Too Damn Rich (62 page)

"The ... bright side?" Zandra echoed
suspiciously. "What bright side?"

"Well, there's always your prince."

"Heinzie?" gloomed Zandra, chin cupped in one
hand. She tapped her cheeks in quick-time with her fingers.

"Now, now. Don't give me that look. Admit it,
Zandra. He's definitely the catch of the year."

"Especially," brooded Zandra, "for someone
who's not ready for marriage." She took a long pull on her drink
and shuddered. "Goodness. Kenzie, since when are we drinking
Campari straight?"

"Here." Kenzie grabbed the neck of the
champagne bottle and tilted it over Zandra's glass. "That should do
it."

"Now where were we?"

"On the bright side," Kenzie said.

"Right. Is it any wonder, darling, that we
haven't made a bit of headway? What in heavens could we have
missed?"

"Why, the ... the bundle of joy, of course!
Your own wonderful, precious, darling little precocious Serene
Highness of a baby!"

"Please," Zandra begged weakly. "Don't remind
me."

"Of what? Motherhood?"

"Darling! Did you have to say it?"

"But it's wonderful!"

"No, Kenzie, it's not. Motherhood means
morning sickness. Motherhood means stretch marks."

"Both of which go away."

"And, motherhood means diapers. Bottles.
Formula and rashes, colic and tantrums—"

"For God's sake, Zandra! You'll have a whole
army of trained nannies who'll worry about all that!"

"Oh." Zandra abruptly brightened. "Why, yes.
I suppose I will . . ."

"And just think. While the rest of us gals
are beating the bushes for husbands, you'll be floating down the
aisle, without even having had to find a man! Wait till word hits
Burghley's about this! The girls in The Club'll be scratching your
eyes out!"

"Those twits," Zandra said, with disdain.

"Still, you have to admit you'll make a
lovely bride."

"Hmm," Zandra said dreamily. "Yes, I suppose
I will. Speaking of which, I shall be able to count on you, shan't
I, darling?"

"Of course. I'll be beside you every step of
the way."

"Oh, good. Then you will be my maid of
honor?"

Kenzie stared at her. "But ... Zandra! What
about Dina?"

"What about her?" said Zandra darkly.

"Well, won't she feel snubbed?"

"Dina deserves to be snubbed," Zandra
decided. "She can be an attendant. For that matter, Becky can,
too."

Zandra giggled for the first time in
days.

"As a matter of fact, between Heinzie's
friends and relatives, and mine, I'll have the oldest bunch of
bridesmatrons ever seen at a wedding. And, if I were truly mean and
horrible—"

"Zandra ..."

"—I'd insist they wear the most ghastly
dresses in ... in something like lime green! Or perhaps puce? Which
do you think's worse?"

"You wouldn't!" said Kenzie, awed.

"Don't tempt me, darling. It would serve them
right, don't you think?"

"Yes, but... wouldn't that be rather like
using Christmas as a means of punishment?"

"Darling, where have you been? Christmas is
punishment. Ask anybody. So are weddings."

"C'mon, Zandra. Don't be such a spoilsport.
Weddings are fun. And who knows? I might even catch the bridal
bouquet."

"Did I hear you say bouquet, singular? You,
Kenzie? Darling, I'm afraid that at the rate you're going, you'd
have to catch two."

"Now, now, we'll have none of that. We're
ac-cen-tu-at-ing the positive. Remember?"

She smiled at Zandra and sighed
blissfully.

"A princess. You'll be a real life,
honest-to-goodness fairy-tale princess, after all! A von und zu
Engelwiesen."

"Shit," said Zandra softly.

"What now?"

"I just remembered. Along with weddings and
births come ... funerals."

"So? Zandra, what have funerals got to do
with weddings?"

"For a von und zu Engelwiesen, everything,
darling. Everything."

"Such as?"

"Such as, one is buried in three different
locations. Did you know that?"

"Three ... ? I ... I don't understand.
Educate me, please."

"All right. Let me see. One's embalmed body
goes into a special mausoleum in the crypt of Augsburg
Cathedral."

"And what's so bad about that?"

"But one's heart," Zandra went on, "is
pickled in some sort of brine or other, then placed in a sealed
vessel of some sort, and entombed in the crypt under the chapel at
Schloss Engelwiesen."

"You said there were three locations?"

"I'm getting to that. The liver ... or is it
one's bladder or spleen or appendix?—I forget which—is taken to
some remote little Bavarian church to which, if you can believe it,
people actually make pilgrimages, since it's supposedly famous for
its miraculous cures." Zandra shuddered. "Admit it. It's really the
most awfully ghoulish tradition."

"Well, at least you're young. Death is still
a long way off. Zandra, you have your whole life ahead of you."

"Life! As a von und zu Englewiesett? Don't
make me laugh. Kenzie, darling, von und zu Engelwiesens don't have
lives."

"Oh? Then what do they have?"

"Duties, darling. Von und zu Engelwiesens
have duties."

Becky, seated on a goose-stuffed sofa piled
with gaufraged cushions of brown silk velvet luxury, said:
"
Cherie
, I thought you should be the first to know. Heinzie
and I had
dejeuner
together."

It was early afternoon of the following day,
and she and Dina were in the
Salon des Cuirs
of Becky's
Fifth Avenue penthouse. The painted Cordovan leather panels which
gave the room its name, and which looked like splendid figural
tapestries, had been attributed—depending upon which expert's
opinion was to be believed—either to Govaert Flinck, a student of
Rembrandt's, or else to the great master Van Rijn himself.

"And?" Dina, delicate cup of
Calvados-flavored apple tea raised to her lips, looked breathlessly
over the gilt rim. "Do tell! What transpired?"

"
Voila
. It is done," replied Becky,
Mona Lisa smile in place. "He and Zandra are engaged to be
married."

"No!" Dina put down her cup with a clatter
and sat forward. "Truly?"

"
Mais oui
." Becky nodded serenely and
sipped tea. "It is a fact."

"But ... I don't understand! When did all
this occur?"

"According to Heinzie, yesterday. Apparently
Zandra went to see him."

"Oh?" Dina was smarting. She could hear
Becky's voice saying something, but the words flowed past her like
a rippling stream, and did not register. All she could think of was
how embarrassed and—yes, hurt— she felt.

She thought: After all I've done for her,
Zandra didn't even have the decency to call me. If she didn't want
to tell me beforehand, she could at least have told me about it
afterward.

But apparently even that had been too much to
expect.

I have to hear it from a third party! God,
the humiliation!

Then she became aware of Becky's voice.
"
Cherie? Cherie
, are you quite all right?"

Dina pulled herself together and nodded.
"Yes," she lied. "Of course."

"I take it you have not yet spoken to
Zandra?"

"No, not yet."

"
C'est dommage
. I do hope she doesn't
hold our
petite intrigue
against you."

"She won't," Dina said with more certainty
than she felt. "She'll come around ..."

She lifted her teacup with trembling fingers
and sipped.

"I just don't understand it. Zandra was so
dead set against marrying Heinzie. What could possibly have changed
her mind?"

"
Je ne sais pas
." Becky shrugged
eloquently. "But it is done. The banns are in the process of being
posted."

"And the wedding? When is it to take
place?"

"In six weeks' time."

"Six—"

"I know, I know: time is of the essence.
Alors
. You must understand,
cherie
. That, too, is
part of the von und zu Engelwiesen tradition." Becky waved a
manicured hand, the square-cut emerald flashing from a finger.
"
Naturellement
, it goes back hundreds of years, to when the
postal systems took months, and there were no such things as
telephones or fax machines."

"I suppose," Dina said slowly, "I should call
Zandra when I get home."

"
C'est une bonne idea
." Becky nodded
wisely. "
Oui
. I imagine she shall ask you to be the matron
of honor."

Dina blinked, momentarily startled. She will?
Why, of course she will!

Dina immediately felt a whole lot better.
Yes, indeed. She was definitely bouncing back after the initial
shock.

"At any rate,
ma chere
, I was thinking
..."

"Yes?"

"Well, you are Zandra's best friend, just as
I am Heinzie's. Alors. It might be a good idea if the four of us
got better acquainted,
n'est-ce pas?"

"What do you suggest?" Dina asked, bowing to
Becky's superior knowledge.

"Oh, an
intime
little dinner to
celebrate the engagement might be appropriate."

"How clever of you! Yes. I shall arrange it
at once!" Dina said brightly, instantly rising to the occasion.

Miraculously, her spirits were already
completely restored.

The marble floor of the picture gallery in
Schloss Engelwiesen, on the island of the same name, in the lake of
the same name—Lake Engelwiesen, the second-largest lake in
Bavaria—shone icily, like the surface of the frozen water
outside.

One ninety-foot wall of deeply recessed,
evenly spaced French windows sent brilliant dazzles of northern
light streaming into the long room; hanging from floor to ceiling
on the opposite wall were hundreds of gilt- framed Old
Masters—superb, museum-quality Bellinis and Botticellis, Rubenses
and Rembrandts, Titians and Tintorettos—only the mere tip of the
iceberg as far as the von und zu Engelwiesen art treasures were
concerned.

And, overhead, suspended from the
barrel-vaulted, twenty-six-foot ceiling which had been painted in
the style of Charles Le Brun two hundred years earlier, were two
rows of thirty matching, rock-crystal chandeliers.

It was a room for contemplation, for feasting
the eye and boggling the mind.

At the moment, Princess Sofia was anything
but contemplative or boggled. The majordomo had brought her a
cardboard FedEx envelope, sent to her from New York by her brother,
Prince Karl-Heinz. Opening it, she had found two smaller sealed
envelopes inside.

Having torn open the first, she now stalked
furious circles, her mauve, ostrich-trimmed gown stirring up great
agitated currents of air.

"
Verdammt noch eitimal!
" she
screeched, waving the thick, engraved invitation so violently she
was losing bits of ostrich feathers in the process. "Do something,
Erwein! Or are you just going to sit there and let our inheritance
walk away?"

"What can I do?" her husband, Count Erwein,
whined from one of the carved, thronelike Louis XIV armchairs which
lined the length of both walls. "You know your family's law of
inheritance."

"You useless insect!" Sofia's screech was so
strident that Etti, Welfy, Popo, and Luisa, her four King Charles
spaniels, leapt from their perches and fled the room, ears flat
against their heads. "Sometimes I wonder why I ever married
you!"

She whirled around, wild things dancing
primitive dervishes in her eyes.

"Coward!" she accused.
"
Untermetisch!
"

Count Erwein Johannes Emmanuel von der
Grimmkau cringed and shuddered and tried to make himself as
invisible as possible. His wife was one-third princess, one-third
long-suffering martyr, and one-third shrew. She had the most
terrible temper he had ever known, and he was completely cowed by
her. It did not matter that she was beautiful, for Sofia's was a
cold beauty, all sharp planes and shiny angles and razor edges. She
was one hundred percent von und zu Engelwiesen, with castles and
land, riches and power, and blood so blue it made Erwein's own
distinguished bloodline and title seem thinly diluted and
third-rate by comparison, facts which she never let him forget.

Everything was hers—including a streak of
such greed, possessiveness, and envy that all her waking hours were
spent on plotting how to get even more. If someone had something
she didn't, she could not sleep until it was hers.

And usually, Princess Sofia slept very
well.

For whatever or whomever stood in her path,
she ruthlessly cut down to disposable size. And whatever or
whomever she couldn't cut down or chop up or easily destroy, she
weakened through sheer persistence—and eventually triumphed over by
scheming.

Princess Sofia was Lucrezia Borgia incarnate.
Erwein knew. How well he knew! Because he had suffered more at the
hands of this woman than any man should ever have to endure.

Now, Sofia's wrath was building as she worked
herself up into one of her world-class rages.

Erwein sat there, trembling and cowering in
the thronelike chair. He couldn't imagine a single worse incident
for inflaming his wife's temper than the announcement of
Karl-Heinz's impending marriage.

Now Sofia will be truly impossible, Erwein
thought with trepidation. If only I could run away. If only I could
take a rocket ship to the stars ...

"Erwein."

Sofia's voice sent arrows of dread piercing
into his flesh, and he looked up guiltily.

"There is only one thing we can do." She
paused and gave him a hard look. "It is all up to you now."

"Me?" he squeaked.

"Yes, you. Or don't you love our
children?"

"Of course I love them," he lied
miserably.