Damn, she's read everything, Wandi said to herself.
"I've never heard of them." Georgina sniffed.
"Hey, I'm at this house party on Mustique right now, and there's a girl here who might know," Tatiana offered, adding rather unnecessarily, "She comes from a high-society family in France, from what I'm told."
Tatiana padded out onto the terrace of the Balinese-style villa, where the girlfriend of her husband's business partner sat sipping black coffee out of a bowl. "Lucie, I'm on the phone with some friends. Have you ever heard of a family in France called the Rochambords?"
"Which branch?" Lucie asked.
"Um … I don't know. We know someone who married a guy whose mother is a Rochambord. Here, let me put you on speakerphone … "
"The mother's name is Liliane Rochambord," Georgina offered.
Lucie's eyes widened. "Liliane de Rochambord? Are you talking about the mother of Lucien Montagu-Scott?"
"Yes! Do you know him?" Tatiana asked excitedly.
Lucie shook her head with a sigh. "I don't know him personally, but my God, every girl in France was madly in love with him. I mean, he's a future duc, and his mother is one of the Bretagne Rochambords, not the Paris branch that are the poorer cousins."
"But who are the Rochambords?" Georgina pressed on.
"Oh, they are an ancienne famille de la noblesse … how do you say … an ancient noble family that intermarried with the Bourbons, and their line goes back to Louis XIII. The Paris branch has all the vineyards-you know, Château de Rochambord-but the Bretagne Rochambords own one of the biggest military defense companies in France. They make all the submarines and ships for the French navy. So who's your friend that married Lucien?"
"Colette Bing. But she's not our friend exactly," Tatiana said awkwardly.
"She's a socialite and fashion blogger from Shanghai that-" Wandi began.
"She's a spoiled little cunt!" Kitty suddenly blurted out.
Everyone was too shocked to speak at first, but Georgina tried to turn it into a joke. "Haha, yes, she's famous for that spoiled rant that went viral, isn't she, Kitty?"
The line went silent for a few moments.
"Uh … I think Kitty hung up," Tatiana said.
* * *
*1 Smiling, laughing, frowning, or arching of eyebrows is highly discouraged, though.
*2 What Wandi doesn't know is that the only people who can be married in Westminster Abbey are members of the British royal family, Order of the Bath members and their children, or anyone living in the Abbey's precincts. St. Paul's only allows weddings for members of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, the Order of the British Empire, holders of the British Empire Medal, and members of the Imperial Society of Knights Bachelor and their children (but not their grandchildren).
*3 Chinese + Indonesian × Aristocrat = Chindocrat
*4 She knew by age three that Hugo was too dumb to get in to Raffles.
*5 If they happened to be Japanese, Vietnamese, or any other type of Asian not mentioned on this list, abort scanner function. Totally inconsequential.
CHAPTER TWO
RANAKPUR, INDIA
Su Yi placed her hand on the white marble pillar and with her fingers traced the intricate carving of a goddess, feeling every undulating curve of the figure, so cool to the touch. The entire pillar was carved with figures of dancing damsels from the ground all the way up to the soaring dome. Su Yi looked around the space and saw that she was surrounded in every direction by thousands of white pillars, so many of them that it was impossible to count.*1 And every one of them had been sculpted with deities, animals, love scenes, war scenes-each one so painstakingly carved it looked more like lacework than stone. She could hardly believe how exquisite it was.
Su Yi felt so grateful that the maharani had arranged this trip for her to the Adinatha Temple, hidden in the remote Aravalli Range between Jodhpur and Udaipur. As she followed the marble passageway, she felt as though she were walking into a dream, and around another corner of the temple she came upon a beautiful tree growing in the middle of a serene stone courtyard. Underneath the tree was a young man in a simple saffron-colored robe, picking up stray leaves. He glanced up for a moment and smiled at her. Su Yi smiled shyly back at him before walking into yet another breathtakingly carved vestibule, this one depicting a deity entwined with hundreds of snakes.
"Excuse me, do you speak English?" a voice behind her suddenly asked. Su Yi turned around and saw that it was the young man. This time, she could see a faint gold dot painted in the middle of his forehead.
"I do," she replied.