Indiscretions - Elizabeth Adler [119]
“Signorina Haven?”
India looked in surprise into Aldo’s brown eyes, fringed with curling dark lashes.
“Oh, Aldo … Signore … Conte …” she said, confused by his sudden appearance.
He laughed. “Aldo will do, if I may call you India?”
“It’s a deal,” she countered, “if you’ll let me buy you a drink?”
“Shouldn’t I be buying you one?”
Her full mouth curved in the generous smile he remembered.
“Next time,” she promised, “it’ll be your turn.”
Aldo moved his eyes from her mouth and looked down at her plans. “Well, India, are we in business?”
“The Palazzo di Montefiore is so beautiful, I’m in love with it. When I walk through its rooms I imagine romantic young Montefiore counts riding off to conquer a neighboring princess.”
Aldo laughed. “You’re like my mother, too in love with it to want to take it from the seventeenth century and adapt it to modern life. But I’m afraid if we don’t, India, then it will just crumble and there will be nothing at all for this romantic Montefiore to leave his grandchildren.”
His grandchildren! India shifted her glance away from him, back to the plans.
“I manage to combine romance with practicality sometimes,” she said firmly, “and I think your palazzo will do the same.”
The romantic regrets were gone from her eyes and she looked suddenly businesslike and capable; it was a pity, thought Aldo.
“Shall we go through the rooms together later today?” he asked. “You can tell me all your plans.”
India leaned forward enthusiastically. “First we must discuss the furniture and the paintings. You know, Aldo, I think we should replace the antiques that must be sold with modern designs from Parolis. Fabrizio’s special touch is combining the old with the new. But I warn you, I mean to be drastic; we shall get rid of all those faded wallpapers and frayed old draperies. And the carpets are so worn they’ve lost all their beauty. We must carpet the upstairs corridors and put Paroli rugs on the bedroom floors. And of course each suite must have its own bathroom.”
“Suite?” He’d envisioned just hotel rooms.
“Yes—they must all be suites, some quite small, but still suites. We can partition some of the larger rooms to make a small sitting room, but the larger ones will have their own proper sitting rooms and dining areas.”
Aldo listened amazed. He hadn’t really believed that India would be able to do the job—she was too young and too pretty. He’d thought she was just a movie star’s daughter, playing at working for a fashionable interior decorator, a busy, happy-go-lucky girl who’d left a deep impression on his memory so that he’d snatched at the opportunity of seeing her again when Fabrizio had suggested she come to Montefiore.
“India,” he began, “I hadn’t—”
“Don’t interrupt me yet, let me just tell you first …” Her eyes, as glossy and brown and darkly lashed as his, gleamed with excitement, as she continued to expand on her plans for his palazzo, and Aldo listened, enjoying her enthusiasm. After a couple of weeks spent in Marisa and Renata’s languid, predictable company she was like a breath of fresh air.
“It was such a clever idea, Aldo,” she finished. “The palazzo is exactly the kind of unique, out-of-the-way place that would appeal to the discerning tourist. It has the beauty and the charm of its age; all we need to do is add twentieth-century facilities and a little luxury. No, I amend that. A lot of luxury. Custom-made mattresses for those ancient four-posters, and we’re going to need considerable rewiring for the lighting plans I have in mind—good lighting should contribute to the ambience of the place as well as just allowing you to read the paper. Oh, and excellent linens, and the biggest towels you can find—Americans love those—and we’ll keep all those funny old baths with the brass taps, we’ll just have to get them refinished. Oh, truly, Aldo, it’s a terrific idea!”
“I wish I could take credit for it”—Aldo smiled—“but actually it was Marisa Paroli who thought of it.”
“Marisa?”
“When she was here with her cousin a couple of months back, she said it was a shame to