Too Damn Rich

by Gould, Judith

  "Oh, but you're not imposing!" Dina assured her. "I'm delighted, sweetie! Really I am! Tell you what. Come straight to the apartment. I'll probably be out until sometime after lunch, but I'll get back as quickly as I can. Meanwhile, I shall inform the staff to expect you. Feel free to make yourself at home."

  "Oh, you are a darling—you've positively saved my life! And I can't wait to see you!"

  Frowning, Dina looked at the receiver in her hand and then reached out and replaced it. As she slid back into the now-tepid water, worries nibbled at her. She had definitely detected a disturbing note in Zandra's voice, almost an undercurrent of ... yes ... hysteria.

  Dina's frown deepened. Indomitable, sparkly, but always level-headed Zandra panicking? That was most unlike the Zandra she knew. Yet she was certain she hadn't imagined it.

  What on earth, she wondered, could be the matter?

  Chapter 3

  Zandra von Hohenburg-Willemlohe, Countess of Grafburg, had no intention of reliving the past twenty-four hours—at least, not if she had anything to say in the matter. She didn't think her nerves could stand it. Now that she was out of imminent danger, she allowed herself to feel a little safer. She was, after all, in America—and three thousand miles of ocean separated her from England and Big Trouble.

  "I think I'm in lust," a junior executive keeping pace with her said in a voice just loud enough for her to hear.

  When ignoring him didn't thwart his ardor, she iced him with her eyes. "I make it a point never to rob the cradle," she retorted so loudly that passersby smirked, and that having done the trick she hurried on, her outsize shoulder bag bouncing.

  Zandra von Hohenburg-Willemlohe had long become an expert at rebuffing the advances of strangers. She'd had to. Without meaning to, she attracted men the same way pollen attracts bees.

  Zandra was twenty-eight years old and had the face of the beauty queen she'd once been, and the body of a whore, which she most definitely was not. Her wide-spaced eyes were bright, pranksterish, and mermaid green, and her mouth was wide and full and sensuously pouty.

  She was five feet, ten inches tall before she put on her shoes, and her skin, that celebrated Limoges complexion for which the English are so famed, was, in her case, made all the more delightful by the triangle of irrepressible freckles on the tip of her nose. She weighed one hundred and eighteen pounds, and her hair, the precise color of Wilkin and Sons' Tiptree orange marmalade, billowed around her head in a soft, cloudy aura.

  On anyone else, the baggy cable-knit sweater, second-hand motorcycle jacket, and tight faded jeans tucked into a pair of crimson, flame-stitched, secondhand Tony Lama cowboy boots would have looked decidedly downscale. But on her the outfit looked absolutely smashing, for she belonged to that tiniest percentage of women who could carry off anything, even rags, and still look the height of chic.

  Oddly enough, while men were naturally drawn to her, women never seemed to resent her, for Zandra was altogether too vivacious and down to earth, too fun-loving and crazily uncomplicated for anyone to take offense to her beauty. If anything, her mischievous joie de vivre and high- pitched giggles rubbed off on others, and made anything she did—no matter how outrageous—seem blithefully innocent and done without wishing the least bit of offense or ill will.

  Twenty-four hours earlier, however, that bouncy spark had deserted her, and was yet to be fully regained.

  Now, carried along by the surging horde of passengers following the signs marked TO BUSES AND TAXIS, she silently blessed Dina Goldsmith. Without her old friend, she would have had nowhere to hide out—and then what?

  Then I would have been at the mercy of those goons, she thought grimly.

  The memory made her shudder, caused the bandaged wound on her forearm to throb and sting anew.

  Once outside, on the lower level of the international arrivals terminal, she hesitated, momentarily wondering whether to wait for a bus or to splurge frivolously on a cab. She knew she had less than a hundred dollars to her name, but right now that was the very least of her worries. What mattered was that she was safe and sound and that, except for the blistering wound on her forearm, her body was in one piece.

  How easily it could have been the other way around. How all too easily ...

  The birth of Anna Zandra Elisabeth Theresia Charlotte von Hohenburg- Willemlohe, Countess of Grafburg, in London—followed two years later by the birth of her brother, Rudolph—was little cause for celebration.

  Delivering Zandra was almost more than her delicate mother could bear, but the strain of Rudolph's birth proved to be too much. Lavinia von Hohenburg-Willemlohe died in the midst of delivery, and only the valiant efforts of a highly skilled team of surgeons had managed to save the child.

  Zandra's father, Stefan, was at a complete loss as to what to do. The death of his beloved Lavinia had left him dazed and confused. When he had married her, his fortune, in Czechoslovakia, had been one of the greatest in all Europe, but the Soviets had confiscated everything. His wife's untimely death, like his own decline into poverty, was something with which he could simply not cope. Under the circumstances, a two- year-old daughter and an infant son, possessors of a series of cumbersome and useless titles, presented a serious problem.

  Not surprisingly, he took solace in the bottle.

  Fortunately, there was no end of rich and titled relatives whose fortunes, based in the West, were not only intact but thriving; European nobility being the incestuous soup that it is, Zandra could count most of the dukes and duchesses of England, as well as the comtes and comtesses of France, as her various relatives. But thanks to her paternal grandfather, she was linked to the princely house of von und zu Engelwiesen, which meant that Zandra was also a descendant, however convoluted the bloodline, of the princes of the Holy Roman Empire.

  Subsequently, the relatives rallied 'round. Zandra's godmother, an English duchess, provided the children with a nanny, while Aunt Josephine, whose husband owned a private London bank, employed the increasingly alcoholic Stefan with a make-work job, and Cousin Colin provided a small but rent-free apartment in fashionable Mayfair. But it was Aunt Josephine who took it upon herself to take charge.

  When Zandra turned six, Lady Josephine told Stefan in no uncertain terms precisely to which frightfully costly school his daughter must be sent—the expense being borne by the family, of course. And so began Zandra's education at the most exclusive school of its kind in England. The same held true for Rudolph. Two years later, her brother was sent to the boys' counterpart of the exclusive girls' school Zandra attended.

  As Zandra grew older, she came to understand that she was different, and fit neither into the simple world of the commoner nor the Byzantinely formal world of the rich and titled. She and Rudolph belonged somewhere in between, in some kind of society holding pen, their futures to be decided upon once they were of age. "Much like souls in purgatory," Zandra would often tell herself with a sigh, for along with her title and noble blood came a strong core of Roman Catholicism.

  When she turned eighteen, she was taken to Buckingham Palace and presented at court. Then came her equally important coming out. Having one's season was, after all, an ages-old ritual which was tried and true, and it was precisely in this very fashion that Aunt Josephine herself had met her husband.

  But if Aunt Josephine thought that finding a suitable husband for Zandra would be easy, she was to be severely disappointed. The season came and went, and all Zandra had to show for it were hordes of eligible young men who, for one reason or another, she found fault with. Aunt Josephine finally threw up her hands in frustration. "Beggars cannot afford to be choosers!" she lamented to her sisters, Lady Cressida and Lady Alexandra, "and our Zandra is being altogether too choosy for her own good. Especially," she added ominously, "for someone in 'her position.' "

  The sisters commiserated with Aunt Josephine and one of them patted her hand. "You've done your best, Josie, dear," Cressida said. "No one can fault you for not trying."

  "Be that as
it may," Josephine went on, "Zandra shall either have to continue her education or go to work—although only heaven knows what she's cut out for." She sighed deeply. "I suppose she'll have to decide that for herself."

  Zandra decided upon university. And two years later, so did Rudolph, who went off to Oxford.

  From that point on, Zandra saw little of her younger brother. Unlike the years he had spent at boarding school, when she could look forward to the summer months as theirs to spend together, he now made plans of his own which, often as not, did not include her.

  The reason for this change in sibling relationships was because Rudolph von Hohenburg-Willemlohe had discovered that most enticing of all heterosexual pleasures—women. Before long, his name was linked to a succession of beauties, and his charm and charisma were such that he had members of the opposite sex literally eating out of his hand. Zandra, in the meantime, majored in art history, although she wasn't at all sure where those studies would take her.

  And then along came the Miss Great Britain beauty pageant. She wouldn't have dreamed of participating, had it not been for the urging of one of her girlfriends.

  "Come on, Zandra!" her friend had pleaded. "What have you got to lose? Besides, I'm not afraid to enter, so why should you? Really! We'll have tons of fun! Do be a sport!"

  And so Zandra became a contestant. It was purely a lark, of course. Winning the title was the furthest thing from her mind.

  She couldn't believe it when the crown was hers.

  Neither could Aunt Josephine, who hadn't been consulted about Zandra's entering the pageant, and who did not think it appropriate for a descendant of the princes of the Holy Roman Empire to be making so public, so common, a spectacle of herself.

  Nonetheless, a flurry of brief fame followed, and then came Caracas and the Miss Universe pageant. Regrettably, Zandra didn't even make runner-up; however, she did make some new friends—most notably Miss Netherlands, Dina Van Vliet—and then she returned to England to resume her life where she'd left off.

  But Aunt Josephine refused to continue financing her education. "I am washing my hands of you," the old lady told Zandra succinctly. "I've tried to help find you a husband, which you've failed to do. I've seen to your education, which you saw fit to interrupt. From this point on, you are on your own."

  Being left with no other option, Zandra went out job hunting. She pounded the pavement. Haunted the employment agencies. Tried some modeling, but discovered everyone wanted her to take off her clothes and not put other garments back on. Nor had studying art history, or her reign as Miss Great Britain, given her any particular marketable skills. As far as her noble pedigree was concerned, that didn't buy her so much as a cup of tea. Things got to the point where she didn't know what she was going to do.

  Enter a young businessman by the name of Mark Brandon, vice president of a firm which specialized in handling special tour groups from overseas.

  "We've put together a new 'Regal Holidays' package," he told Zandra when he'd looked her up. "It's limited to groups of twenty-four tourists at a time, and they'll stay in various castle-hotels, tour country houses and gardens, be taken to Ascot, and generally be made to feel they're living the kind of rich, titled life they only dreamed about at home."

  He went on to explain that what he needed to complete the Regal Holidays atmosphere was a genuinely titled lady to greet the tourists in a beautifully furnished townhouse apartment in Wilton Crescent, off Knightsbridge.

  "All it will entail is an hour or so twice a week, sipping champagne, chatting, and posing for photographs with our clientele," he concluded. "After that, they can go back home and show pictures of themselves with a real aristocrat."

  Meanwhile, the lavish accommodations would be hers to live in for as long as the arrangement stood; a gown, jewels, and part-time butler would be provided. "We'll pay you two hundred pounds a week." Brandon smiled ingenuously. "What do you say?"

  Zandra's frown deepened as she'd listened to his pitch. "I'll have to sleep on it," she told him.

  The next day, Rudolph unknowingly made up her mind for her. He had come to borrow money.

  "I'm in a bit of a pinch," he said, trying to act nonchalant as he shakily fixed himself a drink.

  "All right," she sighed. "How much do you need this time?"

  He studied his feet and cleared his throat, the ice cubes in his glass rattling. "How . . . how much have you got?"

  "Rudolph!" She stared at him.

  "It's ... it's a gambling debt, you see." He was careful to avoid her eyes. "I've got to pay up, or else those chaps can get quite nasty, you know. Wouldn't want that, now would we?" He looked at her and tried to smile, but it was a ghastly attempt at bravado.

  And so she called up Mark Brandon. Accepted Regal Holidays' offer. Moved into the grandly furnished apartment on Wilton Crescent. And met the tourist groups twice a week.

  She was very regal. Every inch the countess.

  The tourists ate it up.

  Aunt Josephine didn't. When the old lady heard about it, she was aghast. So aghast, in fact, that she did a complete turnaround and actually begged Zandra to go back to university.

  But Zandra wouldn't hear of it. "I like what I'm doing," she told her aunt stubbornly.

  And it was true. She enjoyed her newfound independence, and had no desire to put herself under Aunt Josephine's thumb, or accept family handouts, ever again.

  And then her father died. Predictably, of cirrhosis of the liver.

  The real trouble started right after.

  Stefan von Hohenburg-Willemlohe was barely interred before Rudolph went around to all the gambling clubs, lying through his teeth about the millions he was going to inherit after the will was probated. The club owners' ears perked up; credit and all courtesies were extended to him.

  Rudolph lost hundreds of pounds the first night alone; more credit was extended. Over the weeks, his losses accumulated into the thousands, and during the next few months, those thousands multiplied into the tens of thousands. Before he knew it, his debts, combined with the usurious interest rates, had skyrocketed into several hundred thousand pounds.

  The club owners discreetly took him aside.

  "The solicitors say it'll be any day now," he lied glibly. "The will's still in probate, but it's only a formality. Meanwhile, how about extending me just a few thousand quid more ..."

  Credit was extended. And extended.

  And then, inevitably, it was shut off. Rudolph was given seven days to come up with what he owed—or else.

  Of course he didn't pay—how could he? And after his week had run out, he came home in the wee hours to find three burly men detaching themselves from the shadows around his front door.

  In the glow of the lamplight, Rudolph caught the glint of brass knuckles. Reacting without thinking, he threw himself to the ground, rolled across a bed of ivy, and lunged to his feet. He sensed, rather than saw, a fourth man blocking the open gate to the street, tire iron in hand.

  With an almost superhuman strength, he jumped at the high wall that enclosed the front garden, scrabbled up it, and dropped down to the other side. Only his quick reflexes—and sheer luck—had saved him. But it had been a close call. Far, far too close for comfort.

  Zandra found out about it when the telephone shrilled her awake at half past four in the morning.

  "Just listen," Rudolph's ragged voice babbled from a phone booth somewhere, "and for God's sake, don't interrupt!"

  And he told her everything.

  "Rudolph, you've got to go to the police," she told him, the level rationality in her voice surprising even herself.

  "The police can't help me." He gave a short, derisive bark of a laugh. "That would only make matters worse!"

  "Rudolph, where are you?" When he didn't reply, she repeated, "Where ... are ... you ... calling ... from?"

  "It's safer for you not to know. Zands ..." She could hear him swallow. "I-I've got to make myself scarce, so don't worry if you don't hear from me for a whi
le." There was a pause. "I-I've got to dash," he added quickly, and the line went dead.

  He had hung up.

  Thirteen hours later, a busload of Regal Holidays tourists arrived. Zandra didn't know how she functioned. She went through the ritual on automatic pilot, welcoming them and chatting by rote, somehow managing a bright false smile while having her picture taken with the housewives from Brentwood, the retirees from Jacksonville, and the grain merchants and their wives from Topeka.

  But it was as if they weren't really there. Rudolph. All she could think about was her brother. Where is he now? she worried as her body went through the social motions. Is he safe? And if so, how can he ever extricate himself from this mess?

  Before the tourists were scheduled to depart, the doorbell rang and the part-time butler—a seldom-employed character actor—went to answer it. He stood by helplessly as three uncouth men in loud suits barged past him and invaded the drawing room.

  One, swooping a flute of champagne out of a tourist's hand, drained it in one swallow, then flung it into the fireplace, the Waterford crystal shattering.

  Another, plopping himself sideways down on a sofa, rudely propped his shoes up on an incensed matron's lap.

  The third, lit cigar in his mouth and hands clasped behind his back, walked slowly around, as though taking inventory. Finally, he took the cigar and deliberately tapped a length of ash onto the Wilton carpet, grinding it in with his heel. "You the countess?" he asked Zandra, an ugly smirk on his pockmarked face.

  "I am Zandra von Hohenburg-Willemlohe, Countess of Grafburg, yes." Her voice was calm but her eyes flashed angrily. "If you'll wait out in the foyer, I'll be with you in a moment—whoever you are."

  He didn't move. "You know good an' well who we are. We've come to find yer bleedin' brother." Crossing over to her, he lifted the cigar, puffed on it, and regarded her with stony gray eyes. "We think you might know where 'e is." He blew a cloud of smoke directly in her face.