Brilliant (30 page)

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“Kick,” my husband said.

“Yes, Thomas?” I shook the tablecloth and it floated to the grass like a fresh sheet.

“If this is what you’re doing for our six months’ anniversary, I can’t imagine what you’ve got in mind for six years.”

“Six months of sheer pleasure.” I smiled. And that was the truth.

There is so much to be said for love when you’re grown. I learned years and years ago—I won’t get into exactly how many years, just “years and years” will do—that a point comes in your life that when you open your eyes in the morning, there’d better be more going on in your bed than matinee idol good looks and a strong libido, because if you’re going to make it for the long haul, at some point you’re going to need to have a conversation. And if that conversation isn’t interesting, well, forget it.

Thomas and I weren’t quite yet “Love Among the Ruins,” but, thank God, we weren’t children with stars in our eyes, either. Let me put it this way: We were experienced. We had the good sense to appreciate the subtleties and refinements of life: when to speak, when to stay silent; the rich satisfaction of enjoying each other’s company over excellent food and fine wine; sharing common interests in books and art and music; the pleasure and intimacy of love without any silly show-off acrobatics; long, quiet walks. And finesse. Ah, yes, finesse—the ability to do something grand without appearing to have done anything at all.

“Where do you want me to set the pie?” He’d carried it carefully from the house. I think it was the most perfect lemon meringue pie I’d ever made.

“Here, I’ll take it.” I placed it in the center of the cloth. “Why don’t you open the wine?”

“With pleasure.” Thomas slid one of the mildly chilled bottles of Chinon from a wicker basket.

“This is lovely,” he said, “Clos Vamess ’98. Nicely done, Kick.”

The late May sun sparkled through the apple tree’s lime-green leaves, my apple tree on my beautiful little farm in Provence—La Petite Pomme—just outside of Éygalières. I’d owned the farm for several years. It was as close to paradise on earth as one can get—several acres of crops, sometimes sunflowers, sometimes lamb’s lettuce, flower, herb, and vegetable gardens, and an apple orchard whose trees produced little pink apples, slightly larger than crabapples but smaller than normal. A rocky, olive tree-lined lane meandered its way to the little yellow farmhouse with its hyacinth-blue shutters and jasmine espaliers.

I moved here, permanently, from London over a year ago, happily single, wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. Ill-gotten gains to be sure, but now I’m in the process of trying to rectify all that. I live a completely respectable life, one without secrets. Well, with fewer secrets at any rate. I have so many, it would be impossible to abandon them all at one time.

My name is Kick Keswick and I am—or rather was—the Shamrock Burglar—revered in the annals of London’s criminal archives as the finest, most successful, most talented, and most notorious jewel thief in all history