The Rich Shall Inherit (57 page)

“That’s just the trouble, Netta.” Poppy sighed, her blue eyes wistful. “Now I really do need him.”

When Netta had gone, Poppy found it hard to slip back into her old routine of simply work and more work, and she roamed the house restlessly, finding fault with everything. She complained that the fruit served at lunch had not been fresh enough, that the cheeses were too cold and the wine too warm. She told Villette she was wearing too much makeup and Solange that her dress was cut too low, and, seething with unexplained nervousness, she went for long, solitary walks. The chestnuts were blooming again, their pink candles weighing down the branches with beauty, and the springtime skies were as blue and clean as though they’d been freshly washed. She glanced at her reflection in the shop windows as she passed, thinking that she looked like any other smartly dressed woman out shopping—except she was different, because
of who
she was, she was always alone.

Despairingly, she returned to the house and shut herself in her room. Luchay huddled onto her shoulder making his affectionate little cooing noises in her ear and she stroked him automatically. “Poppy
cara
, Poppy
chérie,”
he muttered, “Poppy darling …”

“Oh, Luchay,” she sighed despondently, “I love you too. Whatever would I do without you to pour out my troubles to? I wish you could tell me what it is I feel for Franco Malvasi. Am I in love, Luchay? Is this what it feels like? This nervous, excited
… distrait
feeling? Not the soaring on eagle’s wings that I expected? But I don’t even know him, Luchay, and he barely thinks of me. What am I to do?”

“Poppy
cara
, Poppy
chérie!”
he murmured comfortingly, nibbling
at her hair, and she laughed, offering him some pumpkin seeds.

There was a knock at the door and Watkins appeared. “Madame,” he said, “there is someone here to see you.”

“Is it the Signore Malvasi?” she gasped, color brightening her cheeks.

“No, madame, this is a lady. I’m afraid she wouldn’t give her name.”

“I suppose it’s a girl looking for a job, Watkins. Of course, we don’t need anyone, but show her into the office and I’ll speak with her.”

Watkins coughed discreetly. “This is not our usual type of girl, madame, perhaps the office would not be the proper place for her. May I suggest you see the lady in the small salon!”

A “lady,” worried Poppy as she tidied her hair and hurried to the small salon, hoping it wasn’t an irate wife on the trail of her erring husband. She paused, her hand on the door, giving herself a moment to pull herself together, and then, tilting her chin arrogantly, she swept in, ready for battle.

“Good afternoon, madame,” she said, “I am Poppy Mallory.”

The blond woman dressed in discreet but expensive black swung around from the window and came toward her.
“Bonjour
, madame,” she said in a low, cultured voice.

Poppy stared at her curiously. She was tall and very beautiful in a haughty, well-bred, understated way, with smooth blond hair, large green eyes, and a petulant mouth. She looked like any of a dozen women you might see shopping in the rue de la Paix, the sort with a rich husband and a title and a family tree that went back a couple of centuries. Poppy knew there would be a chateau in the country and a town house near the Parc Monceau and enough money to buy whatever she wanted. So why, she wondered uncomfortably, was she here?

“I’m bored,” the woman said suddenly, “my life is driving me crazy. My husband is distinguished, charming, a gentleman—he would never come to a place like this.” Her large green eyes were desperate as they searched Poppy’s face. “I crave excitement,” she whispered, “something to break the monotony of my days. I thought about this a long time before I came here, but now I’m offering you my services.”

“Your services?”
Poppy gasped, taken aback.

The woman stared at her somberly. “Where else could I get what I want? I want sex, Madame Poppy … sex with strangers
where I don’t have to be the ‘lady’ … I want delicious, exciting sex—not the routine embraces of a husband who is too busy thinking about his next business or political coup. I want a touch of illicit excitement in my life … I want to be a whore when I feel like it—and a lady the rest of the time. I came here because I heard that your house was exquisite, that a man could find superb food here, and wonderful wines … and the promise that whatever his pleasure, ‘it all can be had,’ they say, at Numéro Seize. At a price.”

“Are you saying that you want to work here? Like the other girls?” asked Poppy, amazed that any woman could talk that way. Up until now she’d thought that only men had those feelings about sex.

“I am.” Sitting primly in a little gilt chair, the woman stared back at her.

“But obviously you are from a good family, maybe even a prominent one,” Poppy protested, “aren’t you afraid of being recognized? Fashionable Paris is a very small, very closed society. The word would get around in a minute.”

“Naturally, I’ve thought about that. I plan to disguise myself, I shall wear a dark wig, and an eye-mask … and, of course, I shan’t parade myself in the salon. I shall be available only for special clients … those chosen by you. And I shall be exorbitantly expensive, though of course I shall take only one franc for myself.” She smiled aloofly. “But I promise you I shall give value for money.” She stared hard at Poppy. “Well, what do you say, madame?”

Poppy thought of the whispers that would flash around Paris, and she knew the scandal would make her an immediate success. “We must design a special room for you,” she agreed with a smile, “one to suit your mysterious dual personality. But tell me, madame, what is your name?”

The woman looked at her with hooded, unsmiling green eyes. “Why not just call me Catherine?” she said.

Catherine in her dark wig and with a veil hiding her face would arrive at the back door of Numéro Seize on three afternoons a week, flitting like a shadow to her own suite on the second floor. There she would change from her usual smart dress to black lace underwear, black silk stockings, and high-heeled shoes. Opening an exquisite Buhl cabinet she would remove a long-handled black whip and, stroking it lovingly, would lay it on the Empire chaise
longue at the foot of the bed. “This will be my specialty,” she’d told Poppy happily; “at last I can live out my fantasies.”

“But we don’t permit violence,” Poppy had gasped, shocked.

“This isn’t
violence.”
Cathérine laughed. “This is
pleasure.”
And she’d run the lash between her fingers longingly. “I had an English lover who taught me all about it,” she said musingly, “he told me they liked it because of the way they were brought up, with sadistic nannies who always spanked them, and schools where they were caned—usually for the master’s own pleasure. Now,” she said, shrugging, “they can’t do without it.” She sighed. “It was the most exciting thing I ever did.”

“Exciting?” whispered Poppy, curiously.

Catherine’s hooded eyes were full of the remembered thrill as she said huskily, “So exciting that your whole body quivers with it, lusts for it, you can’t wait to see the lash slide over the skin, the drops of scarlet blood, and hear the groans of ecstasy … and then afterward, oh, afterward, when he finally takes you … oohh, Poppy, then you really know what a man can do for you. Of course, not all men will want that.” She shrugged. “And there are many other forms of sexual pleasure that are enjoyable to me.”

Dragging herself from Catherine’s erotic fantasies, Poppy made a note that whenever an Englishman came to Numéro Seize, he was to be offered Catherine’s special services.

Catherine was a well-kept secret, but it seemed she talked to her closest friends. Suddenly more society women arrived on the doorstep of Numéro Seize, swathed in high-collared coats and hiding beneath veiled hats, eager for a sensational escapade, and soon Poppy had a group of beautiful women who whiled away their afternoons masked and naked under satin sheets at Numéro Seize, instead of shopping at Poiret or taking tea at Fauchon.

The rumors that at Numéro Seize a man might be seduced by his own wife—or even his best friend’s—reached as far as Naples, and Franco Malvasi laughed when he heard them. It was the beginning of June, almost a year since he had first met Poppy. Then she had been too young, too vulnerable, she was a small, wounded animal protecting herself from the old predator—man. Cleverly, he’d given her money and advice and he’d kept his distance, until now she was a rich, notorious woman of the world. Poppy was ready for him.

1904, FRANCE

Luchay ruffled his feathers enjoying the August sunshine, stretching first one wing and then the other, preening his long tail feathers and fluffing out his chest. He was watching Poppy through one topaz eye as she fastened her pearls and inspected herself in the mirror.

It was stupefyingly hot. Everyone had retreated to their villas at the coast or to their country houses, and the city was deserted. Poppy had given her girls the month off, intending to go to Marseilles, but Netta was having one of her flings with her latest love, a textile merchant from Toulouse, and she’d disappeared on vacation with him. So she was alone and at a loose end in the empty city. However, today she’d woken up with a definite purpose in mind.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror. She was wearing a blue dress; it was the first time she’d worn any color but gray in years and it felt like coming out of mourning. In a mad moment, inspired by the sunlight and flawless blue skies, she’d hurriedly bought a dozen dresses in a rainbow of pale summer colors, and she was enjoying the youthful feel of wearing simple cotton voile, after so many nights in elaborate satin and velvet.

“I feel like a girl again today, instead of a twenty-four-year-old woman, Luchay,” she laughed, dropping a kiss on his soft feathered head. Her car was waiting outside the front door, a long, glamorous dark green de Courmont like Simone Lalage’s, except Poppy had refused to have a chauffeur, and the sight of her at the wheel of her enormous car had created yet another sensation in Paris.

She sped down the rue des Arbres and into the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, weaving her way through the maze of streets and heading for the suburbs. Half an hour later she paced a desolate tract of land in a scrubby straggling village on the southwestern fringes of the city, listening to the salesman extolling its beauty.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she told him sharply, “neither the village not the piece of land is beautiful, and the price you are asking is far too steep. No one but a fool like me is going to come along and buy this land, so you’d better take what I’m offering you and be done with it. If not”—she shrugged carelessly—“then I shall go elsewhere.”

“Fifteen hectares, madame? At that price?” he asked despondently.

“Fifteen hectares,” she said firmly.

“It’s robbery!” he sighed, leading the way back to his small office. Poppy signed the deed with a flourish, handing him a check for the exact amount she had planned to spend.

Afterward, she walked back alone to look at her desolate fifteen acres and the distant view of the Paris skyline … “Find out which way a city is going to grow,” Franco had told her, “study the planning permissions, the railway links, the needs of industry, then buy a piece of land in its future path. Snap it up for a song, and let your investment lie until the city catches up with you. Not just Paris, any city, any country … you won’t get a quick return on your money, but as the city develops, your land will suddenly be in demand and it will be worth a fortune.”

Poppy sighed with pleasure as she took a last lingering look at her fifteen unlovely acres. They were her first stake in her future, and they promised her a life in which she need no longer be a madam.

It was early evening when she drove back down the rue des Arbres, parking with a flourish outside her door. The windows of her apartment were open to the hot night, but the air was still and oppressive and without a breeze. Feeling lonely, she ordered a light supper and a bottle of champagne to celebrate her purchase. “But there’s only you to share it with me, Luchay,” she murmured sadly, throwing open the glass doors that led onto her little courtyard. It was filled with tubs and pots planted with roses and camellias. A stone Bacchus-head fountain embedded in the wall splashed soothingly, so that if she closed her eyes she could almost imagine she was back in the courtyard at the Konstant House, a child again with Angel and Greg, and Rosalia
calling them all with her little silver bell for dinner … The old familiar shroud of loneliness enveloped her again and she shivered.

She was leaning against the open door, her head flung back and her eyes closed, when Franco walked in, and she looked as though her thoughts were a million miles away. “It’s not good to drink alone,” he said reprovingly.

Poppy stared at him with a little gasp, so filled with pleasure at seeing him there that she almost wanted to cry.

“I felt so alone,” she whispered, “and now you’re here.”

He took her hand, holding it in both of his as he put it to his lips. “Do I assume the champagne was to celebrate my arrival?” he asked with his usual sardonic smile.

She shook her head. “It was intended to celebrate your advice. I bought my first parcel of land today. My first stake in my new fortune.”

“Then we’ll drink a toast to your success,” he said, pouring the wine.

She smiled into his eyes, feeling as giddy and breathless as though she’d already drunk it. They tasted the wine, still gazing into each other’s eyes, and behind them Luchay fluttered anxiously on his perch, skittering up and down and screeching.

“Poor Luchay, we didn’t forget you,” Poppy said, laughing, released from the spell; but the parrot still pecked angrily at his golden stand, glaring at Franco with his beady eyes.

“There’s a little country inn I know, out in the forest near Rambouillet,” Franco told her, “where they serve the most delicious food you’ve ever tasted. What do you say we leave this tired, hot city, and go where we can breathe fresh green country air and indulge ourselves in a wonderful dinner.”