Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [87]
The warehouse was vast. Lydie attacked a tall crate with the claw end of a hammer.
“Voilà!” Lydie said. “Ball gowns …”
“They are gorgeous,” Patrice said. Most were shades of red: crimson, garnet, deep rose. Buried in the red were two of deep green.
“I want some people in period clothes—eighteenth century,” Lydie said. As she forced herself to focus on the ball, she noticed that she began to feel better. “Some of the women will wear red. And the ones wearing rubies will wear green. I’ll need a list of guests from Didier, with suggestions on who should wear the jewels. Also, an inventory of jewels he wants photographed. I’ll have to call him when I get home.” She felt like she was talking to herself, not Patrice. She made notations in a spiral-bound book.
“Can I have first pick?” Patrice said, running her hands across the skirts of taffeta, velvet, damask, satin.
“Of course. Do you plan to wear rubies?”
“I hate rubies—they bring bad luck. I told Didier to drape me in diamonds the size of Mont Blanc. They will look fabulous against this.” She chose a dress whose fabric shimmered even in the dim warehouse: scarlet in a certain light, purplish-black in another. She loved the tight bodice and full skirt, and she couldn’t wait to see herself in it.
“Your cleavage will look great in that,” Lydie said.
“Won’t it, though?” Patrice exclaimed with delight. “Where did you get these from?”
“They’re antique,” Lydie said. “The reason I’m able to rent them for so long, at such a good price, is that they’ve been in storage at the costume museum. The curators have to rotate all their exhibits because they have so little space.”
Patrice looked around. “Is there anyone else here?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” Lydie said.
Patrice dropped her black leather skirt to the floor, pulled her pink angora sweater over her head. “I wish there was a mirror,” she said, standing there in her demi-bra and bikini panties. “Which one are you going to wear?”
“I don’t know,” Lydie said. “I might not dress up. I might just help the photographer.”
“You damned well are going to dress up,” Patrice commanded. “Now choose a dress.” When Lydie wasn’t fast enough, Patrice grabbed a green one off the rack. Forest-green satin, it was supple and liquid and dark as the woods. “Put it on,” Patrice said.
Light filtered through the skylights; several fluorescent lamps running the length of the warehouse were burned out. Others cast diffuse light through the enormous space, making it even gloomier.
Patrice tugged the zipper gently, and the dress closed around Lydie’s body. When Lydie turned around, Patrice gasped. “Michael is going to die when he sees you,” she said. “You might just wear that little number to his big opening as well.”
All the big moments, the turning points of Lydie’s life were suddenly parties. The embassy party, Michael’s opening, the ball. She could almost believe, though she had never thought such a thing possible, that the outcome of her marriage hinged on whether or not she attended Michael’s party.
“Michael came to see me,” Lydie said. “After I saw him in the Tuileries with his girlfriend.”
“His girlfriend?” Patrice asked. “You saw her? Who is she?”
“Anne Dumas.” Lydie felt reluctant to say the name: it carried such weight for Patrice. But Patrice took the news in silence. She reached for Lydie’s hand and held it.
“You know,” Patrice said after a while, “one of Anne Dumas’s ‘three women’ was the Marquise de Brinvilliers. Does that name ring a bell?”
Lydie shook her head.
“A murderer. She poisoned anyone who got in the way of her happiness. She used to volunteer at Paris charity hospitals so she could practice poisoning patients in order to perfect her technique. She knocked off her father, her brothers, her husband …” Patrice trailed off.
“What does that have to do with Anne Dumas?” Lydie asked.
“She wrote that section best,” Patrice said. “She devotes more space to Madame de Sévigné, but she really got inside the head of the murderer.”