The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [146]
She glanced up at him, smiling in surprise. “Go on,” he urged, “please—open it.”
She pulled off the ribbons and paper, gasping when she saw the diamond and ruby necklace, the matching earrings, and two matching bracelets lying on the burgundy velvet.
“The parure is an Arnhaldt heirloom,” he said quietly. “I wanted to give it to you, Verity, because I am asking you to be my wife.”
She closed her eyes, stunned. “But we barely know each other,” she said, amazed. “We’ve only met a couple of times—”
“Does that matter?” he asked softly. “Do we have to meet a thousand times to know what is in our hearts? I am thirty-eight years old, Verity, I have been in love a dozen times, and I have loved casually a hundred. Believe me, I know the difference. And when lightning strikes you—or in this case”—he smiled—“a moonbeam—then there is no time to be wasted.”
“But I—” she began.
He held up his hand to stop her. “I’m not a man who takes no for an answer,” he said roughly. “Come here, Verity, come closer to me.”
Hypnotized, she took a step toward him.
“Closer, I said.”
She was next to him and then his arms went around her and his mouth descended on hers, crushing her with passion. He held her strongly but she did not want to escape, she didn’t want to cry out. All she wanted was for him to keep on kissing her.
“Now,” he said, lifting his face from hers and gazing at her triumphantly, “now say you don’t want me as much as I want you, Verity Byron. Say you will be my wife.”
“I will,” she promised, closing her eyes as his mouth claimed hers again. “Oh, I will.”
Hollywood
Zev was sitting on the veranda of the Hollywood Hotel, fanning himself with a copy of the San Francisco Examiner. It was nine o’clock in the morning. The clear desert heat made the backdrop of mountains look like cardboard cut-outs pasted against a deep-blue sky and the dusty street beyond the wilting flower beds looked like Main Street, Smalltown, America. Occasionally a car puttered by and in the distance he could see the big orange grove at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. He had thought he was coming to the glamour capital of the world and he had ended up in a village.
He glanced at his watch. At ten o’clock he was to meet Mr. Mel Schroeder to discuss his investment in Schroeder’s new motion picture company. Sipping orange juice, he opened the newspaper, glancing at the headlines and the pictures on the front page. He stopped at the sight of a familiar face.
“Verity Byron Weds Armaments King,” the headline trumpeted over the top of the picture of Missie, looking ethereally beautiful on the arm of a tall, unsmiling Prussian-looking man.
“Showgirl and former Elise mannequin Verity Byron, who created a sensation in her first appearance onstage this season, was married yesterday to the Baron Edmund Arnhaldt, multimillionaire steel and armaments chief, in a small private ceremony at Burkeley Crest, the palatial Long Island home of Mr. and Mrs. Florenz Ziegfeld. Miss Byron looked radiant in a cream silk georgette ensemble designed by Elise, with a tulip skirt and a cross-over neckline, cream silk roses at the hip and her trademark floating sleeves. She carried a bouquet of her favorite cream roses, and her rings were a seven-carat teardrop diamond and a wedding band of square diamonds, both by Cartier. She was attended by her sister, Azaylee, aged six, in shell-pink taffeta with Valenciennes lace, who carried a posy of violets.
“The bride’s trousseau is by her former employer, Elise, whose beribboned shoes with their perky satin bows she made famous. The groom’s presents to the bride included an heirloom ruby and diamond parure consisting of necklace, two bracelets, chandelier earrings, and a fine ring. The bride bought her husband a gold Cartier cigarette case, specially sized for the long Turkish cigarettes he smokes, inscribed with his initials in diamonds.
“A small luncheon was given afterward by Mr. and Mrs. Ziegfeld (the famous actress Billie Burke) and the house was a bower of cream roses for which it is said the bridegroom