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While he had been polite to a fault, he had for all intents and purposes ignored her after that. He had ignored her at the monastery, he had ignored her on the yacht, and he was ignoring her right now. Why did she even entertain the notion that someone like him could possibly be interested in her, when up at the villa there was a bevy of beautiful, sophisticated women clinging to his every word. She must have been swept up in wedding fever, in the waxing moon, in the romance of Capri.
As she was about to leave the chamber, she heard the sound of someone coming down the steps, and a moment later George appeared at the threshold.
For some reason, she knew it was going to be him.
“Are you stalking me?” she joked, trying to sound nonchalant, although she could hear her voice quivering.
“Yes, actually.”
“Really. Why?”
“Because I need to give you this,” George said, as he suddenly leaned forward and kissed her. Taken by surprise, she lurched backward for a moment, before reaching around, grabbing his head, pulling him closer, and kissing him hungrily.
“Isabel told everyone last night that you were her little angel, you were off-limits. That’s why I went home,” George whispered as he kissed the area right below her ear.
“Fuck Isabel. I was off-limits to everyone but you,” Lucie muttered, surprised by her own words as she realized at that moment how much she wanted him, from the first moment she had set eyes on him in the lunchroom of the hotel to the vision of him as a godlike Apollo diving off the rock at Da Luigi, she had wanted him so desperately she could hardly breathe, gasping deeply while he shoved the heavy door closed with his foot, pressed her body against the ancient stone wall, kissing her throat, her neck, letting his mouth linger, as she reached for him urgently. They lay on the bench and he kissed her for what seemed like an eternity, but Lucie didn’t want it to ever stop, and as his fingers and lips found her breasts and tortured her so exquisitely, she found herself pushing his head down, down, down, until her diaphanous skirt pooled around his head and she could feel his stubble graze her inner thigh, his searing tongue on her skin, hearing him murmur, “Are you sure it’s okay?” as she answered with a moan, opening herself to him, closing her eyes as time collapsed and she submitted in a way she never had before, letting herself get lost in a pleasure so intense she thought she was going to pass out, holding her breath, biting her lip trying not to scream as his warm sweat beaded down her legs, her heart pounding in her chest, pounding as if it would explode, pounding louder and louder until a scream filled her ears and she realized it wasn’t coming from her and wasn’t coming from George, but from Charlotte.
Charlotte was pounding on the door, screaming, “Stop it! Stop it, you two! The drone! The drone can see you! The damn drone is filming everything!”
Lucie opened her eyes and saw a drone hovering above them, a tiny point of light flashing, flashing. Flashing red.
*1 The private yacht club in the Hamptons that Lucie’s family belongs to.
*2 After selling his business to Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy in 1988 and retiring in 1995, Hubert de Givenchy spent most of his time at Le Jonchet, his beautiful Renaissance castle from the early seventeenth century. #goals
*3 His full name was Baron Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, the Swedish French heir to a huge steel fortune. Interestingly, he was related to Axel von Fersen, rumored to be Marie Antoinette’s lover. (In the exquisite Sofia Coppola film Marie Antoinette, the character of Axel von Fersen is played by Jamie Dornan, aka Christian Grey.)
*4 That would be Eros Ramazzotti, who might have been unknown to Lucie but in Italy is pretty much as famous as one gets, having sold more than sixty million records in a career that’s spanned three decades.
XV
Hotel Bertolucci
CAPRI, ITALY
Lucie sat in the bathtub, knees curled up to her chin, the shower turned on to its highest, trying to drown out her headache. Even with the full force of the water beating down on her, her head felt like it had been put into a vise that was tightening by the second. Any moment now it would explode, and nothing would be left but a big, messy splatter against the blue-and-white painted tiles. Her one contribution to this planet: a Jackson Pollock in the bathtub. And not a good one at that. Too much red, the critics would say. What a waste, her mother would say. What would her mother actually say? She couldn’t bear to even think of it.
She had fucked up, she knew it. She had tried to be someone she wasn’t. She tried to do something daring, unpredictable, and carefree, and look what happened. Isabel was right. She was far too innocent, far too much of an angel, to try playing in the deep end. How would she ever face it? The embarrassment. The utter humiliation of being caught with George Zao, of all the boys in the world. Caught and exposed like that. All her life she had been so responsible, so virtuous, so perfect, and the one time she had tried pretending to be the sophisticate, the bad girl, it had all gone up in flames.
The moment Charlotte started banging on the door at Villa Jovis, everything entered this strange liminal space where it all seemed to happen in slow motion but somehow also sped up. They scrambled to untangle from each other. George opened the door to a shrieking Charlotte, bolted out of the chamber, and started chasing after the two guys who had been controlling the drone. The guys ran into the woods, and George disappeared after them. Lucie stumbled out and began running herself, but in the opposite direction. She couldn’t face Charlotte. Not now, maybe never.
At some point, Lucie willed herself somehow to get out of the tub. The steam had helped, maybe. She threw on the plush white bathrobe and padded out into her bedroom, letting out a quick gasp when she found Charlotte sitting in her armchair.
“You left the door half open. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
Lucie caught her breath, her fists still clenched. “I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yesss!” Lucie hissed.
“Okay, okay. I just wanted to be sure, that’s all. You don’t have to be so defensive. I’m on your side, Lucie,” Charlotte said, trying to sound calm, even though she was boiling with panic.
“I’m sorry, I’m a little on edge,” Lucie said, sitting down on her bed.
“I can only imagine.” Charlotte arched her eyebrows. She sat back in the armchair, crossed her arms, and all pretense of caring gave way to the old Charlotte that Lucie had been dreading. “Oh, Lucie, my poor Lucia. What were you thinking? I don’t mean to overreact, but this is bad. This is very, very bad.”
“I know very well how bad it is. You can stop saying it.”
