M.J. Rose

Sudden Light
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (written in 1853 or 1854)


I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell;
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow’s soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.
Jewels should stir something deep inside you, a primal urge for endless knowledge, and a desire to crack open the capsule that is the very structure of the jewel. The annals of history it has witnessed and the individual moments, glances, and fleeting ideas this object has been privy to are insurmountable to comprehend. But with one interaction, you brush up against that well of experience, with breadth and depth, and it all comes rushing to the surface of the present, just for you. — Levi Higgs, author, art historian.


August 1790, Tuileries Palace, Paris, France

“Sit still, Your Majesty,” Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun said. “This is actually more difficult than painting a full-length portrait.”

Marie Antoinette laughed but did as her portrait painter asked. She folded her hands and sat as still as she could, imagining the look on her dear Axel’s face when he received the miniature portrait of her eye.

She’d asked her jeweler to take some rubies from one of her bracelets, frame the tiny, ivory painting with the luminous gems, back it with gold, and fashion it into a stickpin for her lover to wear on his cravat. Near his heart.

And she’d already planned for Mademoiselle Le Brun to paint Axel’s eye when he returned to France so she could have a brooch to pin near her heart, as well.

Of all the men in her life—other than her husband, of course—Marie had known Axel the longest. And of all the men in her life, including her husband, she relied on Axel more than any other. He would save her and her family from the Jacobites. Even though the previous plan had failed, there was a new one being devised. She trusted that he would succeed.

It was fairly boring to be painted, so while she sat as still as she could in her pretty méridienne chamber, the private parlor hidden behind her bedroom, decorated with mirrors and lilac textiles, Marie Antoinette mentally composed the letter she would send to Axel accompanying the gift.



My dearest,

I am alive here, my beloved, for the reason to adore you, and I grieve all the forgotten hours I am forced to spend with other people—every one of them wasted when I could be with you, in your arms. Every one of them lost, squandered, and never to be regained for us to share.

For all the hours ahead when I cannot be with you, I send you this.

I wish that you will wear this portrait of my eye next to your heart, where our secret love lives. No one will know that it is of me but you. When you return to Paris, I want to have Élisabeth paint one of you, for me, so that I may carry you with me in the same way.

We have given each other so many things over the years—friendship, love, trust, passion—that I have rimmed this portrait in rubies to signify my passion for you and to remind you always that you alone have my heart.

Farewell, the most loved and loving of men. I kiss you with all my heart and await the next time we shall meet.



As soon as Élisabeth called the session to an end, Marie Antoinette took pen, ink, and paper and wrote out the message. Even though the jewel would not be ready for weeks, she didn’t want to forget her thoughts. To protect her secret, she placed the letter in an envelope, then melted wax, dripped it on the closure, and pressed her seal into it. The insignia contained her initials and the image of a flying fish, which she’d borrowed from Axel von Fersen’s coat of arms.

There were five words inscribed underneath.

Tutto a te mi guida. Everything leads me to thee.

Once the stickpin was finished, she would send her courtier to Sweden to deliver her gift. And then she would wait for Axel’s letter of thanks to arrive, hoping that within it would be the encoded information for the new plan that would save her.





London, 1947

Chapter 1



It wasn’t until the evening I discovered Ashe Lloyd Lewis’s grave that I found out I’d been mistaken about the past. I’d always believed it was set in stone—familiar and trustworthy—whereas the future was the mystery, offering only the unknown. But when I visited Highgate Cemetery the night before Halloween, at the end of a most unsettling day, I began a journey that would prove I’d been wrong: the past is as unfathomable as the future.

It is only the present you can trust, and only a bit at that.

The day had started off with a curious invitation to tea from my employer, Mr. Gibbons, the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. As requested, I arrived at the museum’s Green Room at three p.m.

Entering the restaurant is like stepping back in time. Decorated in a beautiful green-blue scheme, designed by William Morris’s company, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., in the 1860s, every inch, floor to ceiling, is covered with organic patterns. The large, stained-glass window at the far end includes painted figures designed by Edward Burne-Jones.

Anywhere the eye landed was a treat, but the room’s beauty did little to distract me that afternoon. Typically, Mr. Gibbons invited us to his office when he wanted to discuss something. He didn’t take meals with employees.

I was shown to a table to discover that Mr. Gibbons had arrived early and was already seated. He greeted me cordially, and after we’d ordered, complimented me on my most recently curated exhibit.

I thanked him, though I knew it had been a success. My staff and I had taken more than two dozen antique fabrics from our holdings and matched them to clothing and upholstery captured in portraits from the fifteenth century through the nineteenth.

“I was especially pleased to get a lovely note from Lady Alice, the Duchess of Gloucester, praising the show,” Mr. Gibbons said, then went on to share some of her comments.

We were halfway through our Earl Grey and salmon sandwiches when the director cleared his throat. I’d been working for Mr. Gibbons for seven years and knew this tell. Before delivering bad news of any sort, he always cleared his throat.

I felt my back go up. Certainly, nothing I had done deserved a reprimand. My job was my life. I prided myself on my devotion to the museum and my department.

My best friend, Sybil Shipley, often told me she wished I gave my relationships half the effort I gave my job. But I was more comfortable with objects than emotions. I could read a vase or a necklace better than a face. I wasn’t prideful about my looks or intellect, but I was proud of how I ran my department, and I could be stubborn when it came to others’ suggestions.

“You know obstinance isn’t the only way to get things done,” my mentor, Clio Oxley, used to say whenever I dug in. Both my brother and I had taken after my father when it came to willfulness. As an archaeologist, his doggedness and certainty had been the very traits that elevated him above all his peers. That was true of me, as well. My tenacity had gotten me all the good things in my life. It had also cost me, delivering all the heartache I’d endured. I’d had my one chance at love and squandered it. But I was fine. Beauty surrounded me every day while doing a job that filled my soul. I could cope with being alone. Hadn’t I proven that by now?

“Mrs. Maycroft.” Mr. Gibbons cleared his throat again. “I find myself in the unpleasant position of asking you to take a bit of a demotion.”

I was stunned. He had just complimented me.

“A demotion? But why?”

“It’s nothing you have done. Nothing at all. No, no, you’re one of our most exemplary employees. It’s the damn war, still.”

I didn’t like what I was hearing, but the reference to the war explained it. In the last two years, women all over England and at every company had been asked to take demotions so that returning soldiers could regain their pre-war positions. Mr. Gibbons had reorganized the staff at the museum several times to accommodate re-hires. Except I’d believed my job was secure since I’d inherited it from a woman, not from a man who had gone off to war.

I was Keeper of the Metalworks. Only the second woman to ever hold the post—or any Keeper post at the museum, for that matter. I had the keys to all the vaults that housed items in my department. I was in charge of all exhibitions that included ironwork, jewelry, continental silver, arms and armor, medieval champlevé and late nineteenth-century enamels, brass work, and pewter from the Bronze Age to the present. I was responsible for hiring and firing all research assistants in my department. Since my promotion in 1944, Mr. Gibbons had done nothing but praise me. My show, Bejeweled: Artists, Artisans, and Models in the 19th Century, had been such a success I’d been approached to write a book on the subject, which was almost finished.

So now, sitting in one of my favorite rooms in the museum, my tea growing cold, the bread on my sandwich curling, I tried but couldn’t make sense of the request.

“I don’t understand,” I finally admitted. “The person who held my job before me wasn’t a man who went off to war. It was Clio, and sadly, she’s not coming back.”

“No, but Hugh Kenward has returned from the front and is returning to the museum.”

I felt sickened at hearing his name.

“If you would agree to go back to the job you held under Mrs. Oxley as head research assistant to the Keeper, I will agree to keep your salary at its current level.”

“Which would allow you to move Mr. Kenward into the Keeper’s position, a job he didn’t have before the war.” If I was being impertinent, I didn’t care. Of everyone, I couldn’t tolerate the idea of stepping down for Hugh Kenward.

Mr. Gibbons took a sip of tea instead of responding.

“And here I thought you were happy with my work,” I said, unwilling to let the matter go.

“Of course, I am. You stepped into Mrs. Oxley’s shoes with great success. She would be so proud. The problem is that Mr. Kenward, a war hero, cannot be asked to work for you, Mrs. Maycroft. You know that. And with so many men having already returned, and so many reorganizations to date, I am at a loss for how else to solve this new dilemma.”

I pushed my cup and saucer away, first one inch and then another.

“Even though you well know it’s not fair to ask me to take a demotion?”

The director frowned. “The war wasn’t fair, Mrs. Maycroft. Will you agree to at least think about it and see if there isn’t some way you can accommodate this change? We really don’t want to lose you…” He paused. “Either of you.”

So, I was not only being asked to step down but also being told that any job at the V&A was in jeopardy if I refused. But how could I work for Hugh Kenward?

It was bad enough he was returning to the museum at all and I’d have to work alongside him, but to answer to him?

I debated bringing up my past history with the man. I worried that even though the director valued me, reminding him of the long-ago problem wouldn’t help me now. If questioned, Hugh would certainly defend himself and say I had encouraged him. And in situations like these, wasn’t the man always believed? Especially when he had fought for his country and won medals for valor?

Hugh Kenward was charming and well educated, but so were many others. What made Hugh that much more important, and the reason he was Mr. Gibbon’s favorite, was his relationship to the throne. As a third cousin to the king, with a duke and duchess as parents, we mere mortals couldn’t compete. Hugh had been in the process of being groomed for a top position at the museum when England entered the war, and he went off to fight. From the gist of this conversation, it seemed that grooming would continue.

But the fact was, for all of Mr. Gibbons’ bravado and all of Hugh’s connections to the Crown, I had a few things going for me, as well. My father had recently been knighted for his war efforts, and it wouldn’t do to let me go either.

Mr. Gibbons was in a tough spot, but I would not make it easy for him. I’d worked too hard for my position.

“Thinking about it won’t change my mind. I wouldn’t be able to do my job to the best of my abilities,” I told the director, “working for someone who is neither senior to me nor has as much experience as I do. I was here years before Mr. Kenward arrived, and I remained throughout the duration of the war. And you know as well as anyone what I did to safeguard the museum’s treasures and what risks I took. As much as many soldiers.”

Like many other families who had homes far from London, safe from the bombings, my father and I, along with my mother’s best childhood friend, Lady Barbara Silversmith, had taken in many national treasures and hidden them at our family homes in ancient Forest of Dean—some from the Imperial War Museum, and others from the V&A.

I could hear my heart beating loudly in my chest as I hoped Mr. Gibbons wouldn’t lose his famous temper and fire me on the spot for insubordination.

He looked down at the tablecloth and slowly smoothed out a wrinkle with a forefinger. After remaining silent for another few seconds, he finally spoke, slowly and carefully, as if holding back his rage.

“Your refusal will make things quite difficult,” he said. “We all are thankful for your war efforts, and know full well how valuable you are to the museum. At the same time, our duty is to restore every man to a position commensurate with his stature. So many—thankfully—have returned. I simply don’t have another position to shuffle. However, I don’t want to lose one of my most valued members of staff, Mrs. Maycroft. If you are adamant, the best I can do is think on this and see if there is another solution,” he said. “And I’m very much looking forward to reading your new chapter on May Morris’s jewelry. I have it on my desk upstairs and should be getting to it this afternoon.”

With that, he brought the conversation back to neutral territory and the beginning of the end of the uncomfortable meeting.