Love and Splendor: The Coltrane Saga, Book 5 Read Free

anger shone in his eyes. “Then you’re trifling with me,” he accused.
    His voice had risen, and in proportion, so did Dani’s ire. How dare he make such an insinuation? Good Lord, did all men think merely because a woman accepted an invitation that they were a candidate for the position of wife?
    “I resent your implications,” she said sharply. “I asked for nothing more from you than your friendship. If you consider that ‘trifling’, then you’re sadly mistaken.”
    She lifted her skirts and turned to swish angrily through the open gates.
    At once, Perrine contritely called, “Dani, wait…I didn’t mean it. I just love you so, and…”
    His voice faded amid the furious roaring in her ears as she hurried on up the sidewalk, up the stairs, and past the waiting doorman, a bewildered expression on his face.
    She entered the circular foyer, with its marble floor, the walls papered in pale green satin with designs of ivy in a darker shade of velvet.
    Standing patiently, she allowed Cletus, the butler, to take her white fur wrap, then she moved toward the burgundy carpeted stairs that curved upward to the second-floor landing. To either side stood a pair of carved wood and gilded pedestals, supporting a pair of bronze and ormolu candelabra.
    When she reached the landing, she turned toward the left, to her quarters, but suddenly Kitty cheerily called out to her from the direction of the other wing.
    “Dani, good evening. Didn’t you invite Perrine in for a nightcap?”
    Dani felt a rush of need and turned to look at Kitty, peering from a doorway, wrapped in an emerald dressing gown that complemented her lovely eyes. Her hair, the shade of a brilliant summer sunset, tumbled softly about her shoulders.
    Dani’s eyes were imploring as she miserably whispered, “May I come in and talk to you, if it won’t disturb Poppa?”
    At once aware something was wrong, Kitty beckoned to her. “He’s at the embassy, getting ready to leave for Panama tomorrow. Come in and have a glass of wine.”
    As always, Dani was impressed by the beauty of Kitty’s parlor. Since moving to Paris, Kitty had become passionately involved in the study of interior design, as well as art, and as a result, the Coltrane mansion was a showplace of taste and culture. An invitation to visit and view was a prize coveted by the social and government aristocrats of Paris.
    Dani was especially fond of the magnificent and imposing Chippendale mahogany secretary bookcase that stood just inside the door, with a beautifully carved swan-neck pediment and its unusual ogee bracket feet. Kitty had said it dated from 1775.
    Beside it sat a George I period chair in walnut on elegant cabriole supports, which were decorated with shell-carved knees that terminated in ball-and-claw feet.
    To the side of the secretary, on the wall covered in yellow watered silk, hung a fabulous pair of carved wood and gilded two-branch girandoles, decorated with birds, torches, and wheat sheafs, and hung with crystal drops.
    Kitty had crossed the room to where she kept her evening bottle of wine on a Chinese altar table with two secret compartments. It was one of her favorite pieces, and she watched, smiling with pleasure, as Dani admired her other pieces…fruits of long hours of laborious searching in out-of-the-way French antique shops.
    She poured them each a glass of rosé, then served Dani before gesturing to her newest addition to the room. “A treasure,” she explained proudly as they stood before the painting of a young man and woman embracing as they sat together in a wooden swing, suspended by ropes from an overhanging branch. “I was at a tea last week given in honor of the new German ambassador, and it was such a lovely afternoon, I decided to walk home. Along the way, I discovered a tiny little shop on the Rue Jussieu, and the owner was not learned enough to know the works of Pierre-Auguste Cot. He died in 1883, and his paintings are becoming more valuable each