“I’ll be fine,” Lucie said as she herded Charlotte toward the door. After her cousin had left the room, Lucie plopped down on the sofa with a sigh. A memory began to surface, and for a moment she was transported to a beautiful beachfront house in Hobe Sound.
She was six years old, squinting in pain as the sour-faced Irish maid pinched her right shoulder to steady her, while with her other hand she brushed Lucie’s hair forcefully, stinging her scalp each time with the hard wire brush. Lucie sat there quietly, her eyes brimming with tears. She knew better than to make a sound.
“It’s no use, ma’am. I’ve given it a hundred strokes and it’s still frizzing up like a French poodle.”
“Good God, you’re right, it is just like a French poodle.” Lucie’s grandmother laughed dryly. “Lucie, did you not wear your swimming cap like I told you to before going into the pool? Did you get chlorine in your hair?”
“I wore it, Granny.”
“Ugh, what impossible hair! I’ve never seen anything like it. Okay, change of plan, Oonagh. Why don’t we use some coconut oil to slick it down and get rid of the frizz that way? It’ll give it some gloss. Then we can give her braids on either side, and she can wear my Lacroix dragon jacket like it’s a robe. If we can’t make her look like the other girls, let’s give her the china doll look. Lucie, remember how we used to play china doll? You’re going to be my precious little Chinese empress at the party tonight!”
Lucie stirred herself from the memory, wondering how she was ever going to face George tonight. He probably thought she was a total freak. Why in the world did she kiss him? She didn’t even like him. What came over her to make her lunge at him like that back at the villa? Over and over, she was doing nothing but making bad decisions and embarrassing herself. Ignoring him, crying on him, kissing him. What would her grandmother think if she saw her behaving like this? Maybe she had Stendhal syndrome, being surrounded by so much beauty at that spectacular villa overlooking Positano. She had heard of people arriving in Paris or Rome for the first time and bursting into tears uncontrollably, overpowered by the exquisiteness of everything. No, she blamed Charlotte and Olivia. It was all that kissing talk between them after lunch that stirred her up and confused her.
Just then, she heard a strange shuffling sound on the floor. She looked down and saw that a little envelope had been slid under the door. Jumping off the sofa, she rushed to the door and opened it, peering out to see who was there.
The hallway was empty.
Lucie tore open the envelope and found a folded sheet of beautiful Italian parchment paper. Unfolding it, she let out a quick gasp. Written on it in prep-school cursive was one line:
In one kiss, you’ll know all I haven’t said.
—Pablo Neruda
CHAPTER TWELVE
Certosa Di San Giacomo
Capri, Italy
As luck or Murphy’s Law would have it, the one time that Lucie and Charlotte were a few minutes late in Italy was the one time the event started early. From Via Pizzolungo, the Certosa di San Giacomo looked smaller than when one actually passed through the narrow iron gates and entered the monastery. Here, the cousins discovered that they had to walk for what seemed like miles through a complex of ancient buildings, passing magnificent cloisters and expansive gardens that overlooked the sea. Arriving at the chapel at long last, they found the space packed and the concert about to commence.
“I’m sorry, I tried to save seats for you, but the Queen of Sheba wasn’t having it,” Olivia told Charlotte in a hushed voice, darting her eyes at the elderly Italian lady with the enormous shellacked beehive festooned with emeralds seated next to her.
Charlotte forced a smile. “That’s perfectly fine. There are a few seats left at the back, I believe, otherwise we can just stand.”
Seeing how cross Charlotte was, Lucie apologized again. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have washed my hair. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“What were you thinking, Lucie? You know your hair takes ages to dry, and I told you we were already going to be late. And no one can even tell that you washed your hair when it’s put up.”
“I just wanted to get the sea out of my hair,” Lucie lied. She hadn’t washed her hair at all; she had spent the past thirty minutes trying to calm herself after receiving the mysterious Neruda poem, trying on six different outfits in a panic and finally settling on the long black gown with a bandeau top—the one her mom called her “Rita Hayworth dress”—that made her feel more sophisticated and grown-up. She had worn it at the Frick Young Fellows Ball,fn1 where Bill Cunningham had complimented the dress and taken her picture, and she felt that she needed this armor against George, even though she was sure he wouldn’t notice—he dressed in such a nondescript way and would probably be oblivious to her sartorial efforts.
As they took their seats in the back row, Charlotte wondered out loud, “Where did all these people suddenly come from? I hardly recognize anyone.”
“I think many of them arrived just in time for the wedding tomorrow,” Lucie surmised, using the excuse to stand up and scan the room. She was trying to spot George but couldn’t locate him anywhere in the crowd.
Conte Andrea De Vecchi, a tall, imposing man in his sixties, and his wife, Contesssa Laudomia, a striking strawberry blonde dressed in an emerald-green gown that Lucie recognized from Valentino’s spring collection, approached the altar in front of where the orchestra of musicians had been set up. Looking very distinguished in a dark velvet dinner jacket, the Conte tapped on the microphone with his finger and addressed the crowd in charmingly accented English: “Your Majesties, Highnesses, Holinesses, Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen, my wife and I are so honored that you have all come tonight from different corners of the earth to celebrate the nuptials of our son Adolfo to la bella Isabel. We are here in one of the oldest buildings in Capri, and to me the most beautiful. It was built in 1371 on the orders of Count Giacomo Arcucci on land donated by my ancestor Queen Giovanna D’Angiò of Napoli as a sanctuary for the Carthusian monks. Tonight, as we take sanctuary together in this sacred place, we are very lucky to have with us the maestro Niccolo Miulli leading the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma, who will be accompanying the incomparable Dame Kiri Te Kanawa!”
The crowd gasped in surprise as the celebrated diva took the stage in a billowing cape of orange shantung silk over an iridescent violet ball gown. The orchestra began to play, and as Kiri bellowed out the first notes of “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta” from Puccini’s opera La rondine, Mordecai could be heard letting out a moan of ecstasy so loud it sounded slightly obscene.
Even from the back row, Lucie was transfixed by Kiri’s incredible voice. She couldn’t believe that anyone could hit those high notes with such clarity, and as she sat there in the chapel, lulled by the ethereal beauty of Kiri’s next aria, “Bailero,” from Chants d’Auvergne, she found herself staring up at the vaulted arches of the chapel. The ceilings and walls had once been completely covered by a fresco, much like the Sistine Chapel, but now only a few colorful fragments from the original painting remained on the white plaster ceiling, punctuating the starkness in a random way that reminded her of jigsaw puzzle pieces.