Sweet Revenge

cinema. That came as a plus for me, as I could always go in and watch whatever was showing, sometimes for a whole afternoon. Other than that, itdidn’t go much further than paying the rent on a miserable two-room flat in Chelsea. My father had breezed into her life long enough to make me, then breezed out again when he learned I was on the way.”
    She felt a pang, and would have reached for his hand, but he lifted his wine. The moment passed. “It must have been difficult for her. Being alone.”
    “I’m sure it was hell, but you’d never know it. She’s a born optimist, the kind of woman who can be content with whatever she has no matter how little or how much. She’s a great fan of your mother’s, by the way. When she found out I’d taken Phoebe Spring’s daughter to dinner, she lectured me for an hour for not bringing you to see her.”
    “Mama had a way of endearing herself to people.”
    “Didn’t you ever think of following in her footsteps as an actress?”
    It was easy to smile as she lifted her glass. “Didn’t I?”
    “How much is an act, I wonder.”
    “An act?” She gestured with her hands. “Whatever’s necessary. Does your mother know about your—vocation?”
    “You mean sex?”
    He hadn’t been sure she would laugh, but she did, then leaned forward so that the candlelight caught in her eyes. “Not avocation, Philip, vocation.”
    “Ah. Well, it’s nothing we discuss. Suffice it to say that Mum’s no fool. More wine?”
    “Just a little. Philip, do you ever think about going back, about one last, incredible job? Something that would keep you warm in your old age.”
    “The Sun and the Moon?”
    “That’s mine,” she said rather primly.
    “The Sun and the Moon,” he repeated, amused as he watched her. “Two fascinating jewels in one necklace. The Sun, a two-hundred-eighty-carat diamond of the first water, absolutely pure, brilliantly white, and according to legend a stone with a checkered past. It was found in the Deccan region of India in the sixteenth century, the rough cut being over eight hundred carats. The stone was found by two brothers, and like Cain and Abel, one murdered the other to have it. Rather than being banished to the Land of Nod, the surviving brother found misery in his homeland. His wife andchildren drowned, leaving him with the rather cold comfort of the stone.”
    Philip sipped, and when Adrianne made no comment, topped off his wine, then hers. “Legend has it he went mad, and offered the stone to the devil. Whether he was taken up on it or not, he was murdered and the stone began its travels. Istanbul, Siam, Crete, and dozens of other exotic places, always leaving a trail of betrayal and murder in its wake. Until, having satisfied the gods, it found a home in Jaquir around 1876.”
    “My great-great-grandfather bought it for his favorite wife.” She ran a finger around and around the rim of her wineglass. “For the equivalent of one and a half million American dollars. It would have cost him more, but the stone had developed a nasty reputation.” Her finger stilled. “There were people starving in Jaquir at that time.”
    “He wouldn’t be the first ruler to ignore such things, or the last.” He waited, watching her as the waiter cleared their plates. “It was cut by a Venetian, who either from nerves or lack of skill lost more of the rough stone than he should have. His hands were severed and hung around his neck before he was left in the desert. But the stone survived to be paired with a pearl, just as ancient, that had been plucked out of the Persian Gulf, perfectly spherical, with an orient that defies description. Lustrous, glowing, like two hundred fifty carats of moonlight. While the diamond flashes, the pearl glows, and legend has it the pearl’s magic fights against the diamond’s. Together they’re like peace and war, snow and fire.” He lifted his glass. “Or sun and moon.”
    Adrianne took a sip of wine to ease her throat. Talk of the necklace excited as much as it upset. She knew just how it had looked, draped around her mother’s neck, and she could imagine, only imagine the way it would feel in her hands. Magic or not, legend or not, she would take it.
    “You’ve done your homework.”
    “I know about The Sun and the Moon the same way I know about the Kohinoor or the Pitt, as stones I may admire, even lust after, but not as stones to risk my life for.”
    “When the motive is only money or acquisition, even