Satin Dreams (29 page)

Gilles made Alix extremely nervous. Lisianne was due any day. A bundle of wires anytime, Gilles had made the contractors rip out the wall telephone in the design room and install an extension on a long cord to his drawing table, only inches from his hand, so that he wouldn’t miss his wife’s call to come take her to the hospital. All the time he worked draping the fabric on Alix, he kept glancing at the telephone.
 

Alix had taken off her bra, stripping down to a scanty pair of briefs so that Gilles could get as close as possible to fit the stiff, sometimes unmanageable laminate. When he petulantly tossed the long silky lengths onto the floor for the third time, yelling, Alix grabbed up her dressing room wrapper.
 

“Gilles, I have to eat lunch,” she told him.
 

“You see I can’t work with this stuff,” he had shouted after her. “
Merde
, I’ve sold my soul to the devil!”
 

Alix ran.
 

She ate her raw vegetable lunch with Nannette and Sylvie in the atelier.
 

“How’s Gilles?” Nannette asked. When Alix didn’t answer, the fitter said, “Eh, they are ruining his talent.
And
his disposition. He was a sweet boy when he was working for Rudi.”
 

“And Rudi’s boy,” Sylvie said slyly.
 

“Is that true?” Alix wanted to know.
 

Nannette shrugged. “Who knows but Gilles?”
 

“Let’s not talk about it,” Alix said quickly. She’d had enough for one day.
 

Half an hour later, Princess Jacqueline began fitting Alix for her version of the
Bal des Oiseaux Blancs
costumes that, Jackson Storm had assured her, Alix would wear. If he approved the finished product.
 

The princess was unusually pale, but the usual dark circles no longer surrounded her eyes. After the holidays the princess had returned to the Maison Louvel somewhat subdued, but with her usual air of
sang froid.
No explanations. No mention of the part Alix and Karim had played in that dreadful evening. Certainly no thanks. The Medivani car delivered the princess in the morning and picked her up at quitting time, as usual.
 

Alix gathered the episode wasn’t entirely unknown in the Maison Louvel. She detected a sense of unease, and supposed Karim had found it hard not to tell his father. Now, when his son wasn’t watching her, Abdul watched the little princess like a hawk.
 

Alix tried to marshal her sense of humor. The princess had apparently gotten over her traumatic adventure. And if Jacqueline knew Alix had rescued her from the club, she never acknowledged it. Though Jackie, in her dirty Keds and her chic punk clothes, was more attached to Alix than ever. She threw herself into the fantaisie design for Alix with dedicated fervor. The costume had to be a smashing success, she told Alix. She wanted to be famous by the time she was twenty.
 

Between the princess and Gilles, Alix told herself, it was no wonder she shook visibly when they tried to fit her.
 

The princess sat on a high stool at her drafting table while Nannette and Sylvie fitted muslin toiles to Alix’s body. The patterns, haphazardly cut to the princess’s sketch, made up the skirt in leaflike layers of Heavenly Lace, representing the ragged effect of flamingo feathers.
 

“That should dip, there,” the princess directed, pointing imperiously.
 

Alix was fascinated with the way the princess acted and the way the two seamstresses responded. Both women were union members, Nannette even bragged she was a member of the French Communist Party, but Princess Jacqueline treated them like serfs. The seamstresses, to Alix’s surprise, went along with it. Just as though they were all living in the eleventh century.
 

The princess somberly watched as the two women on their knees pinned the toiles to Alix’s hips. “
Merde
,” she sighed, “I wish I were beautiful. Even my sister Kata is beautiful.”
 

It was one of Princess Jackie’s favorite complaints. Alix looked over the teenager’s cropped black head to the seamstresses, but Nannette and Sylvie avoided her eyes.
 

Jacqueline Medivani was pretty, but no raving beauty. Whatever attractiveness she possessed was obliterated by the chopped hair, military-issue T-shirts, and baggy jogging pants. And the Keds.
 

It was a way to hide, Alix realized suddenly. But from what? From being, as she constantly complained, not beautiful? Or from just being Princess Jacqueline?
 

“Niko Palliades is beautiful, too,” the princess said. She’d taken to talking to Alix about Nicholas Palliades rather slyly. “Don’t you think so?”
 

Alix looked down at Sylvie and Nannette, working on her hemline. “I really don’t know,” she murmured.
 

The princess knew.
 

“My sister made him do things. You know about that, don’t you? That my sister Kata had Niko Palliades as a lover? He was only fifteen. It was a scandal in all the newspapers, like Caroline of Monaco with Philipe Junot. Alix, are you,” the princess suddenly digressed, “a triple Scorpio?”
 

Alix’s birthday was in November; the princess had already asked. “Tell me, do you people all know each other that well?”
 

The princess shrugged. “They all went to Le Rosey together before the school became overrun by rich Saudis and Japanese.” She watched Alix from under tangled lashes. “You just wouldn’t believe how
dumb
he was. But that was because the grandfather would never let Andros and Niko make friends. Once on school break in Klosters, Kata told Niko to go to his room and take off all his clothes and wait for her. So Niko goes up. He was lying in bed when Kata and her friends threw open the door, and there was Niko Palliades, totally naked. Of course, he was rigid as a flagpole thinking about what he was going to get. It was marvelous! He was so humiliated.”
 

The princess giggled huskily. Alix glanced at Nannette and Sylvie. It was typical of the teenager to blurt out things like this, as though the women were deaf.
 

At the sound of the princess’s hoarse laugh, Karim appeared in the doorway. Alix saw him out of the corner of her eye. She had a good idea what was going on with the porter’s son, and it was not only dangerous for Princess Jackie, it was doubly dangerous for Karim.
 

She looked down at the two seamstresses struggling with the muslin patterns.
Poor Nicholas Palliades
. It sounded as though Princess Catherine and her crowd had been terribly cruel. “What’s a triple Scorpio?”
 

“It’s the sexiest sign in the zodiac.” The princess fixed her with an intent stare. “What time were you—”
 

Now it was Abdul in the doorway, obviously agitated. Beside him stood a man in a black business suit who was almost as broad as he was tall. Behind the man built like a wrestler was a man in black chauffeur’s livery.
 

Abdul gestured with both hands, pointing downward, as the man in the black suit and the chauffeur stepped into the room. “
Mademoiselle
, there is someone very important who must see you.”
 

The powerfully built man moved past Nannette and Sylvie to take Alix by the shoulder. “Mademoiselle.” Close up, his face was seamed with scars. “Please allow us,” he said in heavily accented French, “to escort you to someone who wishes to see you for just a moment of your time.”
 

Alix covered her bare breasts with her hands. The strange chauffeur picked up her frayed robe and threw it around her shoulders. Abdul and Karim backed away to give them room.
 

“Wait,” Alix protested. “I can’t go anywhere like this.”
 

They started for the stairs. The chauffeur and bodyguard were meticulous; their hands hardly seemed to touch Alix, though they were almost carrying her.
 

Were they kidnapping her in broad daylight?
“You can’t do this!” It all seemed so matter-of-fact. She twisted to look up the stairwell. The seamstresses, Abdul, and his son Karim were leaning over the railing, looking down with rapt fascination. She tried to call to them to get Peter Frank or Jack Storm, but the words died in her throat.
 

They went down the final flight of stairs and burst onto the rue des Benedictines in a rush. A cold wind seized Alix and almost tore the front of the silk robe from her hands.
 

“Stop!” she cried.
 

They held her firmly by the elbows as they hurried to a silver Rolls Royce limousine. The chauffeur dropped Alix’s arm and darted ahead to open the door.
 

For a wild moment she was sure she was going to be dragged inside and kidnapped. And it wasn’t Nicholas Palliades’s Daimler. She had already opened her mouth to scream when the bodyguard bent and said to someone inside, “Here is the model, sir.”
 

He pushed her. As she dropped to one knee in the doorway, Alix saw a silvery soft chinchilla lap robe like the one in Niko’s limousine.
 

The hand in the small of Alix’s back pushed her closer.
 

The inside of the Rolls was dim by contrast to the bright, dold sunshine outside. Two alarmingly black eyes like those of a small animal looked out from the pile of silky chinchilla fur.
 

Alix would have recoiled, instinctively, but the hand at her back held her there.
 

It was a man, once a good-sized man, she guessed, now shrunken like a gnome in the furs. She saw two long matchstick legs sticking out below the robe.
 

“This is Mr. Socrates Palliades,” the man on the curb said. “He just wants to take a look at you, mademoiselle.”
 

A wizened face like that of an old, malevolent chimpanzee stared back at her. Half-crouched in the doorway of the limousine in the rue des Benedictine, Alix wore only a tattered silk wraparound over panties, her feet in battered mules. It was standard attire for models used to spending most of their days undressed, but out here she was freezing. And astounded.
 

This was Socrates Palliades? The legendary, mysterious man, his wealth so vast it was no longer estimated?
 

This was Nicholas Palliades’s grandfather?
 

A bony brown hand, withered as a mummy’s, lifted from the chinchilla fur. “Hair,” a disembodied voice said.
 

“I’m sorry, mademoiselle,” the voice behind her said. “Mr. Palliades wants to see your hair.”
 

Before Alix could stop him, his fingers had found the knot and pulled out the bobby pins. “Now just a minute,” she cried.
 

Her copper-red hair tumbled down in the wind. The employee’s hands pushed her closer.
 

A bony paw reached out to touch her cheek, the tip of the finger leathery and cold. Black button eyes took in Alix’s face, her windblown hair and violet eyes, with almost eerie concentration.
 

The black eyes were like chips of obsidian.
 

The squeaking voice said, “Nize.”
 

“What?”
 

The mummy head seemed to nod. “Nize ... very pretty.”
 

Alix recognized raw lechery in that dark stare, looking her over cruelly. Another dry wheeze, like laughter. “Be nize for Niko, yes, in bed.” He said something in French that was so obscene, it made Alix gasp. “Wait, I give you something.”
 

Behind Alix, there was a sudden flurry as, on signal, a large gold foil box was produced and opened.
 

“Mr. Socrates Palliades wants you to have this, mademoiselle,” the chauffeur said. Hands pulled Alix to her feet so he could drape the coat around her shoulders.
 

She found herself surrounded in full-length sable. The satin lining was slick and cold against her bare skin. Alix clutched it around her, unable to speak.
 

The bodyguard brought a green waxed paper bundle out of the car. The heads of dozens of red roses bobbed from one end. He thrust the flowers into her arms.
 

A creaking sound from inside the car made the men push Alix forward again.
 

Encumbered by the rich folds of the sable coat and almost unable to see over the huge bouquet of roses, Alix almost fell into the car. But the hands caught her and held her in an undignified, half-kneeling position.
 

“Very pretty
poule
.” The wizened head had retreated back into the mountain of chinchilla, but the eyes gleamed with malice. “I give you money, too.”
 

Alix tried to gain her feet, but the hands forced her down. A futile anger made her want to cry out, but she was so cold her teeth were chattering.
 

No wonder Nicholas Palliades is so bitter.
 

The old man was vile; she believed all the stories about him. He had just wanted to see who his grandson was sleeping with. A nasty, vicarious pleasure.