Claude stood with a champagne flute in her hand, waiting for the toast to begin. To her right, the crowd parted, and she saw the young man making his way across the room toward her. He was lovely, she thought. His height, posture, and gait spoke of generations of good breeding.
He found an empty spot a few feet away from her. A moment or two passed before he casually turned her way. He didn’t want to try too hard. “Have you had a chance to view the collection?” he asked, smiling down at her. Even in heels she was almost a foot shorter than he was. Men always felt bigger standing next to her.
“Oh yes. It’s the reason I’m here. I’m Claude.” She saw no flicker of recognition in his eyes. He was genuinely interested. “I study art,” she added.
“Owen,” he said. “Where do you study?”
“Yale,” she replied. “I’m just down for the weekend. What did you think of the paintings? It’s in vogue these days to dismiss Singer Sargent as a brownnosing society portraitist.”
“I’ve always been a big fan of his,” Owen said. “In fact, that’s my great-great-grandmother right there.” He tilted his champagne glass at the portrait of a regal older woman whose corset-stiffened form was draped in pearls. “Of course, he was very prolific. I’m sure your grandmother is around here as well.”
Claude blushed prettily. “No, I don’t think so.” He thought she was one of them. He’d find out the truth soon enough. “So you’re descended from Lady Wilcott, then. I read somewhere that she was found in a storage facility that hadn’t been opened in decades. She must be glad to have finally found a good home.”
“Perhaps. It’s a shame, though.” Owen let his voice drop. “That she and the rest of these beautiful people will spend the next few decades staring back at that.”
Claude followed his eyes to the spot where their host stood chatting with a small group of guests. He was easily the largest man in the room, with a belly that cleared a broad path for the rest of him. The thatch of thick black hair on his head had been temporarily tamed, but his jowls were tinted by tomorrow’s beard. The party had started only an hour earlier, and there was already a stain on his shirt. Pâté, Claude guessed. There was a matching splotch on his chin, where the food had first hit when it tumbled from his mouth.
“I must get the name of his tailor,” Owen said. “If they can fit a gorilla for a tuxedo, they should be able to work wonders for me.”
Claude hid her frown with a sip of champagne. “Do you know him?” she asked.
“My father invests with him,” the young man said. “He says he’s brilliant. Grew up in France in the years after the war. He told my father he ate rats to survive. Apparently, he has no formal education to speak of, and yet—” He gestured at the grand ballroom with his free hand.
“And they say the American dream is dead,” Claude quipped.
“Yes, only in America could a rat-eating French peasant corner the market on nineteenth-century portraits of American aristocracy. Funny, I would have taken him for a Koons or Hirst man. And this house. It’s magnificent. I assumed he’d married someone with taste, but my father told me he’s single.”
“I believe his wife passed away many years ago,” Claude offered.
“I wonder who she was,” Owen mused. “It must have been hard crawling into bed with that every night.”
“Not if you’re another rat-eating French peasant,” Claude replied and Owen laughed heartily as their host took his place at the front of the room. “I can’t wait to hear what this one has to say.”
“Good evening,” their host said. “Thank you all very much for coming tonight. I am a man of numbers, not words, so rather than bore you all with a terrible speech in a thick French accent, allow me to introduce you to the person who made this all possible, my charming and talented daughter, Claude Marchand.”
“Will you excuse me?” Claude asked Owen, whose horror was just beginning to register on his face. “Daddy needs me. What did you say your last name is?”
The young man cleared his throat. “Van Bergen.”
“Nice to meet you, Owen Van Bergen. I’ll have someone pass along the name of my father’s tailor.”
Later that night, after the guests had gone, Claude cuddled up next to her father on the sofa in his study. The two often ignored the rest of the house when they were alone. With the lights off and a blaze in the fireplace, the study reminded them both of the little house in Brittany in which Claude had been born. They’d been happy there, the two of them, just as they were happy in the mansion her father had purchased when Claude was thirteen. As long as they had each other, Claude figured, they could be content just about anywhere. From time to time, Claude felt a pang of remorse that she’d never gotten to know her mother, who’d died during childbirth. But her father had always done everything he could to compensate for the loss. No father could have loved a child any more.
“You hired the perfect caterer, my dear.” Her father patted her on the knee as he praised her. “The food was delicious.”
“I can see from your shirt how much you enjoyed the pâté,” she teased.
He pulled his shirt out to take a look and sighed at the sight of the pink smear. “Your father is a pig. I don’t know how you acquired your gift for all this,” he told his daughter.
“Anyone could do it,” she said, dismissing his praise. “All it takes is money.”
“No.” Her father was adamant. “You cannot buy taste. It is a rare gift. One we both know I don’t share. You make me look presentable, and for that I am grateful.”
“Grateful enough to grant my fondest wish?” she asked, keeping her tone light.
“Of course. Whatever you want, it is yours,” he replied.
“I want to come work with you at the hedge fund. I want to learn everything about your business and join you after I graduate.”
He frowned. It wasn’t the first time the subject had been raised, and they both knew it would not be the last. “No,” he said. “Money is filthy. A beautiful girl should keep her hands clean.”
She’d known what his answer would be, yet it still stung to hear it.
Claude’s father took her hand and squeezed it. “I’ll always take care of you,” he promised.
She didn’t doubt it. That wasn’t the point. “You don’t think I’m capable of taking care of myself?”
“It has nothing to do with your abilities, Claude. Trust is the key to my business. I do not hire women because men only trust other men with their money. I wish it were not true, but it is. I would not lie to you.”
“So things would be different if I’d been born a boy?”
“Yes, they would.” He turned to face her, his eyes moist beneath thick, black brows. “No boy could do what you can do, Claude. I can hire people to work for my fund, no problem. But I could never hire anyone to do your job. You are my ambassador, my translator, my guide. I don’t speak the language these people speak. I don’t understand their ridiculous world. But you do. You know how to make them happy. Two more investors signed on this evening—because of the party you threw. You are as important to the business as I am.”
“You mean that?”
“Absolutely. Now, if you want to help the business even more, you can do your father a big favor and marry someone impressive. That way I can bring him into the fund and put his name beside ours on the door.”
“You really want to marry me off to some snob with a fancy name?” Claude jested. “What is this? The nineteenth century?”
“The game is the same as it’s always been,” her father told her, and she knew he was serious. “You’ve been dealt a good hand. You can either throw your cards in the air and walk away—or you can let me teach you how to play to win.”
He paused for a moment to contemplate his glass of scotch.
“To be honest, you are lucky that I am letting you choose your own husband.”
Claude pulled a throw pillow from behind her back and walloped him on the side of the head. They were both laughing so hard that a member of the staff poked their head through the door.
“No one’s being murdered. We are just having fun,” her father told the concerned servant. Her father was always kind to the help. When Claude was away, he even took his meals with them.
“The people who were here tonight look down on us,” Claude said, grabbing the glass of champagne she’d left sitting on the side table. “It doesn’t matter what we do. They always will.”
“Let them underestimate us,” her father said with a shrug. “That’s how we’ll win.”
Claude nodded thoughtfully and finished her champagne. “How do you like the name Van Bergen?”
“I have a client named Van Bergen. He’s the fanciest of them all. I used to think he shit rose blossoms. Now I know better.”
“Oh really?” She arched an eyebrow. “What exactly do you know?”
“Ask around and you’ll find out,” her father said. “It’s not something a girl should hear from her father.”
“Okay, but you still haven’t answered my question. How would you like the name Van Bergen for your door?”
Her father scowled. “That bastard. Did he proposition you? These old men think they can have anyone they want.”
“Calm down! Van Bergen has a son. I met him here tonight.”
Her father relaxed, releasing his breath in a whoosh. “And you liked him?”
“He was very handsome,” Claude said. “Though he said some mean things about you. I don’t know if I could ever forgive him for that.”
“Forgive him,” her father counseled.
“Why should I?”
“He’ll make excellent insurance. If anything were to happen to me, you would have your own fortune and a different name.”
“What could happen to you?” She was suddenly serious.
Her father patted her knee. “Nothing, my darling. Don’t worry your pretty head.”
Two years later, Claude was engaged. The discussion she’d had with her father that night was forgotten. She’d long since forgiven Owen for his snobbery, and she loved her life among the Van Bergens. Owen’s father got her a job with the best art gallery in Chelsea—and his mother drew invites to every gala in town. Claude heard the whispers about the senior Van Bergen, of course, but they weren’t that different from the things she’d heard about other Wall Street titans—including her father. She didn’t blame the gossips. Rumors were their way of keeping billionaires human.
Claude was at work at the gallery one afternoon when a grim-faced intern beckoned her into a conference room. The local news channel was playing on the monitor. From the pedestrian walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge, an enormous man had crawled out onto one of the beams above six lanes of cars. A tourist’s camera captured the action as bystanders screamed. When the man reached the end of the beam, he stood, wobbled, and jumped. A different camera captured the fall—and the impact when Claude’s father slammed into the water.
She later learned that her father had been buying a cup of coffee at the deli downstairs from his office on Maiden Lane when he got word from a member of the cleaning staff that the Feds were raiding his business. While his employees were being herded into a conference room, her father had simply slipped out onto the street. A dozen security cameras captured his trek to the East Side of Manhattan, where he joined a crowd of sightseers walking across the Brooklyn Bridge.
He jumped because he knew what the Feds would discover. There were no investments. His hedge fund was a Ponzi scheme. Every dime had been funneled into paintings and palaces. He must have realized he’d get caught eventually. That’s why he’d wanted her to have insurance, Claude realized. Then he’d died while the check was still in the mail.
Owen called off the wedding while Claude was waiting to be interrogated. The gallery fired her by email. Her mansion on Seventy-Fourth Street was seized that very evening. The Singer Sargents were packed up and loaded into the back of an unmarked government van. Within twenty-four hours, Claude had been stripped of everything she owned. Desperate, she went to see Owen’s father, prepared to grovel for a loan. His proposal made it clear how far she’d fallen—and how accurate all the rumors had been.
Heartbroken and humiliated, she slinked away with a thin envelope of cash. Until the authorities could be convinced of her innocence, she hid from the paparazzi in a motel room near a freeway in Queens. For the first time in her life, she knew exhaustion and hunger. The self-loathing felt worse. She despised herself for being so gullible. Her father had told her they were playing a game—and made himself out to be a master. But he’d never once told her how high the stakes were—and she’d had no idea he was cheating. Still, she loved him. When she cried, she cried not for Owen, but for him.
Claude was finally allowed to leave New York on the Saturday that would have been her wedding day. She hopped on an Amtrak and hopped off in Philadelphia. She couldn’t afford to go any farther. She never planned to go back to the city.
Six weeks later, she was on a break from her job at a midprice bridal boutique when she received the call.
“Is this Claude Marchand?” It was a woman’s voice.
“I have no comment,” Claude informed her.
“Oh no!” the woman cried before Claude could hang up. “I’m not a reporter. My name is Jennifer. My husband invented ChitChat?” She paused. Claude gave her nothing. “I got your number from a friend at the gallery you worked at. I would be grateful if you could give me a moment of your time.”
“Yes?” Claude asked. She didn’t want to be rude, but her break was almost over.
“I hope this doesn’t sound horribly crude,” she said, and Claude knew it would. “I purchased a rug from the Sotheby’s auction.”
The auction in which the contents of the Marchand house had been sold. She paused nervously, as if expecting Claude to explode.
“It’s a seventeenth-century Aubusson. My understanding is you’re the one who originally purchased it?”
“That is correct.”
“Would you be interested in helping me locate a few more in the same style?”
“I’m not an interior decorator,” Claude said.
“No, no, of course not!” the woman rushed to say. “But your consulting skills could do me a world of good.”
Claude said nothing. She was pondering the possibility.
“The truth is, I have no idea what I’m doing,” the woman confessed, her voice cracking. “I grew up in a split-level ranch in Cleveland. My favorite food is tuna casserole. I don’t know an Aubusson from a West Elm. I desperately need guidance. These people are so awful to me. I just don’t know how to be rich.”
“I’ll help you.” If her time in Philadelphia had taught Claude anything, it was that being rich was the one thing at which she excelled.
“Really?” the woman squealed. “Fantastic! Name your price. Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.”
“We can discuss compensation later,” Claude said. “I have a condition you must agree to first. You and your husband must never allow anyone with the last name Van Bergen into your home.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” the woman said. “I have no idea who the Van Bergens are.”
“You will,” Claude told her. “I was engaged to Owen Van Bergen. I can confirm that everything they say about his father is true.”
“Oh my God. What do they say?” Jennifer took the bait.
“I can’t bear to repeat it. Just ask around.”
“I certainly will!” the woman replied, as though Claude had just done her a favor.
It was a conversation she’d have with all her clients from that moment on. For a few years, her efforts appeared to have little effect. Then a cocky finance guy from Brooklyn hired her for a charity event.
“Owen fucked you over, did he?” the client asked bluntly. Fifteen years her senior, he reminded Claude a great deal of her father. He was an outsider, too.
“He did,” she admitted. She felt safe with him.
“In that case, I’ll enjoy making him suffer,” Leonard told her.
She thought he was showing off. But that day marked the end of the Van Bergen family’s three centuries of excellent luck. Much to Claude’s glee, the elder Van Bergen soon found himself juggling multiple scandals—financial mismanagement, tax evasion, and the sexual assault of his former receptionist. The younger Van Bergen, unwelcome in all his former Manhattan haunts, was rumored to be living in Nova Scotia. Claude, meanwhile, flourished. With Leonard as her partner, she wielded real power. But she swore she’d never again take her position for granted. A woman had to be ready to look out for herself.