Excerpt of The Angels' Share by Ellen Crosby

Vintage Madeira is the color of old blood.

A nearly indestructible wine, it improves almost magically with fire and heat. Once upon a time the value

of a barrel of Madeira was determined by the number of voy- ages it made secured in the holds of cargo ships that criss- crossed the oceans. Thomas Jefferson famously used to send his Madeira back to sea—to African ports or the distant Indies—if he decided there were not enough destination stamps on the barrels he’d ordered.

No other wine in the world requires at least half a century to fully mature or can live for two centuries and remain so potent and wonderfully drinkable. To taste Madeira—really old Madeira—is to taste history.

“I have a proposition for you, Lucie.” Prescott Avery’s pleasant baritone, breath hot with alcohol, was low in my ear even though no one else was around. Somehow he had man- aged to whisk me away from party crowds, rooms filled with

laughter and chatter, the clink of china and glasses, and the beguiling beat of a samba.

“I thought we could discuss it over a glass of one of my old Malmseys,” he added.

Malmsey is the best Madeira in the world. Sweet, made from the malvasia grape, it comes from Madeira itself, a moun- tainous Portuguese island off the coast of North Africa with a reputation as a place of eternal spring.

No one turned down Prescott Avery, even though he al- ways managed to make it seem as if he were doing you a favor when, in reality, you’d find out later it was the other way around. He meant to charm and flirt with me—I already knew that—but in five years, he’d be a century old. This was the harmless seduction of a sweet old man with hearing aids and a cane.

We were at an after-Thanksgiving neighborhood party in his magnificent home, alone in an opulently furnished room filled with museum-worthy art and bookcases lined with leather-covered books, no doubt all rare volumes or first edi- tions. A fire flickered in a fireplace surrounded by an elab- orately carved mantel of cream-colored Italian marble. My brain was already buzzy with alcohol, two deliciously lethal Caipirinhas that I had drunk too quickly in the past few hours. If Prescott wanted to make some kind of deal with me, I wanted to be clear-headed and have my wits about me.

“I’d love to try your Malmsey,” I said. “Maybe I could come by one day next week. Now that harvest is over and we’ve finished most of our cellar work, things have finally quieted down at the vineyard.”

Prescott made a tsk-tsk sound with his tongue. “Actually, my dear, I was thinking about right now.”

I didn’t want to do this now. “What about the party? We

really shouldn’t leave . . .”

He gave me a coy wink, cutting off my protests. “Non- sense. It’s my party, isn’t it? Besides, we won’t be gone long.” It wasn’t actually his party. Prescott Avery II, his grandson, whom the family called Scotty, and Scotty’s Brazilian wife, Bi- anca, were hosting their annual Saturday-after-Thanksgiving celebration, a traditional feijoada dinner for about a hundred friends and neighbors. Normally the get-together was Atoka’s laid-back antidote to leftover turkey, cranberry sauce, and stuffing, with its Brazilian comfort food menu of black bean and pork stew, garlic rice, fried manioc, collard greens, and sliced oranges. It was served with caipirinhas, Brazil’s potent national drink of muddled lime and a sugarcane hard liquor called cachaça. This year Prescott had insisted the gathering be held at Hawthorne, his home—or “the Castle” as everyone called it—rather than at Scotty and Bianca’s magnificent horse farm just down the road. And this year the vibe was anything

but laid back.

A few caipirinhas in and word had gone around that Prescott had insisted that everyone in the family spend the night at the Castle so he could convene a board of directors meeting first thing the following morning at which he planned to share news about the future of Avery Communications. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was on his mind. For the last three years Prescott had watched his stepson Clay- ton relinquish his role as publisher of the Washington Tribune

to his two grandchildren, Scotty and Alexandra. He had also witnessed their increasingly public feud over how the newspa- per should be run. Clayton, caught up in an ugly divorce, had done little to tamp down or even discourage the bickering be- tween his son and daughter until it had finally disintegrated into two warring camps at the Trib. This afternoon Alex and Scotty were barely speaking to each other and when they did, they were icily civil.

Maybe Prescott just wanted to get away from the taut-as- a-violin-string tension among his family, and needed an ac- complice. Plus he had piqued my interest: what proposition?

“This must be important if you want to discuss it right now,” I said.

He didn’t bite. “Then let’s go, shall we? We can take the elevator. It will be easier for both of us.”

He indicated my cane with the tip of his. Mine was utili- tarian, the consequence of a near-fatal automobile accident ten years ago and doctors who said I’d never walk again. His, crys- tal with a beautiful antique silver handle engraved with his family crest, was merely an aid to help with balance, though he often joked that it was his magic wand. He slipped his free hand under my elbow. His grip was surprisingly strong.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“My wine cellar. I thought you might like to see it since the little renovation was finished last month.”

Ah, the hook. I’d visited Prescott’s wine cellar before, though more often I’d seen photographs of it in the pages of glossy lifestyle or shelter magazines. “Wine by Design: The Twenty Most Beautiful Wine Cellars in the World” or “The

Largest  Private  Wine  Collections  in  America  You’ll  Never See.”

“I would.”

“Excellent. We’ll be back before anyone misses us.”

I doubted that. Clayton, Scotty, Bianca, and Alex had all been keeping an eagle eye on Prescott this afternoon, no doubt wondering about the news he planned to announce tomorrow morning. Our departure would not go unnoticed.

“What about Quinn? Why don’t I go find him?” I said. “I know he’d love to join us.”

Quinn Santori, my fiancé, was also the winemaker at my vineyard. If I got a private tour of Prescott’s newly renovated wine cellar without him, I’d never hear the end of it.

Prescott drew my hand through his arm and patted it. “Oh, he’ll give you up for a few minutes, my dear,” he said in a reassuring voice. “Besides, you’re the one I want to talk to. Only you, Lucie.” He laid an index finger over his lips like we were conspirators. I could read the message in his eyes.

Don’t tell anyone.

He led me down a long corridor lined with more paintings in ornate gilded or carved wooden frames that I knew for a fact were original Old Masters. Classical bronzes and marble sculptures that had once graced temples, palaces, and gardens in ancient Greece, Italy, or somewhere in the Middle East were subtly lit and so beautiful they took my breath away.

Then there was Hawthorne Castle itself, an honest-to- goodness castle with turrets, towers, crenellated walls—even a portcullis leading to an inner courtyard with a multi-tiered fountain in the center—built by Prescott’s father, Jock, in

the 1800s as homage to his British wife, Lady Daphne, so she would not be homesick for her beloved England. Hawthorne also possessed a knight in a full suit of armor that stood guard in the foyer, a small garden maze modeled after Henry VIII’s maze at Hampton Court Palace, an orangerie, servants’ quar- ters, three swimming pools, a bowling alley, and dozens of formal rooms for entertaining where hand-woven silk and wool carpets from Morocco, Iran, China, and Turkey covered floors with elaborate inlaid borders of exotic wood. In total, the Castle had sixty rooms, including fifteen bedrooms, along with three Tudor-style guest cottages. In addition to the art on the walls, the high-coffered ceilings were painted with mu- rals of hunting scenes and pastoral landscapes or cherubs and creatures from mythology; the intricate woodwork had been carved by craftsmen Jock had flown in from Italy.

“I’m sure you must never get tired of seeing these beauti- ful things,” I said. “I know I wouldn’t.”

“I don’t,” he said, “but to be honest, acquiring them is what really interests me. It’s more about the thrill of the hunt, if you know what I mean. Learning the provenance of each item—about the artist, the owners—traveling the world to find something so rare and exquisite, so sought after . . .” His voice trailed off.

Only to give it all away.

People in Middleburg and Atoka still talked about it. How shortly before Rose Avery, Prescott’s beloved wife, died five years ago, the two of them had signed the Caritas Commitment, a philanthropic promise drawn up by some of the world’s most influential billionaires, to give away the majority of their wealth as a legacy, a way of giving back for the very good for-

tune they had enjoyed in their lifetime. Already Prescott and Rose had bequeathed many paintings and sculptures in the Avery art collection to important galleries and museums upon their deaths, adding to donations made by Jock and Daphne. What remained after those bequests were fulfilled—more art, furniture, jewelry, books, carpets—would be sold at auction with the proceeds going to charities the Averys supported— most of it to the Miranda Foundation, named for their late daughter.

“I think it’s incredibly generous that you’ve committed to giving it to charity,” I said. “I can’t imagine how you could do that—let go of everything.”

“It was Rosie’s idea. She was the driving force in setting up the Caritas Commitment, you know.  My  Rosie  always said that we are merely temporary stewards of our good fortune.” His hand swept the length of the hall. “All these things belong in a place where anyone can see them. Where everyone can see them . . . My God, we have a Picasso in one of the guest powder rooms because there was no place else to hang it.”

He chuckled at the irony of a Picasso in a bathroom. We reached the elevator and he pushed the call button. Like everything else in the house it had its own fascinating his- tory: originally commissioned in France to be installed as the first elevator in the Senate wing of the U.S. Capitol, Congress changed its mercurial mind while Hawthorne was being built and Jock had snapped it up instead.

The elevator gave a faint whine as it descended from one of the upper floors and stopped on the main floor. Prescott pulled the outer door aside and the inner door slid open.

He gestured to me, ever the courtly Southern gentleman. “After you, my dear.”

I stepped in and saw my reflection in the dusky glass of an antique mirror on the back wall, my features accentuated in the slightly distorted reflection. Dark brown hair pulled back in a French braid, my favorite pearl drop earrings that had been my mother’s, hollowed cheeks, eyes with smudged cir- cles underneath since we had been hard at work in the vine- yard right up until Thanksgiving this year and I still hadn’t caught up on sleep.

Prescott’s eyes met mine in the mirror and I knew that he had been studying me. What did he want to talk about that we couldn’t have discussed upstairs?

It still surprised me to realize that he and I were distantly related. My great-aunt Grace had married Prescott’s uncle, joining the Montgomery and Avery families together three generations ago. I had been named for Grace’s sister Lucy, who the family had nicknamed Lucky, because of her carefree joie de vivre and uncanny good fortune. Like the time she gave a girlfriend her ticket to sail home from London so she could stay behind and continue an affair with a married man, who happened to be a count. The ship was the Titanic.

We reached the lower level and the elevator stopped with

a tiny jolt. This time Prescott opened the inner door and the exterior door slid open. We stepped into another corridor; sharply cooler and lit by flickering gas wall sconces. More art hung on the walls: paintings that were darker, surrealis- tic. Macabre. I thought I recognized Salvador Dalí, Goya, and Andy Warhol. Originals, all of them.

I looked away from a bloody severed head being held up

by a gruesome-looking demon and said, “What else is down here besides your wine cellar?”

His lips curved in a small smile. “The bowling alley, the Italian marble swimming pool, storage rooms for the chairs and tables when we have our big parties, holiday decora- tions . . . that sort of thing. And, of course, my archives.”

Prescott’s collection of documents and memorabilia dating from the earliest days of the country—particularly anything belonging to the Founding Fathers who were Virginians—was probably the most extensive in the world outside of the Library of Congress. Leland, my late father, had also been a historian and collector of documents and first editions on early Virginia history, and occasionally had sold some of his precious books and papers to Prescott when he needed money—usually to pay gambling debts.

We walked by a door with an old-fashioned dead bolt and a padlock.

“What’s behind that door?” I asked.

Prescott’s smile widened. “The dungeon. No castle would be complete without one.”

My stomach tightened. Was he serious, or merely teasing me? “I thought that was just talk,” I said. “Kids trying to scare

other kids, especially at Halloween.”

“So I’ve heard, but it’s part of the mystique of Hawthorne,” he said. “I certainly wouldn’t want to discourage the idea. Would you?”

He hadn’t said yes or no. “I suppose not. Especially consid- ering the cheerful art collection that’s on display down here.”

He chuckled as we turned another corner. “I like to think we have very catholic taste in art. A little of everything.”

I had now completely lost my bearings. The wine cellar, I knew, extended underground well beyond the Castle walls. Reportedly it contained twenty thousand bottles and was so extensive Prescott’s sommelier used a golf cart to traverse its many aisles. Supposedly every bottle had been chosen because it was one of the best, and there were no fillers. The value was somewhere in the millions of dollars.

We stopped in front of another door that looked sturdy and unyielding, from an era when the Castle occupants might have needed to reinforce every entrance, ensuring they were pro- tected from potential enemies. Ironically next to the door was a state-of-the-art keypad that flickered to life when Prescott touched it and keyed in a code. I was standing near enough to see it flash on the display before disintegrating into a set of asterisks: HTWSSTKS.

Probably a mnemonic for a phrase that meant something to him. A series of heavy clicks sounded, as tumblers fell into the right places and the door silently swung open.

Once again Prescott indicated that I should go first.

I hesitated, a flash of panic in case the moment I walked through the doorway he’d key in his “Close Sesame” pass- code, abandoning me inside. He had sidestepped the question about the dungeon, just as he had avoided telling me why he’d brought me here. But of course nothing of the sort happened and he followed me into the room.

Dim lights brightened automatically as though we were in a theater at the end of a performance. It was all I could do not to gasp. The “little renovation” had transformed the tast- ing room from a 1920s jazzy Prohibition-era hideaway with Tiffany lamps, lighted mirrored shelves filled with crystal

glasses, acres of marqueted paneling, and a plush, comfortable sofa with matching chairs surrounding a tiled fireplace into an austere room of carved stone that reminded me of a medieval French château. White pendant lights hung from the vaulted barrel ceiling and in the alcoves, twinkling like stars. Rows of wine bottles lying in clear Lucite wine racks so they looked as if they were floating formed an undulating wall that separated the bar from a seating area. An arched door had been left ajar so I could see into the wine cellar itself where row upon row of dark, gleaming bottles lined the walls until they vanished into the inky blackness. If there had been music playing, I would have expected a Gregorian chant.

“So, do you like it?” Prescott asked. “All the stone was quarried here on the property. I brought in master stonema- sons to do all the work . . . master stonemasons. The best.”

Prescott only worked with the best of the best.

“It’s . . . spectacular. Nothing at all like the way it looked before.”

More art hung on the walls—this time instead of paintings there were black-and-white photographs taken by some of the world’s most renowned photographers and photojournalists. I made a quick tour, reading names and captions: Henri Cartier- Bresson, Alfred Stieglitz, Diane Arbus, Robert Capa, Edward Steichen, Ansel Adams. I stopped in front of the lone excep- tion: an oil painting of a beautiful young woman in a blue- and-white gown, her red cape strewn on what appeared to be a throne next to the sea. Two men—one elderly, one young— and a horned creature that looked like a devil, surrounded her. I was still staring at it when Prescott said in a sharp voice,

“Take a seat, Lucie, won’t you? The sofa’s very comfortable.”

I stole one more quick glance at the painting and read the small plaque attached to the bottom of the frame. ferdinand courting miranda, william hogarth, circa 1735.

Miranda. Rose and Prescott’s daughter’s name. “Lucie,” Prescott said again. “Do sit down.”

I turned around, flustered, as if he’d caught me spying or eavesdropping. He was standing behind the bar where a bottle of Madeira, a decanter filled with dark, ruby wine, and two crystal tulip-shaped glasses sat on a silver tray. Just how far in advance had he planned this meeting? It obviously hadn’t been a spontaneous idea.

“I see I’ve been expected,” I said. “It looks like your Malm- sey was already waiting for us.”

Now he was the one who looked chagrined. His smile was half guilt, half guile. “I spoke to my sommelier earlier and asked him to decant our wine. He’s new, but so far, so good.”

“Is he here? In the wine cellar?”

“No, he’s upstairs helping at the party. It’s just you and me down here.”

I’m sure he didn’t mean to sound menacing, but a small shiver went up my spine. I walked over and sank into the sofa, which was covered in a concrete-colored fabric. It envel- oped me like a pillow and felt like the softest cashmere.

I slipped my phone out of my pocket and checked the strength of the signal. One bar and then no bars. No way to let Quinn know where I was. Damn. I already regretted not insisting that he join us.

“I heard you have a new laboratory,” I said. “Maybe you could show it to me?”

“Some other time I’d be happy to,” he said in a silky voice

that let me know he knew a distraction when he heard one. “It’s quite amazing. I funded the technology at Cal for nuclear resonance testing, which allows one to analyze the contents of a bottle of wine without opening it and disrupting the aging process. Very useful if you’re checking for fakes.” He picked up the tray. “Relax, Lucie, darling. I promise I’ll have you back up- stairs in no time. I just wanted us to have a little privacy, is all.” He walked over and set the tray on a glass-topped coffee table with a base that looked like a fiery blue geode. I thought he would join me on the sofa, but he settled into a black-and- white zebra-striped barrel chair directly across from me. He

leaned over and poured our Madeira.

There are wines, beers, and spirits that pair well with food. Vintage Madeira is not one of them. It is to be drunk for the pure pleasure of drinking it—savored on its own—a drink for when you’re in a reflective mood.

“You’re drinking thirty-two-year-old Malmsey,” Prescott went on. “The grapes were picked in your birth year. I thought you might like to taste something of the history of what was happening in the world the year you were born.”

On the  one hand  his thoughtfulness  touched me—any winemaker knows there is a particular magic to drinking a wine attached to a significant date. On the other hand, I was feeling more and more like a trapped insect that was slowly being spun into the web of a very clever spider. Prescott’s business prowess was legendary. I was being set up for some- thing he really wanted.

“How kind,” I said. “Thank you.”

He handed me my glass and picked up his own. “To many more birthdays.”

“To your health. And your centenary in five years.”

We sipped our wine and he leaned back and closed his eyes. “Do you taste that velvety honeyed richness?” he asked after a moment. “The trademark of a vintage Malmsey . . . rich, sweet. The aromas of butterscotch, cocoa, and coffee that can fill a room.”

Madeira is the drink of a bygone era, generally consid- ered the beverage of an older person. It must be sipped and enjoyed in an unhurried, leisurely way. Most people my age have probably never tasted it, but Madeira’s fascinat- ing history had intrigued Quinn and me enough that we were experimenting with making our own at the vineyard. Every summer for the past few years, we hauled three old whiskey barrels filled with Seyval Blanc mixed with brandy outside and left them on the metal roof of the barrel room where the temperature could easily soar into triple digits. And last year we stored one of the barrels in our attic dur- ing July and August, just to see what would happen to the taste.

Prescott seemed content to savor his Malmsey in silence, so I, too, settled deeper into the sofa and drank mine. Finally he said in a rich drawl, “I’m sure you’ve been wondering why I invited you here.”

“The thought did cross my mind.”

He grinned. “I’m about to make you an offer you can’t re- fuse.”

Which meant he intended to make sure I didn’t turn him

down. I sat up straighter, on full alert.

“I see. And what offer would that be?”

“I want to buy the Madeira your great-uncle Ian bought

back in the 1920s. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. My family has been trying to purchase it from yours for nearly a century. Ian wouldn’t sell it and neither would any of your kin, including your daddy. But I’m an old man now, Lucie. I want those bottles.” He shifted so he was sitting on the edge of his chair and fixed his eyes on mine. “Name your price. I will pay it. Anything. Surely it can’t mean as much to you, to your generation, as it means to me.”

“I’m sorry—”

He cut me off. “I mean it, Lucie. Do not turn me down. Any price. Whatever you want.” He added, as if to soften his words, “After all, we are related, you know. You’d still be keeping it in the family.”

I set my glass on the glass-topped geode. “What I was about to say was that I have no idea what you’re talking about. What Madeira?”

For a moment he looked stunned. Then he burst out laugh-

ing. “I must need new hearing aids. I thought you said you don’t know what I’m talking about, but you’re just pulling my leg, darlin’. You’re not serious.”

“I’m absolutely serious,” I said. “If my father knew about some old bottles of Madeira as you said, I wouldn’t be sur- prised if he either drank them or sold them to someone he owed money to. You knew Leland. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—hold on to something that precious or valuable. He always needed cash to finance his gambling habits. The vineyard was a fi- nancial ruin when I inherited it, if you remember.”

But he was focused on the wine, not my father’s wayward behavior. “You know nothing about that Madeira? You’re quite sure?”

I nodded. “How did Ian Montgomery get hold of one- hundred-year-old bottles of Madeira?”

Prescott almost didn’t need to tell me. Ian was my namesake Lucky’s brother, a gambler and a risk-taker like my father had been. However, unlike my father—and gifted with the same good fortune Lucky had—everything Ian touched turned to gold.

Before he could answer, I took a guess. “He won them in a bet.”

“Close,” Prescott said. “And these days they’re not one- hundred-year-old bottles, either. They date from 1809, which makes them—”

I finished his sentence. “Over two hundred years old. My God, Prescott, are you serious?”

“James Madison was our fourth president and the city of Washington, D.C., had just been founded a few years earlier.” He leaned back and crossed one slim leg over the other, reach- ing for his cane and playing with the engraved silver handle. “As to how Ian acquired the Madeira, I probably don’t need to tell you that he was a Prohibition bootlegger working with The Man in the Green Hat.”

That much I already knew: George Cassiday, an unem- ployed veteran from World War I, more famously known as The Man in the Green Hat, had literally set up shop in the

U.S. Capitol, first in the Cannon House Office Building and later, after the police caught him, moving to the Russell Build- ing on the Senate side, providing a steady supply of alcohol to members of Congress that went on for years. I’d heard sto- ries that Ian worked with Cassiday, often carrying suitcases of booze directly to the offices of congressmen and senators.

So while Congress was busy telling the rest of the country drinking was illegal and immoral, they were awash in the stuff themselves.

I nodded and Prescott went on. “What was less well known was that while Cassiday had his hideaway offices in the base- ment of these buildings, Ian knew all the secret places in the warren of passageways and underground tunnels that linked every House and Senate office building to the Capitol just like he knew the back of his hand.”

He set down the cane and picked up the decanter of Ma- deira, pouring some more into my glass before filling his own. “What happened was that Ian got scammed by a fellow who owed money to the Mob, promising to take a shipment of some top French vintages, all premier cru wines, off the guy’s hands. Ian paid him, the man vanished, and then Ian discov- ered the wine had been stored in a closed-off tunnel near a boiler room. Everything was undrinkable.”

“Except the Madeira?”

Prescott held up a finger. Not so fast.

“The Madeira had already been there,” he said. “Two cases of it. Twenty-four bottles. All nailed shut, never opened. Hid- den in the recesses of that tunnel, but far enough from the boiler that it wasn’t destroyed the way the wine was. When Ian finally got a look at the bottles, the labels told him every- thing. The Madeira had been imported via Baltimore for a congressional ceremony to toast the anniversary of the sign- ing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4. President Madison was supposed to be there.”

I caught my breath. “Then those bottles would be quite valuable.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Indeed.”

“So who owned the Madeira? Not the guy who sold Ian the spoiled wine, apparently.”

Prescott gave an elaborate shrug. “It didn’t matter. Finders keepers, as far as Ian was concerned. Payback for buying the cases of cooked wine. Besides, it was Prohibition. Whoever originally owned it was probably long dead and the Madeira had been forgotten about. Why it wasn’t drunk in 1809 . . .” Another shrug. “Who knows? Anyway, Ian decided to keep it for himself since he knew the value was only going to in- crease. After he died, everyone else in your family hung on to it as well. No one wanted to sell.”

That didn’t sound like my family at all. Why had we kept Ian’s Madeira for another almost-century? And, more impor- tant, why didn’t I know anything about it? There was some- thing Prescott wasn’t telling me. Why couldn’t he have asked me about this upstairs? What was up with the cloak-and- dagger secrecy?

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really wish I could help you, but I can’t. I never knew anything about these bottles.”

“What a pity,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or merely regretful. “Did you know that a few years ago Chris- tie’s sold two bottles of 1795 Madeira for ten thousand dol- lars apiece? Do you have any idea what your bottles could be worth to the right person?” Before I could answer, he added, “I just happen to be the right person, Lucie. I’ll pay you more than that.”

I did the math. He was talking about a crazy amount of money. “Why?”

“Because I have just acquired a unique treasure that can

only be unveiled with that Madeira. And for another even more important reason I can’t discuss. At least not yet.”

“And why is that?”

He reached for his crystal-and-silver cane once again and stood up. “Come. I’ll give you a tiny hint. However, first you must give me your word that you won’t say anything to any- one about what you’re about to see.”

“All right.”

He waved the tip of his cane at me as an admonishment and a rebuke. “Lucie, I’m absolutely serious about this—it’s not some lark. You must promise or this conversation is over.”

Startled, I said, “I promise.”

“Good.” He lowered the cane. “Then you may follow me.”