Never Too Rich (19 page)

But the Satan’s Warriors would never dream of
scouring the city’s private clinics. Especially not the
plastic-surgery palaces on the Upper East Side.

But first, they would have to change cabs. Surely
the bikers had taken note of the taxi’s number—and the driver would
be easy to find. She didn’t doubt for a moment that those cavemen
would get him to talk.

“
St. Vincent’s,” she said again,
thinking: We’ll get another cab there.

Chapter 19

“
Good evening, Miss Robinson.”
Banstead, the white-gloved butler, gave a slight bow.

Edwina smiled. “Good evening, Banstead.”

The butler inclined his head in R. L. Shacklebury’s
direction. “Good evening, sir.”

“
Hi,” R.L. returned informally. As
he looked around, his lips formed a silent whistle. He was no
stranger to money himself, but his Bostonian family and their vast
cousinage had eschewed blatant signs of wealth, preferring to live
discreet Yankee lives. The foreign-born de Riscals, on the other
hand, obviously subscribed to an entirely different philosophy.
Everywhere he looked, opulence shimmered, glowed, shone, sparkled,
refracted, and glinted. Everything shouted money, money,
money.

Money showed in the circular foyer, with its domed
ceiling and the two facing giltwood consoles on which massive
floral arrangements exploded from Chinese vases. It showed in the
lighting: all electric light was banished, and wall sconces
dripping crystals glowed with slim beeswax tapers, while overhead
the icy chandelier bristled with a two-tiered forest of flames.
Potpourri and beeswax and perfume wafted delicately in the air.
From somewhere down the long, checkered marble hall, a Saint-Saens
melody being performed on an antique Bechstein grand piano was
almost drowned out by the buzzing of many conversations. Musical
ripples of bright clear laughter rose and fell.

Money was in the air. R.L. could breathe it, smell
it, and hear it . . . and soon, no doubt, he thought with a wry
smile, he would taste it as well.

After a uniformed maid had relieved them of their
coats, Edwina headed to the nearest mirror and checked out her
off-the-rack silk de Riscal. It had a chartreuse bodice, slim
emerald-green skirt flaring into ruffles above the knee, and a
shocking-pink cummerbund. Her frizzy Botticelli hair was parted in
the center and fluffed like two sunset-tinted clouds to either side
of her face. Her makeup was savage perfection. Brushed-gold
quarter-moon earrings dotted with diamond-chip stars dangled from
her ears.

Touching R.L. on the arm, Edwina said, “This way,”
and started confidently down the marble hall.

“
Where did they find that butler?”
R.L. asked softly, looking back over his shoulder. “Central
casting?”

“
Buckingham Palace,” Edwina
whispered.

“
For real?”

She gave him a steady look. “For real.”

“
Edwina!
Darling!”

Before they reached the drawing room, Anouk bore
down on them in a cloud of jasmine like a splendid couture-clad
witch. Her arms were extended in welcome and her wrists dangled
delicately.

Edwina held out her cheek for an air kiss and
returned it in kind.

“
You look mahvelous!” Anouk cooed,
stepping back. Her topaz eyes inspected Edwina from head to toe. “I
have always maintained that on you, Antonio’s off-the-rack looks
almost like couture!”

Edwina forced a friendly smile; she wasn’t about to
dignify the backhanded compliment with clever repartee. “And you,
Anouk, look stunning. As always.”

“
You mean
this?”
Anouk
gestured at herself and gave a deprecating shrug. “It’s just a
little nothing Antonio whipped up for me, that’s all. Hardly worth
a mention, really.”

Anouk could be a master of understatement.

Possessed of an uncannily psychic talent to predict
who would wear what, Anouk had figured—accurately, how else?—that
all the women would be wearing up-to-the-minute fashions—in effect,
all colors of the rainbow, and then some. So she, of course, had
opted to wear all black. A floor-length plain black velvet sheath
that came up to her armpits, leaving her narrow, elegant shoulders
bare. Of course, it wasn’t
too
plain: a gargantuan black
silk bow flared from her back like silken wings, and she trailed a
black silk train. She wore no rings or bracelets, but the Bulgari
sapphires on her ears and around her thin throat could have
financed a minor revolution.

Anouk’s widening eyes swept R. L. Shacklebury up and
down. She really must give credit where it was due. Edwina, the
simple little student, had managed to marry one of the finest and
most appealing plastic surgeons in the world—and now she appeared
with this simply gorgeous hunk of a man. How did she do it? “And
who, may I ask, is this mahvelous man?” she demanded, glancing
questioningly at Edwina. “And why have I not seen him before?”

Edwina made the necessary introductions, and R.L.
took Anouk’s proffered hand, mockingly kissing her fingers.

Anouk’s perfectly plucked eyebrows lifted in
amusement. “My,
my.
How gallant!” Then a faraway look came
into her eyes. “Shacklebury . . .

Shacklebury ...” She tapped her lips with a
fingertip and looked thoughtful; then suddenly her brilliantly
mascaraed lashes widened. “Don’t tell me! One of the Boston
department-store Shackleburys from Shacklebury-Prince? Your father
died several years ago, I recall now.”

“
Guilty,” R.L. said with a sheepish
smile.

At this admission, Anouk’s manner grew positively
warm. “Darling,” she purred, “and to think that not one of your
twenty-three department stores carries Antonio de Riscal!” She
wagged an admonishing finger at him. “Shame on you! We shall have
to remedy that, won’t we?”

He looked surprised. “How do you know that we have
twenty-three stores and don’t sell de Riscal?”

“
I know.” Anouk smiled, but without
boastfulness; she was simply stating a fact. “I know every emporium
and boutique around the world worth knowing—those that carry
Antonio de Riscal, and those that do not.”

R.L. looked at her with growing respect. Instinct
told him that beneath the expertly applied makeup and expensive
gown and jewels, Anouk de Riscal was a cunning and clever
garment-industry version of a stage mother—or was it a stage wife?
At any rate, a formidable power behind the throne.

Stung at having been relegated to the sidelines by
Anouk, Edwina was beginning to feel the stirrings of potent anger.
She didn’t like being made to feel like excess baggage, and she
hated surprises! Why didn’t R.L. tell me he owns the stores now?
she wondered. Why do I have to learn it secondhand from this
conversation with Anouk?

Holding her breath, she fought to retain her
composure. Rationally, she knew she had no right to be upset. R.L.
didn’t owe her any explanations. Besides, he never had been one to
boast. Even years ago, when they’d had their affair, she had found
out about his father, the department-store tycoon, quite by
accident. In fact, R.L. had been almost ashamed of his family’s
vast wealth.

“
Unfortunately,” Anouk was saying,
“we can’t possibly let your San Francisco and Chicago stores
represent Antonio de Riscal. I. Magnin has exclusive franchise
agreements there. But you have other stores in other cities . .
.”

Edwina, holding a smile that made her lips ache,
listened with only one ear. If she was fair—and she always tried to
be—R.L. really hadn’t had the opportunity to tell her he now headed
Shacklebury-Prince. Still, she couldn’t help but feel slighted.

“
Well, enough of that,” Anouk said
brightly. “We can talk business some other time. Come along,
darlings.” She slid a slim arm through R.L.’s as though fearful of
his escaping. Thoroughly in charge, she led the way down the
remainder of the long hall to the drawing room. Edwina, feeling
abandoned, followed in their wake. R.L. kept turning around to
shoot her helpless looks, but Anouk, having seized him in her
clutches, wasn’t about to let go of him yet.

The de Riscal drawing room was at least the size of
most single-story dwellings, and Edwina suspected it had been
designed but for a single purpose—to unnerve. As always when she
visited here, she felt reduced to Lilliputian size, like a tiny
ballerina captured inside a blazing red jewel box. Rich red silk
velvet walls surrounded her, and miles of red silk brocade trimmed
with fringe swagged the windows, held in place by tasseled red silk
ropes as thick as hawsers. On pink marble plinths, busts of Roman
emperors stared mutely out at the clusters of guests from the row
of narrow windows. Sitting and standing in little groups, champagne
glasses in hand, guests dotted the Turkey carpets like precious
living jewels. The candles glowed. The conversations glowed. The
fires in the twin fireplaces and the guests all around glowed. At
either end of the room, one of a pair of enormous pier mirrors,
placed strategically opposite each other, stretched the elegant
scene into infinity. It might not have looked like home, but it was
where Anouk’s heart was.

Edwina didn’t need to look around to see who the
guests were: the usual, predictable ionosphereans. For the most
part, the men ranged from the slim to the obese, but they were all
middle-aged or older and shared the kind of self-confidence only
nine-and ten-figure fortunes can bestow. The women, on the other
hand, were of two distinct varieties. There were the Pretty Young
Things, or PYT’s, as
W
, the fashion paper, slyly called
them, and then there were the Dinosaurs—those ageless, almost
hunger-ravaged lizards who starved themselves to within an inch of
death in order to live lives as walking, breathing clothes hangers
for the world’s most expensively tailored clothes. Like exotically
plumed tropical birds, they cried out in silvery voices and flitted
from group to group, perching on the arms of furniture or spreading
their wings to dangle multicarat bracelets.

Anouk, arm still hooked though R.L.’s, turned her
head and smiled at Edwina. “Darling, I hope you don’t mind, but
there are
tons
of people I’m sure R.L. hasn’t met, and I
simply
must
introduce him!” She blew a kiss at Edwina with
her free hand. “Circulate!” she admonished in a stage whisper. “And
don’t worry. I won’t appropriate him for too long!” Her laughter
tinkled up the scale.

The bitch! Edwina was burning with outrage. How dare
Anouk abscond with R.L. like that? But she smiled her aching bright
smile and wrathfully plucked a glass of champagne off a passing
footman’s tray. She drank half of it in a single gulp. Through
slitted eyes she watched as Anouk swept regally from group to group
of beautiful people, R.L. in diplomatic, if reluctant, tow.

“
Oh . . . Edwina.”

Momentarily startled, she glanced to her right and
blinked. Klas Claussen looked down his beautifully sculptured nose
at her, smirking with cool disdain as he floated past on his way to
the powder room, where, no doubt, he intended to inhale a snort or
two of nose candy. “Anouk sometimes has the most irritating habit
of inviting just anybody,” he sniffed. “Doesn’t she?”

Edwina wished she had a cattle prod in hand.
Gritting her teeth in a semblance of a smile, she lifted her glass
in a toast and downed the rest of her champagne.

Some party, she thought miserably.

And wondered: who is the bigger bitch? Anouk or
Klas?

Chapter 20

Swallowed by an obese leather chair in one of the
Cooper Clinic’s small private waiting rooms, Olympia Arpel thought
that she, too, was going to need treatment if Duncan Cooper didn’t
finish examining Shirley soon; she was ready to climb the
exquisitely paneled walls.

The instant he entered the waiting room, she jumped
to her feet, her eyes searching his face for a verdict.

Duncan Cooper, one of New York’s preeminent plastic
surgeons, was no great beauty himself. Nor was he a fashion plate.
He was that rarest of
Homo sapiens,
a man totally
comfortable in his own skin. Unlike his vain clientele, he was
completely satisfied with his looks and saw no need to improve upon
nature.

Duncan Cooper was forty-four years old. His head was
capped with a halo of wiry, unmanageable yellow-gray curls and his
skin still showed signs of the ravages of teenage acne. He had
dark, liquid brown eyes that gave him a vaguely sad, bloodhoundish
look. A nose that was a tad too long and too thick. Hands that were
delicate and almost femininely beautiful, with tapered short-nailed
fingers. They were the hands of a skilled artist whose medium was
scalpels and skin instead of paints and brushes.

Neither thin nor heavily muscled, he had a body that
was comfortingly ordinary, but his disarmingly crooked grin, when
he smiled, was one of such generous, arousing brilliance that it
elicited sighs and shivers from women of all ages. He was also one
of the few plastic surgeons whose work did
not
include
built-in obsolescence, and whose lifts and treatments never
deteriorated after a few short years, in order to ensure a steady
procession of repeat customers.

“
How is she?” were the first words
out of Olympia’s mouth. She gripped Cooper too firmly by the
arm.

Wordlessly he reached into a pocket and took out a
little vial. He shook two tiny yellow pills out into his hand and
held them out to her.

She looked down at his hand and then up at him.
“What are those?”

“
Five-milligram Valiums,” he said
gently. “I think you could use them.”