Heart of Paris

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Nineteen year old Annabel Graye is suddenly left penniless in Paris when financial disaster overtakes her rich father. Fortunately, she is offered a job at the world famous couturier, Maison Christophe, and there her beauty and elegance make her easily the top mannequin. Paris is captivated by her and none more madly than Christophe himself. However, he is engaged to marry the wealthy influential Michèle Luchacre and she is determined to hold on to him. Seeing that Annabel is taking her place in his heart, Michèle, with the assistance of gypsy model Guida, hatches a seemingly infallible plot to discredit Annabel ? and the English girl falls right into the trap. Denise Robins is at her best in this delightful tale of romance and intrigue in the heart of Paris.

Release date: December 12, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 208

Sample

IT WAS no sudden whim that led Annabel to go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower and there do some serious thinking. She often went there for that same reason. It gave her a sense of peace and solitude and a grandeur far removed from the glittering city three hundred metres below.

Her life, which consisted of nineteen years, had so far given her little leisure for deep thought and introspection. She had had a radiant childhood, as the only daughter and heiress of the rich father whom she hardly ever saw because he was so often in America or the Colonies on business. Just as well, as she found him unsympathetic and even alarming at times. But her beautiful, charming mother adored and spoiled her and intended, when Annabel left her finishing school in Switzerland, that she should ‘come out’ in London society, then make a love match and be ‘happy ever afterwards’. All of which she might have done because Annabel had beauty, intelligence, and all the natural charm of her mother. But unfortunately Lady Graye died after a brief and fatal illness just before Annabel’s seventeenth birthday, and from that day onwards Annabel’s whole life had changed—for the worse.

She was given less than a year to mourn for her idolized mother and to try (without success) to get to know the cold distinguished man whom she called ‘Daddy’, but who seemed to have so little interest in her. High finance was the beginning and end of Sir Neville Graye’s existence. And Annabel had always been a disappointment. He disliked children and had wanted only a son and heir. And perhaps because of that particular ambition he married again quickly, a woman as physically attractive as Annabel’s mother but almost as cold and mercenary as himself.

Edwina, the new Lady Graye, was half American and half French. Annabel’s mother had been a dreamer and, like Annabel, easily hurt. The present Lady Graye found it easier to hurt others, and was wholly ambitious. She was not unkind to the young stepdaughter who was only about eight years younger than herself at the time of her marriage to Neville, but she decided that the thing to do would be to make use of Annabel’s extraordinary beauty and get her married at once to a suitable young man.

It was then that she came up against that streak of determination, of will-power, which the late Lady Graye had also possessed when anything affected her principles and ideals. Annabel had those same principles—those same ideals, and among them was the ideal of love. There was a deep sincerity and passion in her nature which made it impossible for her to ‘marry money’, which her young stepmother and her father wished her to do. She infuriated Edwina by turning down two eligible men with excellent prospects, and when finally Annabel refused an extremely wealthy American widower introduced to her in Paris, a few months ago, Edwina washed her hands of the girl.

‘You can look after your own daughter,’ she had told Sir Neville, who happened to be at home at the moment (they had a flat in Paris as well as the Grayes’ country seat in Devonshire). ‘You’ve got a sentimental fool to get off your hands, my dear, and I can’t be bothered with her.’

Up at the top of the Eiffel Tower this morning, Annabel looked down at Paris, which she loved very much. At the deep green of the Seine, dotted with little barges. At the white beauty of Sacré Cœur on the top of Montmartre. And for a moment it was all misted by her tears as she remembered her father’s answer to Edwina. Looking at Annabel with those piercing, steely eyes which had always scared her even when she was a child, he said:

‘What a pity; I am always irritated by fools. As for being sentimental—sentiment is all right in its place, but you seem to be overdoing things a little, my dear girl, in your so-called search for the ideal marriage. It does not exist.’

Edwina laughed cynically. But Annabel, with one of her rare bursts of frank self-expression, had stormed at her father.

‘It would have existed for you if you had been human. My mother was an angel, and she adored you when she married you. She said so. But you’re so hard … nothing matters to you but money … you smashed all her illusions and you hated the fact that I was a girl instead of a boy. But I refuse to be disillusioned by you or Edwina.’

Then she had broken off and rushed out of the room, covered in confusion because her father had looked at her angrily and she had caught the sound of a scornful laugh from Edwina.

And after that neither of them took much further notice of Annabel, but seemed busy with their own affairs. Annabel was left severely alone. Utterly alone in spirit, in spite of many acquaintances, a large allowance, and every encouragement to spend money on wonderful clothes (to enhance her market value, Annabel thought with a cynicism tragic for a girl not yet twenty years old). And she wanted the things money could not buy, she thought this sunlit afternoon in May as she looked down at Paris—the most gay and glamorous city in the world. They were love and companionship and understanding—all the things that money could not buy.

But perhaps everything would be changed now. Decidedly it must change materially for her. A year had elapsed since that painful scene with her father and a month ago Edwina Graye had provided her husband with the greatest thrill of her life. Not one son, but two … twin boys, born in the American Hospital one fine April morning.

In different circumstances, Annabel might have been touched by and interested in her tiny half-brothers, who were to be christened Neville (the first to be born) and Oliver, after Edwina’s father. But no such pleasure in the new attachments was allowed her. When Edwina returned home, the twins were given into the care of an English nanny, and Annabel hardly ever saw them. But one thing was certain: their arrival meant that she, Annabel, would mean even less in Sir Neville’s life than before. His attention was focused entirely now upon his sons and their triumphant mother.

But it so happened that the achievement of this particular ambition in Neville Graye’s life coincided with financial disaster. Annabel, who did not care for money or understand matters concerning it, knew nothing except that devaluation of the English pound and certain other current events in Europe had turned her father overnight from a wealthy man into one who could only call himself moderately well off—certainly too crippled any longer to live in the luxurious style to which he was accustomed.

He instructed Edwina to tell Annabel what this would mean to her.

This morning he had left by air for London. Edwina and the twins and their nurse were following next week. She, Annabel, was told that she could stay on at the flat for a few weeks if she wished to, but only until their Paris agent had disposed of it. Neville could no longer afford to run a Paris home as well as his estate in Axminster.

Edwina was in a vile mood today, Annabel remembered with depression. Edwina had married for what she could get out of Neville Graye, and this sudden new ‘poverty’ was repulsive to her. She called Neville a fool and a few other things besides, to his daughter’s face, then added:

‘Well, you’re such an idealist, it won’t hurt you to earn your living, and so you’d better get busy and find a job, my dear—unless you want to be a parasite and live in Devonshire with us doing damn-all.’

To which Annabel replied heatedly:

‘I’ll find work here in Paris. I won’t add to your burden, I assure you.’

Edwina, shrugging her shoulders, seemed then to relent a little of her lack of feeling, and in her own way strove to be more sympathetic with Annabel.

‘Personally, I think it’s damned bad luck on you, right at the start of things, my dear. You, like myself, must at once close your account at all the shops we deal at in Paris. Your father said that he wouldn’t pay for any more bills for either of us—and cancel your new order at Christophe if you can!’

Annabel had just ordered a new suit and evening dress from Christophe—one of France’s leading couturiers. And she was due for a fitting this very day.

‘What shall I do? They’ve almost finished the dress,’ she had told her stepmother. ‘You said I needed one for the opera.’

Edwina had certainly said so … always hoping to make a suitable match for her tiresome young stepdaughter (whom she could not understand, as Annabel seemed to prefer to listen to the opera rather than show off her dress in the entr’acte). But Edwina could no longer be bothered with Annabel. She was much too concerned about cutting down her own expenses. Annabel must in any case step aside for the twins. They would come first with their father now.

This morning, from her exalted position on the Tour Eiffel, Annabel stared down at the green smoothness of the Champ de Mars and then back to the shining Seine and tried to formulate some plan of action. What could she do? She could at least say that she had been given the best education. She spoke French and a little German. At her finishing school in Vevey she had taken special art classes because she had shown a gift for sketching, and to amuse herself had even tried her hand at painting portraits. The one thing for which her unloving father had thanked her really warmly was the clever little sketch she had made of the twin boys as they lay in their big double pram in the Tuileries Gardens. Yes, she could draw. And she could dance well, too. At one time she had had a passion for ballet—that was when she first went abroad, and had become friends with Virginia Powell, an American girl, the same age as herself, who had an absolute craze for the ballet.

Dear Virginia! The one real friend whom Annabel had made at school and found sympathetic—more to her than her own kith and kin! If only she were here now in Paris, so that they might talk over the future together! But Virginia had gone back to her parents in Boston and was thousands of miles away. She might be coming over to Europe this summer, but even of that Annabel could not be sure.

She could not be sure of anything, she thought forlornly, at this moment. And she could not see that any of her training would help her find work. She might go into a dress shop, of course. Even Edwina admitted that she had ‘dress sense’, and Mlle Gautier, who made skirts and dresses for Christophe, had herself told Annabel that she could easily be a model because she had the right measurements and walked so well. But she didn’t really want to go into a shop or be a mannequin.

To her young, puzzled mind there seemed to be no easy way out of her present predicament.

The only thing that she was sure of was that she would never ask for charity from her father or her stepmother. Somehow or other she would earn her own living and be independent of them in future.

The first thing to do was to keep her appointment at Maison Christophe, which was in the Avenue George V. It was a most awkward thing to have to do … to tell them that her father had lost his money and that she must cancel her order.

Edwina, who had a passion for clothes, liked to ring the changes, see all the collections and fill her wardrobe with models from all the great Houses—Dior, Fath, Balmain, etc. … This year she had, for the first time, taken a particular interest in the Christophe collection. They had made one or two dresses for her to wear after the twins were born. They had also made the ensemble that Annabel was wearing this morning, and as she left the Eiffel Tower and crossed back over the bridge through the Trocadero Gardens she was conscious that she attracted quite a lot of attention from men and women alike. Her dress and jacket were certainly noticeable, she thought—navy blue tie—silk with white polka dots, divinely cut. She wore a little white cloche grosgrain hat with a bunch of flowers over one ear. She remembered choosing this navy blue creation when she saw the Spring Show at Christophe with her stepmother. It had meant nothing to her then that the three-piece cost 70,000 francs. Today she remembered those figures aghast. She would want money like that to live on in future.

What could a well-educated girl without training do in order to earn her bread and butter? she asked herself despairingly, as she made her way to the Maison Christophe. In future she would not, in all probability, be able to spend six thousand francs on a dress. Never again would she be received with open arms by all the glamorous-looking saleswomen who thronged the luxury salons of haut coutures. Never again would Mlle Simone, who was her particular vendeuse at Christophe, greet her with the respect due to money and position. Nor would she be fussed over and fitted by M. Charles, the finest tailor in Paris, and by little Mlle Gautier, the oldest member of the staff, who knelt at her feet, and with a mouthful of pins and yardstick in hand, flattered her about her ‘wonderful figure’. ‘Quelle forme! Quelle taille!’

Annabel was depressed and embarrassed when finally she walked past a bowing commissionaire and through the big doors over which the famous name ‘Christophe’ sparkled in silver letters upon black glass. The great couturier had spent a lot of money recently in modernizing and improving his ‘House’ in the broad Avenue George V, with its green trees, which could boast some of the loveliest, most exclusive shops in Paris.

Once inside, it seemed to Annabel that she entered a different world. Cool … supremely individual … shut away from the brilliant sunshine, artificially lighted and heated, with thick grey carpets, tall narrow windows framed by crisp, grey taffeta, with deep silver-fringed pelmets, walls panelled in pale polished wood, all of which made a perfect neutral background for the mannequins who moved around swiftly, gracefully, exhibiting one glorious creation after another.

The ‘creator’ and designer of Maison Christophe, the great Christophe himself, Annabel had never seen. He was half French and half English. His name was Christopher Brande. During these weeks while Annabel and Edwina had patronized the salon the ‘great’ man had been in New York. He was due back this week. In a mild fashion, Annabel had looked forward to meeting him, for he was a very famous person these days, and acknowledged throughout the world of fashion as one of the most brilliant designers in Paris.

Annabel drew off her gloves as she walked into the showroom. She felt her heart sink as a dark, smart girl wearing black and white smilingly approached her. This was Mlle Simone, her vendeuse. And now for the difficult task of explaining why she would not be coming for any more fittings. And the even more dreaded task of carrying out her stepmother’s orders and trying to cancel that fabulously expensive white evening gown which she had ordered for the opera. She and Edwina were to have been guests of some distant American cousins who had a box for La Tosca. But Edwina intended to cancel the appointment.

Simone, who was shrewd and intelligent and a born saleswoman, advanced upon Annabel with a gay smile and just that touch of reverence in her voice which she kept for the wealthiest of her clients (and Lady Graye and Miss Graye were numbered amongst these important personages in Simone’s mind). Before Annabel could open her mouth. Simone clapped her hands smartly together and raised her voice:

‘Odette … Mees Graye’s fitting … the white evening gown first, and the linen skirt from Mlle Gautier, and tell M. Charles we shall be ready for him shortly afterwards for the white linen jacket. Georgette, venez vite, mon enfant … which fitting room is free?’

Annabel blushed bright pink and stammered:

‘If I might speak to you a moment, please, Mlle Simone——’

But Simone was caught up in the surge of the emotional delight which always filled her soul when she was serving a beautiful client who did justice to Christophe’s incomparable models. She had vanished, and Annabel could hear her shrill voice giving orders in an adjoining room. The showroom was full of well-dressed women sitting on gilt chairs and velvet sofas, watching the daily display of models. One or two mannequins moved in from behind grey velvet curtains. For an instant Annabel watched the most striking of the two—a tall girl with red hair and dark doe-like eyes which, when she drew nearer, seemed to Annabel to hold the glitter of a serpent rather than the softness of a fawn. But she moved superbly. She was the one model girl here to whom Annabel could put a name, for she was famous in London as well as Paris, and the ‘star’ mannequin of Maison Christophe. Her name was Guida. She was of Hungarian descent. She was now showing a dinner-gown, strapless and cut very low; swirls of finely pleated coffee-coloured chiffon narrowing down to a fishtail showed every line of her famous figure.

She approached Annabel with the set cool smile of her profession. As she swung round to show the back view, Simone rushed back to Annabel.

‘Mees Graye, did you see this model … in our last collection? It was a sensation. M. Christophe called it “Heart of Brazil”. I feel sure you could wear it, Mees Graye.’

Annabel looked at the model now showing and stammered:

‘Oh, no, no! It’s much too exotic for me.’

But as she followed Guida’s dazzling figure in coffee-coloured chiffon (heavy gold necklace, ear-rings and bracelets loaned by Boucheron) she forgot, for a moment, that she had come here to report that she was now a penniless girl in search of a job. A queer little thrill ran up and down her spine. She could wear that dress and look as wonderful in it as Guida, she told herself, although she had such a different personality and was of such different colouring. But a dozen long mirrors in the salon showed Annabel that her figure was younger and just as perfect as Guida’s and, if less voluptuous, she had that incomparable freshness of youth which Guida lacked. An exquisite skin which one poet would have described as ‘rose-misted marble’, and the silken sheen of hair so fair that it was almost silver-gilt. She had not cut it short to suit the new fashion. Smooth and shining, it curved into a knot at the nape of her neck. Much grieving for her mother and loss of appetite had made Annabel thinner than usual at the moment, and painted lilac shadows under those haunting eyes that were purest grey with large, black pupils—and too sad for one so young. She had black sweeping lashes, narrow brows, and finely-cut lips.

She had a sudden childish wish to put on that dress which was called the ‘Heart of Brazil’ and show all these other women in the salon that she could look more beautiful in it than Guida.

So foreign to Annabel’s nature were such thoughts that they almost scared her. But at last she plucked up courage to do what must now be done. She walked with Simone into a fitting-room, firmly drew the curtain and said in her excellent French:

‘I think you will have to take me on as a mannequin instead of a client very soon, Mlle Simone. I need a job. Would M. Christophe accept me, do you think?’

Mlle Simone’s gay tinted face looked horror-stricken. But then she smiled more broadly than ever. The young English lady was joking, of course.

In came the small black-robed figure of the little Gautier, who made the best tailored skirts in Paris. Behind her Simone’s assistant, the youthful Odette, carefully carried a billow of stiff white net on which sparkled hundreds of silvery sequins. Annabel’s new evening dress.

Gautier, whose age might be anything up to fifty, and who had worked here since she was sixteen, always seemed to Annabel like a figure out of a French novel, with her false fringe of dyed curls, her wrinkled, overpainted face and her excessive thinness. From her waist hung a variety of scissors and pin-cushions. She wore a locket containing the hair of some departed friend or relative hanging on her flat bosom. She had a sharp tongue. All the girls in the workroom were mortally afraid of her. At her job she was an artist, yet she suffered from an inferiority complex because of her small, lashless eyes, an ugly wart on her chin and the fact that no man had ever proposed marriage to her. She was rarely without a cold and a perpetual bead of moisture on the end of her long, pinkish nose. She was a nervous wreck. How many dozens of times a day did she have to fit fashionable ladies—Parisians, Americans, English? How many excitable, nervy clients did she have to soothe? Always complaints to listen to and alterations which meant more and more work, until her eyes suffered and she had to get stronger and stronger lens for her glasses. Yet she adored her work and knew that she triumphed through it. But in her soul she despised most of the fashionable ladies before whom she knelt, and often wished she could stick some of the pins into the rolls of fat which it was her duty to conceal. Besides, she envied the clients bitterly, because they spent enough money on one dress to keep Louise Gautier and her bed-ridden mother for a year.

But she had a smile of genuine warmth for the little English lady, Mees Graye. She was kind and gentle, and at the last fitting, when Gautier had a streaming cold, Mees Graye had begged her to go to bed and take care of herself.

‘My dress can wait,’ she had said.

No other woman in Louise Gautier’s memory had been known to say, within these four walls, that her dress could wait. Always it was the opposite. A feverish demand for speed. Always. . .