say.
Two weeks later she still felt like pinching herself.
Her basement flat below Madame’s elegant Chelsea terrace house, with its window-boxes and tubs of pansies, black enamelled front door with a polished brass knocker facing a quiet leafy garden in the centre of the square, was small but comfortable. And although at first she’d felt a bit like a rabbit living below street level, she’d soon adapted. Who would not, she thought sometimes, to vibrant, stylish, historic Chelsea? And she was gradually finding her way around the King’s Road and Fulham Road, Sloane Square, Cheyne Walk and the river.
She’d been to the Natural History Museum, the Albert Hall, Harrods, seen the Grinling Gibbons carvings in the chapel of the Royal Hospital, guided by a delightful ninety-year-old, scarlet-coated Chelsea pensioner, and, rain or shine, she walked up to Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens every morning. For there hadn’t been much rain—everyone agreed it was a marvellous spring so far. Of course, she realised there was a whole lot more of London to see, but the truth of the matter was that Yvette Minter might make amazing gestures but she was also something of a slave-driver—Martha had never worked so hard in her life. But she found herself enjoying it, even if she changed clothes fifty times a day or was cajoled, coaxed and screamed at by temperamental photographers, by everyone at Minter’s, in fact, all unable to avoid being affected by Madame’s histrionics at the forthcoming début of her off-the-rack range.
Then one afternoon, about two weeks after her arrival, Martha donned a blue fitted waistcoat that left her shoulders and arms bare and matched her eyes, a coffee-cream straight silk skirt that fell to just above her ankles and had a slit up the front to above her knees, gold suede shoes, clustered pearl earrings and a chunky gold and pearl bracelet, swept a brush through her hair, which she was leaving long and loose, and walked through to the elegant room where Madame’s haute couture clothes were shown to clients.
There was no one there apart from Madame herself, who proceeded to walk around Martha, dressed in her inevitable black, but this time definitely a cocktail dress, with her mouth pursed. ‘Yes,’ she said finally, ‘we did right with the ’air; those subtle lighter streaks are very good and a little shorter and all one length so you can toss it around and it settles just a little wild as if some man has been running his ‘ands through it but still looking très bon—it’s very good. And the ’ips under the silk—quite delectable!’
Martha said, ‘Thanks,’ casually but eyed her warily for she’d learnt that it wasn’t only when Madame was with clients or in the grip of emotion that her French accent surfaced; it was also when she was being devious, and she was capable of being extremely devious at times. ‘So?’ She looked rather pointedly at the empty gilt chairs.
Madame put her hands on her own hips. ‘So?’ she repeated arrogantly. ‘I’m having a little cocktail party at home this evening, just friends, and you are coming, Miss Martha, that’s what!’
Martha sighed. ‘Madame—look, you’ve been wonderful about renting me out your basement; you haven’t bothered me in the slightest and I hope I haven’t bothered you at all—but I think we should keep it that way.’
A flood of genuine French greeted these words which Martha endured stoically, enraging Madame even more until she burst into English, saying finally, ‘It’s business, you stubborn, ungrateful child!’
‘I thought you said it was friends.’
‘Friends, yes, but friends who will talk about you—don’t you understand anything? Is Australia such a hick place they don’t even——?’
‘Now look here...’ Martha broke in.
‘No, you look here; it’s part of my campaign to make you famous and what do you do? Throw eet een my face!’
Martha grimaced. ‘It so happens I hate cocktail parties.’
‘This one you won’t. That I guarantee. I have never given a party in my life that anyone has hated! Martha Winters—please,’ Madame said, changing tack so suddenly that Martha blinked. ‘I would like you to come with the very best intentions in my ’eart. I would like everyone to see this fabulous girl who is so soon going to become a sophisticated, wonderful woman——’
‘Stop. I’ll come,’ Martha said, laughing at the same time, as she shook her head a little dazedly.
‘So you jolly well ought to,’ Madame said severely. ‘This place Australia—are they all like you over there, so wary, so stony-hearted, so——?’
‘Madame, I said I’d come!’
It was Martha’s first glimpse of the first-floor reception-room of Madame’s house, and she couldn’t fail to be impressed by the looped, draped, tasselled yellow velvet curtains about the tall windows that overlooked the square; by the palest eau-de-Nil wall-to-wall carpet that was dotted with exquisite Chinese and Persian rugs; the beautiful, spindly, inlaid pieces of furniture; the flowers and lamps; the vivid pink silk-covered chairs.
But of course it was still an ordeal—to be introduced and overlooked by an ever-growing number of people, to try to make conversation with complete strangers without sounding gauche and, particularly, colonial. I really should have got over these kind of nerves, she told herself once, sipping a very dry sherry. How many times have I paraded before hundreds of strangers? But that’s different; I can detach myself then—not something I can do now at the same time as I’m hearing my accent stand out so obviously—not that I care what they think about my accent, so why do I feel like this? Martha asked herself impatiently. Perhaps, she went on to think with a slight shrug, looking round the room suddenly, I can concentrate on the possibility that one day I could own a room like this...
‘Miss Martha?’
Martha turned as Madame’s voice penetrated her reflections.
‘I ’ave a very special guest to introduce you to—my nephew. Simon, this is my new protégé, Martha Winters—is she not stunning?’
Martha froze, her lips parting and her eyes widening as she looked up at the tall man beside Madame who was wearing a beautifully tailored grey suit that sat superbly across his broad shoulders. She took in his quiet air of assurance and authority, his brown hair, his long-fingered hands which had once made her shiver with delight to think of them upon her body—and looked at last into Simon Macquarie’s grey-green eyes.
CHAPTER TWO
‘WELL, well,’ he drawled in that quizzical, amused voice that haunted her dreams, ‘we meet again. I wonder if that’s pure fate or—something else?’
Two things happened at the same time: Madame burst forth into surprised French and Martha tossed her head and clenched her sherry glass so that her knuckles showed white. Which caused Simon Macquarie to narrow his eyes and cut across Madame’s outpourings as he said drily, ‘Now, Martha, we’ve been through this once before. I was remarkably understanding about the champagne but there is a limit—I would drink that sherry if I were you.’
Martha did just that and the next best thing she could think of. She tossed off the last of her sherry, placed the glass down gently on a table, and stalked out with all of the considerable hauteur, disdain and controlled rage she was capable of—leaving the party to fall into a sudden, electrified silence behind her.
Once in the sanctuary of her basement with the door firmly locked,
