“My dear fellow, women don’t know the first thing about porcelain. “Why not give her the bowl itself?” Mather’s hearty laugh filled the room. “I wish to buy my beloved a gift with what I get for the bowl.” Ian kept his gaze on the vessel. The wedding to be held on the twenty-seventh of June of this year in St. Aubrey’s, Suffolk, announces his betrothal to Mrs. “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. “The man told me I had it at a bargain.” “One thousand guineas,” Ian repeated. “At least give me what I paid for it,” Mather said in a panicked voice. The bowl was genuine, it was beautiful, and he wanted it. Ian put his nose to the glaze, liking the clean scent that had survived the heavy cigar smoke of Mather’s house. 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. If Mather couldn’t tell the value of his pieces, he had no business collecting porcelain.
Ian’s rapidly calculating mind had taken in every asset and flaw in ten seconds flat.
Explain yourself.” There was nothing to explain.
Mather looked taken aback, blue eyes glittering in his overly handsome face. “The bowl is worth one thousand guineas.” He fingered the slightly chipped rim, the base worn from centuries of handling. “Now, my lord, I thought we were friends.” Ian wondered where Mather had got that idea. The little vessel might just cup a small rounded breast, but that was as far as Ian was willing to go. Three gray-green dragons chased one another across the outside, and four chrysanthemums seemed to float across the bottom. 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. 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 Madness Of Lord Ian Mackenzie Jennifer AshleyĬhapter One 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.
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