Satin Dreams (39 page)

The Palliades chauffeur stepped closer, wanting to interrupt.
 

“Listen, Alix,” Chris said urgently, “Poseidon-Palliades is charged with hiding Israeli weapons in specially built compartments on their tankers headed for the Persian Gulf. That’s rotten. And it’s illegal.”
 

She turned her violet eyes on him. “You were watching him, that night, weren’t you? Wasn’t that why you were so conveniently right there in your automobile to pick me up in the avenue Foch?”
 

He raked his fingers through his hair, sighing. “What are you trying to get me to say?”
 

“You didn’t have to have him arrested right in the middle of the show tonight,” she said bitterly. “You just wanted to get even.”
 

The chauffeur broke in. “Mademoiselle, please, he wishes to marry you. Niko told his grandfather he would do so even
without
his permission!”
 

Forbes shoved himself in between. “You’re not going to listen to this crap, are you?”
 

The chauffeur’s dark features were rigid with emotion. “You must believe me, mademoiselle. What could Niko do? We are Greek—one does not denounce one’s own grandfather!”
 

“This guy is a sailor off old Socrates’s yacht,” the writer said desperately, “he practically raised Nick Palliades. You don’t have to listen to him.”
 

The chauffeur pushed him back, scowling. “Niko has tried for months to find out what his grandfather has been doing and stop it. It has put him in much danger.”
 

A television team had wriggled its way to them through the crowd. “
Fräulein
,” the German TV reporter said, pushing a microphone into Alix’s face, “
what do you think of the evening’s outcome
?”
 

Alix ducked her head and fumbled with the zipper of her slacks, knowing she had to get out of there. “No comment,” she told the television people. Lakis had come to her, miraculously, just when she needed him. She knew she didn’t have to explain anything.
 

“I need to go by my apartment in Ranelagh first,” Alix said, grabbing her down jacket, “to get some things. Is that all right?”
 

“Mademoiselle,
anything
,” he told her quickly.
 

“Alix, don’t.” Forbes stepped in front of her. “Come have a drink with me. At least let me talk to you.”
 

Alix supposed Chris Forbes had done what he thought was right. She shook her head. “First,” she said, taking the chauffeur’s arm, “I need to find a telephone.”
 

“In the car.” Skillfully he parted the crowd for her. “The Daimler is parked in front of the opera.”
 

The lights had been dimmed in the grand foyer for dancing, but the air was sticky and warm. Most people in the close-packed crowd had discarded their extravagant masks and headdresses. After such an exciting evening, the guests at the
Bal des Oiseaux Blancs
were reluctant to go home.
 

Outside, it was still snowing. The Mercedes-Daimler purred a the curb, a sybaritic, superpowered ghost in the wintry dark.
 

Inside, Alix found it was still chilly in spite of the heaters blowing full blast. She pulled her jacket around her as she picked up the silver-plated French telephone.
 

It took only a second to dial the code numbers for overseas, New York, and then the final number preceded by another code, knowing that she was passing through a filtered security system that allowed her to speak to one of the most powerful men in the world.
 

The system responded. A voice answered, asking politely whom she wished to contact.
 

Alix frowned in the semidarkness of Nicholas Palliades’s silver and gray limousine. In one sense, she had come full circle.
 

“This is Catherine Alixandria Melton,” she said into the telephone receiver. “Let me speak to my brother.”
 

Twenty-Four

At three A.M., the remaining scraps of the costumes from the
Bal des Oiseaux Blancs
were carried up to the design room by Gilles and Abdul. After the porter left him in the midst of a tangle of shoe boxes and headdress bags, Gilles turned on the drafting light over his table and sat down. At that hour, the ponderous silence of the old Maison Louvel building was soothing.
 

And Gilles needed soothing, after this terrible day.
 

Damn the de Brissacs! If he blamed anyone, Gilles blamed the bourgeois silk mill merchants. Their willingness to let him go ahead with the lace laminate that they knew was defective was monstrous, unforgivable. He’d never expected much from the American dress manufacturer Jackson Storm, the publicity woman from New York, the cretinous vice president in charge of European development—or even the overbearing young backer, Palliades. But his own kind?
Frenchmen
? What perfidy!
 

Gilles put his head in his hands. Now Palliades was in jail, arrested right in the middle of the opera ball, just as in some ludicrous Hollywood film comedy. Jackson Storm had disappeared, and no one seemed to know where he was.
 

Peter Frank had intercepted Gilles as he was packing up to leave the opera and had said with monumental falseness, “We know you did a good job, Gilles, kid, you just had tough luck. Report in as usual for work in the morning, and we’ll see how it goes.” Peter Frank had been unable to meet Gilles’s eyes. “Jack Storm tells me he and his wife are—ah, leaving immediately on a second honeymoon. I think he said Rio de Janeiro.”
 

Gilles told himself that if one believed such things, then surely all the planets in the universe must have come together this ill-fated evening to form the most baleful influences ever known. Who could have foreseen a
fantaisie
before the season’s most illustrious audience deteriorating into a travesty? Into a—
peep show
of nude models.
 

Worse, it hadn’t ended there.
 

When Gilles had entered the Maison Louvel tired, discouraged, and chilled to the bone, the Arab porter had met him, full of his own disasters. And with Princess Jacqueline’s note for Gilles. It had been delivered to the rue des Benedictines late, Abdul told him, by an employee of Prince Alessio Medivani.
 

Standing amid boxes and paper bags at the elevator, Gilles had read the note.
 

Princess Jacqueline, the note said (it was obviously written by a secretary), thanked M. Gilles Vasse for his time and patience and knew that he would be interested to know that Her Serene Highness was opening her own swimsuit company, for which she would be sole designer, in New York. The princess regretted she would no longer be working with M. Vasse, but sent her sincerest wishes for his continued success.
 

In other words, he’d realized, furious, Princess Jacqueline was taking advantage of the privileges of her class and beating a speedy, strategic retreat.
 

As if that were not enough, Abdul was in tears. His son, Karim, was leaving Paris, abandoning his studies at the university for full-time employment as Princess Jacqueline’s bodyguard!
 

It was madness, all of it.
 

Gilles knew his own future was not much clearer. In spite of the standing ovation at the end of the show, he was treading in professional quicksand. The upcoming, all-important spring collection would really determine whether he had established himself. And Gilles didn’t know if he still had a job with this imbecilic operation the Americans called a couture house. The Greek millionaire backer was in jail, the American fashion king had suddenly announced a honeymoon with his wife, and Gilles’s
fantaisie
costumes had just dissolved before the eyes of a fascinated Paris audience and the world press.
Merde
, he still couldn’t believe it!
 

Gilles looked around the design room, feeling as though a harrowing decade had passed since he’d left it earlier that evening. It was time to go home, but he had to compose himself; Lisianne would hear of the disaster in the morning, if she hadn’t already seen it on television. He had to prepare to make light of it. For the sake of them both.
 

With a sigh, he reached to turn out the fluorescent lamp, and heard the sound of the elevator ascending.
 

He didn’t want to see Abdul again. He’d already had his fill of the porter’s troubles: the emotional distress about his son who was going to America with Princess Medivani, the temptress who was not a good influence, even though she was wealthy and titled.
 

But when Gilles looked up, it was not the Arab porter who stood in the doorway but the plump, disordered figure of Rudi Mortessier in a half-buttoned overcoat and snow boots.
 

For a moment, Gilles could do nothing but stare. He was overtired. It was an apparition, he told himself. Not Rudi.
 

“Gilles,
mon petit
,” the apparition said hoarsely, “I have just had a most sublime experience!”
 

Gilles slipped down from the drafting stool. “Rudi, what are you doing here in the Maison Louvel? Do you know what hour it is? It is the middle of the night!”
 

Rudi gave him a rather strange look. “I, Rudi Mortessier, have been with darling Lisianne for ten hours. Think of it Gilles,” he said, his voice rising, “I have been with that magnificent woman, your wife, for
ten hours.
All this time I have been holding her hand and breathing with her. Diligently.”
 

“My God.” Gilles lunged for him, stumbled into the costume bags and shoe boxes, and barely caught himself. “Rudi, damn you—tell me what this is all about!”
 

“Have I not been telling you? Gilles, my dearest boy. Lisianne is in the hospital—with your newborn offspring!”
 

Gilles wanted to grab his former employer by the throat, but couldn’t reach him. He leaned against a file cabinet, struggling for breath. He realized he was having an anxiety attack. “She has had the baby?” he croaked.
 

“Yes, yes! What a wonderful woman! She called me, Gilles, because she didn’t want to rob you of your magnificent triumph tonight, not even when she was in labor. She almost waited too long. Such courage! I was with her all the time until she went into the delivery room. It was the most exquisite experience of my life, Gilles.” Rudi rolled his eyes heavenward with great sincerity. “I wish you to know how grateful I am.”
 

“Rudi,” Gilles almost shouted, “my wife—is she all right? Is it a boy or a girl?”
 

“Lisianne is wonderful. She is lovely, very happy,” Rudi assured him. “She wishes to see you right away.”
 

Gilles slumped against the file cabinet, sweat pouring into his eyes. “Thank God,” he choked. “And the baby? It is well?”
 

“They are wonderful, and lovely, too. A beautiful little girl and a beautiful little boy. It was amazing to watch, this marvelous birth, which I did through the glass of the delivery room by special permission. Your lovely wife knew months ago, of course, that there would be twins. But Gilles, what a noble woman. She did not wish to trouble you with all—”
 

Rudi Mortessier found himself suddenly addressing a body that had crumpled down the front of the file cabinet to the floor. He pushed his glasses back up his nose with his index finger and leaned forward.
 

“Gilles, dear boy,” Rudi said. “Gilles?”
 

But Gilles Vasse had fainted.
 

The Parisian night was cold and brilliant with only a few ice flurries stirred by the wind drifting sporadically over the sidewalks. Because Lakis was waiting in the Daimler with the motor running, Alix didn’t take time for a long, soaking hot bath but instead took a brief shower and changed from her slacks and sweater into a black woolen dress, combing out her hair to a resonable semblance of order. The last thing she did before leaving her apartment was put on Nicholas Palliades’s diamond and emerald earrings, and the full-length sable coat.
 

In the mirror, she studied her face framed by dark fur, diamonds, and emeralds. It was not the image she had ever wanted for herself.
 

But this was the poorly paid model Nicholas Palliades’s grandfather didn’t want his grandson to marry. The woman Nicholas Palliades desired. And most especially, the one her brother, behind his security systems and barricades of wealth and power, had wished to deal with, reason with—even threaten, these past few months.
 

Alix turned to view herself from all angles, thoughtfully.
 

This was also the hardworking couture-house model Gilles Vasse used for inspiration for his creations. And the idealized role model on whom silly little Princess Jacqueline had lavished her adoration.
 

Who had she been before that? she wondered.
An unsuccessful music student
. And before that?
Lonely and afraid
. Did she ever want to be that again?