Indiscretions (8 page)

Marisa had followed her into the powder room off the flagged hallway because she wanted to know how well India knew Aldo Montefiore. Marisa wanted to drop a word of warning now just in case India got too interested. After all, she didn’t want any trouble with Fabrizio’s little protégée later, did she?

“How did you meet Aldo,
cara?
” she asked, taking a jeweled compact out of her tiny blue leather bag. Powdering her faultless nose gently she caught India’s eyes in the mirror.

India rummaged in her big leather satchel, feeling clumsy—as always—next to Marisa. The invitations had said informal, but there was informal and informal, and the scarlet sweater seemed wrong next to Marisa’s sapphire cashmere Krizia sheath. “We met at the reception,” she said flatly. “I spilled champagne on him.”

“Don’t worry about it, my dear.” Marisa watched as India glossed red lipstick over her mouth. “Nothing could ruin that suit. I doubt that it could stand another
day at the cleaners. Of course the poor boy can’t afford little luxuries like good clothes. The family is desperately hard up. Aldo is their only ticket to salvation. Of course he’ll have to marry money, and with his looks and title it won’t be too difficult. There’s
so much
money about.” Marisa shrugged her almost overly slender shoulders deprecatingly. “Of course you know who he is, my dear, don’t you? The Conte di Montefiore, one of Italy’s oldest titles. He has that vast place in Venice that’s crumbling into the canal. I think you once painted it and gave it to Fabrizio. And then there’s the Palazzo Montefiore on the coast. Magnificent but doomed—unless he suddenly makes a lot of money. He got on so well with my cousin Renata, didn’t you think?” Marisa picked up her bag and snapped it shut with a firm click. “We all have our responsibilities,” she announced with a final slow smile over her shoulder as she drifted from the room.

India was fuming. Anger burned her cheeks red. How dare Marisa warn her off as though she were some servant girl chasing after the lord of the manor? Nineteenth-century nonsense! She wasn’t the least bit interested in Aldo Montefiore anyway. The Conte di Montefiore. Her brown eyes gazed back at her from the mirror and she remembered Aldo’s smiling voice as he’d said, “Snap.” Well, not
that
interested anyway. But he was attractive, and nice.…

India stood up abruptly. She was tired. It was time to go home. She’d find Fabrizio, say good-bye, and leave.

The evening was still young. A pianist lazed over the keys of the white grand piano in the hall, singing Cole Porter. Guests were gathering in groups or lounging on the vast sofas, gossiping. White-gloved waiters were serving coffee and tiny delicious chocolates from silver trays. India searched the room for Fabrizio and found him leaning over the piano, absorbed in Cole Porter’s magical lyrics that lost nothing with the passage of time.

“I must leave now, Fabrizio. Thank you for a lovely evening.”

“India? So soon?” His warm hands encompassed hers, and she thrilled at the light touch. Odd how Marisa was warning her off Aldo, who was obviously earmarked for the wealthy cousin Renata, and not her own husband.

“I’m tired,” she said lamely. “It’s been a long day and I must be up early to check that the plumbers showed up at the Mondini apartment.”

Fabrizio felt a pang of guilt. Sometimes he thought he worked her too hard. He could easily have sent someone else to oversee the workmen at the penthouse they were redoing, but this was the first time she had been allowed to follow a project through from beginning to end, and if she wanted to learn, then she must understand the basics as well as the gloss. Functional plumbing was as important as the color of the tiles in a bathroom.

“Take care, then,
cara
,” he said, bending his head and kissing her tenderly on each cheek. “Ciao. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He watched her walk away from him. “India.”

She half turned. “Yes?”

“I’ll have the carpet delivered tomorrow afternoon.”

Her delighted laugh quite made his evening.

India surveyed the Rolls-Royces, Mercedes, Ferraris, and Porsches parked in the courtyard with remembered dismay. Of course—she had no car! She hovered uncertainly on the steps while the parking valet waited for her to hand him the key.

“The black VW Rabbit, please.”

Aldo smiled at her. “He can’t mistake it. It must be the only VW in this pope’s ransom of automobiles.”

“Oh, but shouldn’t you be at the party?” India was pleased despite herself and she smiled back at him.

“I always take home the girl I came with,” he replied
with a twinkle, “and besides, how would you get home if I didn’t drive you?”

She hadn’t realized how tired she was until she settled back in her seat, wriggling her toes in the black boots. A glance at Aldo’s profile showed him concentrating on the still dense traffic. In the lights of passing cars he looked older, even a little sad. She liked his strong dark features with the prominent cheekbones and slightly battered nose. And the dark eyes so like her own. His hands on the wheel were square and firm with a scatter of dark silken hairs across the back. A tiny shiver of response fluttered along India’s spine as her gaze rested on his hands.

Aldo shifted his attention from the traffic for an instant and glanced at the girl beside him. She was staring straight ahead, and her face looked pale under the streetlights. She was heart-touchingly pretty. India Haven had a quality that inspired tenderness in a man, and tenderness was exactly what he had been determined to avoid. But he couldn’t, he knew that now.

“It’s left here.” Her charmingly accented voice broke his reverie and he swung the small car quickly to the left and around the corner, following her instructions and concentrating once more on the traffic.

“Right at the next corner and we’re there,” said India. “It’s this building, right here.”

The car purred to a smooth stop. “As smooth as a Rolls,” said India with an impish grin.

“I’ve missed my vocation. I should have been a motor mechanic.”

“Really?”

Aldo smiled deprecatingly. “No, not really. But I love this little car, she’s become something of a passion with me.”

A passion. India wondered about his passion. She
changed the subject. “Tell me, Aldo Montefiore, what do you do?”

“I manage the family estates. Not very well yet, but I’m learning. And what do you do?”

“I assist Fabrizio. Not very well yet, but I’m learning.”

His laugh was low and appreciative, and like his hands, it sent a little frisson through her. India felt herself relaxing; she was enjoying his company, enjoying the way he looked, the way he was. To hell with Marisa and the cousin, she decided suddenly, she was enjoying herself.

Aldo glanced at the building where India Haven lived. Its stone façade looked forbidding and its vast double doors that would lead, as they all did, to a tiny courtyard were firmly shuttered against the night and intruders. Which were her rooms?

“There”—she pointed them out to him—“On the first floor. Too big, really, for just one person and a bit bare yet, but I’m decorating them slowly in the best Paroli style. I hope we didn’t spill too much champagne on the carpet,” she added with a grin “—tomorrow it’s mine. It will enhance the faded marble grandeur of the Haven residence and add considerably to my warmth and comfort on the forthcoming cold winter nights. You can think of me wriggling my toes in its comforting luxury as the snow falls over Rome in January.”

“I’ll remember to do that,” he replied, wondering if she was going to invite him up for a drink.

“I hear you are a count,” India said suddenly. “The Conte di Montefiore.”

“And I hear you’re Jenny Haven’s daughter.” Aldo’s smile was amiable, relaxed.

India stiffened. So that was it. He knew who she was. Her spirits drooped suddenly. And, I suppose, she thought miserably, he thinks I’m another little rich girl, ripe for the picking. Another cousin Renata. Well, he’s mistaken. Jenny may have money, but she’s worked for
every cent of it. Her millions came from her own endeavors and there’s no way she’d be happy to see them expended on saving and restoring Italian palaces. You’ve got the wrong girl, Count Aldo.

The slam of the door sounded angry, and Aldo’s face showed his surprise as he leapt after her.

“Good night,” said India stiffly, “and thank you for driving me home. I really appreciated it.”

“But, India, I want to see you again. Would you have dinner with me tomorrow night? Please say yes. We could go to the little osteria I know in the hills. You’d love it there—Papa Rizzoli does the cooking. At this time of year they’ll have a big fire blazing in the hearth—applewood, it smells like heaven. And there’s candlelight and wine from their own vineyards, and it’s my favorite place. I would love to show it to you, India.”

His voice was persuasive, but India steeled herself against his coaxing.

“I have something else on tomorrow night,” she answered vaguely.

“Then the next night, or the next. Just tell me when.”

“Call me.” India retreated behind the big double doors, closing them with a soft thud behind her. She leaned against them, listening until she heard his footsteps cross the pavement and the slam of the car door. The engine started at first touch and the little car hummed away. Only then did she walk toward the lighted hallway. What would it have been like to go to the osteria with him? It sounded like the perfect romantic setting for an evening with a man you liked, or might fall in love with. The scent of applewood, candlelight flickering on ancient whitewashed stone walls, wine straight from the vineyard … and Aldo Montefiore with his firm hands and strong profile.…

The particular high shrilling call of the Italian telephone
system penetrated her consciousness as she idled her way dreamily up the stairs.

A phone was ringing. Her phone! India leapt the last few stairs two at a time, fumbling with her key in the lock. Slamming the door behind her she rushed across the room, flinging her satchel onto the sofa as she went. Maybe it was Fabrizio. Maybe he’d decided to slip away from his guests and spend a few stolen hours here with her.

“Yes.” Her voice had a breathy, expectant quality.

“Signorina India Haven?”

“Si. Pronto.”

“A call for you, signorina, from Los Angeles.”

2

Jenny Haven was dead. The headlines splashed across the newspaper in bold black print with painful finality. The photograph reproduced below showed a laughing blond woman, no longer as young as she was doing her best to appear, but nevertheless beautiful. The line of the jaw might have been a little less perfect than it used to be, the well-known bosom a little less firm, but the eyes were
smiling with Jenny’s familiar wide, gray-blue gaze, and the full mouth curved in the enticing smile that contrived to be both demure and provocative at the same time. And neither face nor body owed a single point to Hollywood’s finest cosmetic surgical scalpels. Jenny had had a fear of hospitals and doctors and the idea of voluntarily submitting herself to the knife had filled her with such horror that even when the edges of her beauty had begun to blur and it had seemed necessary because of her career to “help things along a little,” as her agent had suggested, she had been unable to bring herself to do it. Jenny Haven had been the perfect combination of corn-fed middle America and Hollywood glitz. She was the blond girl-next-door and the unattainable star who lived in a rarified atmosphere of blue skies and perpetual sunshine, limousines and lovers, the woman that young men around the world fantasized about possessing and young girls dreamed of becoming.

Venetia folded the paper carefully so that she wouldn’t see that headline every time she glanced at it lying on the empty seat next to her. Especially the caption that ran across the top of the picture: “Jenny, the Golden Girl—Suicide?”

Jenny had been fifty years old and they were still calling her a girl. “It’s because that’s the way they all remember her,” Paris had said. “It’s affection, Vennie, they’re not being unkind.” Paris had understood. And yet she was the only one who had
not
protested that it couldn’t be true. Paris had remained silent when Venetia and India had sworn it simply couldn’t be right, that Jenny, who loved life, would
never
have committed suicide. The newspapers were hinting that maybe pills and booze had had a lot to do with the twisted wreckage of the silver Mercedes at the bottom of Malibu Canyon—that, and possibly a fading career, and the split-up with the live-in lover of the past two years, Rory Grant, almost
half her age and into his first big break as star of a new TV series.

The newspapers had thrown it all up, using everything they could find to add dimension to a story whose headline had rocketed around the wire services of the world. Jenny Haven was dead.

The endless tears slid down Venetia’s cheeks. She didn’t even bother to try to stop them anymore, letting them fall from her swollen eyes, not caring about her blotched face.

It was India who had been most vehement against the suggestions in the papers. “Suicide!” she’d cried, and her brown eyes had flashed with anger. “If Jenny were committing suicide she’d have done it in the Rolls!” She had been so right that it had struck them as irresistibly funny and the three of them, alone in a VIP waiting room at London’s Heathrow Airport, had fallen into fits of hysterical laughter that had been even more painful than the tears.