Authors: Maggie; Davis
“Mademoiselle Claude, she know
tissu.
” Sophie picked up a length of grayish unprocessed silk velvet and rubbed it against her cheek. “She come here, she tell the finisher, ‘Zis will be so,
la couleur,
like I say, make it for me.’ And the finisher, he go back to Lyons to do it.”
Sam picked up the piece of silk velvet, passing it between her thumb and forefinger. Gray yardage was ugly and stiff, as colorless as its name, but it was like a skull before the flesh had been put on. In design school she had grown to love gray goods. They were a canvas on which you could create a beautiful picture. Any designer who worked only with grease pencil and a drawing board and never saw the raw cloth was only half an artist.
The creaky old Maison Louvel was a gold mine, a museum, a classic haute couture house that overlooked no painstaking detail. Whoever had run the place in the past had set up an elaborate process to take a mill sample in gray goods like the raw velvet she held between her fingers, and then order a particular color that the finisher, perhaps, would do only for one time, for one particular creation of that season, and only for a select handful of customers. Owning an haute couture design created just for you had to be the ultimate ego trip, Sam was thinking. Wealthy upper-class Frenchwomen of the not-so-distant past had lived for their beautiful clothes and the care they took of their bodies. Parisiennes, Jean Ruiz had told her, had never been famous for natural good looks, but what they had, they made the most of, superlatively.
Wasn’t that—she wondered, dropping the velvet swatch on the nearest table—the fulfillment of every woman’s wildest dreams?
In the next room they saw whoever was doing the designing for Louvel’s worked from
toiles,
patterns made from unbleached tailor’s muslin, fitting them either to the client herself or to a jersey-covered dressmaker’s dummy made to her exact specifications. Without Chip to translate, Sam bogged down with Sophie’s English explanations. The cloth patterns were scattered like so many butternut-colored leaves and drifted over the floor of the room.
Sam had heard about
toiles,
but had never seen them. She wanted Sophie to tell her who at Louvel’s could show her the technique, but Sophie only shook her head uncomprehendingly. “Now we see the salon and rooms for fitting,” the model said. “I am ze only mannequin now,” she added, sighing.
Sam watched the undulating sway of Sophie’s incomparable bottom under the clinging kimono. The redhead was something of a mystery. The tall, slender model was beautiful enough to be at a top-flight design house anywhere, London, New York, or Paris. She moved well, and she had an exquisitely proportioned, rather bony body perfect for showing clothes. Sophie might be an airhead, she might get stoned during working hours, but the real question was What was she doing here at Louvel’s?
They went down the last flight of stairs to the European first floor, one floor up from the street. The atelier women still trailed after them in spite of its being past noon and the end of their Saturday workday, and Chip lounged close behind. As they trooped down the steps Sam could see someone waiting on the landing before the doors to the salon.
The handsome, fair-haired Frenchman who’d been there that morning wearing a jogging outfit turned around at the sound of their feet on the marble stairs. Now he was wearing a continental-style gray silk business suit and held a pearl homburg in his hand. The suit was magnificent and so was he, Sam thought, staring. His face lit up when he saw them.
“Ah, good,” they heard him murmur. “I was afraid I would miss you somehow.”
Sam stopped abruptly on the last step, wondering why he had come back.
“Permit me,” he said with charming formality. He spoke American English with almost no trace of an accent. “I am Alain des Baux. I was with my sister in the salon before, do you remember?”
Oh, yes, Sam remembered. How could she forget a man who looked the way he did? Whoever he was, Alain des Baux had been fantastic in his jogging Reeboks, but in the gray suit he was mind-boggling.
She froze awkwardly as he reached for her right hand and lifted it, holding her fingers lightly curved over his. Then he bent his gilded head and brushed the back of her hand with warm, firm lips.
Sam stood stock-still on the marble staircase, caught in sudden, breathless shock. She’d never had her hand kissed before, not even in New York, not even as Sam Laredo. People really did these things, she was telling herself. The elegant pressure of his mouth was so incomparably sensuous it should have burned right into her skin like a laser beam.
“Welcome to Paris,” the gorgeous Frenchman murmured, smiling up at her.
Chapter Four
He straightened up, still holding her fingers in his warm clasp. “Please tell me,” he murmured, “that I have not embarrassed you, doing this.”
Sam stared at him. If Alain des Baux had cut off her hand at the wrist with a chain saw, she wouldn’t have been able to protest. “Oh, no,” she whispered. What did she say? Thank you? I’m stunned? Do it again?
He was even handsomer than Jack, if that were possible, though he was not as tall, not as broad-shouldered, and instead of Jack’s famous platinum hair, his was sun-streaked brown. But Alain des Baux was positively breathtaking. His face was very European, somewhat narrow, with high cheekbones and a thin, elegant nose that ended in slightly flaring nostrils, and his skin was satiny gold. In fact, this marvelous Frenchman seemed to be shades of gold and brown with his olive complexion, gilded chestnut hair and slightly tilted, gold-flecked eyes. There was a strength and sweetness, an easygoing, teasing charm about him that hinted of sensuous fires that lay below the surface. He was just plain gorgeous.
It was some seconds before Sam realized he was looking at her expectantly. He was waiting for her to introduce herself.
“I’m Samantha—” She stopped. “No, really, I’m Sam Laredo,” she said, blushing. “From Jackson Storm in New York.”
If he thought it odd that she couldn’t decide on her right name, he didn’t show it. His eyes passed over her quickly to take in the swell of her breasts under the orange silk tank top, her slender hips, the remarkable length of her legs in the tight-fitting Sam Laredo jeans and back up again. Sam couldn’t remember being looked over so thoroughly and yet so pleasurably. Her whole body responded with a slightly unexpected tingle.
He’s sexy, too, she thought. He has everything.
“I would recognize you at once.” The enchanting smile broadened to a grin. “My business takes me to New York often, so I had the opportunity in American hotels to see you on television. Ah, don’t look like that,” he said hastily, “it was meant as a compliment. I must say I vastly prefer your commercials to those of Brooke Shields.”
Last year’s TV spots, she realized, staring at him. Jackson Storm’s multimillion-dollar launching of the Sam Laredo jeans. A line that now might very well be this year’s major disaster. But Alain des Baux in Paris had remembered them.
Slowly, Sam pulled her fingers from his hand. “They aren’t running anymore, the commercials.” She was aware that the group on the stairs behind her was listening to every word, no matter whether they understood. She turned abruptly and bumped into Sophie, who was right behind her. “The—ah, staff was just showing me around, but we couldn’t see the storerooms in the attic.” What else should she say? she wondered. She was feeling like a tongue-tied moron. “We can’t get into the storerooms up there because—ah, the key is lost.”
“Yes, so much is lost here,” he agreed, gravely. He lifted his gaze to the stairwell going up through the interior of the building. “It should be an interesting experience for you, someone from America, finding an old couture house like this. It is one of the last of its kind. My grandmother had her clothes made by old Madame Louvel. Then my mother came here when the house was owned by the niece, Mademoiselle Claude.” He reached to take her arm as Sam stepped off the last step. “May I accompany you? I have been here many times. Perhaps I can be helpful. Perhaps there are even questions I can answer.”
Sam gave him a slightly dazed look. The way this man spoke, the way he looked, his lovely manners, all overwhelmed her. How could she say no? How could she even want to? They walked through the doors of the salon with the others trooping silently behind them.
“They have told you,” he continued, “that the area around the rue de la Paix and the Vendôme is the original center of haute couture? The Englishman, Worth, began to make high-fashion clothes here over a century ago. I believe the Maison Worth building is still in the rue de la Paix.” His warm grip held her arm and Sam was finding it almost as distracting as having her hand kissed. “Patou, another old house, is around the next corner. And of course Madame Grès is in the rue de la Paix also. But it is all more than a little passé, this old district. And Paris changes. They are building a great glass and aluminum monstrosity in Les Halles that is called another fashion center, very ‘international chic.’” He gave her a wry smile. “Much of Paris complains Les Halles is tasteless, a sacrilege. When you talk of anything modern, of progress, Parisians react with debates about good taste.”
Sophie drifted up to Sam’s elbow. “It is the salon, here,” she said vaguely. “You want I continue?”
Alain des Baux turned, his expression pleasant in spite of the interruption. Then his golden eyes took in the model’s disheveled red hair, the disreputable kimono, the blots of smudged mascara in a pale face still slightly swollen from hysterical tears. Quite softly, his lips hardly moving, he said something to her in French.
At first Sophie didn’t seem to hear. Then, in slow motion, she clapped her hands to her mouth and bent her head to look down at herself.
Alain des Baux said something again in the same softly pleasant voice, and the model lifted her face to him, wide-eyed, cringing as though he had struck her. With the same unfocused motion she extended her hand, offering the Maison Louvel’s ring of keys. When he took them, Sophie turned on her heel and ran from the room.
Alain des Baux looked as though nothing had happened. “My sister still comes here, you saw her this morning? I apologize for what you found when you came in, but my poor sister collapses at the sight of blood. A real phobia. And of course the old di Frascati ducchessa is impossible, a veritable pest, and so is the granddaughter.”
“Is it true, that the girl is a—” Hemophiliac, she wanted to say, but stopped just in time. “Going to get married?”
He shot her an odd look. “Already engaged, I think. To one of the lesser Savoia, a baron or something. Fortunately, the boy manages a bicycle factory in Pisa and is somewhat solvent.” He was still studying her face. “It’s very important to them, these poverty-stricken nobility, to make a good marriage with someone of their class, to keep their titles. It is all they have left. I know this is something that is very difficult for Americans to understand.”
“Oh, I understand,” Sam said politely. She was thinking of the pale, fragile girl who was so sick and the titled fiancé who managed a bicycle factory. If you were European, she supposed it made sense.
Nannette had hurried up. With a nod from Alain des Baux she led the way across the salon.
“I can remember in the old days there were several fitters here,” he said, taking her arm again, “all of them kept very busy. And a very intimidating lady who always wore severe black, rather long dresses was the vendeuse. There were always at least two mannequins—I know this because at twelve years of age I fell violently in love with one of them, an incredible blonde with violet eyes. I was so enamored, wanting to come with my mother every time she had a fitting, that my poor mother began to think I was going to become a couturier like her good friend the Marquis Hubert de Givenchy. I think she was greatly relieved when I lost interest, when the love of my life decided to marry a rich German businessman and go to live in Frankfurt.”
Sam looked over her shoulder, still wondering what had happened to Sophie. The man at her side steered her toward the fitting rooms off the corridor behind the salon. They squeezed into a room just large enough for the three of them, Sylvie and Chip watching from the doorway.
The little fitting room had the same ugly worn green carpeting, the same chipped cream-colored woodwork, and three sides were lined with full-length mirrors. It was plainly a place to get down to the serious business of alterations.
Nannette dropped to her knees in front of Sam and whipped off the tape measure, pantomiming what she would do if she were fitting a customer. Before Sam could pull away, the fitter had grabbed the inseam of her jeans with strong fingers and pinched together a quarter inch down the length of one leg.