show up.”
“But where will you live? Not in Shanghai, I hope?” Mimi said.
“I’m keeping my business in Paris. We’ll live there and Bennett will commute to Shanghai.”
“That’s a hefty commute,” Grizelda commented, but Bennett told them he planned on spending less time in Shanghai, though he still had to travel frequently to the States.
“Don’t worry though,” he said. “I won’t leave Preshy alone long enough to get lonely.”
“It couldn’t be more perfect, could it?” Preshy said contentedly, lifting up Lalah and kissing her on her sweet black nose.
TWENTY
T HERE was no time to be lost and Grizelda plunged headfirst into the wedding arrangements. First she had to use all her influence, rounding up people she knew in Venice to get permission for the wedding to take place at the Basilica. Then, she had to call her friends at the Hotel Cipriani, where she had stayed many times over the years and where they knew her well, to arrange for the celebration dinner, and for the wedding cake.
She also called in a few favors and managed to rent the fourteenth-century Palazzo Rendino on the Grand Canal, owned by old friends (there were advantages to getting older after all, she thought: at least you could call in years of favors) and now the bridal party would stay at the Palazzo. She had immediately ordered her wedding outfit—a white Dior suit and an enormousPhilip Treacy hat for the ceremony, plus a long red lace Valentino dress for dinner the evening before.
She’d also had a fight with Preshy on the phone about the wedding dress because Preshy refused to wear white.
“You don’t have to be a virgin these days,” Grizelda said, exasperated, but Preshy just laughed.
“It’s not that, Aunt G, thank goodness,” she said, sounding giddy as a lovesick high school girl heading to her first prom. “It’s just that I don’t want to look like your typical bride in a strapless mushroom cloud of white tulle. I want to be different.”
“How different?” Grizelda demanded. “For God’s sakes, Preshy you have only three weeks. You’d better make up your mind fast. I’m flying to Paris tomorrow and we’ll sort it out then.”
Meanwhile, there were the flowers to be taken care of and right now she was driving along the precipitous Grande Corniche road, heading for the flower market in Nice. She’d been using the same man there for years and trusted him completely. Since it was a November wedding and roses were out of season, she would have him order those marvelous huge cabbage roses imported all the way from Colombia, and ask him to come personally to Venice to decorate the church and the reception, as well as do the bouquets.
Everything had to be perfect, and with only a month—now down to three weeks—she was as tight with nerves as if she were getting married herself.
Not that her wedding to Oscar von Hoffenberg had been anything like Preshy’s. First of all, they’d known each other over a year and their engagement had been announced properly in theEuropean and American newspapers. Then his parents had orchestrated the whole event, down to the last place card and who sat next to whom—which with various members of international royalty and ambassadors, clerics and cardinals, lords and ladies, her own friends and family members as well as theirs; plus the tenants and workers at the Schloss, had been quite a feat of organization. Grizelda had just sat back and let them get on with it.
She’d chosen the dress herself, though. She still had it, wrapped in acid-free paper in a cedar chest at the back of her vast walk-in closet. It was a plain white satin affair, cut on the bias by a master of that art, and it had sleeked around her young body so sexily that the wedding guests had gasped and Oscar’s eyes had popped. It had certainly helped make her wedding night an event to remember, though it had alienated Oscar’s prissy family forever.
After Oscar died, of course all his money
“But where will you live? Not in Shanghai, I hope?” Mimi said.
“I’m keeping my business in Paris. We’ll live there and Bennett will commute to Shanghai.”
“That’s a hefty commute,” Grizelda commented, but Bennett told them he planned on spending less time in Shanghai, though he still had to travel frequently to the States.
“Don’t worry though,” he said. “I won’t leave Preshy alone long enough to get lonely.”
“It couldn’t be more perfect, could it?” Preshy said contentedly, lifting up Lalah and kissing her on her sweet black nose.
TWENTY
T HERE was no time to be lost and Grizelda plunged headfirst into the wedding arrangements. First she had to use all her influence, rounding up people she knew in Venice to get permission for the wedding to take place at the Basilica. Then, she had to call her friends at the Hotel Cipriani, where she had stayed many times over the years and where they knew her well, to arrange for the celebration dinner, and for the wedding cake.
She also called in a few favors and managed to rent the fourteenth-century Palazzo Rendino on the Grand Canal, owned by old friends (there were advantages to getting older after all, she thought: at least you could call in years of favors) and now the bridal party would stay at the Palazzo. She had immediately ordered her wedding outfit—a white Dior suit and an enormousPhilip Treacy hat for the ceremony, plus a long red lace Valentino dress for dinner the evening before.
She’d also had a fight with Preshy on the phone about the wedding dress because Preshy refused to wear white.
“You don’t have to be a virgin these days,” Grizelda said, exasperated, but Preshy just laughed.
“It’s not that, Aunt G, thank goodness,” she said, sounding giddy as a lovesick high school girl heading to her first prom. “It’s just that I don’t want to look like your typical bride in a strapless mushroom cloud of white tulle. I want to be different.”
“How different?” Grizelda demanded. “For God’s sakes, Preshy you have only three weeks. You’d better make up your mind fast. I’m flying to Paris tomorrow and we’ll sort it out then.”
Meanwhile, there were the flowers to be taken care of and right now she was driving along the precipitous Grande Corniche road, heading for the flower market in Nice. She’d been using the same man there for years and trusted him completely. Since it was a November wedding and roses were out of season, she would have him order those marvelous huge cabbage roses imported all the way from Colombia, and ask him to come personally to Venice to decorate the church and the reception, as well as do the bouquets.
Everything had to be perfect, and with only a month—now down to three weeks—she was as tight with nerves as if she were getting married herself.
Not that her wedding to Oscar von Hoffenberg had been anything like Preshy’s. First of all, they’d known each other over a year and their engagement had been announced properly in theEuropean and American newspapers. Then his parents had orchestrated the whole event, down to the last place card and who sat next to whom—which with various members of international royalty and ambassadors, clerics and cardinals, lords and ladies, her own friends and family members as well as theirs; plus the tenants and workers at the Schloss, had been quite a feat of organization. Grizelda had just sat back and let them get on with it.
She’d chosen the dress herself, though. She still had it, wrapped in acid-free paper in a cedar chest at the back of her vast walk-in closet. It was a plain white satin affair, cut on the bias by a master of that art, and it had sleeked around her young body so sexily that the wedding guests had gasped and Oscar’s eyes had popped. It had certainly helped make her wedding night an event to remember, though it had alienated Oscar’s prissy family forever.
After Oscar died, of course all his money
Similar Books
