Judith Krantz (41 page)

“You’re the best looking of the three of us,” Fernanda said sincerely. She only hoped that when she reached her mother’s age she’d be as chic as Liddy, since nothing else but staying in style would mean anything in that hideous, faraway, unimaginable future.

“Thank you, Fernanda, but after the frightful morning I’ve spent, I’m amazed that I haven’t torn my hair out.”

“Bad luck at Bergdorf’s?” Valerie asked sympathetically.

“There were some good enough things, but I can’t believe how expensive they are. What on earth has happened to prices? Even on sale, at close to half-price, there’s almost nothing I can afford—there wasn’t a single simple daytime dress for under seven hundred dollars, no long dress I would care to be seen in for less than twelve hundred.”

“I’m sure tomorrow Miss Kelly at Saks will have a better assortment for you,” Valerie said hastily. “Everyone says that Bergdorf’s has become the priciest store in town.”

“Let’s hope so,” Liddy said, trying not to sound
as discouraged as she felt. After one of her maiden great-aunts had died, her fixed income of thirty-five thousand dollars a year had grown to almost sixty thousand. Her parents lived on, as healthy as ever, controlling what little remained of the Stack estate. Her family had always had far more history than money, and even when they died, she couldn’t expect much. However, prices had continued to rise steeply in Europe as the value of the dollar steadily lessened, so that now Liddy could no longer live in Marbella in anything approaching the style she had established when she first went there thirty years ago.

She hadn’t so much as changed a slipcover or bought new towels in ten years; she hadn’t been able to give the pool or the guest bathrooms the major overhaul they needed; she had reduced her staff so that now she ran her villa with only the help of one maid, one gardener, and a cook. Liddy spent more and more time every day filling in for the servants she no longer had. She had reduced the number of house parties she gave each year, although, of course, they were the last economy she could make, for without them, where would she be? Indeed,
who
would she be? Incredulously, Lydia Henry Stack Kilkullen began to feel as if she were the proprietor of a small business who saw herself being steadily but surely forced into bankruptcy.

Worst of all, Marbella was no longer the drawing card it had been for so long. She traced it to the evil day when Prince Alfonso had sold much of his ownership in the Marbella Club to a fabulously rich Saudi Arabian, Al-Midani, who, to the universal dismay of the residents, had allowed so much development to take place that the town was now disfigured by tall apartment buildings and shopping centers. Almost all of Liddy’s friends had abandoned their homes on the coast and moved inland to the hills behind the Cadiz road, building mansions worthy of Beverly Hills in new residential developments.

The town of Marbella itself was still full of people, but they weren’t the right people anymore, Liddy
thought acidly. The new visitors were unspeakably awful. They made the invasion of rock stars and backgammon professionals of the seventies look as brilliant as the truly golden, glorious sixties. Her friends continued to come to her house parties, but the day would soon come when an invitation to her villa would no longer bear any cachet.

In fact, that day had come already, if she were to allow herself to face the truth. It was only habit that made her friends return each year. What did they say to each other at night, in their guest suites? Had they noticed all the signs of deterioration that she knew were there, or did her still-meticulous hospitality outweigh the fact that the Marbella Club was no longer glamorous, the fact that although the Archduchess von Hapsburg, the Bismarcks and the Rothschilds were still coming to Marbella, their main topic of conversation was how much it had changed for the worse?

“I’m counting on Miss Kelly,” Liddy said, as lightly as possible. “I won’t begin to really worry unless Saks lets me down too. Now, Fernanda, what’s new in your life? Exactly what is going on with you and that husband of yours?”

“Nothing much,” Fernanda said with false calm. It certainly hadn’t taken old Mum long to get down to the most unpleasant subject she could have raised.

“From what I hear, I have every reason to be concerned about you.”

“No, really not, Mother. Val, do tell Mother all about the show house and the great electric train victory.”

“Valerie told me the whole story last night at dinner,” Liddy said. “I think you did well to speak up, Fernanda. Lady Georgina sounds like a most agreeable person. And her husband seems a sensible man, in spite of all the things one hears about him.”

“He knew it was absolutely wrong even before she did,” Valerie remarked. “We’ll go over to the show house after lunch, shall we? The Rosemonts have turned out to be charming, both of them.”

“Actually,” Fernanda said, delighted that the
conversation had turned away from her troubles with her husband to the Rosemonts, “I bumped into Jimmy Rosemont the other day on Madison Avenue and we had a quick drink together.”

“Did you indeed?” Valerie said with quick curiosity. “A quick drink?” How come this was the very first she’d heard about this meeting, she wondered. Fernanda had never been known for afternoon drinking, nor, she imagined, would a man as busy making billions as Jimmy Rosemont be strolling idly around the streets of Manhattan looking for people to pop into bars with. But even Fernanda couldn’t have … yes, Fernanda not only could have, she
had
, Valerie realized, looking at the fugitive expression that was crossing her sister’s face. My God, was there nothing she stopped at? Didn’t she realize what a ghastly idea it was to mess with Georgina’s husband? If it got out—and how could it not?—the whole city would be talking about it. Her damned sister was in heat every day of the year. And just when she and Georgina were getting on so well, too.

“When was that, Fernie?” Valerie probed casually.

“Oh, last week, I don’t remember exactly. But he did say something I meant to discuss with both of you when Mother got here. He wants me to introduce him to Father.”

“Why?” Valerie asked sharply, her fury at Fernanda’s sexual activities forgotten for the moment.

“What else did he say?” Liddy asked intently.

“He said he had a business proposition that he’d like to put before Father, and that he thought it was always better to meet a man through a member of his family or a mutual friend.”

“What did you tell him?” Valerie demanded.

“I said … I said that Father wasn’t the easiest man to meet when it was a question of business, but I’d do what I could. Actually, I was stalling to see what you thought.”

She could hardly tell them that she’d already
promised to introduce Jimmy Rosemont to her father, Fernanda thought. Their lunch, in the small, luxurious apartment she knew he kept for just such secret meetings, had been a disappointment sexually, but curiously enough she felt most kindly toward him. No man had ever showered her with such intelligent and detailed praise for the specific beauties of her body. More important of all, no man had made her feel so young in a long time. There was a great deal to be said for older men.

It wasn’t Jimmy’s fault that he’d been so excited from the moment they started to make love that he couldn’t hide it. It wasn’t his fault that she’d noticed the state he was in—who could miss it?—it wasn’t his fault that she’d been overcome by that familiar disappearance of her desire when she realized that even if his endurance was as prodigious as it was reputed to be, he was basically just like all other men. All Jimmy Rosemont really wanted to do was put it in her and get his own satisfaction, and no amount of his elaborate foreplay could disguise that brute aim.

She’d been convinced that if she didn’t fake an orgasm, he’d keep her in bed all afternoon, trying one thing after another to pry it out of her. He certainly got the prize for persistence. And she deserved one too, Fernanda thought, for the sheer artistry of the orgasm she’d produced. He, the legendary cocksman, hadn’t been able to tell it from the real thing any more than any other man ever had, and she’d managed it with elegant dispatch, as soon as she realized that he’d never give up on her although she had been turned cold by his robust, athletic eagerness.

They’d parted in mutual good humor. He’d been delighted by her performance and she’d been pleased with his astute and discerning compliments. She’d told him that she couldn’t meet him again because she liked Georgina so much that her conscience would bother her. A nice touch, that, Fernanda thought. It got her off the hook of having to go through another such experience, and it kept his self-esteem intact,
always important with any man. If he wanted to meet her father, why not? That introduction, she knew for certain, wasn’t why he’d asked her for lunch.

“Did he say anything about buying land?” Valerie asked.

“No, Valerie, a cow,” Liddy said witheringly. “Of course he wants to buy land. Everyone has wanted the same thing for twenty-five years, and the answer has always been the same. Your father won’t sell.”

“I wonder,” Fernanda said slowly, as if she were thinking out loud, “if Father marries Red Appleton, won’t things change? Maybe he’ll be ready to sell—won’t he want to have more time to enjoy life? After all, Red’s loaded, everybody knows that. It wouldn’t be fair for him to ask her to give up her way of life and live on the ranch—and at the same time, how would it look if he lived on her money?”

Liddy choked on her Evian. “Marry!” she hissed when she’d regained her breath. “You talk about it as if it were a minor thing! What have the two of you not been telling me? How far has this business gone?”

“Fernie’s talking off the top of her head, Mother,” Valerie said hastily. “They’ve just been seen a lot together.”

“Over a period of months and months, Val, and suspiciously often,” Fernanda objected. She didn’t like to hear her speculations dismissed so quickly.

“Neither of you has the slightest common sense,” Liddy said angrily. “If there’s any chance that your father might remarry, don’t you realize what it would mean to the two of you? This Red person is only forty-one. What’s to prevent her from having a baby or two, for pity’s sake? And how do you know that the ranch wouldn’t be left to any male child she might have? That’s been the Kilkullen tradition since they came here out of the bogs and began to act like the British aristocracy.”

“You don’t really think that Father would cut us out of his will?” Valerie said incredulously.

“Why not?” Liddy said, trying to rein in her impatience
with these criminally ignorant, naive children. “If he had a son, he’d be perfectly capable of leaving you and your children some worthless souvenirs and keeping the ranch in one piece, in trust for his son. He thinks both of you have quite enough money—which you do—and he’s already paid for your expensive educations, thanks to me.”

Valerie and Fernanda sat in stunned silence. With all their chat about the Red Appleton developments, neither of them had thought the matter all the way through to its logical possible conclusion. They were too accustomed to thinking of themselves as the inevitable Land Grant heiresses to imagine a Land Grant heir ever being born and taking their place. This was the modern world. Such things simply didn’t happen. But they knew Mike Kilkullen and they knew he didn’t live in the modern world.

“Naturally, you two haven’t planned any counteraction,” Liddy said scathingly.

“What can we do, Mother? We can hardly go to California and break up his little romance,” Valerie managed to say.

“Both of you should be busy planning to spend Christmas at the ranch, you and every
single
one of your children. Fernanda, your Jeremiah is nineteen and Matthew is seventeen. Your Heidi and Valerie’s three girls are all adorable. With six grandchildren, two of them young men, swarming all over him, your father won’t have much time to see this Red creature, and he most certainly will realize that he has heirs already.”

“My kids are planning to go skiing,” Fernanda wailed.

“My girls have sub-deb parties all during the Christmas holidays, Mother,” Valerie said.

“Absurd! None of that matters. They
must
be at the ranch. And in good spirits about it. No whining,” Liddy snapped.

“Mother, it was one thing when you sent us to the ranch every time you possibly could—we understood why—but our children weren’t born there, they
don’t know much about you and Father, we haven’t brought them up the way you brought us up—how could we explain it to them?” Valerie asked:

“I don’t know and I don’t care, but you’ve got to do it! If your father marries again, you’ll have to share his estate with his wife even if he doesn’t have any children. And then there’s always Jazz, Jazz who practically lives there! A man can make a will any way he chooses. What if he leaves you practically nothing? What if Jazz and his new wife get the ranch and you get the cash in his account at the bank, the way I did?
I’m talking about billions of dollars
. Don’t you two nitwits have the sense to understand that?”

Valerie and Fernanda exchanged a quick glance of terror. Ever since they could remember, their mother had drilled into them the fact that she had sacrificed her marriage to enable them to get the education and the advantages that good Eastern boarding schools and friendships with nice girls from nice families would mean. They knew that they owed her their escape from growing up as a pair of Orange County country mice. It had always been understood that when they did become heiresses, they would provide Liddy with a handsome percentage of their inheritance in return for all she had done. Both Valerie and Fernanda had never questioned this future arrangement, nor did they now, but they realized that their mother’s panic was not just for them but for her own future as well.

Panic was not an emotion they had ever heard before in Liddy Kilkullen’s voice, but as they heard it now, it infected them instantly. The three women sat silently, staring at the tablecloth as the waiter removed their half-eaten fish. Fernanda and Valerie were both frantically trying to decide how they could change their children’s Christmas plans and force them to accept the trip to the ranch.