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‘Travel! You will! I take showings abroad. I also intend to make you famous—what’s one year when you’re——’ Madame gestured in a very French way ‘—twenty-two? My dear Miss Martha, when you’re thirty and starting to get leetle lines and your ’air don’t ’ave quite same bounce and gravity starts to attract the bust—that’s the time to travel!’
Martha had to laugh.
‘And this is quite an organisation I’ve built up,’ Madame added proudly. ‘You theenk this is some teen-pot outfit?’ Her black eyes flashed and her accent came back.
‘No, no,’ Martha said hastily.
‘Thees is good,’ Madame said proudly, and switched accents adroitly once more. ‘I’m just about to bring out an exclusive off-the-rack range which will be seen in all the best fashion magazines. Seen,’ she said dramatically, ‘with you inside them. But only if you put yourself in my hands, Martha Winters,’ she added sternly. ‘You think I’m flattering you? I’m only flattering the raw material.’ Martha flinched but Madame flowed on unaware. ‘Certainly some fine raw material but still a very great lot to learn. You have somewhere to live? No? You will come and live with me——’
‘No, Madame, thank you very much but I must insist that I find my own place.’
Deep pansy blue eyes stared resolutely into snapping black ones and for a moment Martha expected a Gallic explosion but Yvette Minter laughed suddenly. ‘I like it, I like it, but you see, you silly girl, I have a perfectly private little basement flat under my house that I will rent out to you for a perfectly normal amount, where you will be able to take your boyfriends without me even seeing them. Mind you, while a certain amount of sex is marvellous for the looks, men do complicate one’s life, much as I love ’em.’ And an oddly penetrating black glance now came Martha’s way.
‘Point taken,’ she said calmly.
Whereupon Madame raised her eyebrows. ‘What does that mean? Don’t you like men?’
‘It means I’m not looking for any complications at the moment,’ Martha said.
‘Ah. Hmm. I see. Yes, indeed. So.’
It was Martha’s turn to raise an eyebrow.
‘I see only that some man ’as ’urt you,’ Madame explained, causing a faint tinge of pink to rise to Martha’s cheek and causing her to curse herself silently. ‘But never to mind,’ Madame continued, ‘it is you who will be going round breaking hearts soon. In the meantime, are you on, Martha Winters?’
‘I...oh, well, they say faint heart never won anything. Yes, I’m on,’ Martha heard herself say.
Two weeks later she still felt like pinching herself.
Her basement flat below Madame’s elegant Chelsea terrace house, with its window-boxes and tubs of pansies, black enamelled front door with a polished brass knocker facing a quiet leafy garden in the centre of the square, was small but comfortable. And although at first she’d felt a bit like a rabbit living below street level, she’d soon adapted. Who would not, she thought sometimes, to vibrant, stylish, historic Chelsea? And she was gradually finding her way around the King’s Road and Fulham Road, Sloane Square, Cheyne Walk and the river.
She’d been to the Natural History Museum, the Albert Hall, Harrods, seen the Grinling Gibbons carvings in the chapel of the Royal Hospital, guided by a delightful ninety-year-old, scarlet-coated Chelsea pensioner, and, rain or shine, she walked up to Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens every morning. For there hadn’t been much rain—everyone agreed it was a marvellous spring so far. Of course, she realised there was a whole lot more of London to see, but the truth of the matter was that Yvette Minter might make amazing gestures but she was also something of a slave-driver—Martha had never worked so hard in her life. But she found herself enjoying it, even if she changed clothes fifty times a day or was cajoled, coaxed and screamed at by temperamental photographers, by everyone at Minter’s, in fact, all unable to avoid being affected by Madame’s histrionics at the forthcoming début of her off-the-rack range.
Then one afternoon, about two weeks after her arrival, Martha donned a blue fitted waistcoat that left her shoulders and arms bare and matched her eyes, a coffee-cream straight silk skirt that fell to just above her ankles and had a slit up the front to above her knees, gold suede shoes, clustered pearl earrings and a chunky gold and pearl bracelet, swept a brush through her hair, which she was leaving long and loose, and walked through to the elegant room where Madame’s haute couture clothes were shown to clients.
There was no one there apart from Madame herself, who proceeded to walk around Martha, dressed in her inevitable black, but this time definitely a cocktail dress, with her mouth pursed. ‘Yes,’ she said finally, ‘we did right with the ’air; those subtle lighter streaks are very good and a little shorter and all one length so you can toss it around and it settles just a little wild as if some man has been running his ‘ands through it but still looking très bon—it’s very good. And the ’ips under the silk—quite delectable!’
Martha said, ‘Thanks,’ casually but eyed her warily for she’d learnt that it wasn’t only when Madame was with clients or in the grip of emotion that her French accent surfaced; it was also when she was being devious, and she was capable of being extremely devious at times. ‘So?’ She looked rather pointedly at the empty gilt chairs.
Madame put her hands on her own hips. ‘So?’ she repeated arrogantly. ‘I’m having a little cocktail party at home this evening, just friends, and you are coming, Miss Martha, that’s what!’
Martha sighed. ‘Madame—look, you’ve been wonderful about renting me out your basement; you haven’t bothered me in the slightest and I hope I haven’t bothered you at all—but I think we should keep it that way.’
A flood of genuine French greeted these words which Martha endured stoically, enraging Madame even more until she burst into English, saying finally, ‘It’s business, you stubborn, ungrateful child!’
‘I thought you said it was friends.’
‘Friends, yes, but friends who will talk about you—don’t you understand anything? Is Australia such a hick place they don’t even——?’
‘Now look here...’ Martha broke in.
‘No, you look here; it’s part of my campaign to make you famous and what do you do? Throw eet een my face!’
Martha grimaced. ‘It so happens I hate cocktail parties.’
‘This one you won’t. That I guarantee. I have never given a party in my life that anyone has hated! Martha Winters—please,’ Madame said, changing tack so suddenly that Martha blinked. ‘I would like you to come with the very best intentions in my ’eart. I would like everyone to see this fabulous girl who is so soon going to become a sophisticated, wonderful woman——’
‘Stop. I’ll come,’ Martha said, laughing at the same time, as she shook her head a little dazedly.
‘So you jolly well ought to,’ Madame said severely. ‘This place Australia—are they all like you over there, so wary, so stony-hearted, so——?’
‘Madame, I said I’d come!’
It was Martha’s first glimpse of the first-floor reception-room of Madame’s house, and she couldn’t fail to be impressed by the looped, draped, tasselled yellow velvet curtains about the tall windows that overlooked the square; by the palest eau-de-Nil wall-to-wall carpet that was dotted with exquisite Chinese and Persian rugs; the beautiful, spindly, inlaid pieces of furniture; the flowers and lamps; the vivid pink silk-covered chairs.
But of course it was still an ordeal—to be introduced and overlooked by an ever-growing number of people, to try to make conversation with complete strangers without sounding gauche and, particularly, colonial. I really should have got over these kind of nerves, she told herself once, sipping a very dry sherry. How many times have I paraded before hundreds of strangers? But that’s different; I can detach myself then—not something I can do now at the same time as I’m hearing my accent stand out so obviously—not that I care what they think about my accent, so why do I feel like this? Martha asked herself impatiently. Perhaps, she went on to think with a slight shrug, looking round the room suddenly, I can concentrate on the possibility that one day I could own a room like this...
‘Miss Martha?’
Martha turned as Madame’s voice penetrated her reflections.
‘I ’ave a very special guest to introduce you to—my nephew. Simon, this is my new protégé, Martha Winters—is she not stunning?’
Martha froze, her lips parting and her eyes widening as she looked up at the tall man beside Madame who was wearing a beautifully tailored grey suit that sat superbly across his broad shoulders. She took in his quiet air of assurance and authority, his brown hair, his long-fingered hands which had once made her shiver with delight to think of them upon her body—and looked at last into Simon Macquarie’s grey-green eyes.
CHAPTER TWO
‘WELL, well,’ he drawled in that quizzical, amused voice that haunted her dreams, ‘we meet again. I wonder if that’s pure fate or—something else?’
Two things happened at the same time: Madame burst forth into surprised French and Martha tossed her head and clenched her sherry glass so that her knuckles showed white. Which caused Simon Macquarie to narrow his eyes and cut across Madame’s outpourings as he said drily, ‘Now, Martha, we’ve been through this once before. I was remarkably understanding about the champagne but there is a limit—I would drink that sherry if I were you.’
Martha did just that and the next best thing she could think of. She tossed off the last of her sherry, placed the glass down gently on a table, and stalked out with all of the considerable hauteur, disdain and controlled rage she was capable of—leaving the party to fall into a sudden, electrified silence behind her.
Once in the sanctuary of her basement with the door firmly locked, she tore off her earrings and bracelet and flung them down on the kitchen table. She was just in the process of undoing the buttons of her waistcoat when, to her incredulity, she heard a key in the area door and it swung open into her kitchen-cum-sitting-room to admit Simon.
Buttoning herself up with furious, trembling fingers, but aware that he must have seen at least the flesh-coloured silk and lace of her low-cut French bra, she spat, ‘How dare you! How did you get a key? This is intolerable!’
‘It’s Yvette’s master key,’ he said placidly, laying the offending article on the table next to her earrings and bracelet. ‘She—er—agreed with me that there was obviously some unfinished business between us.’
‘Oh, no, there’s not!’ Martha flashed, then took a breath as she tried to think, tried to gather herself into some sort of icy composure. ‘At least to my mind,’ she said in a suddenly cool, reflective voice, ‘there’s only this, Simon Macquarie. You posed the theory that I’d somehow tracked you down and ingratiated myself with your aunt in a bid to...’ She paused, which was fatal as it turned out.
‘To re-establish yourself in my life?’ he suggested gently, but with such mockery that she winced. ‘It did cross my mind, yes.’
‘Then you must be mad!’ she accused. ‘I had no idea she was your aunt, and believe me, if I had, the last thing I’d be doing is working for her.’
‘Well,’ he murmured with a faint smile, ‘you’ll have to forgive me for being a little wary of your motives, Martha. But I must say——’ that clever, amused gaze roamed up and down her figure ‘—I have to give you full marks for ambition, my little Aussie tart. This is a rather astonishing climb up the ladder from serving drinks and propositioning guests. Like to tell me how you achieved it?’ And with a wryly raised eyebrow he sat down at her kitchen table and picked up the gold bracelet she’d cast down in such a rage, to run it thoughtfully through his long fingers.
Martha had never actually seen red before but what saved her was the sudden, startlingly clear mental picture of what had happened to her the last time she’d slapped this man’s face. So she closed her eyes on the red film, very briefly and discreetly filled her lungs with air as she’d been trained to, then sat down opposite him with a shrug and said, ‘How do you think? It’s amazing what you can achieve—on your back.’
For a long moment their gazes locked, hers not even defiant, she hoped, yet she was momentarily puzzled by the tinge of scepticism she thought she saw in his; then it was gone and she wondered if she’d imagined it.
But he said abruptly, ‘So that part of it was always true?’ And there was no mistaking the cold disgust in his eyes now.
‘Of course. Did you ever doubt it?’ Martha asked sweetly, despite the strange mixture of hurt and the feeling that she was tumbling down a mine-shaft—by her own hand but unable to stop herself. ‘Perhaps I was a bit...rough in those days. Is that what made you have doubts? Well, I’m much, much more experienced now, Mr Macquarie. Would you like a demonstration?’
He relaxed all of a sudden. ‘No, thank you, Miss Winters. I think I could live without it. No,’ he mused. ‘What activated certain doubts was the sometimes undoubted genuineness of your—rages. But I guess we’re all wrong from time to time. Does my aunt know how you operate?’ he asked drily.
I’ve gone too far—I’ve done it again! Martha found herself thinking dully as she coloured a little. Why does this man do this to me? Then she stood up abruptly, swung her hair defiantly and said equally drily, ‘No. In fact I’ve turned over a new leaf. Now I’ve got this far it would be silly to...well, I guess you know what I mean.’
‘Acquire a sleazy reputation?’ he suggested softly.
‘Yes,’ she said shortly, but couldn’t prevent herself from shooting him one brief, blazing glance.
His lips twisted. ‘Well, I hope you succeed. And I hope you don’t find it too difficult to live without,’ he added, standing up himself.
Martha knew exactly what he meant as his gaze drifted up and down her again as if he could see beneath the blue crêpe and the coffee silk and she was reminded with deadly accuracy how it felt to have his hands on her body, but he didn’t leave a thing to chance. He moved towards her and stopped only inches away so that she was assailed by everything about him that she’d always found so tormentingly attractive: his height and the width of his shoulders; the slight tang of a lemony aftershave and the sheer male smell; the hard planes and angles of his fit, lean body that she’d secretly so admired. And she recalled the rapture of being kissed and held by him and how her heart had beaten and her skin shivered of its own accord, how her nerves had leapt...
She swallowed as she tried to gaze up unaffectedly into his eyes and remembered that he’d always been more than a match for her, and not only physically. She remembered, too, how he’d looked into her eyes, often after a passionate embrace, with that assessing, clever amusement lurking in the greeny depths of his and that wry, ironic twist to his lips and just sometimes with a more deadly kind of mockery.
She opened her mouth, desperate for something to say to break the unbearable tension of the moment, but he spoke first. ‘Live without sex, I mean,’ he murmured, and smiled as she trembled suddenly. ‘It should be interesting, Martha, to see how you cope. And I suppose one can’t altogether blame you for working your way up the ladder on your back when there are places on your body where your skin is like silk and there are curves and hollows so well arranged and designed, so erotic and sensitive, it’s...’ he paused ‘...almost a crime to find that you haven’t got the heart and soul to go with them. But——’
‘Get out,’ she whispered, rigid and white to the lips.
‘Just going. Good luck...’
‘Look, Madame, I apologise for walking out of your party but if you want to sack me for it that’s fine with me.’
Yvette Minter threw up her hands. She was wearing a colourful, stiffened-silk dressing-gown and she’d descended the area steps and knocked Martha up only moments ago. It was the morning after the party, a Sunday morning, and about nine o‘clock. ‘Why did I know you would say something like that to me?’ she demanded in clearly aggrieved tones. ‘Can you not even offer me a cup of coffee at this horrendous hour of the day?’
Martha shrugged and turned to the stove where a percolator was bubbling gently. ‘If you like.’ She poured two mugs.
Madame glanced at Martha’s bent head during this process but uncharacteristically said nothing for a time as she sat down and arranged the rich folds of her gown around her.
‘There.’ Martha pushed a mug across the table and after a brief hesitation sat down herself.
‘Merci.’ Madame smiled faintly and pursed her lips.
This caused Martha to wonder what was coming and it was as if Madame guessed her thoughts, because she said lightly, ‘I was just thinking—such a difference! Last night you were all fire and elegance; today you are like a teenage girl.’
Martha grimaced down at the floral patterned leggings and voluminous T-shirt she wore. ‘So?’
‘That’s another thing—how many times you say, “So?” to me, like so.’
‘Sorry. I guess what I’m trying to say is this. If I’ve blown my chance, if I’ve disgraced myself thoroughly and you can’t see any hope of retrieving things and making me famous——’ there was a tinge of irony in her voice ‘—you only have to tell me straight.’
‘Martha,’ Madame reproved, ‘why are you so prickly?’
‘It’s the way I’m made, I guess.’ Martha shrugged.
‘OK, I believe you, but what makes you think you disgraced yourself last night? All you did was add a bit of spice and mystery to the image. Believe me, to walk out on Simon—even to want to, let alone to do it—is a gesture not many girls make.’
‘Then they should,’ Martha said before she could stop herself. ‘I’m sorry if he’s your nephew but he—’ She stopped abruptly.
‘Go on,’ Madame said, her black eyes fairly snapping with curiosity.
Martha bit her lip and thought, Shades of Jane...‘No—uh—well, the least said, the soonest mended, I’m sure. Unless he...’ She stopped and looked directly at the other woman.
‘He has said nothing. Nothing,’ Madame emphasised. ‘Well, beyond that he met you three years ago in Australia. He has left me totally in the dark in other words—which is extremely frustrating for a woman like me,’ she added with complete honesty. ‘Mind you, it’s not hard to guess that you two—er—had something going; the air nearly sizzled around you. What a shot in the eye for Sondra Grant.’ She sighed with obvious pleasure.
‘Who’s she?’
Madame opened her eyes very wide. ‘His fiancée—well, his unofficial fiancée—you didn’t know?’
‘I don’t know anything about him, other than that he can be an absolute——’
‘Then I will tell you.’ Madame sat forward eagerly, and took not the slightest notice of Martha’s protest. ‘He is the son of my late ’usband’s brother—in reality we bear the same name but I chose to use my maiden name for my business. Now you think it’s strange that I should have married a Scot? Not at all; the Macquaries ‘ave married French women often; the family is half French anyway because——’
‘I know about the liqueur,’ Martha said drily. ‘That’s how we met in Australia—at a cocktail party but serving liqueur instead.’
‘Ah!’ Madame looked suddenly enlightened then she became serious again. ‘But do you know that Simon has literally saved the family company from fading into oblivion and turned it into a highly profitable concern again? Because he is a brilliant businessman—dynamic. Why, without his advice even I wouldn’t be where I am today and—–’
‘Madame—’ Martha stood up ‘—I’m really not interested. I’m sorry—–’
‘So he was the one?’
‘The one what?’
‘Who ’urt you, Martha. Look—–’ Madame became angry at last ‘—don’t take me for a fool, Mees Winters!’
‘I’m not!’ Martha denied. ‘But he is your nephew—Oh, this is impossible,’ she whispered suddenly, and was horrified to find she had tears welling. Tears because she could see a new life she’d just begun to believe in shattering before her eyes.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘What’s what got to do with it?’ Martha asked impatiently, dashing at her eyes with the back of her hand.
‘That he’s my nephew?’ Madame said with more of her old arrogance.
‘Everything, I should imagine. I hate him, he...despises me, and I couldn’t even begin to tell you how much. We could be tripping over each other all the time, but you obviously admire him tremendously and—–’
‘So you think I automatically take his side, Miss Martha?’
‘Yes!’
Madame stood up and arranged her robe regally around her. ‘Then you do not even begin to understand me, Martha Winters,’ she said chillingly. ‘I do not only design exquisite clothes but I am a very fine judge of character as well as human nature. I’m also a Frenchwoman through to my bones and as such I know a lot about men, so I would never dream of saying, This man is my nephew therefore he must be all honour and virtue. No. Instead I say to myself, This is a man, first and foremost, and we all know what bastards men can be sometimes—this is what I say!’
Martha stared at her then sat down abruptly, dropped her face into her hands and started to laugh a little wildly. ‘But you hardly know me from a bar of soap!’
‘True,’ Madame conceded. ‘But I like you. So, hate Simon if you wish to. It will not affect me. But it also might not deceive me entirely.’
