Blessing in Disguise Read online

  Blessing in Disguise is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Danielle Steel

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  DELACORTE PRESS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Steel, Danielle, author.

  Title: Blessing in disguise : a novel / Danielle Steel.

  Description: New York : Delacorte Press, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018052998 | ISBN 9780399179327 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780399179334

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Love stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3569.T33828 B589 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2018052998

  Ebook ISBN 9780399179334

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Virginia Norey, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Derek Walls

  Cover illustration: Debra Lill, based on image © Elisabeth Ansley/Arcangel Images

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dedication

  By Danielle Steel

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Isabelle McAvoy sat at her well-organized desk with photographs of the important people in her life in silver frames around her. Her oldest daughter, Theo, in Putnam’s arms when she was three months old, a photo of Xela at two, hands on hips, looking outraged. That photo made Isabelle smile every time she saw it. It was so Xela, the drill sergeant among them. Theo was the dreamer, as quiet and shy as she had been since she was born, and so like Putnam, her father. It was as though they both had landed from another world and weren’t quite equipped for this one. There was a photo of Declan, next to one of Oona as a baby, where she was smiling broadly. She was the happiest person Isabelle had ever known. From the very beginning she had radiated joy and good humor. There was also a photograph of Isabelle with all three of her daughters, taken during a trip to Italy a few years before, with Theo looking wistful, Xela annoyed, Oona laughing, and Isabelle the bridge between the three. Their personalities hadn’t changed, and at thirty-seven, thirty-two, and twenty-six now, they had grown into the women they had promised to be as children.

  It was hard for Isabelle to believe how the years had flown. Theo had been pursuing a life of self-sacrifice and caring for the poor in India for sixteen years, Xela was consumed by her passion for business and entrepreneurial talent, and Oona had been nurturing her children, her husband, and his family in Tuscany, and loving it. Only Xela remained in New York where they’d grown up. Isabelle had her own career as a private art consultant, after years as a curator in a highly respected downtown gallery. Now she had her own clients. They ranged from famous art collectors to the newly rich, hungry to buy important paintings to show off their wealth and impress their friends. Some of them genuinely wanted to learn what Isabelle could teach them. Others just wanted to spend money, and a few had a deep appreciation for art. She enjoyed working with all of them and ran her business from her home, a small, elegant town house on East Seventy-Fourth Street she’d owned for twenty-seven years. She also used it to showcase the art she sold. The house was impeccable, it suited her, and the girls had grown up there as well. It was thanks to Putnam that she had been able to buy the house and start her business, which had flourished ever since. She hadn’t amassed a huge fortune, but had enough to live well, help her children when they needed it, and enjoy a pleasant life herself. Her innate sense of style showed in the simple, chic, understated way she dressed. She was still beautiful at fifty-eight.

  On her desk was a photograph of Isabelle with her father, Jeremy, as well. They were in front of the remarkable “cottage” in Newport, Rhode Island, where she’d grown up. Her mother had been a schoolteacher and died when Isabelle was three. Her father had been a curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, with a specialty in Impressionist art and a subspecialty in Renaissance art and history. Her earliest memories were of trips to the museum with him. Two years after his wife’s death, he had made a dramatic career change and accepted the job of property manager for one of the Vanderbilt estates in Newport, which included the mansion euphemistically referred to as the Vanderbilt “cottage.” It was a spectacular home more like a small château, filled with priceless antiques and art. With the job came a modest house on the grounds where Jeremy and his daughter could live. Jeremy had been looking for an opportunity like it for a while. He thought it would be better for Isabelle to grow up in the country rather than the city of Boston in a small apartment with him. He also wanted a job where he could spend more time with his daughter than his curating at the museum would allow. When the right position turned up, he jumped at it. They moved to the Vanderbilt estate in Newport. He was responsible for the art, antiques, the grounds, the staff, and keeping everything in perfect order and ready at the drop of a hat for his employers, who only used the house once a year for a few weeks in August. The rest of the time, the Vanderbilts lived in their other homes in New York, London, and the South of France, where they spent June and July.

  For eleven months of the year, Isabelle had free run of the grounds and was in and out of the main house frequently with her father. She would study the paintings for hours while he was busy. She’d sit quietly on a chair, examining the paintings minutely, and her father would tell her about them, and something about the artists. She learned a great deal from him, and her early favorites were Degas and Renoir. It never struck her as odd that she lived amidst such opulence, although none of it was theirs. She had no pride of ownership, nor did her father, only a deep appreciation for the beauty of their surroundings. In some ways, it was like living in a museum. As she grew up, her friends were the housekeeper, the butler, the cook, and maids and housemen, though she and her father ate dinner alone in their own house every night. She went to the local school but made few friends. It was complicated explaining to them where she lived, and why.

  It came as no surprise to her father when she decided to major in art history at New York University, and volunteered on weekends at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She took her junior year abroad at the Sorbonne, where she spent every moment possible at the Louvre, the Jeu de Paume, and the Impressionist exhibits that her father had given her a profound love for ever since she was old enough to talk. She described every exhibit and museum she went to in detail in her letters to him, and he was proud of her. He had saved up for her education for years, and he approved of her plan to work at the Met or an important gallery in New
York after she graduated. She landed an internship at a greatly respected gallery in Paris for June and July after she’d finished her year at the Sorbonne. It was there that her life’s journey began. And now, so many years later, she was still influenced by the choices she had made at twenty, and by the people who had crossed her path so long ago.

  * * *

  —

  Isabelle had begun her internship at the Verbier Gallery in Paris that June feeling breathless to be in its hallowed halls. The most important collectors in the world entered their portals regularly to view the remarkable paintings being presented to them, at prices beyond anything she could imagine. Her duties were menial. She had to clean the coffee machine, order lunch for the sales representatives from the bistro nearby, and set it up in the gallery’s dining room. She was taught how to wrap a painting for delivery, or for crating to be shipped, using all the packing materials they showed her, and under the careful supervision of one of the regular employees. They all wore the same white cotton gloves she had been given to handle the art. The truly important paintings weren’t left in her care, but she saw them after they were removed from a viewing room. She’d been told that if she encountered a client, which would be rare, she was to say only good morning or good afternoon. She was fluent in French by then, having learned it during her year at the Sorbonne. She looked like a child with her long blond hair in a braid, and the short navy skirt and white blouse she wore to work every day. She looked younger than her twenty years.

  She’d been at the gallery for a week when there was a considerable stir one afternoon, before a client came in. She didn’t hear his name, and wouldn’t have recognized it anyway, all she could glean was that he almost never came in, as it was rare for him to leave his château in Normandy. Although he was an important collector, and a frequent client of theirs, he hadn’t been to the gallery in two years.

  The gallery’s director, Robert Pontvert, and two assistants were on hand when he arrived. They showed him discreetly to a viewing room, and shortly after, Isabelle was asked to bring cold mineral water for the client to drink. She noticed the four beautiful Monets on display, and a slim, quiet man, concentrating on the paintings without saying a word. She set the water down on a table, as the man turned toward her and smiled. She then disappeared without a sound, as she’d been told to do. He emerged an hour later, with the gallery director looking pleased. The client stopped briefly to study a small painting of a nude on the way out. It was part of their current exhibition, and after he left, Isabelle heard his name for the first time. Putnam Armstrong was American, from a wealthy Boston family, and had lived in France for twenty years. He had just bought two of the Monets, and there was a celebratory atmosphere in the gallery after he left. Armstrong had slipped out as quietly as he’d arrived. He drove away in a beautiful old silver Rolls he had left with the doorman outside.

  Isabelle had forgotten about him by the next day. She tended to her duties, watched other clients come and go, and two days later, the director of the gallery summoned her to his office. She was sure she had done something wrong, although she had no idea what it might have been. She had followed all the directions she’d been given impeccably. She wondered if someone had seen her looking at the paintings they kept in a locked room. She’d been careful not to touch them, and only studied those that were set up on viewing stands, but she was suddenly terrified she might be dismissed.

  “Did you see Mr. Armstrong, the client who was here two days ago to see the Monets?” Robert Pontvert asked. She nodded, too frightened to speak at first.

  “Oui, monsieur,” she said in a whisper, waiting for what would come next.

  “He looked at a small nude on the way out, and wishes to see it again. He wants us to send it to his château. It’s a two-hour drive from here, in Normandy. Can you drive?” he asked her sternly. She had gotten her international license before she’d left, in case she wanted to go on driving trips, but had only used it a few times. It was easier to take the train.

  “Yes, sir, I can.” He didn’t tell her that Putnam Armstrong had requested that she deliver it. He had identified her as the girl who brought him water in the viewing room. It was a demand he’d never made before. He normally didn’t care who delivered the paintings to him. But whatever he wanted, the gallery would supply. They had delivered the two Monets to him the day after he bought them. They knew that payment by wire would be made within days by his bank. He was one of their most reliable clients. He could never pass up a truly spectacular work of art.

  “Good. You can take the painting to him tomorrow, with the gallery car. Leave it with his butler, Marcel Armand. He’ll be expecting you.”

  “Should I wait to bring it back if he doesn’t keep it?” she asked cautiously, not wanting to make a mistake. It seemed like a daunting task to be entrusted with a painting to take to a château, and she wondered why they had chosen her.

  “Just give the painting to the butler, and come straight back. You won’t see Mr. Armstrong. He’ll look at it whenever he wants and let us know,” Pontvert said precisely, and she felt like she was being entrusted with the holy grail.

  She barely slept that night, worrying about it. What if she got lost and couldn’t find the château? Or if she had an accident and it was destroyed? Or what if she was robbed at gunpoint on the way? The worst scenarios possible rushed through her mind, and she was at the gallery the next morning in her navy skirt and a freshly washed and starched blouse, looking anxious and pale. The painting had already been wrapped and was carefully put on the floor of the backseat of the Citroën so it wouldn’t fall on the way, which had been another of her fears. She was given a map and told that the château would be easy to find, half an hour outside Trouville. A few minutes later, she left the gallery and was on her way.

  She didn’t start to relax until she’d left Paris and found herself in the countryside. It looked a little like New England. And as she approached Deauville, she glanced at the quaint Norman houses. She followed the directions she’d been given, and two hours after she’d left Paris, she found herself at the imposing gates of the château. It was a beautiful June day, and she had caught glimpses of the sea along the way. She pressed the button on the intercom at the gate, and was instructed to proceed to the end of the drive, which was a surprisingly long way after the gates swung open for her and she drove through. There were enormous old trees on either side of the drive along the way, and she saw a park and manicured gardens at the château come into sight. All she had to do now was find the butler, hand him her precious cargo, and go back to Paris.

  As she got out of the car, she saw an older man with gray hair appear on the top step and guessed he was the butler. He was frowning at her, as though she were an intruder. She hurried up the steps to explain her mission to him, and he nodded. She went back to the car to get the painting, and as she did Putnam Armstrong appeared and came down the steps to greet her with a quiet smile.

  “Did you have trouble finding us?” he asked pleasantly, as though she were a welcome guest. Putnam had spoken to her in French, and she responded in English, knowing that he was American.

  “They gave me very good directions.” She smiled at him, and he looked surprised.

  “You’re American? I thought you were French.” He didn’t tell her that she looked like a young French girl in a school uniform, with her flat navy shoes the French called “ballerines.” “Thank you for bringing me the painting. It’s been haunting me ever since I saw it in the gallery. I wanted another look. It’s a bit of a trek here.”

  “It was a beautiful drive,” she reassured him. “I enjoyed it.” She opened the back door of the car and carefully handed him the painting, as the butler continued to observe them as though she might attack his employer. He appeared to be fiercely protective of him.

  Putnam stood holding the painting for a minute and looked into her blue eyes the color of the sum
mer sky, almost as though he had seen her before in a different context and was remembering someone else. Then he spoke to her in a soft voice. He seemed like a gentle person, and she had the feeling he was shy.

  “Would you like to come inside for something to drink? Juice, water, something cold?” he offered. The day was warm and she’d had a long drive. Isabelle wasn’t sure how to respond, if she were meant to decline or if it would be more polite to accept. They had given her no instructions to cover the possibility of his inviting her into the château. It hadn’t occurred to the gallery owner that he might, nor to her. She looked hesitant, but his smile was warm, and the invitation seemed kind and sincere.

  “Just for a minute, if you don’t mind.” She followed him up the steps as the butler glared at her, as though she were a thief or a gold digger. He would have stopped her from entering if he could, but it wasn’t an option as Putnam Armstrong led the way into the château. She found herself in the long entrance hall, filled with impressive paintings that covered the walls, and she stared at them in awe. The hall was somewhat dark, and he flipped a switch to fill it with light so she could see the paintings better, then led the way into an enormous living room, with even more paintings on the walls, beautiful antiques, and two huge fireplaces. Beyond it, she could see a terrace overlooking the sea. The château sat on a cliff above a beach, and she could see sailboats and other boats, as she smiled back at him.

  “It’s so beautiful.” She admired the château and the scene beyond, and he was pleased by her reaction.

  “That’s why I never leave. I hardly ever go into Paris, only once or twice a year. It’s so peaceful here.”