Perfect (19 page)

T  H  I  R  T  Y  -  N  I  N  E

“Oscar,” Robert called. I heard him via the staircase transmitter in Schloss Constantin. “All ready?” His feet thundered down the carpeted stairs.

“Ready, sir,” Oscar responded. “Big sled ready to go.”

“Sebastian, did you call the Shaws and let them know we’re bringing a guest?”

“Indeed I did. You know she’s a princess.” Sebastian sounded a little put out, a little pissy. Was he having a tantrum because Robert had invited me to come along? I hoped not. Maybe the jewelry I had on would soothe him.

I was wearing a fairly simple chartreuse satin cocktail dress with art deco Cartier diamond clips pinned at my waist, an unbelievably fanciful, noisy necklace of diamond, tourmaline, and peridot beads, diamond-and-tourmaline earrings, three jeweled bangle bracelets, satin sling-back pumps, and a spray of yellow Cymbidium orchids tucked in one of my matching diamond combs. I looked sensational, if I do say so myself.

“What kind of princess?” Robert was now passing through the kitchen.

“Romanian.”

“Isn’t that nice.” From the tone of his voice, Romania clearly didn’t rank very high on Robert’s list.

“I know,” Sebastian replied. “The Romanians are as desperate as they come. But she does have beautiful jewelry. Did you see that brooch this afternoon?”

“Umm.” Robert was evidently also uninterested in women’s jewelry. “Very nice. Are you ready?”

“I am.”

A few minutes later, my cell phone buzzed and I watched the big, brightly painted antique sled, its lanterns aglow, come through the laser beams at the gate, the three horses moving at a fast clip, their hooves throwing clods of snow into the air. Oscar was perched up behind in the higher of the two benches. Every time I saw him, I wondered what was going through his mind. If he was wondering how he, a man from the tropical jungles of the Congo, ended up in snow country, riding in a fancy horse-drawn sleigh driven by an opera singer. I loved the incongruity, but I had no interest in getting any closer to Oscar than I had to.

I put my cell phone on silent and slipped it into my dress pocket. Moments later there was a knock on the front door.

“Margaret!” Robert’s voice boomed. “We are here to take you away.”

I opened the door and felt that same intense, intimate, immediate warmth of his personality that I experienced at the café. I’d never met anyone with such an indomitable persona—it was as though a giant had entered my house.

“Come in.”

He bent forward—I am a tall woman and he was at least five inches taller than I was—and kissed my cheek. His lips were like velvet and he smelled of spice.

Silly as it sounds, I was almost breathless. Here was one of the greatest superstars on the planet picking me up to take me to dinner. Don’t, for a second, get the impression I was getting starstruck. Not a chance. My brain was instantly full of visions of Owen Brace, a famous man with a famous line that I’d fallen for in a very big way, who’d tried to steal my money and break my heart. He failed spectacularly, due to my wiliness, and I learned a lesson—a humbling lesson. In spite of what Alma had said about Robert’s promiscuity, I knew who I was and what I was, and what I looked like, and no big superstar who wanted sex was going to go after me to get it. No, it simply wasn’t going to happen. Which was fine. I was immune to superstars, but still, it was flattering to have him make such a to-do over me.

“What a beautiful, beautiful woman you are.” He looked in my eyes.

My mouth went slightly dry. I swallowed.

“What is that perfume?”

“Opium.”

“Appropriate—delicious and addictive.”

I handed him my sable coat and he held it while I slipped my arms in, and then he placed his hands on my shoulders, not in a suggestive way but almost as though he were trying to reassure me. I pulled on my gloves and tucked a cut-velvet scarf around my neck. I picked up my purse. “Ready.”

“Come.” He tucked my arm through his. “Your sleigh awaits. Have you met my companion, Sebastian Tremaine?”

“Only briefly.” I offered my hand, which Sebastian took and helped me climb into the sleigh. “I’m glad to meet you—glad to be properly introduced.”

He smiled, a little defensively, as though he were expecting me to hurt his feelings again. “Indeed. I’m glad you could join us. No one should sit at home every night in Mont-St.-Anges. Robert told me you haven’t been out at all.”

I nodded. “It’s true.”

“That’s disgraceful!”

“It’s been by choice, not for want of invitations.” Inwardly I cringed at the grandeur in my voice but I wanted to put some pressure on Tremaine, see just how impermeable he was. I suspected his skin was no thicker than a frozen glaze on a pond.

“Oh, my.” He raised his eyebrows. “You are quite grand, aren’t you? You might possibly be the most important person I’ve ever met.”

Okay. I’d pushed and he’d pushed back and I knew what I needed to know—he was not a cream puff, there was a little starch in his spine. I put my hand on his. “Forgive me,” I said. “That was completely unwarranted. I’ve been on the phone all day with my lawyers and the gallery owner and they’ve just about worn me out.”

He nodded. “I understand—I talk to Robert’s promoters all the time.”

Well, that was interesting. Tremaine hadn’t struck me as the business type.

Robert called an unintelligible command to the horses and off we went.

“Russian,” explained Sebastian. “These are Russian horses specially bred for centuries to pull a troika. They’re called Orlov trotters.”

“They’re magnificent,” I said.

“The breed was almost lost during the 1900s thanks to the dictatorships but it’s coming back now. It takes someone who really knows horses to appreciate them. Are you a horse person?”

“I’m certainly becoming one.”

Robert maneuvered the sled expertly around my drive and let the team accelerate slowly. It was fascinating to watch them, and him. We absolutely flew along the road.

“This team has been working together for seven years,” Sebastian said. “You’ll notice that the center horse is in a fixed harness—that large ornate bowed frame above his back is called a Duga—and has two reins while the outside horses only have one rein each. Quite interestingly, the duga horse trots at a very high speed while the two outside horses gallop. It’s quite remarkable.”

“You really are a little jabber box, aren’t you?” I said, but by then our sleigh bells were making such a racket, he couldn’t hear me. But I caught Oscar’s expression out of the corner of my eye and I could tell he had heard because his eyes squeezed shut and his shoulders shook.

And the fact was, Sebastian never stopped talking as we raced through the center of town. He was just being polite, telling me all about this and that since I was a newcomer to the valley, but I stopped listening. We thundered into an enclave similar to ours and pulled up to a large, brightly lit chalet. A number of sleighs were already there, but none as fancy as Robert’s.

Because I was with Robert, I was near the center of attention, but mostly I kept my eye on Sebastian, watched what he watched. There was some amazing jewelry in the big jovial living room, easily snatched, but I knew he wasn’t interested in ripping off his friends. Instead, he stayed close enough to keep an eye on Robert and me, and unbeknownst to him, within my earshot. I have excellent hearing, finely honed by decades of keeping all my senses tuned in to the almost imperceptible sluggish hesitations and ticks that occurred in spin locks on safes. I listened to him gossip about me.

“I did some checking,” he said to one of the semiregulars from their daily café table. “She’s in the market for a husband but I think she’s going to have some trouble finding one here—she has a reputation as a gold digger.”

The woman rolled her eyes. “Heaven help us,” she said. “That’s what we’re supposed to be protected from in Mont-St.-Anges.”

Sebastian pursed his lips. “Well, that wouldn’t get to me as much, I mean we all do what we must to survive, but she’s so arrogant, it’s unbelievable. What on earth would a Romanian have to be arrogant about?”

“How did she get into the valley?”

“She’s a friend of Alma and George.”

The woman’s expression changed. “I’d be careful what I said about her, then.”

“Indeed I am.” He looked slightly miffed. “I can’t imagine you’d think I’d say it to anyone but you.”

And so it went.

Sebastian was jealous of me. He thought I was after Robert when in fact it was he whom I had in my sights.

“Ooooooh,” Lucy Richardson whispered in my ear. “You have the most beautiful jewelry I’ve ever seen in my life. I’d almost kill to get my hands on that necklace.”

“Thank you.” I smiled.

“You’ve certainly hit the jackpot, haven’t you?” Her bee-stung lips had curled into a mean little smile.

“What do you mean?”

“I heard George and Alma made over you like crazy this afternoon and now here you are with Constantin. Nothing like starting at the top—makes my little invitations look like nothing.” She patted my arm. “I have a feeling you’re up to something,
Princess
Margaret. And I’m going to find out what it is. By the way, look out for Robert—he’s all hands.”

“Lucy—” I began.

“Just make sure you keep
your
hands off
my
husband,” she cooed, “or I’ll scratch your eyes out.” And then she walked off.

I was beginning to understand the attraction between her and Alma—they were both just plain vicious.

The party ended at eleven-thirty and it had been the kind of party that would go all night if the host and hostess had agreed to it. But, they explained very good-naturedly, they wanted to get up and go skiing in the morning, so their guests would have to find somewhere else to carry on. Consequently, there was a mass exodus of revelers. We all stood outside in the snow while our sleighs were retrieved and brought round. Everyone was a little tipsy and enjoying the flurries, talking about what they had planned for tomorrow.

The temperature had plunged, and Sebastian and I huddled as close to each other as possible, while Robert commanded the team and Oscar stifled a yawn from his perch.

Back we raced toward town and into the square, which was now illuminated by a big, bright neon sign. It wasn’t anything you’d notice during the daytime unless you knew it was there, especially because it was over the café.

Disco Rialto, it read.

We pulled up to the door. Inside, I could see a wide, curving staircase, carpeted in faux zebra skin, descending to the basement.

F  O  R  T  Y

When was the last time I’d gone to a disco? Never. I have never in my life been to a night club or a discotheque. I’ve never cared for noise or revelry and the deeper we wound down those zebra-skin steps, which were banked with big bronze braziers filled with red flowers, the louder and louder and dimmer and dimmer it got. Finally we entered a huge room with a dance floor in the center. A stage with a disc jockey and two dancing girls in sequined hot pants and white go-go boots was opposite the entrance. A large U-shaped bar sat off to one side. Aside from its ’70s music, the room reminded me of pictures I’d seen of a glamorous pre-World War II nightclub. There was an elevated section with tables for four and six. Leopard- and tiger-skin-upholstered banquettes and little cocktail tables for two or four, with white cloths and silver Champagne buckets, circled the dance floor.

The ceiling was black and sparkly and the place was absolutely packed. Except for the clothes—which, like mine, were beautiful and expensive cocktail clothes—the dancing was exactly like a disco in the movies. Another noticeable difference (with the exception of a handful of young and shapely trophy wives), most of the people were what is known as age-appropriate to the vintage of the music, so we all knew all the words.

Fun has never been a major factor in my life. I have, instead, directed all my energy and attention to providing for myself. Sir Cranmer and I had what he considered fun, so I did, too. For him, fun consisted of an evening at my flat, sipping scotch and eating a cheese soufflé and some tomato soup, watching the news and perhaps a BBC mystery on TV, possibly followed by a little comfortable lovemaking if he were still awake and if there was time before he had to get home to Lady Ballantine. Thomas and I have what we consider fun—going to lunch, shopping for antiques, discovering new wines, followed by a little comfortable love-making, for which we are generally awake, more or less.

But when it comes to what most people consider fun, such as going to an all-night dance hall? This was a new one for me.

I took to the disco life like a duck to water. We danced without a break. I knew all the music by heart—it was what we’d played at the reform school back in Oklahoma: the Beatles, Bee Gees, Beach Boys, Linda Ronstadt, Chubby Checker and Fats Domino, with a little Zorba the Greek and Shirley Bassey singing “Goldfinger” thrown in for atmosphere.

At some point I realized Sebastian had disappeared from the scene and it made my senses sharpen. If he were going to make a move, now would certainly be a good time to do it.

I never knew Zorba could be so sexy, until—this was at three-thirty in the morning after who knows how many glasses of Champagne—Robert and I started clapping our hands and snapping our fingers, circling each other and looking into each other’s eyes. The music was more erotic than “Bolero.” If he’d asked me to take all my clothes off at that very moment, I would have.

But like a bucket of ice water over my head, or a slap in the face, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket and I was forced to excuse myself to go to the ladies’ room. I went into a compartment—this club had the most fabulous powder room, all private cabins and enough wonderful makeup and toiletries to do a complete makeover—and locked the door. I slipped my video phone from my pocket and watched Sebastian Tremaine break into my house.

F  O  R  T  Y  -  O  N  E

At least, I think it was Sebastian. But on second thought, with the night-vision goggles and the tight black clothing and high turtleneck pulled up over his chin, it could have been anybody. It could have even been Lucy Richardson. She and Sebastian were exactly the same size, and when you get right down to it, from what I knew of Sebastian and what I knew of Lucy, I realized it could absolutely be her. Did that mean I thought she’d stolen the queen’s jewelry? Not at all. She hadn’t. But I was 99 percent positive she was in my house looking to steal my jewelry.

I’d spotted the blind spots in the existing security system and the thief had, too. But he or she’d made the mistake of not checking to see if any modifications had been made since I’d moved into Tinka Alexander’s house.

Although I’d left a few lights turned on low, with the night-vision goggles, the burglar looked like someone from outer space. He’d scaled the side of the porch off my bedroom and entered through that door, setting off the silent alarm of the pressure pad under the door mat. He crept quickly, catlike, to the front of the house and searched the living room, dining room, kitchen, and then back to the master bedroom—moving paintings, sorting through bookcases, pulling up rugs, looking for a safe. Whoever it was, was extremely thorough, but not particularly efficient or savvy. For example, he—or she—moved and opened things before checking to see if there were any telltale booby-traps, such as pieces of thread or paper that only the victim would know if they had been moved. He entered my sitting room and rifled through papers on top of the desk, evidently looking for something incriminating. There was a small wall safe in the bookcases, easily discovered. He pulled an electronic scanner from his back pocket and opened it. Inside were a few pieces of Tinka’s jewelry, nothing spectacular, certainly nothing worth stealing.

Unfortunately, the intruder lifted the cloth covering the canvas on the easel and saw a completely white spread. He let go of the cloth and let it flutter back down and shook his head and then flipped through the blank canvases leaning against the bookcase. I knew there was a contemptuous look on his face and I felt a little embarrassed that my lie about working so hard had been caught out. Well, so what? I’m sure painters get painter’s block, the same way writers get writer’s block. I was having trouble getting started.

Then he went to the closet that contained my workbench and Tinka’s big safe, and found it locked. A locked door is no obstacle for a good thief, or even a semicompetent one. He flipped his lock picks into his gloved hand—he seemed to have them on some sort of instant spring-loaded affair on his wrist, something I would definitely look into—and after studying the lock for a second, selected the proper pick and inserted it.

Although I couldn’t hear it, I knew at that moment, the alarm had gone off. He jumped almost ten feet in the air. It was a horrible alarm, many, many decibels above the norm. A screaming, wailing, high-pitched sound that could deafen you for days in no time. I watched him open his mouth and yell and put his hands over his ears and then I watched him hightail it out of the house and leap over the balcony rail like an Olympic hurdler and vanish from sight into the deep snow below.

Poor Barnhardt. It took a minute for him to get himself together, and by then, the burglar was long gone—he’d sprinted up the hill and was on his way home. Barnhardt ran out of his quarters, barefoot, trying to tie his bathrobe around himself one-handed. He carried a shotgun with the other. Once inside the kitchen, he stood there, an agonizing grimace on his face, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. The blare was so horrific, its source was untraceable. I turned it off and I watched his shoulders slump. He closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath and then conducted a good, thorough search of the house. He checked all the window latches and door locks and after leaving me a note on the kitchen counter, he returned to the stable. Shortly after that, his light went out.

I went back to the dance, but the evening’s sparkle had dulled. I was perplexed and preoccupied by the break-in. Thankfully, the party was wrapping up. Donna Summer’s “Last Dance” was just ending.

“Margaret,” Robert said. “I wanted to dance with you to this. It is so romantic.”

“Sorry, Robert,” I said. “Maybe next time.”

If I were going to dance to that song with anybody—which I never had—it would be my husband, once I’d forgiven him. What was wrong with him, running off with the queen like that?

Thank God for fresh, cold air.

I was tired. I’d never been up this late. Although Sebastian had departed earlier, Oscar had remained, ever-present in the background, silently keeping his eyes on his boss and watching the crowd as though he were protecting the president of the United States or the Bank of England. We glided back to Schloss Alexander, with Robert singing “
Addio, fiorita asil”
from
Madam Butterfly,
singing out his heart to me. As we drew abreast of Schloss Constantin, he slowed down just enough for Oscar to jump out and then spurred the horses on up the hill to my house.

“Oh, Robert,” I said, as we jingled to a stop. “Thank you so much. What a wonderful, wonderful evening.”

He jumped from his side of the sleigh and came around and helped me down. “Tonight—disco dancing. Tomorrow—gin rummy!”

I laughed and shook my head. “It already is tomorrow.” I put my arm through his as we negotiated the icy path to my front door.

“Thank you again,” I said. I was ready for a move of some sort and curious what form it would take.

“How about a little cognac for your Robert?” He pushed his way past.

Before I knew it he had his arms around me and was kissing me—a very aggressive, very French, very leaned-over-backward opera kiss.

Oh, for heaven’s sake.