Empress Bianca (17 page)

Ferdie laughed. ‘You are an incorrigible romantic, as your husband is always saying. I’ll help. Of course I’ll help. It would be great if Philippe could find himself a wife, and I somehow don’t see him doing that without a little push from his friends.’ Then he paused, became sombre, and said, ‘I had no idea you and Bernardo were having problems.’

‘No one knows,’ Bianca said, her voice breaking as if she were about
to cry. ‘He has another woman.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘One tries to put a brave face on these things,’ she said, assuming a manner she took to be stiff upper-lip English.

‘You are truly an exceptional woman,’ Ferdie said, his voice filled with admiration. ‘Bernardo must be insane. He’s a lucky man to have a wife like you. Any man would be.’

‘That’s the best compliment I’ve received in ages. Maybe ever,’ replied Bianca, always lavish with her praise. ‘I’d better let you get off the phone before you turn my head anymore. See you later. At the usual time.’

Encouraged by the way that bit of preparation had gone, Bianca now needed to neutralize Bernardo. This she did when they were dressing for the evening. ‘I’m trying to make a match between Oriente and Philippe,’ she said to him. ‘At dinner, I’m going to seat everyone in a very eccentric manner on purpose. I’ll dot the children around the table. Julio on my left, Pedro and Antonia on yours. Ferdie on my right. If you ignore Oriente, Philippe will have no one to speak to but her. With a bit of luck, he’ll realize what a lovely girl she is, and we’ll have a lovely wedding to look forward to.’

‘You’re such a romantic,’ replied Bernardo, who only ever saw what his wife wanted him to. With that, he leaned over, kissed her on the back of her neck, cupped her breasts and said: ‘I’m so glad you’ve stopped accusing me of seeing another woman since your return from New York. I could eat you right now.’

‘I wish you would,’ she replied, feeling herself respond, ‘but not now. I don’t want to have to put on my makeup again.’ Despite the fluctuations in their relations since she had first accused him of infidelity, the sexual attraction between them still remained strong. They were still in love with one another, and she still found him irresistible with the result that Bianca had not kept to her plan to push for a divorce but had embarked instead upon a torrid kiss-and-make-up phase with him. This, as things turned out, served her purposes even better than if she had planned them.

Having finished dressing before Bernardo, Bianca left him standing in front of the mirror brushing his hair while she went to the drawing-room to put on some background music. She chose Frank Sinatra and Stan Getz, hoping to set the mood with something cool and romantic.

She then sat down in her favourite chair on the front veranda and
waited for the first guest to arrive. It was Oriente. Bianca offered her a drink, which Duarte, the houseboy, brought back from the pantry. The two women were sipping their drinks and chatting when Philippe and Ferdie arrived within a minute of one another. No fool, for all her blandness, Oriente noticed that her hostess did not offer either man a drink. Instead, as soon as each of them had settled down into the chair of his choice, Duarte padded into the room. Bianca, in anticipation of the sybaritic sophisticate she would soon evolve into, made all her servants wear black shoes with rubber soles so that they would not make any more noise than a cat walking on marble as they served her and her guests.

Silent as a thief, Duarte presented each man with his drink of choice, chilled white wine for Philippe and a Bloody Mary for Ferdie, leaving Oriente to conclude accurately that each man was already so much a fixture in the Calman household that the houseboy knew what they would want to drink without them having to ask. Oriente knew that this observation had ramifications but, starved of sufficient knowledge to know what those were, she pushed it to one side, together with the vaguely disquieting sensation that her presence might be useful rather than desired.

‘Shall we?’ said Bianca, jumping to her feet and leading them all into the dining room.

Once the hostess had seated everyone around the table, and Duarte had served the cold vichyssoise, she moved to test the water and see if Ferdie was really as ‘sweet’ on her as she sensed. Leaning towards her daughter Antonia, seated between Bianca’s least favourite child, Pedro, and Ferdie, she said: ‘Darling, you mustn’t forget to tell you father about your day at school. He’ll be so proud of you.’ Beneath the table, however, a message of another sort was being conveyed at the same time, for while she was speaking, Bianca purposely - but delicately enough for it to be construed as accidental - brushed her right knee against Ferdie’s thigh.

Having done so, she pulled back, turned her attention to Ferdie and said: ‘One’s children give one such pleasure. Don’t you think kids and a good marriage are the best things in life?’

‘After work,’ Ferdie laughed.

‘Of course, for a man, after work,’ Bianca tinkled with all her renowned charm, stopping short of flirtatiousness. Then she leaned in towards Ferdie, touched him on the left arm between his wrist and his
elbow and, once more fleetingly brushing her knee against his thigh as if by accident, said: ‘Do you think we have a budding romance here? Look at how taken Philippe is with Oriente.’

Ferdie swallowed his soup, smiled and said in what was patently a
double entendre
: ‘I see every prospect of a budding romance.’ With that, he brushed his knee past Bianca’s thigh.

Instantaneously, she felt a surge of sexual excitement. ‘It would be so wonderful,’ she responded, ‘if their budding romance could bring them the happiness they deserve, wouldn’t it?’

‘I can think of nothing else I’d like more for them than to see them achieve the happiness they deserve.’

‘Nor me,’ Bianca said huskily and sexily.

With that, Ferdie slipped his left hand under the table and caressed his hostess’s thigh while changing the subject of conversation to politics.

Later, as he was bidding goodnight to Bianca, Ferdie said right in front of Bernardo: ‘Would you mind if I telephoned you tomorrow to ask your advice about something personal?’

‘I’d be delighted,’ Bianca said.

Because Ferdie had a justly deserved reputation for never looking at married women, it never occurred to Bernardo that his guest might actually be making a play for his wife right under his nose. Bianca, however, knew - or, at any rate, hoped that she knew - differently.

The following morning at eleven o’clock, the telephone rang. Before she even picked it up, Bianca was certain that it would be Ferdie. Sure enough, it was.

‘I thought about you all last night,’ he said.

Why Ferdie, you devil, you,’ she said lightly and flirtatiously.

‘I’m falling in love with you, Bianca. Would you like that?’

‘I can’t think of anything I’d like more,’ said Bianca, surprised at how quickly her little plan had worked, her voice a sensual combination of self-possession and throatiness that had never failed to inflame men.

‘I have to be honest with you. I don’t believe in extra-marital affairs. Never had one. Never will.’

‘I wouldn’t want one myself.’

‘We need to spend some time together, alone. Can you get away for the day tomorrow? We can go to my place in the country. I’m in the middle of doing it up, and I need some ideas now that Amanda’s no longer
handling it. If you tell Bernardo that I need your help, will he let you come?’

‘Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’s far more liable to say yes to you than to me.’

‘Done. I’ll phone him right now and ring you back.’

While she waited for Ferdie to call her back with the news that Bernardo had agreed to their assignation, Bianca could hardly believe the dramatic turn events had taken. Ferdie was all but proposing to her - or at any rate, he was subtly informing her that what he wanted was marriage. Shocked though she was, Bianca could hardly contain the feeling of jubilation that sprang up within her. Could this really be happening? Could Ferdie - Ferdie Piedraplata, for goodness sake - really be offering marriage? All Bianca had ever wanted was to be a peripheral member of Mr and Mrs Ferdie Piedraplata’s circle. It all seemed almost too good to be true.

Bianca had never spent any real time alone with Ferdie, so the following day was going to be important as well as instructive. On the way to his country house, they sat in the back of his Rolls Royce, the glass panel separating them from his chauffeur safely raised to preserve privacy.

From the moment she stepped into the car, Ferdie took charge. His personality seemed to fill every available iota of space, even more than it had at her house. While Bianca herself had a strong personality, by the time the car stopped outside the house, which I M Pei had built on the island a hundred metres from the old presidential retreat, the price she must pay for their relationship to progress from friendship to intimacy was clear. Bianca would have to concede all control to him. She could already tell that Ferdie Piedraplata was the sort of man whose need to command was so great that even the more extreme forms of Latin American machismo paled into insignificance beside it.

To someone as used to having her own way as Bianca was, this was a departure from the norm, but she rationalized that it would be a welcome relief to have someone else orchestrating life for a change. After all, Ferdie had already indicated that he was in the market for a wife, not an affair, so if they got along well, he would give her everything she had ever desired, and more. So why place obstacles in his path when, with a bit of compliance, he might offer her even more than Philippe could? After all, she asked herself, had not all her efforts been a quest for what Ferdie had,
was and represented? As she set foot inside the I M Pei extravaganza, she made a mental note to surrender her will to Ferdie’s.

Without realizing the enormity of what she was doing, Bianca even lay down what she thought to be a reasonable condition for swapping a life with Bernardo - or one with Philippe - for a life with Ferdie. Since she did not love him, Ferdie must fulfil the reason why she was entering into this relationship: he must make all her worldly dreams come true.

As Ferdie showed her round the house, Bianca was careful to play true to the role she knew would win his heart. Being a firm proponent of the view that men preferred to earn the regard of a woman to having her serve it up to them without effort, she did not to let on to him that she was eyeing his country house with a view to being its future chatelaine.

Even though she rightly suspected that he was showing it to her with that objective in mind, he would have to voice his intentions in clear and unequivocal terms before she would even acknowledge that marriage might be a possibility for them. He would, in short, have to win her. With that in mind, Bianca gave helpful but noncommittal pointers about how to finish the décor that, she could tell, would have been exquisite, had Amanda been given the chance to complete the job.

While this ostensible advice session was taking place, Ferdie was steering her, as she suspected he would, to the master bedroom. This in itself was an exciting prospect. As she looked around the room and saw an imperial-sized four-poster bed but no other furniture whatsoever, Bianca relieved tension by quipping: ‘I think you’ll need a bit more furniture than that to give this room the elegance its proportions deserve.’

Ferdie smiled and shut the door without locking it. Then, his face a mask of desire, he stepped up to Bianca and kissed her for the first time.

No man had ever kissed her quite like that before.

His tongue felt as if it were made of jelly. The sensation was utterly alien to her. Bianca could not immediately decide whether she liked it or not and, thrown by a sexual situation she had never envisaged, responded as best she could, trying to mask her uncertainty and anxiety while at the same time intent on enjoying to her fullest capacity what was happening between them.

Unfortunately, as the moment dragged on, and Ferdie’s tongue did not lash her with desire but retained its gelatinous quality, she became at a real loss as to how to respond. She was, after all, used to men who were
voracious, whose tongues were instruments of desire. But his seemed to be all sensuality. Whether there was fire there remained to be seen, but she had never expected to find herself in the position with any male of the species where she was unsure of how to respond. Or indeed, unsure of why he was performing as he was.

Just as Bianca was wondering whether Ferdie had judged their first foray into the physical a success or failure, he answered the question for her in the most unexpected way: ‘Will you marry me?’

‘Marry you?’ Bianca said feebly, lost for words for one of the few times in her life.

Ferdie smiled indulgently. ‘Yes, marry me.’

Bianca gesticulated speechlessly.

Ferdie started to laugh. And laugh. And laugh. He laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks, and still he laughed some more. Bianca, catching his mood, also began laughing, until they both fell onto the bed together. Gradually, their positions shifted. Bianca was on her back, Ferdie on his stomach, beside her. There was a pause, and he said: ‘Well?’ She nodded her head to indicate yes, and they made love for the first time.

For Ferdie, it was everything he had ever wanted from lovemaking.

For Bianca, however, it was even less satisfying than having sex with Philippe. Despite the fact that Ferdie was a devastatingly handsome man, and she had believed that she would thrill at his touch, she discovered the unwelcome fact that, for her, there was no chemistry between them. This, of course, was not something she could do anything about: one’s body knew the truth. And there was something about the quality of Ferdie’s skin that she did not like. Something about his scent. Something about the way he felt to the touch. Technically he was all enthusiasm and no finesse.

All emotion and no technique. On the other hand, if having sex with him were the price she had to pay to become Mrs Ferdie Piedraplata, international socialite, she would not only pay it but put a happy face on it too. Who knew? Maybe she would even learn to enjoy it.