A Rather Curious Engagement

by C. A. Belmond

  But these tabloid facts just don’t begin to do justice to her personality and life. To read the papers, you’d never know about her warmth, her compassion, her sparkle, and her generous heart, which had room even for her shady nephew, Rollo; and for me, her little namesake; and Jeremy, for whom she had a special affection because he’s a direct descendant of the man she’d loved.The jaunty brown-eyed copper-haired heiress, Miss Penny Nichols, took London by storm last year, swooping into town for the reading of her Great-Aunt’s will just in time to walk off with most of it, including a Belgravia bolt hole which Miss Nichols took immediate possession of. Penny Nichols’ detractors accuse her of having scooped nearly all of the entire family inheritance away from her English relations, who contested the will but lost.

  For the record, I didn’t “swoop” or “scoop”—I was formally invited to the reading of the will, to represent my mother. And frankly, her cousin Rollo made out quite all right, inheriting all Aunt Pen’s English bank assets plus lots of fancy, expensive furniture from France. But, Rollo’s mother, Great-Aunt Dorothy (otherwise known as the Head Vulture, and no doubt the “detractor” the news story alluded to) convinced Rollo to contest the will for a bigger share, and he fought dirty.

  In the end, however, we all cut a deal: He quit fighting to get more than he was supposed to, and the rest of us didn’t press charges for the shameless shenanigans he pulled—including breaking and entering, theft, and transporting stolen goods across the border, which could have resulted in him being chucked into the Bastille. (The French do not take kindly to the pilfering of priceless art.)

  Now, about that “Belgravia bolt hole” I’m living in, technically, my mother was the one who inherited Aunt Pen’s London apartment, but Mom said she “had no use for it” and therefore gave it to me (and if you saw the New York City crackerbox I’d been living in, you’d understand why. Also, my folks are happily ensconced in Connecticut, and they winter in Florida, so nobody will ever convince them to move away and live somewhere else, ever again. They come to Europe once a year to see me.)

  It’s astonishingly true that Jeremy and I, together, inherited millions of euros, though, all totalled, it was closer to half the amount the newspaper said we did. Maybe it wasn’t so astonishing for Jeremy, who was pretty much born to be rich—he’s the stepson of Uncle Peter, my mother’s brother, and his mum’s family is quite wealthy, too. Anyway, Aunt Pen left him the villa in Antibes. I got the garage . . . and the car inside the garage . . . and the painting inside the car.

  The photograph in the newspaper was snapped on the day I sold the painting to a fine little museum in Italy that I knew would take proper care of it. The photo shows the museum director, an alert-eyed, slightly balding but very dignified man, standing to the right of the beautiful little painting of a Madonna and Child, done by a female student of Leonardo. Yup, da Vinci. To the left of the painting is Jeremy, standing protectively beside me, with just a hint of mistrust in his eyes as he gazes at the photographer. And then there’s me, looking slightly dazed.

  I still can’t quite believe it, even now. I keep expecting to wake up back in New York, scraping by as an historical researcher for romantic bio-pics shown on cable-TV movies-of-the-week. I continue to do some consulting for my friends at Pentathlon Productions, but it’s different now. (I can’t be the first to notice that work is more fun when you aren’t threatened with starvation if they fire you.) Sometimes I even have dreams that gremlins or police or my old grammar school principal is chasing after me for impersonating an heiress, telling me I’m now in big trouble and will be punished for it. Yet day by day, waking up in the dramatic big canopied four-poster bed in Great-Aunt Penelope’s London townhouse, I am discovering that this new life of mine is, after all, very real.Another heir to this fortune is Penny Nichols’ distant English cousin, Jeremy Laidley, who also inherited some of the property—and who recently divorced his wife. The barrister Jeremy Laidley is rumored to be a love interest of Miss Nichols. Do we hear wedding bells? Don’t forget that pre-nup! The couple are considering spending part of their inheritance on a flight to the moon as one of the world’s first space tourists. What else will a gal so young do with all that lovely cashola?

  Thanks a lot, boys. To this day I still get weird calls in the night from strange men who would love to “share my world” and help me handle all that “cashola.” Jeremy, too, has been constantly buttonholed (over at the watercooler in his law firm) by females who seldom before had reason to talk to him, but, upon hearing of his “windfall”, suddenly announced, abruptly and without prelude, that they wished to “bear his child.” (And these women are law partners. The secretaries just want him to either marry them or else buy them a car.)

  Now, as for that ridiculous bit about space tourism, well, believe me, there is just no way that either one of us would blow off any part of the inheritance on a trip to the moon. What happened was, I was sitting in a restaurant minding my own business when some hyper-friendly salesman actually plunked himself in the empty chair opposite me and unceremoniously proceeded to make his pitch to sell me a ticket to the moon. I politely declined, insisting I’d feel claustrophobic in a space capsule, so he bowed, got up and left, and I thought that would be an end to it. Instead, he told the press that I was on his list of upcoming space tourists, and so they printed it. This then opened the floodgates to all manner of salesmen and phony investors. I thought I had junk mail and telemarketing problems before. Phew! My parents still get surprise visits (at dinnertime) from people who claim that they went to school with me (they didn’t) and loaned me money that was never reimbursed (no way).

  Money really can do odd things to people, and Jeremy and I are trying to make sure that it doesn’t do strange things to us. Yet, obviously, the games have already begun. In a way, it’s like winning a lottery; if you’re not careful, pretty soon you only know two kinds of people in the world: 1) those who want to take your money away from you, and 2) those who say they want to help you get more money . . . and guess what? More often than not, those two types of people are actually one-in-the-same.

  But, much more important than all that finance stuff, I’d like to clear up one other little personal matter in that news story. I don’t care for the insinuations that I’m some kind of homewrecker. Jeremy was divorced long before I came on the scene, and before the inheritance. Also, technically, he’s not my cousin. His stepfather is my Uncle Peter (Mom’s brother) but there’s no blood connection to my family at all. None of us knew this until Great-Aunt Penelope’s will brought the whole thing to light. As kids, Jeremy and I had simply thought of each other as distant relatives, because he lived in England and I grew up in America. The inheritance brought us together as adults, amid wild circumstances that made it necessary for us to team up just to figure it all out. We rode that roller coaster together . . . and discovered how we really felt about each other.

  As for the bit in the article about wedding bells, well, that’s rushing things. Love is spectacular enough for the moment! Also, regarding the sneery talk about pre-nups, the fact is that Jeremy and I have already figured out a way to pool our inheritance so that we can make the most of it.

  So life is perfect and I toddled off to live happily ever after, right?

  Erm. Look. I’m not complaining. How could I?

  But even when you’ve fallen into good fortune and feel like you’re in heaven, you know, there’s always a snake in the garden. Our garden was no exception, and our snake was named Lydia.

  Jeremy’s first wife.

  Chapter Three

  I can remember that day with crystal clarity, even though it happened months ago. There she stood, right in the middle of Jeremy’s living room, holding a drink in her hand, wearing a low-cut black-and-red chiffon dress, and diamond earrings almost as big as those ice cubes clinking in her cocktail. Her hair was expensively coiffed, and her skin and body had that highly polished, smooth, glossy, pampered glamorous look that requires a woman to spend all da
y allowing strange doctors to do fearful things to her.

  She looked me over once, twice, thrice, and then had the nerve to tell me, in her high-rent accent, “I’m afraid you’ll just have to go.” Funny thing is, she meant it.

  I’d known about her, of course, but this was the first time we came face-to-face. Blonde, beautiful, posh and totally batty, she’d been out of his life for several years, but she apparently reads the newspapers, too, or else she’d heard about the inheritance on the grapevine from Jeremy’s friends, but in any case—and, here I do not exaggerate—the ink had barely dried on the French judge’s settlement of Great-Aunt Penelope’s will, when Lydia turned up that day, having got Jeremy’s doorman to let her into his spiffy modern bachelor’s apartment in South Kensington.

  Naturally, with feline cunning, she’d managed to pick the night that Jeremy and I had just flown back from France and were planning to plot our future together, over a champagne supper. I’d gone to pick up some groceries, then returned to his apartment, while Jeremy was finalizing some stuff at the office before meeting me here for a night of wine, food, and . . .

  Lydia.

  Well, of course, I stood my ground. I plunked myself right there on his sofa, and Lydia and I stared at each other, motionless, like two lionesses. And that’s exactly how Jeremy found us, moments later. I heard his key in the lock, and his footsteps, and I turned around just in time to see the expression on his face.

  He had been looking down, engrossed in thought, carefully juggling his keys, briefcase, champagne, and a big bunch of fragrant wine-red roses wrapped in blue tissue paper. He glanced up, saw me first, and gave me a smile that went right to my heart. Then he saw Lydia, who had sidled off into the shadows and fixed him a drink to match hers. She floated toward him as if they were still married, and she was the lady of the house, ready to give her hubbie a great big kiss and hug . . .

  Look. I very rarely take an instant dislike to someone. But when a perfect stranger turns a high-beam glare of pure hatred on you the minute you walk in the door, and then tells you to shove off while she makes a play for the man you love, well, frankly, I just wanted to choke her, then and there. But, you’ve got to be careful, where men are concerned. The minute you show your claws, they think you’re the Bad One.

  At the sight of his ex-wife, Jeremy’s expression went from happy to shocked dismay, then polite recovery, ending with a guilty, apologetic look. “Lydia!” he exclaimed. “What on earth—!” When she kissed him, he didn’t kiss back, I noticed, but he didn’t fling her off, either. I’d rather hoped he would.

  “Hello, darling!” she cried, and she actually took the flowers and champagne from his hands, as if he’d bought them for her.

  I abandoned all pretext of being civilized, and I leaped off the sofa, positioned myself between them and said rather pointedly, “How beautiful. Are those for me, Jeremy?”

  Jeremy stepped back from her now, and said, “Yes, of course,” at which Lydia, without ever taking her eyes off Jeremy, passed the flowers and champagne to me with the careless gesture of a woman who’s asked the maid to take care of them for her.

  “Penny,” Jeremy said, “this is Lydia—”

  “Yes, your ex-wife, right?” I said bluntly, putting the flowers and champagne on the hall table. He looked like a trapped animal that didn’t know which way to bolt. Then he recovered, and took a step toward me and held out his arm to put around me.

  Lydia immediately grasped the meaning of this gesture. I could see panic register in her hazel-colored eyes, which then narrowed in ill-concealed fury. Quickly, she said in an urgent tone loaded with meaning, “Jeremy. Might I have a word with you?”

  Jeremy said knowingly, almost as if talking to a naughty school-girl, “Lydia. For God’s sake. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m afraid it’s very serious,” she said, looking tragic, “and very personal. I really do need your help, Jeremy, or I wouldn’t have come. I’ve no one else to turn to. Obviously.”

  She didn’t look at me, and she didn’t exactly say, “So let’s toss this other woman out the window,” but she might as well have. I knew what was coming next. I guess I’ve known one or two neurotic types well enough to understand that she will next insist on sequestering the man for a private conference, that would lead to talking on the telephone at all hours of the day and night. This poison flower had to be nipped in the bud, right now.

  “Why don’t we all sit down and sort this out?” I said helpfully but crisply. “Lydia, if you need our assistance, we will do what we can. Please speak freely in front of both of us. But I’m afraid we must be quick, because we have plans for tonight and we are already late.”

  Jeremy’s jaw dropped. Frankly, I don’t even know where my words came from. I just sort of made them up as I went along. But hell, if she was going to act so dramatic about it, then I could be cinematic, too, and let them both see how absurd she was being.

  Because not for a minute did I believe that Lydia was in any real jeopardy. I had already studied her quite carefully, looking for telltale clues, Girl Detective that I am. No bruises, no trembling, and she appeared perfectly healthy and clear-eyed and determined, and even remarkably well-rested, not at all like a damsel-in-distress.

  Jeremy recovered a bit, and grinned at me. “Yes, a good idea, let’s sit down,” he said hastily. “Certainly, Lydia, whatever you have to say to me, you can say freely in front of Penny. I take it you two have been introduced?” he asked dryly.

  “Not exactly,” Lydia said, a bit crossly. “Is She your fiancée?”

  I really hate when women refer to other women as She. You know the tone. You know what it means. And then there’s that phony fiancée question, as if to imply that if you aren’t engaged, then he doesn’t really love you.

  Jeremy ignored the question and asked, “What’s up, Lydia?”

  And, I swear to God, she burst into hysterical sobs. I watched in utter admiration of how such a woman could go from haughty bitchiness to pathos, right on a dime.

  I looked over at Jeremy and I said, “Oh, hell. Ten minutes, okay? I’ll go chill the champagne.” And then I murmured so that only he could hear, “And don’t you dare let her put her head on your shoulder or use your handkerchief.”

  He didn’t object to this; he even patted my shoulder consolingly, which at least indicated that he understood the impact on me of her crummy timing.

  I stalked off into his kitchen, and put the champagne in ice and salt and water, and snipped off the ends of the roses and put them in a vase of lukewarm water. I never left Jeremy and his “ex” entirely alone, however, because Jeremy’s kitchen has an open section that looks right onto the living room. So, as Lydia spoke to him, he could see me balefully watching him. He and Lydia spoke in low voices, and then he rose and came into the kitchen, looking worried.

  “I know you think she’s shamming,” was the first thing he said.

  “Call it a woman’s intuition,” I said airily.

  “I know, I know,” he said. “She’s always been given to high nerves. And believe me, nobody’s more aware than I of how adept she is at manipulating people.” He paused. “But be that as it may, it does sound as if she’s had a bad time.” And he told me her indisputable tale of woe, in a nutshell. After she ran off with Jeremy’s best friend from work (a liaison which didn’t work out), she then “fell in love” with a wealthy Bolivian boyfriend who had grown up so spoiled that he wasn’t accustomed to ever being told “No.”

  “Apparently,” Jeremy said, “he was a cruel bastard, took money from her and cheated on her, and yet when she wanted to break up, he rather ominously told her that he would ‘never let her go’ and even went so far as to lock her in his hacienda or whatever, and had his bodyguards spy on her. But somehow she managed to evade them, and got on a friend’s private airplane and came to London.”

  “Swell,” I said. “So now she’ll lead her boyfriends’ thugs straight to your doorstep. And don’t tell me, let me gues
s. She wants to stay right here, in your apartment.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Jeremy said. “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “Good,” I said, feeling momentarily ashamed.

  “Apparently she’s found an apartment,” Jeremy said. He paused. I knew.

  “Where, exactly?” I said in a deadly tone. He just looked at me.

  “Right down the street?” I asked in disbelief. Silence.

  “In your building?” I exclaimed. Jeremy flushed guiltily. “What floor?” I asked.

  “This one,” he said, then added hurriedly, “way on the other end, though.”

  “No,” I said. “No, no, a thousand times no.”

  “What can I do? I don’t exactly own the whole building, you know,” he said in the tone of annoying reasonableness that a man uses when he suspects that your instincts are totally justified, but if he says so, it will then require him to do something difficult which will undoubtedly cause a ruckus. “She says she got a good deal on the place, and had to act fast.”

  “She sure did!” I glanced over at Lydia, who had gone to the window to strike a wounded pose. “What exactly does she want from you, apart from being jolly neighbors now?” I asked.

  Jeremy sighed wearily. “Nothing, really. Just moral support, I suppose.”

  “Piffle,” I said.

  “Penny,” Jeremy pleaded, “you must trust me on this one, I think there’s enough truth to this story so that I can’t just turn my back on her.”

  “I trust you,” I said. “I just don’t trust her.”

  “She didn’t manage so well when we split up,” Jeremy said, looking upset. “She tried to commit suicide, even.” Normally, this would have given me quite a pause, but then I recalled a conversation I’d had with Jeremy’s mother, in which she confided about how much neurotic stress this woman had inflicted on him, so that Jeremy never really had a day’s peace in their one-year marriage.