Heirs Book Two: American Lady (5 page)

In a corner of the room her French maid,
very superior and so chic she made Charley feel gauche, surveyed
the young American woman with the slightly bored and supercilious
expression that only born and bred French women knew how to
cultivate.

Charley was wearing a short, simple T-shirt
dress of white silk crepe, completely covered with shimmering blue
bugle beads. It was one of several new dresses she had bought at
Saks when she got Maixent’s invitation. Feeling a little guilty, it
was after all a Bill Blass and not an American Lady design, she had
shelled out over fifteen thousand dollars from her Trust Fund for
seven new outfits for her week in Altobello, bought under the
eagle-eyed direction of her designer friend Griffin.

Mignon, the maid allocated to her by the
palace, had spent two hours curling her long hair so that it fell
like a mass of dark chocolate shavings around her head and down her
back. She had spent a further forty-five minutes on Charley’s make
up, applying soft brown eye shadow with gold streaked highlights to
her eyes and outlining her lips with warm coral lipstick. Then she
had sprinkled gold dust very lightly over her tanned face and
shoulders.

Gazing at her reflection in the mirror
Charley thought she had never looked lovelier. She glowed with
vibrant expectancy. Tonight, she and Maix would be alone.

“If I may suggest, Madam.” The maid leant
forward and gently selected one of the bottles for Charley.
“Fascination by Chambussy.”

Charley took the stylishly cut glass bottle
and lifted the stopper. She didn’t want to admit she’d never heard
of the perfume. She dabbed it on her wrists, throat, the hollows of
her elbows and behind her knees. She felt decadent, worldly,
sublimely French. And she had been having the time of her life ever
since Maixent had met her at the Nice airport four days ago.

* * *

When Charley had mentioned her Easter trip
to Altobello to editor David Averberg, he’d been excited about the
prospect of photos inside the Spring Palace. “No one’s interested
in the sea, petal. But a sneaky peak inside the
verboten
corridors of glamour would soar our mag sales higher than Michael
Jackson’s
Thriller
. You know the Marchessinis refuse to open
the palace to the public.”

“Well it is their home, David!” Charley had
protested.

When she waved Maixent’s invitation in front
of her mother, however, Nikki’s response had been reserved to the
point of New York winter deep freeze.

“I’d rather you didn’t go.”

“Why not?” Charley had been amazed at her
mother’s reluctance.

“Easter is a family occasion, both for them
and for us,” Nikki replied. In the end her mother couldn’t offer a
good enough excuse to hold out against Charley’s enthusiastic
determination. They had compromised, in Charley’s eyes, by
celebrating Good Friday together before Charley flew out to Nice on
Saturday.

Zooming into Altobello from Nice airport in
the royal helicopter with its official flag, Charley had fallen in
love with her first breathtaking view of the kingdom.

“Those jade peaks are the rooftop of the
Hotel de Beausoleil which marks our border with France. On the
rise, back from the Bay, is the Spring Palace. The mountains ahead
separate us from the Italians.” Maixent, who, against all protocol,
had met her at the airport, pointed out the sights to her. “St
Benezet is about two miles wide stretching back from the sea.”

She was able to take in all of St Benezet in
one sweeping panorama, unlike the scope and density of New York
city. “Oh, my God, it really is postage stamp size.” Charley found
herself giggling with nerves. Get a grip! she pulled herself up
sternly. What was it about Maixent that made her overwhelmingly
aware of her body. So much so that she found herself
overcompensating for that awareness by keeping her bodily parts
like fingers, hands and arms strictly away from Maix who was
sitting temptingly close to touch.

“Postage stamp size,” he agreed with a grin.
“But we’re a collector’s item. I can’t believe you lived in Paris
for three years and never visited Altobello.”

“Declan and I were either book-deep in study
at the American Embassy high school or else mom was sweeping us off
to Milan or London for fashion shows or back to New York for family
vacations.”

She was equally thrilled with her guest
bedroom in the palace, shown her by the very dignified major
domo.

The bedroom contained a huge four-poster bed
with a white lace counterpane, an exquisite gold and glass dressing
table, and two Louis XIV chairs by the window. The room was filled
to overflowing with masses of red roses, pink carnations and white
lilies. There was a card from Maixent saying that he hoped she
would enjoy her stay. The major domo had his minions unload her
Luis Vuitton luggage and Mignon had appeared to unpack and put away
her belongings.

“I have arranged to have coffee brought up
so you can relax on the balcony, Mademoiselle.” Mignon moved
quietly and efficiently between suitcase and closet.

“Thank you.”

“Some of these items will need ironing,
Mademoiselle. I will arrange for that.” The maid lifted Charley’s
toiletry case and Charley pounced nervously.

“That’s fine, Mignon. I’ll unpack this
myself.” She hugged the case to her chest self-consciously. Damn,
how did Maixent live with servants poking around his private life?
Hidden away amongst her toiletries were her birth control pills.
That piece of information was not what she wanted gossiped about by
the palace servants, especially since she didn’t even know if she
would need them on this visit.

Charley had spent an hour relaxing on her
private balcony with a cup of very bitter coffee and an impressive
view across St Benezet.

Before dinner Maixent had shown her some of
the palace layout. She had visited many large houses and mansions
throughout America and Europe, but the Spring Palace struck her as
sumptuous and sensual. Charley took out her Leica and started
clicking furiously as they moved through rooms. She had asked
Maixent about taking photos and he had agreed as long as she only
took photos of the staterooms and not the private residence.

“It was built in the thirteenth century as a
fortress,” Maixent explained. “Pretty austere. Around the
Renaissance two wings were added and some of my later ancestors
made minor additions, but really the palace has maintained its
integrity through the centuries.”

“Was it intimidating growing up here?”

“No, not really. I never knew any other
home. But my father isn’t always comfortable here. He spent most of
his youth at our estate in the Saone-Rhone Valley in France. It
belonged to his grandparents and he was close to his grandmother.
In fact Princess Ghislaine lived there until her death in
1962.”

He led her into the music room, one of the
more comfortable and cozy rooms in the palace. Charley wandered
over to the French windows where a dazzling array of straight-edged
flowerbeds were vivid with color.

He put his hand over her camera lens, his
fingers brushing her hand. “This is one of my mother’s favorite
rooms. Please don’t take photos here.”

At the contact, Charley’s breath hitched.
She lowered the camera and to her disappointment he removed his
hand. Glancing around the room she was drawn, like Juliet to Romeo,
to the photographs mounted on the wall and covering the grand
piano.

“That looks like Marlo Jinx’s work. No one
has quite his knack for creating a fashion trend. Look at these
images. He uses the beauty of the model and keeps it all simple
with one or at most two dramatic elements.”

“Most of those are covers he did of my
mother before she became queen.”

“Jinx made her look stunning.” Then,
realizing that sounded like an insult to his mother, she quickly
added, “Of course she still is a beautiful woman. But in those
photos he made her look ethereal, sublime. They’re truly works of
art.”

She dropped her eyes to the photos scattered
on the grand piano. Carefully she studied a photo of Henri as a
young man, staring seriously into the camera and holding his baby
brother. She lifted her gaze to meet Maixent’s intense stare.
Again, her breath caught and her coherent thoughts sank into
sponge-like mush. She forced her gaze back to the photos.

“You don’t look like your father.” Her voice
sounded breathy as though she’d been scaling the outside walls of
the palace like Romeo.

“I know. I’m all American blond hair, blue
eyes and stocky lumberjack compared to Henri’s European
swarthiness, intelligence and sophistication. I definitely take
after maman. Aurelie is more like the Marchessini side of the
family.

“Come. I’ll take you downstairs where you
can take more photos.”

The floor of the grand hall was marble and
in the center was an ornate fountain overflowing into a marble
pool. The setting sun shone through long slender windows high
overhead, bathing the marble in a warm golden glow so that it
seemed to be living and breathing. Above them the crystal
chandelier caught the sun and burst into prismatic rainbows.
Charley changed film, clicking away as Maixent kept talking.

“There are over two hundred rooms in the
palace. Not as impressive as Buckingham which has, I believe,
nearly eight hundred. We have twenty royal and guest bedrooms and
nearly fifty staff bedrooms. But we’ve now converted most of the
north wing into offices. A lot of the governance of the country is
actually run from the palace.

“When he came to the throne my father
decided that Altobello was his home. I think maman almost had heart
failure the first time she saw the palace. Apart from a couple of
rooms in one wing where he had an office and a bedroom and some
formal rooms for state occasions, he hadn’t renovated anything.
Maman informs me the palace was nothing but a horrible dank hole
until she got her decorating hands on it.”

The restoration of the Spring Palace had
been one of Leigh’s major tasks since becoming queen and it was
ongoing.

Ahead of them stretched a curving staircase
swathed in enough red carpet to cover a football stadium, Charley
thought. Instead of going upstairs, Maixent gently touched her
elbow to lead her to the side, skirting one of the six sets of twin
marble colonnades which were gilt edged with marble bas reliefs.
His fingers felt like a caress on the soft skin inside her arm,
unfurling a tendril of desire in the pit of her stomach. But was he
touching her intentionally or just being gentlemanly?

“It’s against the odds that our branch of
the family came to the throne because my great grandfather was the
younger son of the king and it was only because his older brother
died childless that Balzac inherited the throne and passed it
eventually to my father.”

She moved in step with him as he led her
through to the ballroom. Here the walls were lined with silk in
cerulean blue and carried motifs picked out in gold and silver
embroidery. The sofas lining the walls had also been upholstered in
silk. Eight gigantic columns reached sixty feet upwards to support
the ceiling, which was tiled in blue, silver and gold mosaics.
Three gigantic chandeliers dripped crystal from the center and
either end of the room. Running down one length of the entire room
were a series of balconies from which guests could overlook the
festivities below.

He dropped his arm and Charley had to bite
her lip to stop from begging him to please touch her again. Her
skin craved the warmth of his fingers.

“Do you hold balls here?” She forced herself
to sound casual, changing lenses for a wide angle shot, and then
zipping around the room to catch the best light and angles.

“We use this mainly for state receptions,”
Maixent said. “Any official balls that we hold with a guest list in
the thousands, such as the Rouge et Rose, tend to be in the Sports
Palladium. It’s much bigger, has a stage for acts and the ceiling
can be retracted so you can dine al fresco.”

Taking her along a corridor he threw open
the double doors under a huge arch with a flourish. “The throne
room.”

The reception room was lined with flocked
scarlet wallpaper and rich Axminster carpet covered in massive gold
floral designs. Against the wall facing them was a dais under a
gilt encrusted canopy and flanked by two full-length mirrors, also
framed in gilt. On the dais sat a broad throne, its ornately carved
back gilded in gold leaf and featuring a rearing dragon’s head.
Charley peered more closely at what looked like a second dragon
head entwined around the neck of the first. Glowing like embers
were three enormous rubies falling like rain from the neck of the
second dragon.

“In this room many historic ceremonies have
taken place since the sixteenth century when my ancestor Prince
Philippe I established this room and moved the Dragonblood Throne
here. He decided that if it was good enough for the French kings it
was necessary for Altobello to have a dedicated throne room.

“Although it’s had some refurbishment from
time to time, the throne is essentially as it was constructed for
Geatane-Auguste, the founder of the Marchessini line. This is also
the room where my parents had their civil wedding ceremony before
the religious service at Cathédral St Georges.”

For a few moments Charley stared enthralled
with the throne. Changing film again, she paused to say, “And it’s
okay for me to take photos?” David Averberg would be bouncing
around in his size seven shoes in anticipation of the advertising
windfall she was about to deliver: no other photographer had been
given such an exhaustive glimpse into the most private palace in
the world. Her best friend Janie had rolled her eyes, mouth pursed
in an awestruck whistle when Charley had confessed where her next
assignment was. “Okaaaay, so why didn’t you tell me the prince was
smitten? No other reason to give a lowly freelancer carte blanche
entrée to his private home.”