Brilliant (26 page)

S  I  X  T  Y

That afternoon, when we arrived back in the city, I was greeted with a bouquet of three dozen long-stemmed ivory roses. The arrangement almost took over my desk, and their fragrance filled the landing and reception area.

“Please forgive me,” the card read. “I love you, Owen.”

“What are these for?” I followed him into his office. “Forgive you for what?”

“For calling you an old fogey.”

“Fuddy-duddy.”

“Okay. Whatever it was, I’m sorry. I hurt you, and I didn’t mean to.”

“I know.” When I looked at him, I still couldn’t believe he was mine. And, God forgive me for saying this, but, deep down, even if he was mine, I still wasn’t sure I wanted him.

Twenty minutes later he stuck his head out his office door. “Kick, I left last night’s Credit Suisse faxes at the hotel. Do you mind getting them? They’re on the coffee table—I don’t want anyone else to see them.”

“Absolutely. I’ll be right back.”

I greeted the front desk staff, took the lift to the fifth floor, and let myself into Owen’s suite. The coffee table was piled with correspondence and beneath the stack was a personal computer, a small titanium Portegé, like mine. I didn’t know Owen had one. I couldn’t resist. His passwords were predictable and within seconds I was into his e-mail—dozens of communications between him and Gil about the state of the corporation detailing the looming likelihood of bankruptcy and new rescue schemes. Then suddenly I found myself looking at a months-old message from Mr. Hiller, the hacker in Vermont. The subject was Query and the message read:

“The sole beneficiary of the KDK Trust is Kathleen Day Keswick.” It went on to give my London address and phone number and a staggering amount of personal information—social security number, medical records, beauty shop appointments, even my grocery purchases. Everything I’d ever charged on a credit card. Trips using my American passport. There was nothing about France.

I wasn’t sure exactly what to do. I stared at the message, dumbfounded. It was dated the day he took me to the Panther plant and then to Cliveden for lunch. The day this all began. The phone rang and startled me back to earth.

“Mr. Brace’s office,” I said automatically.

“Where in the hell are you?” It was Owen. “You’ve been gone for ten minutes.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “The papers weren’t where you said, but I’ve got them. I’m on my way.”

He hung up without comment.

I carefully closed the computer and slid it back under the papers where I’d found it, tucked the confidential faxes into my briefcase, and then went into the bathroom and threw up. Afterward, when my legs could support me, I splashed cold water on my face. But I couldn’t bear to look at myself in the mirror. I couldn’t stand to see the marks of betrayal and humiliation I knew were there.

The phone rang again. I didn’t answer it.

I really didn’t know what to do, how to act, how to proceed. All I knew for sure was that until I decided how I was going to handle this, I had to move forward as though everything were fine, and Owen, being the sort of man he was, would never be able to tell the difference, which was one of the greatest differences between us. He was self-consumed. I was wary and aware.

I had self-control. He did not. That’s the difference between grown-ups and adolescents.

“Where do you want to have dinner tonight?”

“I think I’m going to go home and go to bed. I feel like I’m getting a cold.”

“Let’s just go out and grab a quick bite. You have to eat something.”

What I wanted to do was go home and pull the covers over my head, but I needed to protect my position. Okay, Kick, do you have the fortitude for this or not? I studied his face. How could someone who looked so good be so bad?

He stroked his finger down my cheek. “Come on. Let’s just go over to Caprice and I’ll buy you a martini and a bowl of soup.”

I nodded. It was the best I could do at the moment.

S  I  X  T  Y  -  O  N  E

The next morning was beautiful. It was Odessa Day, when we would get our first look at the Princess Arianna Collection. I dressed with particular care—brand-new navy Chanel suit with black trim and several strings of pearls. My bus bumped its way through the neighborhood along its familiar route. The coffee and cruller were probably as delicious as ever, but my mind was swamped with this terrible mess. It had kept me awake most of the night with a variety of choices, plans, and schemes about how to deal with it, ranging from murder to retribution to revenge to simple vanishment.

Did I feel as though I were in danger? That he’d kill me for the company stock? No. I felt as though I’d entered a whole new dimension, as though I were observing my life from a distant spot. I felt in complete control. In fact, I was in complete control, not only of myself, but of him.

Last night at dinner, we tried to reach a consensus on where we’d live once we were married—he wanted to stay at the Dukes, just take over the suite next door, but the hotel management was balking, which was fine with me. I just kept going through the motions.

“It’s a great hotel, Owen, but I think we need our own furniture.”

“Yeah. I suppose you’re right.”

I suggested that we keep my town house, maybe take over the one next door, but Owen nixed that idea: The neighborhood was too stuffy and stodgy. Housing became another bone of contention, and so we’d just set it aside.

The sex was the usual deal, except I’d never been so disengaged. I sent him home at nine-thirty.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just feel lousy. I think I need a good night’s sleep.”

His reluctance to leave was hollow. Maybe it had been that way all along, but now that the gauze had been removed from my eyes, I saw everything about him in high definition.

“I have an idea,” I said when he got to work. “It sounds crazy, but maybe we should just continue to live in our own places.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Owen snapped. “Find us something.” He was in a rotten, petulant mood—irritable and argumentative.

“You know, I’m beginning to think this being engaged deal is not that great,” I said to get a reaction, give him a little heartburn.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, if you want to know the truth, you’re in such an awful mood all the time, being married to you is starting to sound absolutely horrible. You should know that I’m really having some serious second thoughts.”

“Come over here,” he ordered, and wrapped his arms around me. “If it weren’t for you—I think I’d probably come unglued. You are my whole life, Kick. I promise I’ll make it up to you.” And then he gave me one of those kisses and that made him think that I thought everything was going to be all right.

At three-thirty, our team was ready. Andrew, Bertram, Owen, and I.

“I’d feel a lot better if you’d stay at the office and keep things under control,” Owen said.

“And miss seeing this collection?” I said. “Not on your life.”

“Let’s go away for the weekend.”

“Not unless you get one hell of a lot nicer between now and then.”

“You have my word.”

Owen talked on the phone for the whole ride to Odessa’s palatial Kensington town house, so the three of us sat silently, which I didn’t mind, but I could tell that it rankled Bertram. There had been some friction between him and Owen lately. Although I didn’t know specifically why, I suspect it was because Owen kept the pressure on him, and he didn’t like it. It wasn’t good for the company in the long run. “You’ve got to stop looking at this as a short-term, fast-cash business,” I’d overheard Bertram saying. “We need to invest more in relationship building.”

“Just do what I tell you,” Owen had responded.

A liveried butler opened the door, showed us into a grand reception room, and offered us tea. We all accepted, and fiddled around, making small talk. But then, as the delay stretched first to ten minutes, then fifteen, then twenty, the four of us settled into a silence we willed ourselves not to let turn insolent or angry. This was the opportunity of a lifetime, and we would make it happen. I watched it all from a perch somewhere up near the ceiling as I wandered around admiring the furniture and fabrics, works of art and bibelots.

“I’m going to ask Odessa who her decorator is,” I said to Owen. “I think we should get a place like this.”

“I think it’s a little grand, don’t you?”

“No. I think it’s just right. We’ll be entertaining so much, we’ll need this much room.”

Finally, almost forty-five minutes later, a set of French doors opened and in she swept like the Queen of the Nile, all in floaty white chiffon, her cleavage sparkling like sugar-sprinkled café au lait.

“Owen.” She took his hand and kissed his cheek. “I’m so glad you could come.”

It should have hit me like a punch in the stomach. A bucket of cold water over my head. A smack in the face with a big, cold, slimy fish. A big, cold, slimy, Scottish salmon, for instance. But it didn’t. Unfortunately, I wasn’t even a little surprised. You son of a bitch. I saw it all. Odessa had been in Scotland with Owen. It hadn’t been a stewardess. And it hadn’t been a fishing trip. It had been Odessa Niandros.

My God, I thought, how much more tawdry can this get?

“You know my team,” Owen said. “Bertram, Andrew, and my fiancée, Miss Keswick.”

I almost laughed out loud. Oh, Owen, you were making this so, so easy. And you didn’t even know it. You idiot.

Odessa tucked her arm through Owen’s and led us through the door. “I’ve set the pieces out in the dining room, I think the light is best in there.”

He turned and winked at me.

I winked back.

S  I  X  T  Y  -  T  W  O

I fixed myself a strong drink, turned on the music, and got into the bathtub. I looked at my body and started to laugh. Absolutely nothing was where it used to be. It was all still there, but lower. And there was so much of everything. And while I didn’t mind that—I mean, age is age, and unless you want to spend thousands of dollars and endure weeks of excruciating pain having it all hoisted and anchored back into place—what on earth ever made me think that a man like Owen would be interested in a woman like me, I’ll never know.

I’d been tricked, twice! In two days! With my eyes wide-open. The story was as old as time. Of course people were astonished by our engagement—all they had to do was look at him and look at me. The power of sex had deluded me into believing everything he told me. Now that I could see all the pieces, it was so obvious. No wonder he hadn’t wanted a prenuptial agreement. Star power had never been important to me before—but Owen had turned those beams on high and I was caught in their blaze.

Oh Kick. You’ve been used. You’ve been had.

Well, that was simply not true. I’d almost been used. Almost been had. Sheer good fortune had kept me from being totally fooled. There are no accidents.

The phone rang and rang.

I opened a bottle of Chianti, fixed myself a light dinner of capellini tossed with garlic, olive oil, fresh chopped tomatoes and basil, and quite a lot of cheese, watched television, and gathered myself together. My guardian angels had helped me dodge a veritable hail of bullets. Or, as Owen had so succinctly put it the day the Romanov Collection arrived on our doorstep: I’d just escaped what could have turned into my own personal—excuse my French—shitstorm of the century.

By the time I got to dessert, a blueberry trifle I’d made the day before, I was feeling much more together. And I knew exactly what I was going to do.

I put on some Schubert—no more rock and roll for me, and by God, this time I mean it—fixed myself a mug of hot cocoa with a fat plop of thick cream and a scoop of brown sugar, put on my nightgown and robe, snuggled into the living room sofa, and picked up my sketchpad.

S  I  X  T  Y  -  T  H  R  E  E

The next morning, the phone rang at ten o’clock.

“Odessa here. May I speak to Owen.”

“One moment, please, Miss Niandros.”

With that call, she officially awarded us the Princess Arianna Jewelry Collection—it would be the biggest sale anywhere of the springtime, international magnificent jewelry auction season, which was imminent. It would blow Sotheby’s and Christie’s out of the water. Bertram was so happy he was ten feet off the ground.

I gave him a hug and kiss. “I’m delighted for you, Bertram. Congratulations.”

“I love this business.” He beamed. “There’s just nothing like it.”

“You’re so right.” I laughed. “I can see Sir Cramner smiling—Ballantine & Company is lucky to have you. We’re in good hands.”

I kept my own counsel around Owen, never letting him get the slightest inkling that I knew what he was up to. I tolerated his affair and continued to sleep with him, although I did allude to having some sort of “condition” which cooled his ardor basically completely. He stayed predictable and true to form: Once the contracts were signed with Odessa, and the collection delivered and safely stored in our vaults, once the publicity was launched and the catalogue in the works, the bloom fell quickly from the rose. He was getting tired of her.

“She’s so goddamned boring—always talking about Lord this and Lady that. Who gives a shit?”

But here was the rub: She wasn’t getting bored with Owen. She was liking him, lots, and he was trapped. “She’s so fucking dull. And I don’t think she’s very bright, either.”

“I’m so sorry, darling,” I sympathized. “But, don’t worry, it won’t be for much longer.”

The nights he wasn’t at some function or other, I was usually too tired to do much more than go to dinner.

“What are you so tired from all the time?”

“Planning our wedding. It’s exhausting.”

“Why don’t we just go to a magistrate and get it done?”

I frowned. “Don’t be silly. I’ve never been married before. I want it to be special.”

I’d made—and paid cash for with his money—excessive nonrefundable arrangements. Not only did I intend to keep putting it to him in every subtle way I could think of, but also, I’d taken it upon myself to give a fairy-tale wedding on behalf of all us girls who never would have one. Everything any one of us had ever dreamed about, I was planning.

Although I never actually contacted the church, I told Owen the ceremony would be at the Chapel Royal at St. James’s Palace, where Holbein painted the ceiling and where the Queen’s own rector conducted regular services. Owen would be expected to make a significant gift to the Queen’s Purse.

And then, we had to have the horses and carriages to get the wedding party and all our guests up to the reception. That required a large deposit because the carriages were so in demand this time of year.

The reception would be at the Ritz and I’d met with them. Big time. We would take over the main dining room, a privilege granted to the few who could afford to underwrite the famous room’s entire Saturday night business in addition to the cost of the party itself. We would have an eight-course, seated dinner for two hundred, as well as a block of fifty rooms and suites for our out-of-town guests. Cases upon cases of wines and champagne had been purchased, and the wedding cake had twelve tiers and was refulgent with icing ribbons, flowers and doves, all gilded with gold leaf and sparkling sugar. All of this, of course, had to be paid for in full, up front. I’d also made a hundred-thousand-pound deposit with the florist.

“I’m stunned,” Owen said, “at how much all this is costing.”

“Well, you have an image to keep up. I know cash flow-wise, it’s not especially good at the moment, but in the long run, it’s worth the investment.”

“What in the hell do we need a thirty-piece orchestra for?”

“Dancing. It’ll be fun. I have a fitting for my dress this afternoon. Do you want to come?”

“No. How much is that?”

“I’m not really sure yet.” I shrugged.

Creditors in addition to Credit Suisse were closing in, and he still couldn’t totally control the maneuvers because of that one burr under his saddle: the KDK Trust. He had no idea how close he’d come to getting it—if he knew, it would kill him.

Office life became exactly that: office life.

I uprooted all my shamrock plants, chopped the greenery into a lovely zesty pesto, threw away the dirt, and stacked their pots neatly in the corner of the garden.

Bertram came and went on his regular schedule. He was kind, humorous, and respectful, in spite of the fact that he was under severe pressure from a number of fronts. Not only was the Arianna Auction quickly approaching, but there was much to be done to get the house ready for the grand reopening. He carried it all in good stride, like a man who had come fully into his own: His years of experience had culminated into this well-deserved, highly acclaimed, moment in his career.

I loved seeing it all come together. The house hummed with the same kind of energy it had in its heyday with Sir Cramner.