The Rich Shall Inherit (16 page)

He asked about her painting and why she had given up her courses in Florence. “It’s because I’m to be married,” she replied, lowering her eyes.

“Then we must arrange new courses for you,” he said quickly. “Leave it to me, I’ll find you the best teacher.”

Aria wondered why he didn’t understand that it wouldn’t be the same. It wasn’t only the teaching she would miss, but her friends; she’d miss their laughter and the fun together in the cafes and at parties.

The steward appeared to ask if they wished anything. “Champagne?” Carraldo suggested.

“Thank you, but could I please have a Coca-Cola instead?” She blushed as he smiled, stealing a look at his profile as he asked the steward to bring two Coca-Colas. She thought his hawkish nose made his bony face look arrogant and the purplish shadows beneath his deep-set eyes made them look even darker. She supposed some women might find Carraldo an attractive man, but he made her feel uncomfortable.

“Did you know I also have a house in Portofino?” he asked, meeting her eyes.

“No,” she replied, “but then I know so little about you.”

“We must rectify that,” he said quickly, “but I think you’ll be happy there, Portofino is always full of young people. And then, of course, there’s the house in London and the apartment in New York. Do you enjoy travel, Aria?”

“I haven’t had very much opportunity.” She sipped her Coke uncomfortably. It was served in a delicate Baccarat crystal glass with smooth rounded cubes of ice and slices of lemon, but she would have traded it for a simple can of Coke shared with her college friends any day.

As the plane prepared to land, she thought, surprised, that the half-hour flight had passed quickly. Another long black Mercedes was waiting to whisk them from Malpensa Airport to the city. “Are all your cars the same then?” she asked. “Like the interiors or your planes?”

Carraldo shrugged. “As always, there is a good reason. I was once in a bad accident—I was almost killed. I was driving my father’s old Mercedes, a car he’d had for years because he loved its style. The steering was such perfection, I was able to spin the
car out of danger. I’ve driven Mercedeses ever since, and this particular model suits my needs.”

Of course, she thought somberly, a man like Carraldo would always have a reason for everything, he would never act on impulse. Every single act would have been considered and planned. But if so, then what was his real reason for marrying her?

A butler in black jacket and white gloves flung open the door as the Mercedes purred to a halt. Carraldo had turned the tall, gray-stone eighteenth-century town house into a twentieth-century home. The floors were of bleached wood and the only carpets were the two antique Chinese silk rugs glowing quietly on the walls, like a pair of exquisitely subtle paintings. He had opened up the downstairs room to make one vast area with lofty double-height ceilings, and twin fires blazed in the unadorned marble fireplaces at each end. The walls were a plain cream and the deep sofas were all in a simple taupe linen. All the lighting was indirect, from recessed downlights or spindly high-tech lamps that cast pools of light, and a wonderful Bang & Olufsen hi-fi whispered the sounds of Ashkenazy playing Mozart through speakers as tall as Aria herself.

She stared around the room expecting to see Carraldo’s famed art collection, but apart from the beautiful rugs, the walls were bare. There was not a single painting, not a single piece of sculpture or decorative object.

“Everything in these rooms has a function,” Carraldo said. “As I mentioned before, I look at so many works of art each day that I need to allow my mind to rest in absolute simplicity. Except for one favorite painting kept in my bedroom. It’s the last thing I look at each night before I go to sleep. It stays for a month and then I change it. I don’t like to get too attached to any one possession.”

The girlish posy of flowers arranged in the center of the steel and glass dining table seemed out of character, lily of the valley and baby’s breath, stephanotis and freesia, and tiny cream rosebuds. Like a bouquet for a young bridesmaid, Aria thought, surprised.

“I chose them for you,” Carraldo told her. “I thought they might be the kind you’d like.”

Aria flushed angrily; did he think she was such an infant, then? The butler offered her a glass of champagne, and she took a large gulp, suddenly determined to behave as badly as she dared.

The meal was a simple one of Italian food, exquisitely presented and served, but Carraldo ate little, sitting back in his chair, sipping his champagne and watching her with that faint sardonic smile. Avoiding his eyes, Aria drank her champagne as if it were water, saying nothing.

They sipped their coffee in silence, and then finally he took her hand and said, “I have something to show you before we go.”

Her head was swimming from all the champagne as she stumbled beside him down the hallway and into a room that was obviously his study. An eighteenth-century oaken
cartonnière
, its leather drawers faded from burgundy to rose, contrasted with the modern simplicity of the slab of speckled black granite that served as his desk. Everything was immaculately tidy, with papers in neat piles next to important-looking books. The telephone was black and the simple pale cream shades on the windows matched the color of the walls. Aria thought it looked as though Carraldo had pared his personal life down to a minimum, and she shuddered, wondering what his bedroom must look like, imagining some cold, monastic cell. A small, gilt-framed landscape was displayed on an easel, and she recognized it instantly as a Manet.

“Ohh … How beautiful,” she gasped, bending forward to look at it more closely.

“I thought you’d like it,” Carraldo said quietly, pleased.

Aria hovered over the painting, thrilled. “However did Manet do it?” she whispered, forgetting for a moment where she was and who she was with. “How did he create such a magical feeling with just a brush and some paint? This is so … so intimate, I feel as though I am there, in that meadow by that river, on a sunny Sunday evening.”

“When Manet submitted this painting to the Paris Salon in 1860 they rejected it,” Carraldo told her, “they thought it was odd, and ugly.”

Aria stared at him, shocked. “How sad not to know that someday his painting would be appreciated, even though he must have known the Salon was wrong.”

Carraldo turned away with a shrug. “Van Gogh never sold a single painting in his lifetime. What I try to do now, Aria, in my own small way, is to find young artists of talent whom I can help by nurturing them along, and eventually finding a market for their work. Nevertheless, it’s a hard life for them. It takes a great deal of courage to be an artist, and a long time to build a career.”

“I didn’t know that’s what you did,” she said, surprised.

Carraldo took the Manet from its easel and offered it to her. “I bought it for you,” he said abruptly. “Please take it.”

Her eyes widened in amazement.
“You bought this Manet—for me?
But that’s impossible … I mean … nobody does things like that.”

“I didn’t succeed in impressing you with the maharani’s emerald,” Carraldo replied curtly, “but obviously you find this more appealing. It’s yours.”

She hesitated, staring at the painting, stunned by his magnificent gift. “I can’t,” she said finally. “Please don’t ask me why, but I just can’t accept it. Not yet.”

Carraldo replaced the Manet on its easel without another word. “It’s time to leave,” he said curtly. Aria glanced nervously at him as she hurried through the door; he seemed so cold suddenly, she was afraid.

As the Mercedes sped silently back to the airport, she told herself she was just being silly, she was just a little drunk from all that champagne. Of course, Carraldo would never harm her. But she’d felt he was angry with her for refusing his gift, and Carraldo’s anger was an unknown force.

She lay back in her seat on the plane, her eyes closed; when she finally peeked at Carraldo, he was immersed in his art catalogue and the journey passed in total silence.

The black car was waiting to take them to the launch, and as the boat nosed its way back along the canals, he finally said to her, “I’m glad we had this opportunity to talk. I feel that we know each other better now.”

But as Aria watched the sleek black Riva speed into the Venetian night, she knew it wasn’t true. She knew no more about the real Antony Carraldo than she had before. And she was still afraid of him.

Today was the opening of Orlando Messenger’s exhibition at the Maze Gallery in London, and though a great deal of not very good champagne was being consumed by a lot of very rich people, there were still very few of the little red stickers that denoted a sale. Orlando smiled charmingly at everyone, accepting quick double kisses from chic women whose dresses had probably cost more than his paintings, and at the same time keeping an ear open for the international gossip that everyone seemed to find more interesting than his work. Damn them, he thought angrily, they can talk about who’s screwing whom over their endless lunches, they don’t have to do it now!

Ever since he was an infant Orlando had been told how beautiful he was, how extraordinary his coloring, how charming his nature. The odd thing was that it didn’t seem to have gone to his head. For a time he’d enjoyed the benefits of several of Britain’s top public schools, where for some inexplicable reason he’d acquired the knack of getting himself thrown out—too frequently to please his parents. It had turned out that Orlando hated school. The child psychiatrist had told his parents his nature was totally opposed to its day-to-day small disciplines, though the larger discipline of learning was no problem to him at all. In fact he was extremely bright, with an IQ of 158.

Orlando had proven to be artistic and with a sigh of relief his parents had sent him off to spend three years at art school in Florence—on condition that he boarded with his mother’s relatives there and kept to certain rules—after all, he was then barely sixteen. In Florence, he had managed to give the social impression of a well-brought-up, good-mannered, charming young art student while at the same time carrying on a series of affairs with
his aunt’s friends. “At least they were all females,” his uncle had said with relief when his aunt had found out and was denouncing Orlando bitterly. “With those English boys you never know!”

Somehow his sojourn abroad had lengthened—after Florence there had been Paris, and then the south of France, and a detour to the Greek islands. But he wasn’t the sort to paint wilderness—his terrain was urban chic, the villas and opulent apartments and homes of his many acquaintances. He had a facility for capturing a likeness and soon learned that there was no better way to flatter a woman than to tell her he simply
had to
paint her portrait, or her house. Women were no problem for Orlando Messenger. No problem at all.

“Orlando! Lovely to see you again. We haven’t met in ages … it must have been, what? Two years ago?” The small and deadly chic woman was dressed in black and her large mouth was a glossy red gash in her white face as she smiled at him.

“At least that, Pamela,” he replied, taking her hand and turning on the charm. “I’ve missed you.”

“Me too, darling.” Her large brown eyes under their burden of gray shadow and black mascara stared knowingly into his. “I have a new chalet in Gstadd,” she murmured, allowing her hand to linger in his. “Come spend Christmas—we’re having quite a house party, twenty-six, I think….”

“Sounds great,” he said, smiling into her eyes.

“Lovely, you can do a painting of the new chalet.”

She strutted across the room on the impossibly high heels that she always wore to give her the necessary extra inches, flinging her arms around another man, a writer Orlando knew, and he heard her repeating almost identically the conversation she’d just had with him. Pamela made a habit of “creative” conquests, and Orlando thought bitterly that with her money she usually had her choice. He’d go to Gstaad for Christmas and she’d expect him to entertain her in bed—if and when she felt like it—and in return he’d do a nice little watercolor of the house. Singing for his supper again!

He stared moodily at the unsold paintings; they were charming and colorful, and they were just a touch commercial because he’d tried to gear his talents to what the customer liked instead of giving himself free rein and painting what
he
wanted, the way
he
wanted it. It had to stop, he told himself bitterly, he was an excellent artist, maybe even a great one. The trouble was he was
no good at starving in a garret, he enjoyed the high life too much. And that’s where Poppy Mallory’s money came in.

He’d called the lawyer in Geneva right away and told him his story. Lieber had listened and then he’d said: “And what documentation do you have to back this up, Mr. Messenger?” What could he say? He’d searched his father’s study from end to end, looking for birth certificates or family letters and documents, and found nothing.

Lieber had sounded doubtful. “Send me a written statement, Mr. Messenger. Let me know if you come up with anything substantive,” he’d added, not quite dismissing him, because after all, his story might be true.

Orlando sighed frustratedly, staring at the smart, laughing gossiping crowd; with Poppy’s money he could be one of them instead of always on the outside, and then there’d be no more having to be charming to the Pamelas of the world. It would be their turn to try to charm him—and by God, he’d make
them
sing for their supper!

“Well, well,” said Peter Maze, the gallery owner, “just look what the wind blew in! My word, Orlando, the gods are visiting you! That’s Antony Carraldo.”

He bustled away, beaming as he held out his hand to the dark, hawkish-looking man standing by the door. Orlando’s eyes lit up; he knew that not only was Carraldo a major art dealer, but that from his bottomless wealth he’d already sponsored two decades’ worth of young artists, establishing several as major names. Carraldo was an artist’s savior, a true patron in the old-fashioned sense, and he was exactly what Orlando needed. Nor was Carraldo a man who wasted his time. He knew Carraldo wouldn’t have come here unless he was interested in him. He sipped his champagne coolly, watching and waiting for Peter to introduce him, but Carraldo was pointing at the painting displayed in the window.