Indiscretions - Elizabeth Adler [30]
India glanced at her sister Paris tossing restlessly on the seat behind her. Jenny’s mistake had been in assuming that they would all have inherited her ambition and drive, but only Paris had that. Paris needed success, she burned for it, and India had the uncomfortable feeling that Paris would be prepared to do almost anything to achieve it. And what about Venetia? A young Jenny Haven, with that same intoxicating combination of innocence and sexuality that India wasn’t even sure that Venetia herself was aware of—yet.
And what about me? India stared blankly out of the window at the banked clouds, graying as the plane flew into the night. What do I want from life? I’ve drifted along just enjoying myself. I think I’m happy … I would be if Fabrizio were free. Wouldn’t I? Be realistic, India, she told herself with unaccustomed bitterness. Fabrizio will never leave Marisa no matter what he feels for you, and anyway, what does he feel? It was a question she had avoided often before. There had been no one else since she had met Fabrizio, in fact she hadn’t even been interested in anyone, until last night and Aldo Montefiore. She remembered his hands on the wheel of the VW, square, firm hands with dark silky hair, the battered profile silhouetted against the streetlamps, and his amused dark eyes gazing into hers. Jenny would have liked Aldo. Oh, what difference did it make? thought India wearily, the Conte di Montefiore was looking for a rich wife and she was damned if she would go through life always as “the other woman”!
Tears slid down her cheeks and dropped onto the pretty scarlet Ginocchietti sweater that she had worn to the party the previous night. After that first call and the numb half-hour alone when she had been incapable of moving, she had called Fabrizio and he had come to her immediately. And then the phone hadn’t stopped ringing with instructions and arrangements. It had all been such a rush, there hadn’t been time to think about suitable clothes, so here she was arriving for her mother’s funeral dressed in scarlet. Oh, Jenny, Jenny, she mourned silently, you expected so much from me as the daughter of the one man you really loved, but there’s nothing remarkable about me and I don’t want what you wanted. The only trouble is, I don’t know what I do want.
Paris’s eyes burned with the tears she couldn’t shed. When she closed them she still seemed to hear the phone shrilling through her studio. She could see again the gray silk dress, the satin underwear, the broken glass. She could feel again how she had hoped it might, just might, be Amadeo … and she hated herself again for thinking of him. Worse. What she’d thought about Jenny; she’d blamed her for allowing herself to seduce Amadeo in exchange for his silks, but no one was to blame but Paris herself. And all the time Jenny must have been lying in Malibu Canyon. Why? Why had she been driving alone along Malibu Canyon at four in the morning? Wearing an evening dress?
She hadn’t been out that night, the housekeeper had said. Jenny hadn’t been feeling well and had stayed in her room. The TV was still on when the housekeeper went to bed at twelve-thirty—she had noticed the time because Johnny Carson was on. The police said it must have happened about four or five o’clock in the morning, but the accident hadn’t been discovered until hours later. Why had no one missed her? Probably, thought Paris bitterly, because Jenny had allowed no one to be that close to her. Nobody had owned Jenny, not even the live-in lovers. She was a free spirit and loved and lived where she chose. Maybe she died the same way?
Venetia and India seemed convinced that it was an accident, but was that really the truth? Weren’t there reasons that might have driven their mother to suicide? The Hollywood dream had died early in Jenny Haven. She had lived it, she was it. It had earned her millions of dollars but she knew it was all a lie. What had success brought her? No husbands, no loving family life, no man