The Dress Thief (53 page)

‘I did not snatch and there was no comfort, only a form of madness. If you don’t care for me any more, I’d rather know.’
Actually
, she thought,
I wouldn’t
.

He didn’t answer at once, and when he did he sounded distant. ‘Nothing hurts more than the death of love.’

She looked down at her plate. ‘I see.’

‘I don’t think you do. When I left England
in ’thirty-five, I was engaged to be married to a neighbour’s daughter. I loved Moira, but when I told her my intention to go to North Africa to cover what looked like a short-lived conflict, she showed a side I hadn’t seen before. Her attitude was “to hell with dying foreigners”. She wanted to spend that season toting me around house parties and hunt balls, showing off her engagement ring. I went
anyway, and she began seeing my brother. The death of love.’

‘She can’t have loved you.’

‘The point is, my love for her died.’

Alix raked a piece of potato through the sauce and put it into her mouth because whatever emotional carnage was on its way, you should always eat. Mémé’s philosophy.

‘In Spain I met a girl, Maria-Pilar, and understood what love was. It’s not just physical attraction,
or “doing the right thing”. It’s not even working out how much you’ve got to live on and where you might set up house. Nor about stealing kisses in taxis,
though I’m fond of that.’ He smiled, pulling her back into his net. ‘It’s finding someone who fits around you and inside you, who you would die for because you want them to exist more than you want your own life to go on. There’s independence
in that kind of love. It makes you both strong, so long as it’s mutual.’

A topaz cufflink kicked out a spark as Verrian drank, his hand moving close to the candle flame. The phantom wedding ring had vanished, his skin uniform brown. ‘You stopped loving Maria-Pilar?’ Alix asked, dreading the answer. If that could die, any love could. Some men could not sustain it. They left tears behind them all
their lives.

‘It was she who stopped loving me.’

She stared. ‘Why?’

‘Because –’ he leaned forward, his eyes digging into hers – ‘though I was too rash to see it, her belief in God underpinned her very breathing. She thought she could convert me, and when she couldn’t, she looked upon me with despair. Then with judgement, and finally with disgust.’

‘How long were you were married?’

‘For about
two months.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘She’s dead, Alix. She died on the battlefield.’

‘A nurse?’

‘A driver. My official driver. Our car was hit by a shell when she took me out to the front one day. I’d seen an Italian tank in
a ditch. The crew had been thrown out and I wanted pictures. At the time, the British press was refusing to acknowledge the presence of Italian and German troops on the ground
in Spain. I told Maria to drive on a few yards then turn around. I didn’t want her to see those dead boys … ridiculous. She’d seen more death than I had. I took the pictures; next second I was blasted into the ditch. I crawled out and saw a bonfire where the car ought to have been. I couldn’t get close, but I’ve never forgiven myself for not being in that car with her. I might have got her out.’

Or died with her, more likely
. She lifted his hand to her cheek. ‘I’m sorry, Verrian, making you tell me this. Where is she buried?’

‘In a mass grave, with other soldiers.’

Waiters cleared their plates. Verrian ordered ice-cream parfaits for them which neither of them finished. When they were ready to leave he said, ‘I don’t think we should invite the brandy bottle upstairs, but shall I order
coffee?’

They didn’t speak in the lift. In his suite she drank her coffee fast, because whatever he might think, the next minutes
were
going to be an ordeal. Dutch courage wasn’t working. ‘The Death of Love’ was a terrifying vision. What if he was disappointed with her body, or if he turned out to be like Serge, rough and selfish? When Verrian tugged off his tie and said, ‘Alix, may I make love
to you at last?’ she blurted out her fears in the words, ‘No – I’m exhausted. Goodnight,’ and fled.

*

In her bathroom she undressed, washed, brushed her teeth. Facing herself in the mirror above the sink, she muttered, ‘Did I just kill love?’ Death was generally something you didn’t recover from. Unless – she bit her lip – you made an extra special effort. She reapplied a few dots of perfume.
In her bedroom, she pulled something in powder blue silk from the back of a chair. The garment smelled of rose oil from the soap flakes she’d washed it in. She inhaled once, then slipped it on.

*

The bathroom door leading to Verrian’s bedroom stood ajar, light making a spearhead across a satin bedspread. Alix stood between rooms, poised to run. She heard water draining, then the bathroom light
switched off. Stay or scuttle? He wouldn’t know she’d been here, since he’d killed the only light. Then a man’s shape appeared and fragrant steam billowed into the room.

She was astonished he didn’t hear her heart beating. Oblivious, he leaned one knee on the bed and switched on the lamp above it. He came to life in the gleam; bronze flesh, damp hair curling against his ears. He was wearing one
of the white seersucker robes the hotel provided. It was loosely belted and a hair-sprinkled chest and bands of muscle pulled her gaze. She responded to the unwitting power of his body, putting her hand against her stomach where the feeling was sharpest, touching sensual silk, asking herself why she’d denied them both so long. Her movement must have hit the corner of his eye because he barked –
‘Jesus!’ He backed off the bed, stood with his feet
planted, arms crossed. She waited for the melting smile, the open arms.

‘If this is you having fun, showing me how insanely I want you, then you can get out.’

‘I – I just wanted to say goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

She heard the contained rage and knew she should go while she had a thread of self-respect. But seeing him robed like an Olympian
held her transfixed.

He covered the space between them and caught her round the waist, bunching the camiknickers she’d put on.

‘And I suppose these are just something you threw on?’ His hand travelled, exploring her shape, finding a breast, spanning her waist, caressing hip and buttocks, the curve of a thigh and finally invading the lace trim, finding the furrow between thigh and mound. And
all the time he kissed her with a confrontational passion that pushed the breath back inside her. She felt him hardening against her and she knew she’d misjudged him. He was a man of many tones but he was a man, and she’d teased and rejected him and beckoned him back too many times. Schooled in Serge’s self-absorption, she’d used her body to punish Verrian. Punished the wrong man …

She collapsed
against him and he swept her up and then she was lying on a lake of satin. ‘Don’t hurt me,’ she pleaded. Yesterday she’d watched him snap a man’s wrist like a piece of firewood. ‘I can do this … I love you. I will. Just don’t hurt me.’

He rolled over, pulling her with him so she lay above him. Words broke against her throat, ‘You can have anything from me you want, everything I have, except the
last shreds of pride. Hurt you? Why would I hurt the thing I love most, the most precious and beautiful thing I have? Don’t run, that’s all.’

‘I won’t,’ she said huskily. ‘But you don’t have to grip the back of my head like a dentist about to pull a tooth out.’

He laughed in reply, a sound mixed with a groan. ‘I’ll trust you.’

‘Yes. Let me.’ Alert for any signs of shock or revulsion, she knelt
beside him, pushing aside his robe, kissing a trail from his throat, moving lower. She adored the texture of flesh and hair, the faint taste of soap, of skin. She found the marks of Serge’s knuckles just under his ribs. She kissed each of the lesions and continued downward. Opened her lips and let her soft warmth envelope him. Without the weight of obligation or of pleasing a careless heart, she
was able to give herself to the intimate act, this most private token of love. Never doubting she could trust Verrian, she enjoyed herself, tasting and caressing and feeling his arousal grow with her.

‘You’d better stop,’ he said thickly, running his fingers through her hair.

She kissed her way back upward, drawing her tongue over his belly, gently teasing each nipple. He groaned and the satin
bed cover whispered. She pushed his robe off his shoulders and he shrugged it away. She’d thought a lot about his torso, picturing
it before she went to sleep every night in those first weeks of meeting him. She’d always imagined it rearing over her, keeping her sweetly trapped, but Serge had given her a horror of being pinned, so maybe it could happen in reverse. Half expecting to be thrown off,
she sat astride him.

His shoulders were honed, with hollows just the right depth for lips and tongue. His throat stretched as her tongue drew a line along it. Teasing his mouth with hers, she absorbed the sensation of a body held captive beneath her. How different a man felt when he wasn’t trying to control, when he was allowing himself to be seduced, his whole body a sigh, his breath deepening.
Moist readiness lay between her legs, betraying her desire. She rolled off him, quietening his protest with two words, and stripped off, throwing the camiknickers into the dark. He reached for her, finding her breasts and caressing her nipples to buds. She cried out as he put his mouth around one then the other. She threaded her legs around him and moved against him, flesh against muscle until
his control broke. He entered her first with his fingers, exploring her core, soft as velveteen until she begged, ‘Now, inside me now,’ and opened for him, crying out as he invaded.

She climaxed fast, the reality of Verrian on her, in her, more erotically potent than she’d believed possible. His rhythm grew frantic, and in the last moments, as he withdrew, a tide of words and kisses broke against
her lips.

They shared the shuddering pleasure. Shared heat and lips. She lay in his arms and thought – I am happy.

They woke at some indistinct hour and reprised their joy slowly. Verrian followed the trail she’d laid with her perfume to show her at languorous length her capacity for pleasure. They fell asleep, wrapped about each other, until daylight clapped its hands. The brief holiday, over.

*

‘You’re convinced Rhona de Charembourg sabotaged your last collection?’

They were crossing the Seine at Pont Neuf, on foot. Verrian had ordered a taxi to Rue Jacob, explaining the Hispano was leaking oil. At Alix’s suggestion, they’d got out on the Right Bank to enjoy the novelty of crossing the river in a blanket of fog. They held hands and murmured ‘excuse me’s’ to other pedestrians.

‘Somebody
sent that Charboneau woman. And how else would Rhona have got an identical suit to mine? That grey-green cloth was a short run a Manchester manufacturer decided to pull from production, and Una thought I’d like it. I made myself a suit and cut out another which never made it into the collection. It was among the stuff the police confiscated which proves Rhona got access to the boxes they took
away. Wearing it was her way of showing that she has more power than I have.’

Verrian put his arm round her. ‘Unspeakably vulgar, as my mother would say.’ He asked her if she still meant to close Modes Lutzman.

‘No – I’ll kick it into life somehow. Though it’ll be like flying
over a desert with no fuel. Oh, and so you don’t have to disapprove of me, I’ll post those francs back to Una. She’s
staying at a hotel in Hastings … she can change it to pounds and spend it on cocktails and fish-and-chip dinners. I’ll scrape by.’

Verrian made a testing noise. ‘You could sell your grandfather’s paintings for cash. Knowing what you know of Alfred Lutzman, surely you don’t want to keep them?’

Alix looked towards the river where fog made ghosts of the boats and wharfs. ‘I couldn’t without Mémé’s
consent and she’s not really able to give it. Besides, I need time to see if I still admire my grandfather’s work, or if I was deluding myself about him. Do I sound mad?’

‘No – scarily rational.’

She shot him an appealing look. ‘If my business fails, you won’t despise me?’

‘You’ll be flying prayer-born, as my good friend Phipps would say, and I like courage. But you’ll succeed. Rhona de Charembourg
likes your stuff—’ He laughed as Alix elbowed him. ‘Theft is the sincerest form of flattery, all the more believable when it comes from one’s sworn enemies.’

As they walked down Rue Dauphine, Alix said, ‘I don’t want enemies. I want friends.’

He stopped to kiss her. ‘Well, you always have me.’

She’d thrown two sketchbooks into the wastebasket and ripped up more metres of
muslin than she cared to calculate. She was discarding yet another drawing when Verrian came into her studio, looked at the bin under its avalanche and said, ‘I’ve just had a stand-up row with my brother … if one can have such a thing over the telephone. Did you know there’s been a shooting at the German embassy?’

She stared at him. ‘In Paris?’

‘A Jewish lad took it out on a German official.
I filed a sympathetic report, pointing out that the boy had just heard his parents had been deported from Germany. My brother refuses to run it, so I’ve resigned.’

He looked down at Alix’s sketchbook, which was covered in desperate hieroglyphs. He was still wearing his overcoat because Alix was economising on paraffin. Fishing an envelope from an inside pocket, he said, ‘As you sent Una’s money
back, I thought this might be useful.’

The wad of money was more than Alix had ever seen in one place. ‘Your pay-off from the
Monitor
?’

Verrian gave a sardonic laugh. ‘I quit, so no pay-off.’ He hugged her. ‘The money’s from the Hispano. I sold it.’

‘Sold … Oh, Verrian. I thought it had oil problems.’

‘A red herring.’

‘You loved that car.’

‘No, I liked it. I love you and I want you to bring
out a blazing collection in the new year because I agree with Mrs Kilpin in one respect – clouds are gathering. Soon it’ll be on with the raincoats and sensible shoes.’