The Dress Thief by Natalie Meg Evans Read Free Book Online Page B

grin sent wrinkles speeding out of his beard.
    ‘Paul’s not my boyfriend. I’m sure I told you.’ But she was smiling. Bonnet was balm to tumbled spirits. He brewed wonderful coffee, and when it got really cold he’d add a drop of Kirsch, the cherry liqueur of Alsace. ‘You should take that size back, demand compensation, say it gaveyour model a fainting fit.’
    ‘Don’t faint,’ Bonnet took up his stance at a second easel. ‘If I have to wheel you home in a barrow, your grandmother will ask questions. She didn’t bring you to Paris to fall among my sort, not after that expensive lady’s education the Comte de Charembourg gave you.’
    ‘How do you know about him?’
    Bonnet gave a conspiratorial wink. ‘I am a man who knows everythingand everybody. One day I will tell you stories of the comte that will make your eyebrows fly off.
Allons
, let’s work.’
    Alix slipped off her wrap and settled into her pose. It was a modest one, as modest as a naked pose can be. She sat tall because tomorrow she’d have to enter one of the smartest buildings in Paris and not blush, stammer or run away.
    *
    ‘Tomorrow’ – 13 th March – came racing inlike a riptide. After a night of troubled dreams, Alix was outside Maison Javier, a vast building filling the angle between Rue de la Trémoille and Rue du Boccador. The nearby Avenues Montaigne and Champs-Elysées provided background traffic noise, but Trémoille itself was empty but for a couple of taxis and a silver-blue saloon, chauffeur at the wheel. Alix was glad of it. The last thing she wantedright now was an audience.
    She reread Paul’s note, checking she was at the right location. Of course she was. A brass plate beside a double-height door announced ‘Javier’. She was just reaching to open the door when the
jooshing
sound of a well-tuned engine made her turn. A Peugeot the colour of vintage wine pulled up on the opposite pavement. Its driver got out, a young man wearing a sharp jacket,wide-leg trousers and a Homburg hat with a deep gutter crown, set at a rakish angle. He flicked back his cuffs, pulled his hat an inch lower, unfolded a newspaper and leaned casuallyagainst his car bonnet. He looked in Alix’s direction and she felt his practised appraisal – felt him taking in her hair, her figure and the battered wicker basket she carried. His glance intruded like a photographer’slens. Alix fumbled at the door of Maison Javier and, in doing so, dropped her basket. A pair of newspaper-wrapped fish flopped out, followed by the fruit and vegetables she’d bought that morning at the market. She rammed them back in the basket and a soft laugh added to her discomfort. She threw the Peugeot driver an angry glare. He wasn’t much older than she was, she could see, but he actedas if he owned the world. Taking a breath, she entered Maison Javier and found herself staring into a paved court broad enough for a horse and carriage to have turned in former times. Crossing the court, she found another door. She pushed that and then she was stepping into opulence, into an interior finer than any she’d seen before.
    Until forty minutes ago she’d fully intended to miss this interview.Tumbling out of bed that morning, she’d reached for a well-worn dress and headed to the market for the weekend’s shopping. She’d been on Rue Mouffetard, buying those fish, when a church bell struck eleven. Paris was full of churches, full of bells, so why this one should sound like the voice of Providence she’d never know. But each knell told her she was throwing away her best chance toget what she wanted in life. Basket bumping, she’d hurtled to the nearest
Métro
.
    Javier’s vestibule smelled sweetly of orange-flower oil, but her basket was introducing a less pleasant note. The fish oughtto be at home, on ice. She could have left the basket in the street, but if it got stolen … another thing to explain to Mémé.
    At least it was Saturday. The ateliers – the