A Moment in Paris Read Free Page A

the most exclusive fashion house of the lot. Just an exciting name to me until a few weeks ago!... And there’s a Madame Denys Armand, who designs the most fabulous things, who has been given the order for my trousseau. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m really awake!’
    ‘And if you suddenly discovered it was all a dream would you be very upset?’
    Celeste smiled strangely. ‘What do you think? Every whim granted, and a man who is so good-looking it would be a pleasure to sit and look at him for hours on end! You know, I honestly can’t believe he’s going to be my husband very soon ... My husband !’
    ‘Then you really are in love with him, and not just the thought that you’ll be a Comtesse?’
    Celeste sent her a long look from her wonderful deep violet eyes.
    ‘I’m nineteen, and he’s thirty-seven,’ she remarked, studying the polished tips of her fingers. ‘It’s a big gap, isn’t it? But it doesn’t really worry me.’ She avoided the subject of love. ‘Of course I want to be a Comtesse, but that isn’t everything. I’ll have to live up to it, won’t I? And that won’t be easy. That’s why you’re here, to try and give me a little bit of polish and bring me up to top-drawer standard, like Philippe! For of course I know I’m not in the same class as he is.’
    Diana tried to soften the reason why she had been offered a fabulous salary, and assured her that with a little effort on both their parts it should be easy to acquire the polish.
    ‘I suppose I do love him in a kind of a way,’ Celeste admitted, returning to a question she had previously ignored. ‘I love it when he makes love to me, and that’s important, isn’t it?’ She lifted the violet eyes to Diana’s face. ‘I’ve had men in my life before,’ she confessed, ‘but it’s never been quite like this ... feeling light-headed at the thought of actually belonging to a man, if you know what I mean?’
    Diana did know—or, rather, she understood—but in the polite world in which she had been brought up, uninhibited revelations of that sort were not normally indulged in, and she looked away.
    Celeste leaned forward and caught at her wrist.
    ‘I like you,’ she said. ‘Or I believe I could like you! You’re not a bit as I expected you would be, someone with a bun and wearing glasses, who would look down her nose at me. You’re young, and you’re not too snootily English. Between us, perhaps, if we worked hard, we could surprise Philippe ... let him see I’m not so very unlike those ancestresses of his he’s always talking to me about! The Duchesse of Somewhere-or-Other, who was a famous beauty, and the Marquise de—’
    There came a sharp tap at the door, and they looked at one another. Diana, who had been quite touched by the other’s appeal—although she doubted whether even Bernard Shaw in his heyday could have brought about quite such a metamorphosis as she was asked to bring about—expected the owner of the bedroom to call “Come in”, but she didn’t do so. She looked for an instant almost afraid.
    Then the tap came again, and before Celeste could even attempt to voice an inquiry, the door was swung inwards and the Comte de Chatignard stood looking in upon them.
    His brow was black, and his eyes were cold.
    ‘I gave you to understand that we would be lunching punctually at one o’clock today, Celeste,’ he said, ‘and it is now a quarter past twelve! I expected you to bring Miss Craven down to drink an aperitif with my aunt, but you are not even dressed!’ He cast a disdainful glance at the disordered room, and although Diana would scarcely have believed it possible, his expression hardened still more.
    Celeste said in a fluttering, nervous voice: ‘I’m so sorry, Philippe. I didn’t realize it was so late. But I’ll be ready in ten minutes if I can only have Hortense.’
    He gazed at her with a disconcerting steadiness, but after a moment the black eyes softened.
    ‘I’ll give you half an hour,’