Beautiful People (33 page)

    "My name's Darcy Prince."

    Belle recognised there was something expectant about the silence that followed. She fixed a disdainful stare on the girl the other side of the gate. Was she supposed to have heard of her or something?

    "If my name doesn't ring a bell," the other said steadily, "then my boyfriend's might. Niall MacDonald?"

    Belle stared for a moment, then gave a peal of laughter. "Oh, Niall. I'm so glad to hear he's moved on. I hope you'll be very happy together."

    Darcy's mouth dropped open. "You mean…you're not with him anymore?"

    "No, sweetie," trilled Belle. "It was never gonna work. We just weren't on the same page."

    "Same…page?"

    Belle giggled. "You see, it's kind of like this. I'm on the successful page and he's in more of a failures type of scene. That's showbiz, honey."

Sheer surprise had stolen away much of Darcy's outrage. She

frowned at this strange-looking blonde with a body like a thin stick on which two brown balloons were hanging. She tried to think of some shattering rejoinder, but nothing came to mind.

    "I've never been crazy about redheads anyway," Belle now remarked with an airy trill. "But, you know, like I say, I'm just so glad to hear he's moved on. I hope you'll be very happy together."

    "We're not together," Darcy managed to grind out, furiously. "Thanks to you."

    "Me?" Belle blinked.

    "You slept with him in London. While I was in L.A.," Darcy hurled at her in a shaking, uncertain voice. "You broke us up."

    "I so did not," Belle exclaimed indignantly. "He said he was single."

    Anger flashed through Darcy. Of course Niall had said he was single. "I bet," she said heavily, "that he told you his father was a butcher as well."

    Belle looked back at her with eyes of a curiously artificial green and shook her white-blonde hair. "Yeah. He did."

    "He was lying," Darcy said flatly. "His father owns a chain of meat processing plants."

    "Yeah. He told me that too."

    "He told you that too? And you didn't mind? That he wasn't telling the truth about the butcher?"

    Belle grinned. "Baby, why should I care about the truth? It wasn't the truth I was trying to sleep with." She shrugged her skeletal brown shoulders. "Hey. I did you a favour, honey. What's the point of being with Niall? That guy's going nowhere, baby."

    None of the mud she was flinging was sticking. Darcy gave the woman on the other side of the gate a hot, resentful stare. "You don't get it, do you?"

    Anger flashed across the thin face of the other. "You don't get it, you mean. You're an actress, did you say? In
Galaxia
?"

    "Yes."

    "Well, you're at the wrong place, okay? I guess there'll be a hostel in town for all you crowd scene guys. This villa's for those with major roles. I," announced Belle, drawing herself up proudly, "am the Countess of Tyfoo. "

    "And I'm the Grand Duchess of the Galaxy," Darcy snapped. "Let me in, will you?"

Marco, settling some diners into their courtyard table, looked up at a loud, agitated, female voice. He smiled politely at the girl who passed by with two subdued blond toddlers attached to each of her hands. She wore, it seemed to Marco, high-heeled shoes inadvisable for the scaling of Rocolo's hill, as well as a pair of extremely tight white jeans even less suited to the purpose.

    The blonde stared haughtily back at him and continued talking in a loud and honking voice into the mobile phone to which she was attached by earphones. "Nightmare, honestly," she was complaining. "Bloody kids running riot. Just ghastly. Cosmo!" she screeched, as if to underline the point, even though the blond little boy she was addressing didn't seem to Marco to be doing anything particularly offensive. Apart from looking unhappy, that was. Both he and the silver-haired girl, presumably his sister, looked miserable. As well as tired—shouldn't they be in bed at this hour? What were the parents thinking? It was obvious this woman was not their mother.

    Marco guessed the tight-trousered blonde was British and a nanny, no doubt to that type of wealthy, pushy British couple that flocked to Tuscany in droves in the summer. Many of them ate in his restaurant. That was the only problem with running a successful restaurant. You attracted successful people who seemed to think that being successful was all about treating other people badly.

    Marco took the order from the just-settled table—Daria and the

other waitress were busy elsewhere—and was about to go into the kitchen when another group loomed up.

    The dominant figure in it was a tall, solid man with red cheeks, thick black hair, and an air of staggering self-satisfaction. He wore the standard-issue middle-class-Brit-male-on-holiday uniform, Marco saw: pale blue shirt, beige chinos, white Panama trimmed with dark band.

    The rest of the group comprised a frazzled, skinny, fiftysomething woman in a yellow and cerise clinging scrap of dress, a couple of smug-looking young men with identical big hair and bigger bottoms, and another downbeat man, presumably the frazzled woman's husband. The well-preserved, rather sly-looking brunette was unquestionably the wife of the big dark-haired man.

    "Table for seven," he boomed in one of those loud, fruity, bullying English accents Marco knew from experience meant trouble.

    "I'm sorry," he said apologetically. "We're completely full tonight." Two, he might have managed. Three at a pinch. But seven? In a restaurant the size of his? Wasn't it obvious that would have to be booked?

    The frazzled woman stepped forward. "What do you mean you don't have a table?" she demanded hysterically, clacking her matching pink shoes on the cobbles in agitation. "We have two members of Parliament in our party."

    Marco considered them calmly. So what? You got MPs round here all the time. "I'm sorry," he repeated, with another shrug.

    The man's eyes, big and black beneath thick shiny brows, widened with annoyance. He was obviously outraged to discover he and his party could not just walk in off the street and sit down. "I want to speak to the owner," he boomed.

    Marco sensed a stir at the tables about him at this. Many were filled with regular customers, all waiting for the trump card to be played.

    "Actually," Marco said gently, "I am the owner."

    The man's red face flushed redder. He stared at Marco in disbelieving fury. "You? But you're taking the orders…"

    "Yes." Marco regarded him levelly. He would not trouble to point out to this man that, besides the best food possible, his restaurant was all about treating people fairly, with respect. There were no tantrums in his kitchen. No one was more important than anyone else, only, in some cases, more experienced. Marco sensed this would mean little to a man like this.

    "But I'm Her Majesty's Shadow Secretary of State," the big man bleated, clearly unable to believe his large, red-tipped ears.

    Secretary of State for shadows? Marco raised his hands in a gesture of helpless defiance. He was determinedly avoiding the amused gaze of the large table nearest to him, which was filled with Rodolfo the painter and his family.

    The black eyebrows snapped together. "You say we need to book?"

    "That's right. Yes."

    "Even if we were God Almighty, presumably."

    Marco smiled tightly. "I could possibly make an exception for Him. But He would be the only one."

    Hearing Rodolfo chuckle softly at this, Marco flashed him an irritated look. He saw Rodolfo now rise to his feet, his eyes bright with laughter, passing a napkin over his mouth in a gesture of finality.

    Marco watched apprehensively. Oh, no. Rodolfo liked to tease, but this was going too far. Surely Rodolfo wasn't going to…

    But he was. "Finito!" Rodolfo announced, clattering his espresso cup back into its saucer. The rest of the table was rising in a muddle of chatter, laughter, reaching for bags, and wiping the mouths of toddlers. Turning to Her Majesty's Secretary of State, Rodolfo added. "We have finished. You can have our table."

    "Grazie, amico mio," Marco bent and hissed furiously into Rodolfo's ear on the pretext of picking up a napkin that had fallen on to the cobbles.

    "Prego," Rodolfo beamed.

    The group, in that British way, rushed to sit themselves down in the seats before the vacating party had finished its manouevres. It was now that Marco noticed the boy, the last to sit down, at the back of the group and plainly wishing he was anywhere but here. A tall boy with a transportingly beautiful face that he seemed to be trying to hide under his hair. Marco shook his head faintly in wonder. He looked like a saint from a Raphael fresco.

    The beautiful boy looked up as he slid into his place. He seemed to slide him a glance of mute apology. Marco gave him a sympathetic smile with more than a hint of conspiracy about it.

At the Villa Rosa, a brilliant disk of sun, thin and bright as a beaten penny, was slipping down from a sky entirely saffron yellow. Thin scraps of gold cloud reflected the vanishing furnace. Below, the darkened hills rose and fell like waves. The air was sweet and still and warm.

    Upstairs, Emma was checking on Morning. He was asleep. She crossed to the window, where, avoiding looking at the devastated rose garden, she saw, on the patio below, that the table had been set for dinner by Mara.

    It looked beautiful and very inviting. The parasol had been dismantled, and the silver of the cutlery gleamed in the rich, but much milder, evening sun. The wine glasses flashed, and the snow-white napkins glowed.

    Emma gave a start as, immediately below her, Darcy now appeared. She was frowning over her mobile phone, as if she expected a text from someone. Then the scent of food seemed to hit her; she sniffed the air appreciatively and went immediately to the table, which she proceeded to inspect with relish. From the vantage point of her room, Emma smiled as, first checking to see that no one was looking, Darcy tugged the thick and crispy end off a piece of bread, took the oil phial, and poured some of the bright yellow contents on it. As she chewed, her face assumed an expression of ecstasy.

    Darcy had, Emma thought, turned out to be something of a surprise. As she was also an actress, and in the same film as Belle, Emma had expected another tantrum-prone diva, but Darcy seemed good-natured and to have no airs at all. She had cooed over Morning and had been especially polite to Mara. Most endearingly of all, she seemed anything but fond of Belle. Her expression when Belle had airily explained what the helicopter had done to the garden had been one of mixed disgust and horror.

    Emma watched Darcy chewing. She had finished the whole of her first piece of bread by now and was launched on the second. The level in the oil phial was dropping drastically. Emma reflected that Darcy had eaten more in the last few minutes than she had ever seen Belle eat the whole time she had known her.

    She felt herself warm further to the dark-haired actress. She had a certain distance and dignity—especially with that cut-glass voice—but was the complete opposite of Belle. While Emma readily acknowledged her employer was beautiful, it was a hard, artificial kind of beauty. But there was something altogether lovely about Darcy; she had a pretty, fresh face with what looked like the original features. Her body, compared to Belle's, looked almost normal. She was slim, certainly, much thinner than me, Emma thought. But at the same time, nothing on the emaciated, artificially inflated scale of Belle.

    There was a clattering sound now, and Belle herself clacked onto the patio in a very short, figure-hugging dress of some stretchy, black, glittery material. Her white hair streamed over her shoulders, and her red mouth glistened from beneath the black sunglasses.

    In her skinny brown arms, Sugar looked about him with his habitual ill-natured stare. In the candlelight, the diamonds on his collar flashed brilliantly, almost rivalling those on Belle's fingers and wrists. She had, Emma thought, made a considerable effort for dinner at home with the nanny.

    Or perhaps she wanted to outshine Darcy, a competition Darcy, simply dressed in jeans, a white shirt, and black glittery flip-flops, seemed uninterested in taking part in.

    Emma began to back away from the window. It was time she went down herself now. Dinner was evidently about to start.

    There came the sharp clacking sound of spike heels on ancient stone as Belle went to the table and sloshed some wine into a glass. "Hey," she exclaimed. "She's set the table for dinner."