Alex Brunkhorst - The Gilded Life Of Matilda Duplaine

The story begins with a dinner party invitation…

When young journalist Thomas Cleary is sent to dig up quotes for the obituary of a legendary film producer, the man’s eccentric daughter offers him entrée into the exclusive upper echelons of Hollywood society. A small-town boy with working-class roots, Thomas is a stranger in this opulent world of private jets and sprawling mansions.

Then he meets Matilda Duplaine.

Matilda is a beautiful and mysterious young woman who has never left the lush Bel-Air estate where she was raised. Thomas is immediately entranced by the enigmatic girl, and the two begin a secret love affair. But what starts as an enchanted romance soon unravels a web of secrets and lies that could destroy their lives—and the lives of everyone around them—forever.

A modern-day Gatsby tale filled with unforgettable characters and charm, The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine is a sparkling love letter to Los Angeles and a captivating journey beyond the golden gates of its most glamorous estates. Timeless, romantic and utterly absorbing, it is a mesmerizing tale of privilege, identity and the difficult choices we make in the pursuit of power.

ALEX BRUNKHORSTis a novelist and a real estate agent specialising in multimillion-dollar estates for Los Angeles’s wealthiest professionals. She is also the founder of the popular luxury life-style website Bungalux.com. The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine was inspired by Alex’s glimpse into the world of extreme wealth and privilege. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and lives in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter @alexbrunkhorst1, or visit her website at www.alexbrunkhorst.com

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To John

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text The story begins with a dinner party invitation… When young journalist Thomas Cleary is sent to dig up quotes for the obituary of a legendary film producer, the man’s eccentric daughter offers him entrée into the exclusive upper echelons of Hollywood society. A small-town boy with working-class roots, Thomas is a stranger in this opulent world of private jets and sprawling mansions. Then he meets Matilda Duplaine. Matilda is a beautiful and mysterious young woman who has never left the lush Bel-Air estate where she was raised. Thomas is immediately entranced by the enigmatic girl, and the two begin a secret love affair. But what starts as an enchanted romance soon unravels a web of secrets and lies that could destroy their lives—and the lives of everyone around them—forever. A modern-day Gatsby tale filled with unforgettable characters and charm, The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine is a sparkling love letter to Los Angeles and a captivating journey beyond the golden gates of its most glamorous estates. Timeless, romantic and utterly absorbing, it is a mesmerizing tale of privilege, identity and the difficult choices we make in the pursuit of power.

About the Author ALEX BRUNKHORST is a novelist and a real estate agent specialising in multimillion-dollar estates for Los Angeles’s wealthiest professionals. She is also the founder of the popular luxury life-style website Bungalux.com. The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine was inspired by Alex’s glimpse into the world of extreme wealth and privilege. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and lives in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter @alexbrunkhorst1 , or visit her website at www.alexbrunkhorst.com

Title Page www.mirabooks.co.uk

Dedication To John

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Acknowledgments

Endpages

Copyright

One

The tinkle of an antique servant bell announced my arrival.

The shop was so cluttered with priceless art and centuries-old furniture that maneuvering among them was impossible. I stood in place, hoping someone would come to my rescue. Sixty seconds later, she did. I did not hear the opening or closing of a door, and there was nothing to indicate how she had entered the room. Had she been watching me from behind the ceiling-height Asian room divider she would have seen me grasping for distractions—my cell phone, my reporter’s notebook, a feigned interest in a chalk drawing that hung on the wall.

Nothing I had read could do Lily Goldman justice. She was in her midfifties, but she could have passed for forty-five. Her eyebrows were tweezed in an arched manner, and her blond hair was expertly coiffed in a tame bouffant that looked as if she had come from a salon. Her face was small and refined save for a prominent nose that belonged on a woman twice her size. It was her most striking feature, one that a less self-confident woman of means would have done away with years ago through plastic surgery.

“May I help you?” Lily asked. Her voice was surprisingly low, and it had a hint of a lady who smoked too much—though I was certain Lily had never picked up a cigarette in her life. Her breeding was too fine for that.

I discreetly rubbed my right hand on my pant leg, hoping to dry it. I reached over an antique oak writing desk, where my proffered hand hung in the air. She looked at it blankly.

“Yes, I’m Thomas Cleary. I’m a reporter, for the Times .”

For the first time she made eye contact, and I thought I detected a slightly favorable response, but then:

“I hate reporters. I never speak to the press,” she said.

“You must be Ms. Goldman.” Phil Rubenstein, my editor, had warned me about Lily Goldman’s disdain for journalists before sending me on this mission. I got the distinct impression he thought it would be fruitless.

She looked away, focusing on a bronze candlestick in the shape of a bird. She rotated the bird one hundred eighty degrees.

“Birds don’t migrate north, they migrate south. It is autumn, after all. This place is such a mess. I need to speak to the staff. Where did you go to school, Mr. Cleary?”

“You can call me Thomas. I went to Harvard.”

“At Harvard I bet they taught you that birds migrate south for the winter, north for the summer.”

“I recall picking up that tidbit at St. Mary’s, my grade school in Milwaukee.”

“A Catholic boy,” she said with a wry smile.

She waited for me to respond, but I didn’t. I was nervous because I was on what I hoped was my big-break assignment. It was my first and only story on the entertainment beat—a short retrospective on Joel Goldman, who had just passed away.

Despite the fact that we were only steps away from one of Los Angeles’s most bustling intersections, it was strangely quiet in Lily’s shop. I had come here straight from the paper, which was alive with phones ringing, keyboards clicking and frantic deadlines being met. Here, there hadn’t been a single phone call, not a single customer. No car had passed. There was a formal English garden in front, but its chaises were bare, and its birdbath and trees were devoid of birds.