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particularly clever card trick.

"Here she is, everyone!" Chloe announced on one particular occasion as
she led Francesca onto the afterdeck of Aristotle Onassis's yacht Christina , which was anchored
for the night off the coast of Trinidad.
A green canopy covered the spacious lounge at the stern, and the guests
reclined in comfortable chairs at the edge of a mosaic reproduction of
the Cretan Bull of Minos set into the teak deck. The mosaic had served
as a dance floor barely an hour before and later would be lowered nine
feet and filled with water for those who wished to take a swim before
retiring.

"Come here, my pretty princess," Onassis said, holding out his arms.
"Come give Uncle Ari a kiss."

Francesca rubbed the sleep from her eyes and stepped forward, an
exquisite baby doll of a little girl. Her perfect little mouth formed a
gentle Cupid's bow, and her green eyes opened and closed as if the lids
were delicately weighted. Froths of Belgian lace at the throat of her
long white nightgown fluttered in the night breeze, and her bare feet
peeked out from beneath the hem, revealing toenails polished the same
delicate shade of pink as the inside of a rabbit's ear. Despite the
fact that she was only nine years old and had been awakened at two
o'clock in the morning, her senses gradually grew alert. All day she
had been abandoned to the care of servants, and now she was eager for a
chance to garner the attention of the grown-ups. Maybe if she was
especially good tonight, they would let her sit on the afterdeck with
them tomorrow.

Onassis, with his beaklike nose and narrow eyes, covered even at night
with sinister wraparound sunglasses, frightened her, but she obediently
stepped into his embrace. He had given her a pretty necklace shaped
like a starfish the night before, and she didn't want to risk
sacrificing any other presents that might come her way.

As he lifted her onto his lap, she glanced over at Chloe, who had
cuddled next to her current lover, Giancarlo Morandi, the
Italian Formula One driver. Francesca knew all about lovers because
Chloe had explained them to her. Lovers were fascinating men who took
care of women and made them feel beautiful. Francesca couldn't wait to
be grown up enough to have a lover of her own. Not Giancarlo, though.
Sometimes he went off with other women and made her mummy cry. Instead,
Francesca wanted a lover who would read books to her and take her to
the circus and smoke a pipe like some of the men she had seen walking
with their little girls along the Serpentine.

"Attention everyone!" Chloe sat up and clapped her hands in the air
above her head, like one of the flamenco dancers Francesca had seen
perform the last time they were in Torremolinos. "My beautiful daughter
will now illustrate what abysmally ignorant peasants all of you are."
Derisive hoots greeted this announcement, and Francesca heard Onassis
chuckle in her ear.

Chloe snuggled close to Giancarlo again, rubbing one leg of her white
Courreges hip-huggers against his calf while she tilted her head in
Francesca's direction. "Pay no attention to them, my sweet," she
declared loftily. "They're riffraff of the very worst sort. I can't
think why I bother with them." The couturier giggled. As Chloe pointed
to a low mahogany table, the wedge-shaped front of her new Sassoon
haircut swept forward over her cheek, forming a hard, straight edge.
"Educate them, will you, Francesca? No one except your uncle Ari is the
slightest bit discriminating."

Francesca slid off Onassis's knee and walked toward the table. She
could feel everyone's eyes on her and she deliberately prolonged the
moment, taking slow steps, keeping her shoulders back, pretending she
was a tiny princess on the way to her throne. As she reached the table
and saw the six small gold-rimmed porcelain bowls, she smiled and
flipped her hair away from her face. Kneeling on the rug in front of
the table, she regarded the bowls thoughtfully.

The contents shone against the white