Indiscretions Read Free Page B

And India had been his lover for almost a year.
    The traffic was hell, as usual. Her enormous black plastic watch with the silver stars pointing the hours—bought for a few hundred lire in some tacky souvenir shop in Venice simply because she thought it had enormous style—showed, if you could deduce the gaps betweenthe stars correctly, that it was almost eight o’clock. Impatiently India pulled the car out of the jam of traffic on the Via Cesare Augusto and edging her two nearside wheels onto the pavement she reversed, honking down the one-way street. Immediately it seemed every horn in Rome blasted into a cacophony as car drivers shook their fists threateningly and pedestrians shrank against the stone walls of the narrow thoroughfare shouting insults to India’s grinning face. “Screw you all,” she shouted back happily in her best American, “I’m late!” India Haven had become a true Italian.
LONDON
    Every surface in the pine-paneled kitchen at the rear of the mews house was submerged beneath baking trays and platters. The Cuisinart held freshly made mayonnaise laced with garlic, dripping colanders leaned perilously over the sink as plump juicy lobster tails defrosted—rapidly, Venetia hoped. Spicy avocado halves with cheese topping waited to be baked to creamy perfection and then crowned with a scoop of “caviar.” Venetia prayed that the guest from America would not be too much of a caviar connoisseur. A fluffy rice dish jeweled with morsels of red, green, and yellow peppers waited beside a small mountain of
mange-touts
prepared ready for a quick sautéeing, and a crisply fresh green salad in a tall glass bowl awaited its final glistening dressing of superb olive oil from Provence and a fine tarragon-flavored white wine vinegar.
    Venetia stood back and surveyed it with satisfaction. The lobster tails had been an inspired touch—there was almost no cooking to be done, just the avocados and the dessert. As a concession to the well-known American fondness for all things chocolate, there was to be chocolatesoufflé; the mixture was already prepared and only the egg whites remained to be beaten.
    It was exactly eight-fifteen as Venetia pulled off the big blue-and-white-striped butcher’s apron and simultaneously the kitchen door crashed open. A hand holding a tall glass of champagne poked from behind it.
    “For you,” said Lydia’s contrite voice. “Am I forgiven?”
    Venetia laughed. “If that’s the good champagne, I’ll forgive you anything.”
    “Roger’s best.” Lydia’s apologetic face peeked cautiously around the door. “I made him open the sixty-nine.” Her quick green glance swept the tables. “And it looks as though no one deserves it more than you do. Oh, Vennie, darling, it’s a feast. You’re so clever—that cookery course was wonderful.”
    “Just as a matter of interest, Lydia,” said Venetia, sipping the champagne, “what were you proposing to feed your guests tonight?”
    Guiltily Lydia dragged a package from behind the door and pulled out an enormous rib-roast of beef. “I thought this would be nice. Americans like beef, don’t they? I simply didn’t think about the time it takes to cook the damned thing! And speaking of time, we must fly and get ready. Come on, Vennie, leave all this. Go and relax in the bath and make yourself pretty. Roger’s got the wines under control and Kate’s done the table and flowers. The flowers! Oh, Vennie, what would I do without you for an extra daughter? Thank you
so
much.”
    Lydia flung her arms around her and Venetia rested her head against Lydia’s soft cheek. This was really where she belonged.
    Kate had run her bath, adding masses of delicious gardenia bath oil, and Venetia lay back in the warm, scented water sipping her champagne. It seemed as though shehad never known any other permanent home, not since she was really small. Not until she met Kate. As a lonely child of twelve in her first term at Hesketh’s, Venetia was no