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“Come to New York,” Stefania commanded.
“What? Now?”
“Yes, now. I called Grandma today and she told me to get you out of her hair. She says you’re driving her nuts.” Having spent most of her childhood in New York, Stefania had a definite command of American idioms.
“What?” Giorgio sat bolt upright in his ergonomic Corinthian leather chair. “I am doing no such thing!”
“She begs to differ. She says you poke your nose in on her day and night so she can’t get any rest.”
Now he was insulted. Their grandmother had had a nasty bout of flu that had settled into pneumonia. After a couple touch-and-go weeks of around-the-clock care, she had pulled through but still needed nursing visits, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and doctor visits. And it was his job to make sure they were doing their jobs. He was more at ease if he could be present for all their consultations.
He reconsidered. Maybe that was a bit too much. After all, his grandmother had run Vinciguerra while he was off at university and had absolutely no trouble making her wishes known. He could also have his assistant text him updates on her health.
“Yes or no, George!” his sister shouted. She only called him his American nickname when she was either very pleased with him or very annoyed. No bets on which it was this time.
“Fine, Steve!” he shouted in return, his matching temper surfacing. “I want to meet this German Romeo who thinks he’s good enough for my only sister. If he’s not up to snuff, forget it! You can finish your master’s degree instead. I’m not paying university tuition to have you moon over some man you barely know.”
“He is not some man! He is my man, and I know him very well.”
Giorgio gritted his teeth at her implication and forced himself to take several deep breaths. If he pressed his sister too hard, she was likely to elope to Vegas with the guy. “If you think so highly of him, Stefania, I will be happy to meet him.”
“Fine.” She sounded mollified, for the moment at least. With Stefania, you never could tell. “And I am finishing my degree, you know. If I take an extra course each semester, I’ll be able to graduate next spring.”
“That’s wonderful news.” He checked his schedule on his phone. “I can fly into New York Wednesday if that would work for you. And Dieter,” he added grudgingly.
“Great! We’ll meet for dinner Thursday, just the three of us.”
“Great,” he parroted, with much less enthusiasm. “I look forward to it.”
“No, you don’t, but thanks for saying so.”
“Insincerity has its place, Steve. I would appreciate a tiny bit more insincere flattery from you, for example. ‘Oh, my princely brother, if it pleases you to meet the unworthy specimen who has asked for my dainty royal hand in marriage…’”
She snorted. “If you wanted me to be dainty and insincere, you should have left me in Vinciguerra after Mama and Papa passed away.”
“You know I couldn’t do that, piccina mia.” My little one—it was what their papa had called her, at least when she wasn’t raising hell. Some things never changed.
“I know, Giorgio, and I love you for it.”
He cleared his throat, which was developing a sudden lump. “I love you, too,” he muttered. Words of love never came easily for him, even for his beloved sister.
“Ciao, Giorgio.” She made a kissing noise into the phone and hung up.
He spun his chair to stare at the terraced vineyards beyond his office, the land still leafy and green in the April sun after a wet spring.
Springtime and young love. Giorgio’s lips pulled into a wry smile. He remembered how romantic New York City could be in the spring. Unlike Stefania’s Dieter, though, he had never been tempted to propose to anyone. He’d been busy with his education and bracing himself to return to Vinciguerra.
And now he would return to New York. It had been so long since he had been a foolish young student in the city. He straightened in his chair, the idea sounding better by the minute. He hadn’t even had a free day in what seemed like forever, his every action in Vinciguerra witnessed and gossiped over by his loyal subjects. And to date any of them? Unthinkable.
He grimaced and tried to roll the kinks out of his neck. It wasn’t as if he had any free time to date anyone, Vinciguerran or not. He pressed the intercom to call his assistant. “Alessandro? Please make arrangements for me to join Princess Stefania in New York tomorrow.” He rubbed the back of his neck. Stefania would give him grief if she thought he looked scruffy for her big dinner. “Oh, and also make an appointment with my barber.” Women always loved a fresh haircut.
“RENATA?” RENATA PAVONI’S assistant, Barbara Affini, who was also her aunt, stuck her perfectly coiffed, poufy head of black hair into Renata’s workroom.
“Hmm?” she mumbled around a mouthful of straight pins as she pinned the white satin hem of a wedding dress. The dress dummy stood on a carpeted platform, high enough that Renata didn’t have to crouch to work with the fabric.
Barbara tsked and came into the room. “Your mama would have a fit if she saw you like that. If you swallow a pin, I’m going to call your brother’s firehouse to take you to the hospital and you’ll never hear the end of it.”
Renata spit out the pins and stuck them into a tomato-shaped pincushion. “Okay, okay. Hey, how does this look?”
“Short.”
Renata sighed. Why did she bother asking? It was the same answer every time. “It’s supposed to be short, Aunt Barbara. It’s a vintage-style wedding dress.” Nineteen-fifties and-sixties fashions were hot as hell, thanks to several hit TV shows and movies set in those time periods.
“Your cousins’ wedding dresses, now those were classics,” her aunt reminisced.
Renata pulled a face, glad her aunt was behind her. Her petite cousins had rolled down the aisle in dresses wider than they were tall, looking like those plastic doll head and torsos on top of crocheted toilet paper holders. Thank God wedding dresses from the eighties were still out of fashion. She’d go broke buying miles of satin and tulle and pounds of sequins.
Why had she hired her aunt? Oh, yeah, her uncle Sal had begged Renata to get his wife out of the house. She needed someone to mother once their youngest married, and the newly retired Sal wasn’t about to volunteer for the vacancy.
Plus, Barbara was a fantastic seamstress and put the p in punctual.
Renata finished pinning the hem and stood, her knees popping. “The bride is coming in for her final fitting tomorrow. Will you have time to hem this?”
Her aunt sniffed. “Child’s play. I even have time to add some sequins on the skirt if you’d like?” she asked hopefully.
Renata shook her head. “No sequins.” Her client was an avowed hipster and would bite the sequins off with her teeth before wearing them down the aisle. “Seed pearls?”
“Nope.”
“How about some white-on-white satin-stitch embroidery?” But her aunt knew when she was beaten, her plump shoulders already slumping. “Sorry.” Renata was sorry. Her aunt would like nothing better than to hand-bead, hand-sequin and hand-embroider a gigantic ball gown with a twenty-foot train. But customers for gowns like that didn’t come to Renata’s design studio, Peacock Wedding Designs.
Instead, the dress in front of them was pretty typical of her sales—a fifties-style vintage reproduction with gathered halter straps and a full-circle skirt complete with a tulle crinoline. The bride was planning on a short, wavy fifties ’do and a small satin hat with a tiny net veil to drape over one carefully made-up eye.
Renata smoothed the skirt and carried it into the alteration workshop for her aunt. She caught a glimpse of herself in the three-way mirror and sighed. She loved vintage clothing but it sometimes didn’t stand up to the modern workday. Her ivory linen blouse was wrinkled and her navy pencil skirt had twisted around her waist so the back slit was somewhere along the front of her thigh. She patted her auburn hair back into its nineteen-forties-style roll.
Her aunt noticed her self-grooming and finally smiled. “You look just like old photos of my dear mamma, God rest her soul.”
“Thanks, Auntie.” She blew her a kiss and fixed her skirt. She probably needed to touch up her lipstick, too. While lush red lips were historically correct, they did require more maintenance and she had to be careful that she didn’t trip over her feet and plant a big red smacker on her pure white fabric. The things one did for fashion. Or at least her grandmother’s fashion.
Renata hopped onto the elevated chair at her design table. Before she could uncap her cherry-red tube, the phone rang. “Peacock Wedding Designs, this is Renata.”
“Hi, I’ve been looking at your website and I was wondering when I could come in to look at your dresses.” The New York voice was young but confident, typical of her clientele. Brides who wanted a vintage look were not shrinking violets.
Renata flipped through the appointment calendar. “We can see you Friday.”
“Are you free tomorrow afternoon?”
Renata wrinkled her nose. She’d been planning to take the afternoon off for the opening of a new art exhibit at a gallery in Manhattan. Her friend Flick knew a couple of the artists.
Her potential client hurried on. “I want my brother to come with me, and he’s flying into town tonight.”
Business was business, and maybe Brother was paying for the dress. “No, that’s fine. What time is good?”
“Noon?”
“Great.” Maybe she could see the opening after all—it started at two. “And your name?”
“Stefania di Leone.” She had a perfect Italian accent when she pronounced her name.
“Ah, Stephanie of the Lion.” Renata laughed. “My full name is Renata Isabella Pavoni—peacock. That’s where I got the name for my salon.”
“I think your designs are wonderful,” Stefania enthused. “I looked in the bridal mags, but everything there is too over-the-top. I don’t want a gigantic, poufy dress, or a corset-slip that looks like I forgot to put the rest of my dress on. And don’t get me started on the mermaid style. I want to be able to dance at my wedding.” She ended in a plaintive note.
Renata penciled her name into the calendar. “I’m sure you can find something you love. Have another look at my website and jot down some styles you’d like to try on.” She gave Stefania directions to her salon in Brooklyn. Renata wished she could afford space in Manhattan, but even marginal neighborhoods there were exorbitant.
But Stefania didn’t seem fazed. “My brother and I will see you tomorrow. Oh, I’m so excited! My first time wedding dress shopping!”
That could be good or bad, depending on if she made up her mind quickly or liked to browse. Either way, it was an opportunity. They said their goodbyes, and Renata hung up.
Barbara appeared in the doorway again. “Who was that, dear?”
“A bride is coming in tomorrow at noon to look at the dresses.”
Her aunt made a disappointed face, her penciled eyebrows drooping. Since Renata had planned to take the afternoon off, her aunt made an appointment for Uncle Sal’s annual colonoscopy. Lucky Sal.
“I’ll be sure to keep you posted. And who knows? She may want a little more embellishment on her dress.”
Barbara brightened. “That would be wonderful! I have lots of ideas.”
“Great. Write them down. Or draw them.”
She made a dismissive gesture. “Renata, you know I can’t draw worth a lick.”
“Ask your granddaughter Teresa to draw it for you. Isn’t she a good artist?”
“Oh, well…” Her aunt fluttered her fingers at her bosom. “I’ll have to see…my ideas probably aren’t very good.”
“You won’t know until you try.” Her aunt was a product of her times, discouraged from attending college and encouraged to marry straight out of high school. It was about time her aunt focused on herself instead of her family. Her family would be grateful, too.
“But I can hem that dress. I know I’m good at that.”
“You are indeed.” Renata gave her an encouraging smile and checked on the selection of samples she had in stock. Kick-ass. Her new bride would love them.
Unlike her aunt, she didn’t have any doubts about her abilities. Renata loved vintage clothing, but she sure didn’t have a vintage attitude.
2
“OUR LITTLE STEVIE’S getting married?” Giorgio’s old friend Francisco Duarte das Aguas Santas was obviously as dumb-founded as he had been. Once Giorgio’s call from the VIP lounge in Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome had reached Frank at his ranch in the Portuguese countryside, it had taken several minutes to explain the situation.
“Yes, she’s engaged.” It was getting somewhat easier to say the words aloud. Giorgio’s grandmother had been ecstatic at the prospect of a royal wedding in Vinciguerra, especially since his own parents’ wedding had been the last one celebrated, and that had been over thirty years ago. They had been returning from an anniversary trip when they died tragically in a car accident. Giorgio hoped his sister’s nuptials would distract his grandmother from asking him when he would make some lucky woman his principessa.
“And to some guy we’ve never met.” Frank sounded nearly as disgruntled as Giorgio had been.
“I’m leaving in a few minutes for New York, so I’ll meet him tomorrow.”
“Does Jack know?” Jacques de Brissard was the third member of their trio.
The three men had met their freshman year at the university in Manhattan. Although Giorgio technically out-ranked Frank, a duke with a large estate in Portugal, as well as Jack, a count who owned a lavender farm in Provence, they had much in common. Their bachelor apartment had turned into a home when Stefania had come to live with them—home, something Giorgio thought he’d lost when his parents died.
“No, I left a message for him, but he’s traveling to Southeast Asia to do medical relief for that cyclone that hit the coast.”
Frank made a sound of dismay. “He just got back from the earthquake in Turkey and sounded exhausted. I told him he needed to take some time off to recuperate. What is he thinking?”
“He’s a doctor, and his patients come first.” Giorgio didn’t like it any better than Frank, but Jacques had always been single-minded about his medical career.
“He’s going to wear himself out,” Frank predicted gloomily, breaking off to shout instructions in Portuguese. Giorgio must have caught him as he was supervising the farmhands. Frank was always experimenting with new crops in addition to the olives and grapes his family’s land produced. “But what are we to do with Stefania? She’s not old enough to marry.”
Giorgio shook his head to decline a second glass of wine from the lounge attendant, a pretty redhead. “I don’t like it, either, Frank, but she’s twenty-four. At least she’s finishing up her graduate degree first. Besides, if you think she was stubborn when she was eleven…”
Frank snorted. “Remember when she refused to go to that fancy prep school you had all picked out for her and insisted on going to the academy of the arts? You even threatened her as her principality’s sovereign ruler and what did she do?”
“Called the State Department and requested legal asylum on grounds of persecution.” Giorgio sighed. He had tried to forget that little incident. His grandmother had not been amused to receive indignant phone calls from various human rights and refugee organizations. “Amigo meu, maybe it is time to turn our girl over to this German fellow. After all, they are the orderly sort.” He laughed, and Giorgio had to join in at the idea of anyone keeping Stefania in order. “And when is the blessed event? If she wants to come to my island out in the Azores she and the German can have a private honeymoon—consider it my gift.”
Giorgio smiled. “They haven’t set a date, but I’ll be sure to tell Stefania when I see her Wednesday.”
“Give her my love, and make sure this fiancé of hers is a decent guy. If he isn’t, then you and Jack and I will talk some sense into her.”
“Or I’ll just drag her back to Vinciguerra and put her in the dungeon.” They had three actually, one cleaned up for the tourists and two that hadn’t been used since the Napoleonic Wars.
“Human rights organizations be damned.” Frank sounded more cheerful. “We’re just living up to the time-honored European tradition of locking stubborn princesses in towers and such.”
“Do the time-honored traditions mention princesses with black belts in tae kwon do cleaning their brother’s clock?”
“You can only blame yourself for that. You insisted she go to those self-defense classes if she was going to travel to the arts school in that awful neighborhood.” Frank laughed. “Come on, things will be fine. If her young man is okay, then pick a date. Jack and I will help you plan her wedding—don’t worry.”
“The three of us?” Giorgio yelped. “Since when are we wedding experts?” He had fought very hard to be the exact opposite.
“Once you get the dress and the date, everything else falls into place. My mother planned my sisters’ weddings. We run large estates—hell, you even run a whole country. How hard could it be?”
“You weren’t even living in Portugal at the time—you merely flew in for the weddings and missed months of preparation.”
“I did see some of what my mother and her wedding planners did.” Frank sounded a bit hurt. “They have notebooks at the bookstore that explain what to do.”
“Fine, okay, Frank, we’ll all help Stefania as much as we can.” Giorgio had no intention of being the lead wedding planner. It sounded like a nightmare in the making.
“Maravilhosa. Great.” Frank cheered up. “I’ll fix up the island however she likes. And I’m good for several barrels of the family sherry.”
Giorgio could use a barrel of sherry about now, but his flight was about to board. “Thanks again, Frank. I’ll keep you posted.”
