The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie

Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie

London, 1881

I find that a Ming bowl is like a woman’s breast,” Sir Lyndon Mather said to Ian Mackenzie, who held the bowl in question between his fingertips. “The swelling curve, the creamy pallor. Don’t you agree?”

Ian couldn’t think of a woman who would be flattered to have her breast compared to a bowl, so he didn’t bother to nod.

The delicate vessel was from the early Ming period, the porcelain barely flushed with green, the sides so thin Ian could see light through them. Three gray- green dragons chased one another across the outside, and four chrysanthemums seemed to float across the bottom.

The little vessel might just cup a small rounded breast, but that was as far as Ian was willing to go.

“One thousand guineas,” he said.

Mather’s smile turned sickly. “Now, my lord, I thought we were friends.”

Ian wondered where Mather had got that idea. “The bowl is worth one thousand guineas.” He fingered the slightly chipped rim, the base worn from centuries of handling.

Mather looked taken aback, blue eyes glittering in his overly handsome face.

“I paid fifteen hundred for it. Explain yourself.”

There was nothing to explain. Ian’s rapidly calculating mind had taken in every asset and flaw in ten seconds flat. If Mather couldn’t tell the value of his pieces, he had no business collecting porcelain. There were at least five fakes in the glass case on the other side of Mather’s collection

room, and Ian wagered Mather had no idea.

Ian put his nose to the glaze, liking the clean scent that had survived the heavy cigar smoke of Mather’s house. The bowl was genuine, it was beautiful, and he wanted it.

“At least give me what I paid for it,” Mather said in a panicked voice. “The man told me I had it at a bargain.”

“One thousand guineas,” Ian repeated.

“Damn it, man, I’m getting married.”

Ian recalled the announcement in the Times verbatim, because he recalled everything verbatim: Sir Lyndon Mather of St. Aubrey’s, Suffolk, announces his betrothal to Mrs. Thomas Ackerley, a widow. The wedding to be held on the twenty- seventh of June of this year in St. Aubrey’s at ten o’clock in the morning.

“My felicitations,” Ian said.

“I wish to buy my beloved a gift with what I get for the bowl.”

Ian kept his gaze on the vessel. “Why not give her the bowl itself?”

Mather’s hearty laugh filled the room. “My dear fellow, women don’t know the first thing about porcelain. She’ll want a carriage and a matched team and a string of servants to carry all the fripperies she buys. I’ll give her that. She’s a

fine- looking woman, daughter of some froggie aristo, for all she’s long in the tooth and a widow.”

Ian didn’t answer. He touched the tip of his tongue to the bowl, reflecting that it was far better than ten carriages with matched teams. Any woman who didn’t see the poetry in it was a fool.

Copyright © 2009 by Jennifer Ashley