little thing, for he had not recalled that the frame had been changed. A little thing, until the imbalance in the frame had finally revealed itself.
