The Last Princess (46 page)

As Lily waited for the call to be put through to Palm Beach, she couldn’t keep from shaking. Ever since that terrible day when the call had come about Jeremy, she had feared that another day would come when something would threaten another of her children. Now her worst nightmare had come true.

For a moment Lily was afraid that Harry wouldn’t be there. It would be so typical, she thought angrily. Harry was never there when the children needed him most. But suddenly she heard the crackle as the operator said, “Go ahead, please.”

“Harry?” she cried.

“No, madam,” came another voice. It must be Harry’s valet, Lily thought.

Trying to speak calmly, she asked, “This is Mrs. Kohle. Is Mr. Kohle there?”

“He can’t come to the phone, I’m afraid. He’s taking a nap.”

“Wake him up,” Lily said, nearly hysterical. “Wake him up, this minute. This is an emergency!”

Harry was surprised when the man timidly came out onto the terrace. He had left strict instructions not to be disturbed. He had heard the phone ring, but no one he knew had this number. He hadn’t even told Ellis or his publisher that he was coming down.

The truth was that for the past several months he had been plagued by a nasty cough and had finally decided to go to a warmer climate to see if the sea air would do some good.

But once here, his bronchitis had turned into pneumonia. His had been a long, slow recovery. If only he could lay off those damned cigarettes! But his three-pack-a-day habit was a hard one to break, and he was sick of all those doctors drawing a long face over him.

After all, he was only forty-seven. As soon as he shook off this illness, he’d be good for another twenty years at least. And if he wasn’t, who cared? Life didn’t seem to hold as much as he had once thought, after all.

And there was certainly no one he cared to speak to. But before he could snap at Jenkins, he saw the worried expression on the man’s face.

“It’s Mrs. Kohle, sir. She says it’s about your daughter—an emergency.”

Those words struck him like a death knell. He, too, remembered the day of that terrible phone call from the dean. Harry threw off his blanket and shakily tried to rise from his chair, but Jenkins stopped him. “I’ll bring a phone to you out here, sir.”

“Lily?” he cried hoarsely into the receiver as soon as Jenkins brought it. “What’s the matter?”

“Melissa is desperately ill in Paris. She’s just given birth. She’s in the American Hospital at Neuilly. I’m flying there tonight and I thought you’d want to also.”

Harry listened with horror. “Oh God, Lily! How sick is she?”

“I don’t know exactly; they wouldn’t tell me over the phone. But the doctor said for us to come immediately.”

Harry knew that he wasn’t fit to travel. The doctor had told him that to strain his lungs at this point might be fatal. That didn’t weigh in the balance if Melissa was gravely ill, but could he even get himself to the airport and onto a plane? He was using a humidifier round the clock.

He shook his head in frustration. “God, Lily—I don’t know what to say. I’ve been sick—”

“Sick? Even if you’re dying, I don’t know how you can even think of not coming! Melissa needs us! And—and there’s also a baby—our grandchild. Well, if you want to or not, it’s up to you. Good-bye.” The line went dead, leaving Harry looking at a silent receiver.

Lily, for her part, wanted to scream. Sick? She didn’t believe that for a moment. Then, suddenly, she remembered that Ellis was in the living room. She ran to him and cried, “Oh God, Ellis—it’s Melissa!”

“Not—”

“No, not dead, but almost as bad.”

Between sobs, she choked out the story.

Instantly Ellis took command. “Now don’t go to pieces, Lily. Of course it’s bad news, but Melissa is young and healthy. I have a feeling that she will pull through this just fine. But you have to be strong now, for her sake. You get your things ready while I call the airport. We’ll charter a plane if necessary. We’ll be with Melissa before you know it.”

The contrast between his reaction and Harry’s was so stunning, she almost couldn’t take it in. “You mean, you’ll go with me?”

“Go with you?” he repeated blankly. “For God’s sake, Lily, you don’t think that I would consider letting you go through this alone, do you?”

Tears brimming in her eyes, she said chokingly, “Oh, Ellis. I love you so much. I just don’t know what I’d do without you!”

“Okay, now go and change and throw a few things in a bag. I’ll get Mary to help you.”

Mary packed a suitcase while Lily slipped into a simple dress and coat. Ellis took her bag and ushered her to the elevators. As they waited for the car to come, he held her in a tender embrace.

“Don’t worry, Lily, dear,” he whispered softly. “Melissa is going to be all right.”

Somehow, with Ellis next to her, Lily was able to keep going. She could keep at bay the terrifying visions of what might be happening to her daughter.

W
HEN THEY WERE AT
last airborne, heading toward Paris, she stared out the window and said emptily, “I just don’t understand. I know we’ve been distant. But how could this have happened, Ellis? How?”

“Well, now, she has been living in Paris, hasn’t she? On her own …”

“That’s true. And of course she didn’t come home for Christmas.” They both knew what that meant. She was already pregnant and starting to show.

“But I just got a letter from her last week and she said everything was fine.” Lily said this as if by saying all was well she could make it so. “She said that she was modeling all the time.”

Gently Ellis suggested, “She was probably trying to spare you the pain.”

Lily nodded. Her appearance was calm but her thoughts were frantic. “She’s not married, of course. Oh, Ellis, a
baby
. And my own child didn’t trust me.”

Ellis could only hold her hand and try to cheer her.

At long last they landed. Their taxi speeded along the road from Orly to the Parisian suburb of Neuilly.

Lily ran into the reception area ahead of Ellis and demanded in her still-fluent French, “
Où est Mademoiselle Kohle? Vite, vite, s’il vous plaît.”

“Le troisième—trois cent quarante-deux.”

“Merci.”

Lily walked swiftly down the corridor and into the elevator. Ellis was at her side when the doors closed on them. When they reached the floor, she ran the length of the hall, her heels tapping loudly on the marble floors.

It was a shock to see the pale figure lying so still. It wasn’t until Lily stood at the edge of the bed that she could be sure it was her own daughter lying there.

All color and life seemed to have fled from her. Even her shining dark hair lay lank and lifeless. She was so emaciated that Lily flinched at the sight of her bony arm lying on top of the green sheet.

“Melissa, darling?” Lily whispered.

The eyelids flickered feebly, then closed again.

Oh God, Lily thought. She looks as though she’s dying.

She turned away as tears flooded her eyes, and stumbled out into the corridor and pressed her forehead against the wall. She was almost unaware of Ellis’s presence until he put his arms around her.

Lily wept unchecked for a few minutes. Then, as she began to collect herself, she and Ellis saw a doctor approaching Melissa’s door.

Lily looked up, saying, “Doctor? I am Mrs. Kohle, Melissa’s mother.”

“Dr. Langlois,” he replied tersely.

“How is she?”

“Very weak. There was a great deal of blood lost in the delivery.”

“But she’s so thin and ill-looking!”

He gave a very Gallic shrug. “That has nothing to do with the baby. We have no idea why she was allowed to get into such a condition; she obviously has not had proper nutrition during her pregnancy. She had no strength whatsoever to draw on; we had to deliver the baby by Cesarean section.”

His look was one of censure, as if Lily had deliberately arranged for this to happen to Melissa.

“The baby is premature, and weighs under five pounds.”

Lily’s and Ellis’s eyes met. In their concern for Melissa, they had forgotten about the baby.

“How is the child? May we see it?”

“The baby is fighting for survival,
madame.
Its tiny lungs are not developed. It is being given oxygen in an incubator, but its chances are not good.”

Lily had cried so much that there were no tears left. She swallowed the lump in her throat and whispered, “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“A girl,
madame
.”

When Lily saw the tiny child lying behind the glass of the incubator, she heard again the echo of the doctor’s words: too small, too young to survive.

This unwanted baby girl was her own flesh and blood. In spite of herself, she loved her; it was as simple as that.

“Live,” she whispered against the glass that separated them. “Live, little one!” She felt Ellis’s arm slip around her as they gazed together at the fragile form, breath barely stirring its tiny chest.

Turning to him, she looked into his eyes and said, “Pray for her, Ellis.”

“I am,” he answered quietly. “I already am.”

Harry arrived the next morning. He came to the hospital room to find Lily and Ellis already there; He expressed no surprise at finding his agent there. All his thoughts were concentrated on his daughter.

Melissa was semi-comatose, but somehow, even in her sedated state, she seemed to recognize her father. “Daddy?” she murmured woozily. “Oh, Daddy?”

“I’m here, darling,” he said, taking her hand. “Your mother’s here, too.”

But Ellis and Lily slipped out once it became clear that Melissa wanted to speak to her father. When Harry emerged some time later, he looked ashen and shaken.

“What the hell happened to her?” he demanded angrily. “Does anyone know?” A fit of coughing overtook him, and Lily frowned. Harry didn’t look at all well. Maybe his story about being ill wasn’t a complete fabrication. Recovering his composure, he went on, “Where is the man responsible for all this?”

“All we know is that she was brought by ambulance. Obviously, she hasn’t been able to answer any questions. We can’t press her until she gets her strength back. How do you think she is?”

“What do you think I think?” Harry cried hoarsely. “She looks like a corpse. There isn’t an ounce of flesh on her bones! All I know is, I’m going to kill the bloody bastard, but where the hell is he?”

At that very moment, the man whom they were discussing was poised on skis at the top of a mountain at Val-d’Isère, straining to burst from the starting gate at the sound of the pistol shot.

The shot went off and the skier exploded from the gate. His lean, taut figure sliced down the giant slalom course, whipping past the poles and carving turns with effortless grace. All the other skiers made the run look like a battle against treacherous icy turns, but this one’s timing had such magic, he appeared to be gliding with perfect ease.

At last he was snapping past the final gate, tucking his head down, and speeding past the finish line. It had been a spectacular run. The crowd watching gave a roar as his time flashed on the board—a full five seconds better than any of the preceding times.

Bronzed and muscular, he stood in the brilliant sunshine some minutes later, nonchalantly receiving congratulations for yet another unbelievable performance. Golden-haired and majestic, he was like a god amid mere mortals. No one watching him would ever have guessed that Jean-Paul Duval had ever traveled in anything but the jet-set circles he now negotiated as comfortably as he did the slalom course.

But Duval had been born in a rat-infested hovel in Marseilles, son of a fishmonger and his slovenly wife. There had been beatings and scoldings and constant financial turmoil. It came almost as a relief to him when, at the tender age of ten, he had been thrown out into the streets to fend for himself. Forced to subsist on his wits, he had scavenged through garbage cans and stolen anything he could lay his hands on.

He quickly learned the ways of survival, but it had been a lonely, uncertain existence. Eventually, like so many in that port city, he was drawn back to the waterfront of his birth.

He began hanging around the magnificent yachts which rode at anchor beyond the humble fishing vessels. One day, as luck would have it, he was spotted by a captain in such urgent need of a new cabin boy that he was willing to overlook Jean-Paul’s obvious deficiencies of dress and manner. The twenty-eight-meter yacht which became his new home was owned by an Italian count and contessa, who took immense pride in the fact that the only larger boat in the harbor at the moment belonged to the Greek shipping magnate Ari Onassis.

The style of living aboard was opulent, to say the least. The count and contessa had spared no expense for themselves and their guests.

Jean-Paul’s lot was a cramped berth in a gloomy forward cabin, where he discovered that he was unfortunately prone to violent seasickness. But after the first few weeks his nausea subsided and he began to look around himself with keen interest. At last he was close to the fabled rich people he had looked at so long from afar. He promptly decided that it was his destiny to be equally wealthy, by hook or crook.

Not six weeks after he came aboard, the contessa discovered him. She thought him a handsome, charming little street urchin and decided to befriend him. The contessa took pleasure in rewarding him for some small task or another and soon became inordinately attached to him. When the Italian couple left the yacht to go back to their own home, she managed to persuade the count to take him along with them. And so young Duval began to take in the most chic, most expensive resorts in Europe.

It was at Chamonix, from his small servant’s room high up in the attic, that he first saw people skiing. He longed to know the exhilaration of gliding down snowy mountains at such speed. It must feel like flying. Almost immediately, Jean-Paul noticed a group of skiers who were subtly but unmistakably set apart. Another servant told him that they were World Cup racers. To Jean-Paul they were like gods as they schussed down the mountains effortlessly; up close, they were even more fascinating, with their muscular physiques and bronzed, glowing good looks.