Chloe. As gently as possible, she tried to make Chloe understand how serious all this was. 'You're forty, Mummy. You need to start taking better care of yourself. Gracious, you haven't had a facial in weeks.'
To her dismay, she saw that she'd hurt Chloe's feelings. Rushing over, she gave her mother a quick conciliatory hug, careful not to smear the delicate taupe shading beneath her cheekbones. 'Never mind,' she said. 'I adore you. And you're still the most beautiful mother in London.'
'Which reminds me-one mother in this house is enough. You are taking your birth control pills, aren't you, darling?'
Francesca groaned. 'Not this again…'
Chloe withdrew a pair of gloves from an ostrich-skin Chanel handbag and began tugging them on.
'I can't bear the thought of your becoming pregnant when you're still so young. Pregnancy is so dangerous.'
Francesca flicked her hair behind her shoulders and turned back to the mirror. 'All the more reason
not to forget, isn't it,' she said lightly.
'Just be careful, darling.'
'Have you ever known me to lose control of any situation invoiving men?'
'Thank God, no.' Chloe pushed her thumbs beneath the collar of her mink and lifted the fur until it brushed the bottom of her jaw. 'If only I'd been more like you when I was twenty.' She gave a wry chuckle. 'Who am I fooling? If only I were more like you right now.' Blowing a kiss in the air, she
waved good-bye with her handbag and disappeared down the hallway.
Francesca wrinkled her nose in the mirror, then jerked out the comb she had just arranged in her hair
and stalked over to her window. As she stared down into the garden, the unwelcome memory of her old encounter with Evan Varian came back to her, and she shivered. Although she knew sex couldn't be that dreadful for most women, her experience with Evan three years ago had made her lose much of her desire for further experimentation, even with men who attracted her. Still, Evan's taunt about her frigidity had hung in the dusty corners of her consciousness, leaping out at the strangest times to plague her. Finally, last summer, she'd gathered her courage and permitted a handsome young Swedish sculptor she'd met in Marrakech to take her to bed.
She frowned as she remembered how awful it had been. She knew there had to be more to sex than having someone heaving away over her body, pawing at her most private parts with sweat dripping from his armpits all over her. The only feeling the experience had produced inside her had been a terrible anxiety. She hated the vulnerability, the unnerving sense that she had relinquished control. Where was
the mystical closeness the poets wrote about? Why wasn't she able to feel close to anybody?
From watching Chloe's relationships with men, Francesca had learned at an early age that sex was a marketable commodity like any other. She knew that sooner or later she wouid have to permit a man to make love to her again. But she was determined not to do so until she felt completely in control of the situation and the rewards were high enough to justify the anxiety. Exactly what those rewards might be, she didn't quite know. Not money, certainly. Money was simply there, not something one even thought about. Not social position, since that had been very much assured her at birth. But something… the elusive something that was missing from her life.
Still, as a basically optimistic person, she thought her unhappy sexual experiences might have turned out for the best. So many of her acquaintances hopped from bed to bed until they'd lost all sense of dignity. She didn't hop into any beds at all, yet she'd been able to present the illusion of sexual experience-fooling even her own mother- while at the same time, remaining aloof. All in all, it was a powerful combination, which intrigued the most interesting assortment of men.
The ringing of the telephone interrupted her thoughts. Stepping over a pile of discarded clothes, she crossed the carpet to pick up the receiver. 'Francesca here,' she said, sitting down in one of the Louis
XV chairs.
'Francesca. Don't hang up. I have to talk to you.'
'Well, if it isn't Saint Nicholas.' Crossing her legs, she inspected the tips of her fingernails for flaws.
'Darling, I didn't mean to set you off so last week.' Nicholas's tone was placating, and she could see him in her mind, sitting at the desk in his office, his pleasant features grim with determination. Nicky was so sweet and so boring. 'I've been miserable without you,' he went on. 'Sorry if I pushed.'
'You should be sorry,' she declared. 'Really, Nicholas, you acted like such an awful prig. I hate being shouted at, and I don't appreciate being made to feel as if I'm some heartless femme fatale.'
'I'm sorry, darling, but I didn't really shout. Actually, you were the one-' He stopped, apparently thinking better of that particular comment.
Francesca found the flaw she'd been looking for, a nearly invisible chip in the nail varnish on her index finger. Without getting up from the chair, she stretched toward her dressing table for her bottle of cinnamon brown.
'Francesca, darling, I thought you might like to go down to Hampshire with me this weekend.'
'Sorry, Nicky. I'm busy.' The lid on the varnish bottle gave way beneath the tug of her fingers. As she extracted the brush, her eyes flicked to the tabloid newspaper folded open next to the telephone. A glass coaster rested on top, magnifying a circular portion of the print beneath so that her own name leaped out at her, the letters distorted like the reflection in a carnival mirror.
Francesca Day, the beautiful daughter of international socialite Chloe Day and granddaughter of
the legendary couturiere Nita Serritella, is breaking hearts again. The tempestuous Francesca's
latest victim is her frequent companion of late, handsome Nicholas Gwynwyck, thirty-three-year-old heir to the Gwynwyck brewery fortune. Friends say Gwynwyck was ready to announce a wedding date when Francesca suddenly began appearing in the company of twenty-three-year-old screen newcomer, David Graves…
'Next weekend, then?'
She swiveled her hips in the chair, turning away from the sight of the tabloid to repair her fingernail.
'I don't think so, Nicky. Let's not make this difficult.'
'Francesca.' For a moment Nicholas's voice seemed to break. 'You-you told me you loved me. I believed you…'
A frown puckered her forehead. She felt guilty, even though it was hardly her fault he had misinterpreted her words. Suspending the nail varnish brush in midair, she tucked her chin closer to the receiver. 'I do love you, Nicky. As a friend. My goodness, you're sweet and dear…'
love you? We've had such wonderful times together. Remember Gloria Hammersmith's party when
Toby jumped into that awful fountain-'
She heard a muffled exclamation from the other end of the telephone. 'Francesca, how could you do it?'
She blew on her nail. 'Do what?'
'Go out with David Graves. You and I are practically engaged.'
'David Graves is none of your business,' she retorted. 'We're not engaged, and I'll talk to you again when you're ready to converse in a more civilized fashion.'
'Francesca-'
The receiver hit the cradle with a bang. Nicholas Gwynwyck had no right to cross-examine her! Blowing on her fingernail, she walked over to her closet. She and Nicky had had fun together, but she didn't love him and she certainly had no intention of living the rest of her life married to a brewer, even a wealthy one.
As soon as her fingernail was dry, she renewed her search for something to wear to Cissy Kavendish's party that evening. She still hadn't found what she wanted when she was distracted by a tapping at the door, and a middle-aged woman with ginger-colored hair and elastic stockings rolled at the ankles
entered the bedroom. As the woman began putting away the pile of neatly folded lingerie she had
brought with her, she said, 'I'll be leavin' for a few hours if it's all right with you, Miss Francesca.'
Francesca held up a honey-colored chiffon Yves Saint Laurent evening dress with brown and white ostrich feathers encircling the hem. The dress actually belonged to Chloe, but when Francesca first saw
it she had fallen in love with it, so she'd had the skirt shortened and the bust taken in before transferring
it to her own closet. 'What do you think of the chiffon for tomorrow night, Hedda?' she asked.
'Too plain?'
Hedda put away the last of Francesca's lingerie and slid the drawer shut. 'Everything looks grand
on you, miss.'
