Indiscretions - Elizabeth Adler [91]
The photograph underneath showed Paris glaring haughtily at the cameras from the catwalk.
Renata, though no beauty, was as attractive as her family’s money could make her. She had had a cute new nose to replace her long family one when she was thirteen, a severe diet to shed the family tendency to portliness when she was fourteen, and, ever since, the attentions of the best hairdressers and makeup artists, until she was one of the best-groomed, best turned-out young women in Italy. It had been hard work. She stared intently at the picture of Paris. “She’s really beautiful,” she commented. Renata was also nice, and her tendency to honesty occasionally annoyed Marisa.
“I suppose so.” She shrugged. “Better than her sister, anyway.”
Why must Marisa be so bitchy? wondered Renata. She was always getting at someone, and no one ever managed to get to her.
“Do you mean India? But she’s so attractive, Marisa. I’ve often wondered how you dared let her be so close with Fabrizio … I mean, don’t you ever wonder—just wonder a little bit—if Fabrizio finds her attractive?”
“Fabrizio and India? Renata, cara, don’t be ridiculous. Now, if you’d said Luciana or Graziella … Fabrizio knows so many sophisticated attractive women. What on earth would he see in someone like India Haven?”
“She’s young—my age, isn’t she?” Renata, noticing the frozen expression on Marisa’s face as she caught the implication that she was getting older, added hastily, “I mean, young like American girls are—so energetic and vital. I can’t imagine India just lazing around like I do, waiting for something to happen. And you must admit she has a very sexy figure, Marisa—look at her from a man’s point of view, not just from fashion.”
“You’re talking nonsense, Renata. Fabrizio’s not in the least bit interested in her that way. He says she’s good at her job, apparently she has a talent for whatever it is she does. Anyway, India was chasing after Aldo Montefiore. I put a stop to that, of course, for your sake! No, I’m quite sure you’re wrong about her.”
Renata cast a sly look at her older cousin. Marisa was an astute woman, but she was also too wrapped up in herself and her appearance. She tended to be dismissive of people who were outside her social comprehension—but men like her husband were not. And Fabrizio Paroli was an attractive, warm-blooded Neapolitan who’d worked his way up the ladder of success. India Haven was exactly the kind of girl who could topple the Paroli marriage. It was fun to goad Marisa from her self-satisfaction.
“Is Fabrizio totally faithful to you, then, Marisa?” Renata’s smile was teasing.
“Of course he is! Why are you asking me now?”
“Oh, just that if so, then he’s the only husband I know of who is faithful.”
“Renata, you know nothing of these things. Once I’ve got you safely married to Aldo Montefiore you’ll know what I’m talking about. A woman knows when her husband is faithful, believe me.” Marisa’s voice was confident, but she looked away, busying herself again in the newspapers.
Renata sipped her coffee, smiling. Had she succeeded in upsetting Marisa’s cool assumption that the world functioned only for her benefit? She didn’t know if there was anything between India and Fabrizio but, what the hell, she’d finally got to Marisa. She’d sown the seeds of suspicion very satisfactorily. It would be interesting to see what Marisa would do about it.
Passion had paid for the luxurious offices of Mario Tomasetti, private investigator. Illicit passion, that is. Mario preferred his luxury flamboyant—ankle-deep gray carpets, crystal chandeliers, scarlet leather chairs, low and deeply-buttoned, and his own vast swivel-chair of deep green suede. “It’s like the traffic lights,” he would say to his clients, “—red for stop is you, and green for go for me.” Mario’s favorite possession was his unusual desk—a thirteenth-century oak tithe-table with a slot at one end where the long-ago serfs had paid their tithe money to the lord of the manor. It amused Mario to have his clients slip their hefty checks