The Rich Shall Inherit (39 page)

But Felipe’s eyes passed over her without a flicker of recognition. He bowed deeply and almost, but not quite, allowed his lips to touch Aunt Melody’s hand. “I am at your service, Miss Abrego,” he said, “and I would be delighted to show you the sights of Venice.”

Aunt Melody gazed approvingly at him through her lorgnette. “Young man,” she boomed, “I’ve seen enough sights these past two months to last me a lifetime. A pity we didn’t meet you earlier; it would have been a good deal easier on my feet! However, I’m afraid it’s too late; we plan on leaving the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh, Aunt Melody,” Angel protested, quickly looking at Felipe, “perhaps we might decide to stay just a little while longer? After all, there’s so much we haven’t seen yet, and who knows when we might be back in Venice.”

Aunt Melody stared speculatively at her niece and then at Felipe. “Hmm,” she said, sweeping grandly into the salon, “we’ll see my girl, we’ll see.”

“‘We’ll see’ always means no,” Angel whispered to Felipe with a sigh.

“You could try a little persuasion,” he grinned, taking her arm and following Aunt Melody.

Poppy stood as if turned to stone as they disappeared into the crowd. Felipe hadn’t even given her a second glance; he’d simply gone off with Angel as though she didn’t exist. It was as if all those stolen afternoons had never happened, all their kisses, the held-back passion, the words of love … had been meant for
Poppy Konstant
and not
Poppy Mallory.

“My dear, are you all right?” Osgood Barrington asked worriedly. “You look awfully pale.”

“Please,” whispered Poppy, her blue eyes dark with anguish,
“please
, would you tell Aunt Melody that I suddenly felt faint … that I’ve returned to the hotel …”

“Why not let me call her?” he asked, alarmed.

“No! No, please. It’s nothing really, I’ll be all right … and I don’t want to spoil their fun …” Poppy’s soft gray velvet skirts swirled around her like a dove’s wings as she fled down the stairs and into the night.

“Poppy? Poppy, are you awake?”

She shut her eyes even tighter, pretending to be asleep as Angel hovered over her anxiously.

“Oh, dear,” wailed Angel,
“do
tell me you are all right, Poppy.”

“Where is she?” demanded Aunt Melody, bustling into the room. “Darling girl, are you feeling better? What is it? Food poisoning, I’ll bet, you can’t trust this foreign food, you know …”

Poppy sat up wearily. It was no use feigning sleep; with Aunt Melody shouting in her ear only the dead could remain still. “I think it must have been something I ate,” she admitted in a small voice, “but I’m quite all right now. Except for a headache.” It was true, her head
did
ache, but it was nothing compared with the pain in her heart. She would rather have been mortally wounded in combat than die of the wound Felipe had just inflicted. And the terrible thing was that she couldn’t even die, she would have to live and carry this pain with her forever.

“But you look terrible, child,” exclaimed Aunt Melody. “I’ll speak to the manager at once and ask him to call a doctor.”

“No! No, please,” she cried. “I assure you, Aunt Melody, I’m all right now.”

“Well, you look to me as though you’ve had the stuffing knocked out of you,” Aunt Melody said bluntly. “I wonder if we
shouldn’t leave Venice as we’d planned after all. This heat is really very unhealthy.”

“Oh, Aunt Melody, you promised,” cried Angel, bubbling with excitement. “Isn’t it wonderful Poppy?
We’re staying on!
Felipe Rinardi—the
Barone
Felipe Rinardi—has promised to show us the city.
‘His city,’
he calls it, and from what he tells me he owns a good part of it.
Two
palazzi, Poppy—and a wonderful old villa with acres and acres of vineyards and farms. He’s even asked us to stay there with his uncle Umberto. And, of course, Felipe inherits everything when his uncle dies.”

“You certainly seem taken with him,” Aunt Melody commented indulgently, “though I have to admit he’s a very charming young man, and I suppose things have been a bit boring lately for you two girls.” She glanced at Poppy again worriedly. “If you’re quite certain you’re all right, I’ll take myself off to bed. My feet are killing me!” Wrenching off her tight purple satin slippers, she hobbled to the door. “Sleep well, girls,” she called gaily, “tomorrow is another day.”

“Oh, Poppy,” Angel cried as the door closed behind her. “Felipe is
so
wonderful,
I’m afraid I’ve fallen head over heels in love.”
She threw herself onto the bed, laughing and kicking up her heels in a flurry of sapphire silk chiffon. “And I thought it would be a waste of time to wear my Paris gown! Didn’t I tell you the effect it would have on some romantic Frenchman? Well, Felipe may not be French, but he’s certainly romantic so it’s the same thing. He has the most interestingly
haunted
face, Poppy, sort of like a starving musician. If only you could have seen the way he looked at me, as though I were the only girl in the whole entire world … oh, he’s just wonderful,
wonderful.
The boys in Santa Barbara seem so juvenile compared with him. Didn’t you think him handsome, Poppy? Did you notice that his eyes were a
true
green? ‘Mossy’ is how I would describe them … goodness, here I am talking like a Shakespeare sonnet, I
must
be in love….”

Poppy turned her face to the wall, clenching her jaw to keep the tears from coming, the way she had years ago when Papa failed to return.

“Poppy? Aren’t you excited for me?” Angel asked anxiously. “Oh, I’m so selfish!” she wailed suddenly.
“Of course
, your
poor
head. Wait, I’ll get a cold cloth.” She dipped a linen towel into a jug of cold water on the bedside table and held it to Poppy’s head. “This will make you feel better, I promise you,” she said. “Oh,
Poppy,” she added with a happy sigh, “it’s all going to be
such fun!”

There was no need for Angel to hold the cold compress to Poppy’s head; she was already as cold as ice. Her web of lies and deceit had come tumbling around her ears when she’d been introduced to Felipe as Poppy Mallory—that hateful, hurtful
shameful
name! “Poppy Konstant” did not exist. And neither would she now ever become, as she had in her dreams, Poppy Rinardi. Felipe had chosen Angel instead. And how could any man resist her, Poppy asked herself wearily. She was so very beautiful. And, of course, she
was
Angel Konstant.

1898, ITALY

Poppy lay in bed the next morning, one arm flung over her eyes trying not to watch Angel dressing in her best to meet Felipe, but there was nothing she could do to cut off her endless excited chatter.

“Shall I wear the yellow, Poppy?” worried Angel. “Or does it make me look too pale? Maybe the pink would be better. Or how about this plain white silk blouse and a dark blue skirt? Yes, I think after Monsieur Worth’s extravaganza, it’s better to be as simple as possible.” Throwing a heap of clothes onto the bed, she changed her outfit yet again.
“Oh dear!”
she moaned, sitting in front of the mirror and struggling to capture her silken hair into a knot, “this humidity does impossible things to my hair; it simply won’t stay up. Poppy, do you think it’ll be all right if I just tie it back with a ribbon?”

“You’re late,” Poppy said quietly, “he’s been waiting fifteen minutes already.”

Angel glanced despairingly at the clock. “Goodness, then this will just have to do. Still, it’s a woman’s privilege to be late, and anyway Aunt Melody is with him. Do I look all right?” she asked anxiously.

“You
look wonderful, as always,” replied Poppy, burying her face in the pillows as the knife twisted again in the wound, remembering how
she had
worried what to wear, and whether
she had
looked her prettiest for Felipe.

Angel flung herself on the bed beside her. “Do you
really
think he likes me, Poppy?” She asked wistfully,
“Really
likes me, I mean? Last night seems so far away, almost as if I’d dreamed it all. Oh,
I de wish
you were coming too, it’s too bad you have this hateful headache. I shall miss you so.”

She hugged Poppy compassionately, then, bouncing from the
bed, she hurried to the door, turning with her hand on the latch. “But I completely forgot,” she cried.
“Of course! You
were going to tell me about the man you’d met.
Your secret lover!
Oh, my goodness, I can’t wait to hear all about him! What fun that we’ve both fallen in love at the same moment, Poppy! Remember to tell me the
instant
I get back!” And blowing a handful of kisses, she flew from the room.

Poppy’s breakfast tray remained untouched on the table in the stuffy darkened hotel room. The bitterness of her rejection and the desolation of her loneliness brought memories of her childhood, and she trembled as though she really had the fever she’d complained of, going over and over Angel’s excited snatches of conversation again, searching for some small reference to herself in Felipe’s words. She considered asking Aunt Melody whether Felipe had mentioned her, but it was so obvious that all his attention had been focused on Angel that she knew it was pointless.

There had been a posy of violets on Angel’s breakfast tray that morning, and with it a note reminding her that Aunt Melody had given him permission to escort her on a tour of Venice’s wonderful churches. Naturally, Aunt Melody had been invited along as chaperone, but there had been no mention of Poppy in that note.

The lonely morning hours ticked by as slowly as a funeral procession. A maid came to take away Poppy’s tray, and another brought her the light lunch Aunt Melody had ordered, returning an hour later to remove it again, untouched. At last Poppy heard the excited sound of Angel’s voice from the corridor and then the door was flung open.

“Goodness, Poppy, you’re still in the dark,” Angel cried, rushing to the window and flinging open the shutters, “and it’s such a
beautiful
day!
Oh Poppy, it’s the most perfectly wonderful day!”
She perched excitedly on the edge of Poppy’s bed, her eyes full of dreams as she remembered. “We went to the church of San Sebastiano where Veronese is buried and saw all his lovely paintings, and then to Santa Maria della Salute on the Grand Canal, and San Giorgio Maggiore—you know, the one on the island that seems to float across the horizon—and Santa Maria della Pietà, where Vivaldi was concert-master from 1709 to 1740. Poppy, Felipe knows
everything
about Venice. And you know what he said to me when Aunt Melody wasn’t listening?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He said, ‘Venice is like a lover who wraps his arms around you and promises never to let you go, so that even if you go away, you know you will always return to his arms!’”

Poppy gasped in horror as she heard her own words repeated, but
Angel didn’t seem to notice. “Isn’t that just too romantic for words?” she asked. “And then afterward, Poppy, we had this enormous lunch at a little restaurant he knows on the Zattare, just a trattoria really, with red-checkered tablecloths, but so charming. And oh, Poppy, the
food
—real Venetian risotto and tiny spiny-shelled crab and that delicious chocolate
granita
you told us about.”

Pausing for breath, she regarded Poppy anxiously. “Are you feeling better? I do hope so because we are all to go to the Teatro La Fenice tonight for the symphony.
Do
say you can come.” Her lovely eyes clouded with concern as she noted Poppy’s miserable face. “But you still look so pale! Aunt Melody is right, you must see a doctor.”

“No, really, I’m all right,” Poppy replied, forcing a smile.

“Then please say you’ll come, I’m just dying for you to meet Felipe, I swear he gets more handsome every time I look at him. And you know something,” she murmured dreamily, “when he looks at me it’s not the way men usually do—
you
know what I mean. It’s not just that I’m a pretty girl—he makes me feel ‘special.’” She sighed happily as she began to undress. “Well, I suppose I must rest before tonight. Perhaps I shall sleep and dream of Felipe. Oh,” she cried suddenly, clapping a hand to her mouth, “but Poppy, you were going to tell me about
your
secret lover! Come on, now, tell all!”

“Oh … it was nothing,” stumbled Poppy, “nothing like … like you at all. Just someone I saw in Florian’s … someone I… admired from a distance. It wasn’t important…”

“What a shame.” Angel sighed. “Still, maybe it’s for the better, falling in love is so
exhausting.
I can’t wait for tonight… and Felipe …” she added, smiling dreamily as she climbed into bed.

Poppy tossed and turned, listening to Angel’s quiet, even breathing as she slept the afternoon away. First she told herself yes, she would go to the theater tonight; she would force Felipe to look at her, to acknowledge that she existed, that what had happened between them was real… and then she’d tell herself no, she couldn’t go through with it—she couldn’t humiliate herself again. But in the end, she knew she must see him.

She wore a somber dark red silk dress that made her hair glow with subdued chestnut lights, and she looked pale and composed as she followed Aunt Melody and Angel downstairs to meet Felipe. She thought she saw a flicker of concern in his eyes as he noticed her, but decided she must have been mistaken when Aunt Melody said in her booming voice, “Did you meet my other niece last night? Poppy
Mallory? Of course, she’s not really a niece, but we all think of her as Angel’s sister.”

“Aunt Melody, of course Felipe knows all about Poppy!” cried Angel.
“You
remember? I told him over lunch.”

“Oh, dear, I must be getting old,” sighed Aunt Melody as Felipe bowed to Poppy without meeting her eyes. “I seem to forget so many things these days.”

“I’m pleased you could join us, Miss Mallory,” he said politely.

“Poor Poppy has been so ill,” Angel told him as they walked through the foyer to the hotel landing stage where a gondola waited. “We’re just so relieved she’s feeling better.”