Auden Beebe (City and Country / Saint Ann’s / Amherstfn1) turned and approached them. “Hullo,” he said warmly, although it was clear that he recognized the ladies without quite being able to place them. As a celebrated yoga master, life coach, motivational speaker, and self-help author (his bestseller, The Preppie Guru, had been on the New York Times bestseller list for the past two years), he was accustomed to meeting thousands of people who felt that they knew him intimately.

“Auden, it’s Charlotte Barclay and Lucie Churchill. We were at your workshop at Canyon Ranch last spring? In Lenox?” Charlotte said effusively.

“Yes, of course, the cousins!” Auden said, breaking into a wide smile. “What brings you to Capri?”

“We’re here for a wedding,” Lucie answered.

“Ah. Let me guess … Dolfi De Vecchi’s?”

“Yes!” Lucie and Charlotte said in unison.

“Dolfi has been coming to my workshops for years, and Isabel more recently. I’m officiating the wedding.”

“What serendipity!” Charlotte was clearly enraptured by the trifecta of Auden’s fame, his family’s listing in The Social Register, and his resemblance to Alexander Skarsgård.

“Mr. Beebe, is it true you’re opening a Preppie Guru Lounge in East Hampton?” Lucie asked.

“Please call me Auden, and yes, next summer. It’s going to be a pop-up on Newtown Lane, right next door to James Perse. We’re going to start small at first and offer an Ayurvedic juice bar, qigong, puppy yoga, breath work meditation, and maybe some sound healing. See what the community responds to.”

“Excuse my ignorance, but what is puppy yoga?” Charlotte inquired.

“It’s a yoga session in a room filled with puppies. They’ll be frolicking around your mat and licking you in the face while you’re in downward dog.”

“How adorable! My family summers in East Hampton, and I’m going to be at puppy yoga every day,” Lucie said.

“Terrific! In the meantime, I’ll be leading yoga every morning down by the pool here, minus the puppies.”

Just then, two ladies in their sixties dressed in smartly tailored linen pantsuits stopped by their table on their way to the garden. One of them smiled wryly at Charlotte. “You poor things! We saw what happened in the dining room. I’m sorry you were put in that situation. What an atrocious lack of manners!”

“She’s been like that all week,” added the other lady. “She overheard us talking about how much we loved the orchids at this flower shop next to the church, and the next thing you know we came back to our suite and found it filled with orchids. Dozens of pots, compliments of Rosemary Zao! Now it looks like we’re having a wake!”

“I do hope you and your friend can get your rooms sorted out to your satisfaction,” the first lady said to Charlotte sympathetically.

“Thank you. Lucie is actually my cousin. My mother and her father were brother and sister,” Charlotte said.

“Oh, how nice,” the ladies said in unison. They nodded at Auden before walking on, and his curiosity was piqued. “May I ask what happened in the dining room that so scandalized the unflappable Ortiz sisters of Manila?”

Lucie and Charlotte hesitated for a split second, and Auden immediately picked up on it. “Apologies, I’m being too nosy.”

“No, you’re fine,” Charlotte said, before breathlessly recounting what had just transpired with Rosemary Zao in the dining room. “… she kept insisting, and she was making such a spectacle of it, we felt so uncomfortable that we had to seek refuge here.”

“Actually, I think she was trying to be nice—it just came out in a peculiar way,” Lucie interjected.

“Peculiar is an understatement! She was trying much too hard, and I can’t figure out what her angle is,” Charlotte said.

“What if there was no angle? I think, coming from New York, you have a natural instinct to look for a motive in everything … I do the same thing myself,” Auden offered. “Having gotten to know Mrs. Zao, I think her offer was likely made in a pure spirit. She’s only known me for a few days, but she’s already invited me to do a workshop in Hong Kong and even told me she’d arrange the space to host it and invite all her friends. And yesterday, she spontaneously ordered pineapple and coconut sorbets for everyone lying around the pool. I thought it was a lovely gesture.”

Charlotte let out a deep sigh. “Well, I guess I’ve made a mistake. You think I’ve been too suspicious and judgmental?”

“Charlotte, Auden’s not saying that …,” Lucie began.

“Not at all,” Auden insisted.

“Yes, I’m afraid my weakness is that I’m too uptight and proper. I believe too much in decorum. Everyone says it.”

Lucie wanted to roll her eyes but kept herself in check. She knew this game of her cousin’s all too well—Charlotte was the queen of guilt trips, and now she was looking her straight in the eye. “Lucie, everything I do, I do with the best of intentions. I’m here out of your generosity, and my only interest is in safeguarding your good name.”

“My good name? You sound as if we’re living in the Edwardian age!” Lucie laughed.

“Lucie, you are a Churchill, don’t ever forget that. Your name and standing are everything, and wherever you go, you are representing the family.”

There it was, the “family” reminder that Charlotte never failed to invoke. Charlotte was inordinately proud of their storied roots—all that lore about being Mayflower descendants who married into one of Britain’s most aristocratic families and kept the roof over their castle repaired thanks to their great-great-great-grandfather’s Wall Street fortune. Lucie tried to brush it off, but then she realized Charlotte was still going on about it.

“Your mother specifically wanted me to look out for you, but maybe I’ve been too overzealous in my attempts to protect you. Would you like me to obligate you to these strangers? Would you like me to see if the Zaos want to be turned out of their rooms?”

Lucie sighed in resignation. “No, I wouldn’t want you to do that.”

Auden observed the stalemate between the two cousins and decided to make an offer. “Ladies, might I make a suggestion? Since I know the Zaos a bit better, I am happy to act as your intermediary. I’ll see if they are truly willing to trade their rooms, and if the offer still stands, I will make sure they aren’t going to be inconvenienced.”

“Well, apart from that, I do want to be sure there are no expectations implicit in their offer,” Charlotte said.

Auden paused for a split second, catching her drift. “Yes, yes, of course. And if the Zaos have changed their minds, I can promise you there will be no awkwardness.”

Charlotte gave Lucie a circumspect look before turning to the man. “Auden, you are a godsend!”

CHAPTER FOUR

The Gardens of Augustus

 

Capri, Italy

The Gardens of Augustus were once part of the estate of the German munitions heir Friedrich Alfred Krupp, who created a series of expansive terraces perched high on a cliff that afforded incredible views of the island and the sea. Here, pathways lined with lush beds of pink geraniums and dahlias wound around towering Italian cypresses on meticulously manicured lawns.