The Rich Shall Inherit (81 page)

“I really need to know about Poppy,” Aria said worriedly. “You don’t know what’s going on here …. Mama and Carraldo are throwing a big carnival party tonight—
an engagement party!
I’ve been trying to get in touch with Orlando ever since we got back a couple of days ago. I’m afraid he must still be angry with me….

“Hold on, hold on,” Mike interrupted quickly, “one thing at a time, Aria. Look, I’m at the Gritti Palace, why don’t you come over and see me? We can talk about things.”

“I’d love to,” she said miserably, “but Mama’s not letting me out of her sight. There’s a hairdresser flying in from Rome at three o’clock to do our hair, and he’s bringing a makeup person to paint our faces. I shall look like the virgin adorned for the sacrifice!” she added bitterly. “But what can I do? Mama just said it was my duty. Oh, Mike, do you have the proof about Poppy’s daughter yet? Please say you do, and then I won’t have to go through with this charade.”

“I’m not sure yet,” he said, wishing he could tell her the whole truth without hedging like this.

“Then you’re still looking? It’s so important. If I had Poppy’s money now, I could give most of it to Mama and then I’d just run away with Orlando. He needs someone to take care of him, you see. An artist can’t earn very much until he’s established, and that could take time. I’d have to look after us both.”

“Don’t worry about Orlando,” Mike said curtly. “I know he’ll be all right.”

“Of course he will,” she wailed, “but will I? I’ve called him and called him, Mike, but he doesn’t call me back. I can’t believe he doesn’t care about me anymore, not after the way things were between us. He’s just angry with me, that’s all, and I can’t say that I blame him. Imagine how it looked to him, me jetting off to L.A. with Carraldo, leaving him all by himself at Christmastime …”

Mike sighed. “I guess he’s not invited to the party?” he asked.

“Of course he’s not! In fact, I suspect that Mama has asked Carraldo to dismiss him, so he’s no longer my tutor. But
you
are invited,” she added, “I’m inviting you now. The only thing is, I might not be there.”

“Where will you be?” he demanded, alarmed.

“Oh, I don’t know … I don’t have anywhere to go. Without Orlando there’s nowhere to turn, no escape …”

Her voice had the calm matter-of-factness of desperation and he said anxiously, “Don’t do anything foolish, Aria. I’ll be there tonight and we’ll talk.”

“Come at ten o’clock,” she said, “and by the way, you’re supposed to be in carnival costume.”

It was odd, Mike thought as he dressed for the party in the hastily purchased knee breeches, brocade jacket, and buckled shoes, that the only claimant to Poppy’s estate that he hadn’t met should be a real heir; and never having met Orlando, he had no basis on which to judge Aria’s infatuation for him. So far, all he knew about Orlando was hearsay. And he had never met Aria’s other suitor, Carraldo. He thought of the long conversation he’d had with Carraldo just that afternoon, and he hoped he’d done the right thing.

Putting on the black velvet eye-mask, he stared at himself in the mirror. He looked like a seventeenth-century gentleman—except he’d drawn the line at the powdered wig. He threw the black cape over his shoulders and put on his black tricorne hat, and then he decided to have a drink at Harry’s Bar en route to the Palazzo Rinardi.

The fog had rolled in at sunset. The cascading banks of cotton wool settled over the city by nightfall like a mysterious, intangible gray blanket, blurring the bold colors of the carnival revelers and muffling their shouts of laughter and music. Colored lights were strung from the trees and gaily decorated gondolas slid silently past in the mist, permitting a glimpse of Punchinellos and Harlequins, and exotic maidens in yards of multicolored tulle and satin and jewels, or gaudy tropical birds, and glittering fairylike creatures from other planets. Tonight, Venice was a city of illusion, and wrapped in its mantle of mist, it seemed to have recaptured the past.

Luchay perched on his jewel-encrusted stand in the hall of the Palazzo Rinardi, just the way he had all those years ago, at Numéro Seize, as Aria waited with her mother and Carraldo at
the top of the marble staircase to greet their guests. She was wearing a full-skirted seventeenth-century dress of wine-red velvet, and a magnificent necklace of rubies and diamonds—Carraldo’s present to her tonight. A silver mask hid the despairing expression in her eyes as Carraldo took her hand in his and smiled at her encouragingly. He was wearing a copy of the costume worn by Van Dyck’s gentleman in the portrait at the Ca’ d’Oro, and to Aria, he looked even more sinister.

Francesca, looking like a magnificent icicle in her crystal dress and diamonds, was in her element; she had achieved her life’s ambition at last and tonight she was the queen of Venice! Candles flickered in the palazzo’s great chandeliers and torches blazed on the rose-decorated landing stage, illuminating the guests as they arrived in their beribboned gondolas to the strains of a string quartet playing music by Vivaldi, Handel, and Albinoni. There was also a cocktail pianist in each of the two rooms where drinks were being served, and a band was waiting in the long-unused ballroom, to play for dancing after dinner.

Pierluigi Galli, anonymous in a
bauta
mask, black hood, and tricorne hat, stepped from his gondola onto the dock at the Palazzo Rinardi. Drawing his black cape around him to keep out the cold, he waited for a launch to disembark its glittering cargo of partygoers, tagging along behind as they entered the palazzo. In the general confusion, the butler checking the invitation cards never even noticed there was one extra person.

“My goodness,” Francesca exclaimed as he bowed low over her hand, “I hardly recognize anyone tonight, the masks are so clever. But your game will be up, sir, at dinner. Everyone has a place card—and then we’ll know who you are!”

Pierluigi merely smiled; he had no intention of having dinner.

“Smile, Aria,
please,”
Francesca chided her daughter. “Look, here’s Mike. You should have worn a wig,” she told him reprovingly, “or at least a hood.”

“You look great,” Aria told him, “you’ve got the right legs for knee breeches. Can we talk?” she whispered as he kissed her. “I’ll escape as soon as I can and meet you in the salon.”

“Orlando hasn’t called,” she said when she joined him half an hour later. “What am I going to do? I think I’ll call him just one more time.”

“No!” Mike exclaimeed sharply. “Don’t do that.”

“It’s wrong, isn’t it?” she said sorrowfully. “A girl shouldn’t
chase after a man like this. But you see, I love him—and I know now I can’t go through with this engagement!”

“Aria,” Francesca called, “come and say hello to the Contessa Mifori …”

“I’ll speak to you later,” she said miserably.

Mike decided he’d better keep an eye on her, there was no telling what she might do in her state. If only he could have told her she was the heiress, it would have been so much easier….

“So, Mr. Preston,” Carraldo interrupted his thoughts. “We finally meet, and I can thank you personally for giving me your trust. I think you understand now why it was necessary?” His dark, somber eyes, half hidden by the mask, searched Mike’s face.

“I’m glad I was able to help,” Mike said soberly. “I just wish I’d known earlier.”

“Unfortunately none of us can put back the clock. But now your work is over and you must come and enjoy yourself. Let me worry about everything else.”

The party was going with a swing, the champagne flowed, the dinner was delicious and the service impeccable, and Francesca had put Mike at a table next to a girl who he felt quite sure was very beautiful beneath her mysterious golden mask, and who had the sexiest voice and body, as well as an appealing Italian-English accent. She kept him so amused, he never saw the liveried footman in a powdered wig whisper in Aria’s ear, and the room was so crowded that he never noticed her slip away. Not until some time later, when he finally went to look for her.

Aria took the phone call in the kitchen, the only place she could be sure her mother would never go.

“Orlando?” she said breathlessly. “Oh, at last! I’ve been trying and trying to get you …”

“I haven’t called you before because I knew I couldn’t compete with Carraldo,” he said, sounding cold and distant over the phone. “I had no right to hold you back. I just wanted to tell you that it wasn’t because I don’t love you, but because I have nothing to offer you except the life of a struggling artist.”

“But that’s all I want,” she whispered,
“you
are all I want. You’ve called just in time to save me, Orlando … why, oh,
why
didn’t you call earlier?”

I couldn’t,” he said abruptly. “We mustn’t see each other again.”

“Please, oh,
please,”
she wailed, “I
must
see you. I
must talk to you.
Please, Orlando.”

“Very well,” he relented suddenly, “meet me in half an hour at the Church of Santa Maria della Pietà. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Aria threw a black cape over her velvet dress and putting on her mask, she tucked her hair beneath the tricorne hat. Then she sneaked down the back stairs, past the kitchen, and out onto the Calle San Vidal. It was cold outside and she wrapped the cape closer as she hurried through the dank, foggy alleys to meet Orlando.

A masked face loomed at her from the mist and she shrank back against the wall, her heart thumping wildly, as a man in the pointed-nose mask of the Plague Doctor shook his beribboned stick playfully at her and then went on his way, laughing. The shrouded alleys seemed doubly silent as she hurried toward the Piazza San Marco, and she glanced fearfully over her shoulder, imagining she heard footsteps again. You’re just being silly, she chided herself, no one’s following you, it’s just some other carnival reveler on his way to a party. But she quickened her step as she hurried along the Salizzada San Moise.

The deserted Piazza San Marco stretched before her in its shroud of fog, as silent and mysterious as an empty stage. Streetlamps shed a pale, diffused light, leaving patches of deep shadow under the colonnades, and she could hear the eerie strains of
The Four Seasons
relayed over loudspeakers from Vivaldi’s church, where she was to meet Orlando. Something rustled in the darkness and her hand flew to her mouth, stifling a scream that turned into a relieved laugh as a cat brushed against her legs and scampered off into the mist.

The man stalked her in the shadow of the colonnade; he was wrapped in a black cape, with a tricorne hat pulled low over his mask. He knew exactly which way she would go … she was coming closer, closer …

He sprang at her suddenly from the shadow and Aria screamed, paralyzed with fear. She just had time to catch a glimpse of his profile before she twisted from his grasp and fled back the way she’d come. The man was wearing a black hood and the sinister white
bauta
mask. And from the cavernous, empty eye socket dripped three scarlet teardrops, like gobbets of fresh blood.

She could hear him behind her as she fled toward the Piazzetta and the Grand Canal, praying that someone would be there, that there’d be a gondola or a launch … the fog seemed to be
pressing on her eyelids, it caught in her throat, and her heart was pounding, harder and harder; she could hear him behind her, getting closer, closer … she was almost at the canal, she could hear something, people … they were laughing … oh, thank God, thank God …

He sprang at her again suddenly. A powerful arm was flung around her neck, her head jolted back painfully, and she stared terrified at the thin steel blade of a dagger … “No,” she screamed, “no, no …”

“What is it?” someone called through the fog. “What’s happening out there?”

“Help!” she screamed. “Help!”

“Just someone joking around,” another voice said, laughing as they came toward her … she could see them …

The arm gripping her neck slackened suddenly and her attacker disappeared into the mist as though he’d never been. Gasping with relief, Aria ran toward the voices, but they’d already turned away, and she lost them again in the fog.

“Help,” she cried, running through the Piazzetta, toward the canal, praying there’d be a boat waiting. “Oh, please, someone help me, please …” She spotted a gondola and waved it down frantically. Even the gondolier was wearing a carnival costume, a black
bauta
mask and cape. “Take me to the Church of Santa Maria della Pietà,” she sobbed, sinking onto the cushions as they glided into the blank gray mist. Once she got to the church Orlando would be waiting for her and everything would be all right … except they weren’t going the right way. The gondola had turned onto one of the narrow side canals. “Where are you going?” Aria called nervously. “This isn’t the right way!” The gondolier turned to look at her and for the first time she saw that only one half of his mask was black. The other side was white, with three drops of blood spilling from the empty eye socket!

The sweat of fear trickled down her spine as she scrambled to her feet. “No,” she screamed, “no … no … no …”

The masked gondolier came toward her, wielding the pole like a bludgeon. “Oh, God,” Aria whispered, “please help me,
please help me …”

There was a blare of music and laughter suddenly, and then the soft purr of an engine as a launch nosed its way through the fog toward them, filled with an aviary of bright carnival-costumed peacocks, drinking champagne, laughing and chattering. Distracted, her attacker turned to look, and in the split-second
that the launch drew alongside them Aria hurled herself across the narrow gap of water and into the safety of the other boat.

“Oops,” they cried, laughing as they helped her up, “couldn’t stand him any longer, eh? Why don’t you join us then?” And a glass of champagne was thrust into Aria’s shaking hand. She turned, staring back at the canal, but there was only the swirling, empty gray fog.

“Where are you going,
carina?”
they asked her.

“To the Santa Maria della Pietà,” she whispered, trembling.

“Church? At carnival? You must be crazy!” they exclaimed good-naturedly as the launch swung into the Grand Canal. “Is it okay if we drop you at the Molo? We’re turning off here.”