Page 37 of Casanova LLC

“And when it was time to… I mean presumably,” she spoke mincingly, “there was a…” She swung a hand between us. “Passing of the baton.”

“Oh, yes! But sadly, his baton?—”

“Here we go,” I mumbled.

“It is not exactly the stuff of Casanova legend.” Looking regretful, he held up his thumb and forefinger, an inch apart.

Claire burst out laughing.

“I joke, I joke!”

I stood, mustering the fakest laugh I could. “I joke, you joke, we all joke!”

Claire just laughed harder.

Dessert was to be served now. I went into the kitchen, hastily uncovered the small torta I had prepared, and brought it and a knife—for the cake, not him, sadly—back into the dining room just in time to hear him say:

“Yes, it is stupid, Bella, but it is a fact of our life. Wealthy women, they like everything big.”

“Stop generalizing about wealthy women.” My tone was light, but serious, and I nodded at Claire. “It’s insulting.”

She raised a brow. “But I am not a wealthy woman. I was the wife of a wealthy man.”

He waved off my censure and her correction. “Old Money is different.”

“Old Money? What makes you think?—”

“Please,” he pshawed. “You are mannered. So elegant. Poised.” I set the torta on the table and Claire bent over it, inhaling. “And your father, he was in antiquities, no? Some English lord, as well?”

So Jacopo had Googled her, too. And he’d obviously found the same article I had when I’d Googled her years ago.

Claire’s mirthful eyes met mine as I sliced the cake. “You think I’m ‘Old Money,’ too?”

I grinned. “Principessa, for sure.”

She lifted her wine coyly to her lips, enjoying this. “Enlighten me?”

I dished up the cake. “I grew up watching girls like you. I’d see you at the Met, on your little field trips, in your little uniforms, giggling in front of a Roman statue. I was there, sketching. You had one bold friend who would approach first, ask me what I was drawing. And then she’d point at you and say, ‘Can you draw her? Her parents would pay a lot of money for it.’ But then one of your countless chaperones would appear and whisk you back to…” I set a plate down in front of her, both of us fully smiling now. “Greenwich?” I propped a hand on the table and leaned over. “To Something-Something-Obscure-Historical-Figure Day School?” I lifted her hand. Kissed her knuckles. Murmured against her skin, “Tell me: what was your pony’s name?”

Mock-offended, she yanked her hand away. She picked up her fork and studied her plate, taking a moment to assemble a reply. “There was a title of some kind. And some Old Money. Somewhere back. But it was all long gone by the time my parents met.” She looked at Jacopo. “The reporter of that article you clearly found had tracked down my mother, cold-called her, caught her off guard. I’d just gotten engaged to Richard and she didn’t know what he knew about our past, so she told her what my father would have said about himself. What he did say about himself. Before he disappeared. A Baron. Antiquities.”

She forked a piece of cake and held it up, but didn’t take a bite. “But it was all a lie. The something-something-obscure-historical-figure day schools I went to, I went to on scholarship. And I only attended them long enough for my father to con the rich kids’ parents.” She looked at me. “And the only horses I ever knew the names of were the ones my father bet on.”

Then she ate the cake and her eyes rolled back in her head. She thumped the table and extended her arm, dropping her head down onto it and looking up at me with baleful eyes. “Bury me in this torta.”

I was still too busy processing all of what she’d said to laugh. Unbothered, she raised her head and took another forkful.

I began gently. “Did he ever…”

“No, never came back. Left when I was fourteen.”

“Dead?”

“If he were alive, he would have crawled out of the woodwork the moment I married Richard Craven.”

There was only a splash of wine left in the bottle and I poured it into her glass. She took a sip after the bite of chocolate and closed her eyes. And moaned again. “This combination is…incandescent.”

She was incandescent. The combination of her was… I’d never been so completely wrong before. “What happened then?” I’d forgotten about seduction, about teasing, even about Jacopo.

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