Montega's Mistress Read Free Page A

night had passed and it was morning. As she picked up the receiver Helen thought that it had to be one of her parents, since they alone knew she was at the beach house.
    It was the long arm of Switzerland, otherwise known as Helen’s mother, Sophia Chamberlain Demarest Collier Nyquist. Sophia lived in Gstaad with her third husband, the chocolate baron, who commissioned his secretary to send Helen a ten pound box of bonbons every Christmas. Helen had long ago stopped reminding her stepfather that she was allergic to chocolate and routinely dropped the gift off at an orphanage near her apartment in Cambridge. And now Sophia, with her exquisite timing, was calling up for her semiannual clothes lecture while her daughter was harboring a gunshot victim.
    “Darling, just ringing up to remind you that the collections are coming out next week, and I’m expecting you to go with me to pick out a few things,” Sophia began in her breathless, confidence sharing voice, broaching the expected topic.
    Sophia had been born in Darien, Connecticut, but ever since she had lived in England with her second husband, she was fond of dropping Britishisms like “ringing up” into her conversation. Helen looked at the ceiling. She had never accompanied her mother to this ritual orgy of spending, but that did not deter Sophia from behaving as if it were an obligation which Helen would be rude and insensitive to ignore. Helen sighed as her mother rattled on about the trip, wondering how much her stepfather would be expected to pay for this latest indulgence. “Pick up a few things,” to her mother, meant packing off her entire current wardrobe to a secondhand house for a tax deduction and starting over from scratch, ordering originals from a range of designers.
    “Sophia, I have enough clothes, and I really have to go,” Helen interrupted when her mother paused for air. “I have to get to the library.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous, sweeting, one never has enough clothes,” Sophia replied, laughing lightly and ignoring the rest of her daughter’s statement. “I’ve already bought your ticket; you can meet me in Rome at Claudia’s villa.”
    Claudia Fierremonte, a friend of Helen’s mother who had inherited a sports car fortune, shared Sophia’s attitude toward life and the continual pursuit of the perfect wardrobe. Helen would rather do battle with Medusa than be trapped in the Eternal City with the two of them.
    “I can’t make it, Sophia, I have too much work to do.” Helen glanced at Matteo as he kicked off his cover, wishing that she were churlish enough to hang up in Sophia’s ear. Helen wanted to get back to her patient, who was now cold again and shivering. She put down the phone while her mother was still talking and unfolded the quilt from the foot of the bed, drawing it up to his chin. He settled down, and Helen picked up the receiver again to hear her mother say, “And Roberto will be there.”
    As if that were an enticement. Roberto Fierremonte was Claudia’s brother, a handsome, charming playboy who, like Claudia, had never done a day’s work in his life. Sophia thought that he was love’s young dream and considered Helen’s low opinion of him to be just another of her daughter’s many aberrations.
    “I thought we had closed the subject of Roberto,” Helen said wearily, mentally tapping her foot. She had to hand it to her mother; Sophia was as relentless as a tidal wave. She never surrendered, never seemed to consider doing so. “And my research can’t wait. I’m sorry.”
    “Helen, really, your obsession with that... project... simply defies comprehension,” Sophia observed, the first note of irritation creeping into her tone. “You absolutely must do something about the way you look. When you arrived for Bobbie’s shower in that.. .jacket, I almost died. I mean, died, right there in the Sherry Netherland. Darling, I hate to say this, but you are embarrassing me.”
    Helen had thought her mother’s cousin