The Corsican Gambit [antikvár]

CHAPTER ONE She'D almost been too late. Charles had msisted that í ; she join him at the Café de Paris for drinks with a fat little man whose name and title had been meant to impress. She'd stayed the minimum time that convention required, then begged off, murmuring apologies despite the look of disapproval on her stepbrother's handsome face. "Forgive me," she'd said, pushing back her chair, "but I've—I've got an appointment." A smile curved across Francesca's mouth. It hadn't been a lie, not in the strict sense of the word. This was an appointment, a far more pleasurable one than the game of "C^n You Match This?" that Charles and the fat man had been playing with their seemingly casual talk of Bentleys and Rolexes and out-of-the-way luxury vacation spots. But that sort of thing wasn't for her. She much preferred sitting here, in their hotel suite, watching the sun expand into an enormous crimson fireball that set ablaze the sleek yachts at anchor in the harbor. It was a spectacular sight—and the least pretentious one she'd seen since arriving in Monaco two days ago, she thought, sighing as the sun began its final plunge behind the hills of France. Not that she didn't like the tiny principality: its narrow, winding streets had an old-world charm, despite the high-rise apartment buildings that crowded on Monte Carlo. It was just that she'd never seen so much expensive artifice in all her twenty-three years. Everything seemed to spell "excess," from the gilt cherubs that adorned the ceilings of the Casmo to the jewels that glittered at the throats and fingers of the stylishly dressed women who f / 1 ¦ * I