Fancy Pants

Chapter 4

Francesca stood in the center of a pool of discarded evening gowns and studied her reflection in the wall of mirrors built into one end of her bedroom, now decorated with pastel-striped silk walls, matching

Louis XV chairs, and an early Matisse. Like an architect engrossed in a blueprint, she searched her twenty-year-old face for gremlin-induced imperfections that might have mischievously appeared since she last looked in the mirror. Her small straight nose was dusted with a translucent powder priced at twelve pounds a box, her eyelids frosted with smoky shadow, and her lashes, individually separated with a tiny tortoiseshell comb, had been coated with exactly four applications of imported German mascara. She lowered her critical gaze down over her tiny frame to the graceful curve of her breasts, then inspected the neat indentation of her waist before moving on to her legs, beautifully clad in a pair of lacquer green suede slacks complemented perfectly by an ivory silk blouse from Piero De Monzi. She had just been named one of the ten most beautiful women in Great Britain for 1975. Although she would never have been so crass as to say it aloud, she secretly wondered why the magazine had bothered with nine others. Francesca's delicate features were more classically beautiful than either her mother's or grandmother's, and much more changeable. Her slanted green eyes could grow as chill and distant as a cat's when she was displeased, or as saucy as a Soho barmaid's if her mood shifted. When she realized how much attention it brought her, she began to emphasize her resemblance to Vivien Leigh and let her chestnut hair grow into a curly, shoulder-length cloud, occasionally even pulling it back from her small face with hair slides to make the likeness more pronounced.

As she contemplated her reflection, it didn't occur to her that she was shallow and vain, that many of the people she considered her friends could barely tolerate her. Men loved her, and that was all that mattered. She was so outrageously beautiful, so utterly charming when she put her energy to it, that only the most self-protective of males could resist her. Men found being with Francesca rather like taking an addictive drug, and even after the relationship had ended, many discovered themselves coming back for a damaging second hit.

Like her mother, she spoke in hyperbole and put her words into invisible italics, making even the most mundane occurrence sound like a grand adventure. She was rumored to be a sorceress in bed, although the specifics of who had actually penetrated the lovely Francesca's enchanting vagina had grown a bit muddy over time. She kissed wonderfully, that was for certain, leaning into a man's chest, curling up in his arms like a sensuous kitten, sometimes licking at his mouth with the very tip of her small pink tongue.

Francesca never stopped to consider that men adored her because she was generally at her best with them. They didn't have to suffer her attacks of thoughtlessness, her perpetual tardiness, or her piques when she didn't get her way. Men made her bloom. At least for a while… until she grew bored. Then she became impossible.

As she applied a slick of coral gloss to her lips, she couldn't help but smile at the memory of her most spectacular conquest, although she was absolutely distraught that he hadn't taken their parting better. Still, what could she have done? Several months of playing second fiddle to all his official responsibilities had brought the chill light of reality to those deliciously warm visions of royal immortality she'd been entertaining-glass-enclosed carriages, cathedral doors flinging open, trumpets playing-visions not entirely unthinkable for a girl who'd been raised in the bedroom of a princess.

When she'd finally come to her senses about their relationship and realized she didn't want to live her life at the beck and call of the British Empire, she'd tried to make her break with him as clean as possible. But he'd still taken it rather badly. She could see him now as he'd looked that night-immaculately tailored, exquisitely barbered, expensively shod. How on earth could she have known that a man who bore no wrinkles on the outside might bear a few insecurities on the inside? She remembered the evening two months earlier when she had ended her relationship with the most eligible bachelor in Great Britain.

They had just finished dinner in the privacy of his apartments, and his face had seemed young and curiously vulnerable as the candlelight softened its aristocratic planes. She gazed at him across the damask tablecloth set with sterling two hundred years old and china rimmed in twenty-four-karat gold, trying to let him understand by the earnestness of her expression that this was all much more difficult for her than it could possibly be for him.

"I see," he said, after she'd given her reasons, as kindly as possible, for not continuing their friendship. And then, once more, "I see."

"You do understand?" She tilted her head to one side so that her hair fell away from her face, letting the light catch the twin rhinestone slivers that dangled from her earlobes, flickering like a chain of stars

against a chestnut sky.

His blunt response shocked her. "Actually, no." Pushing himself back from the table, he stood abruptly.

"I don't understand at all." He looked down at the floor and then up again at her. "I must confess I've rather fallen for you, Francesca, and you gave me every reason to believe that you cared for me."

"I do," she replied earnestly. "Of course I do."

"But not enough to put up with all that goes along with me."

The combination of stubborn pride and hurt she heard in his voice made her feel horribly guilty. Weren't the royals supposed to hide their emotions, no matter how trying the circumstances? "It is rather a lot," she reminded him.

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" There was a trace of bitterness in his laugh. "Foolish of me to have believed you cared enough to put up with it."

Now, in the privacy of her bedroom, Francesca frowned briefly at her reflection in the mirror. Since her own heart had never been affected by anyone, it always came as something of a surprise to her when

one of the men with whom she was involved reacted so strongly when they parted.

Still, there was nothing to be done about it now. She recapped her pot of lip gloss and tried to restore

her spirits by humming a British dance hall tune from the 1930s about a man who danced with a girl

who had danced with the Prince of Wales.

"I'm leaving now, darling," Chloe said, appearing in the doorway as she adjusted the brim of a cream

felt bowler over her dark hair, cut short and curly. "If Helmut calls, tell him I'll be back by one."

"If Helmut calls, I'll tell him you bloody well died." Francesca splayed her hand on her hip, her cinnamon brown fingernails looking like small sculptured almonds as she tapped them impatiently against her green suede slacks.

Chloe fastened the neck clasp of her mink. "Now, darling…"

Francesca felt a pang of remorse as she noticed how tired her mother looked, but she repressed it, reminding herself that Chloe's self-destructiveness with men had grown worse in recent months and it

was her duty as a daughter to point it out. "He's a gigolo, Mummy. Everyone knows it. A phony German prince who's making an absolute fool of you." She reached past the scented Porthault hangers in her closet to the rack holding the gold fish-scale belt she'd bought at David Webb the last time she was in New York. After securing the clasp at her waist, she returned her attention to Chloe. "I'm worried about you, Mummy. There are circles under your eyes, and you look tired all the time. You've also been impossible to live with. Only yesterday you brought home the beige Givenchy kimono for me instead of the silver one I asked you to get."

Chloe sighed. "I'm sorry, darling. I-I've had things on my mind, and I haven't been sleeping well. I'll pick up the silver kimono for you when I'm out today."

Francesca's pleasure in hearing that she would get the proper kimono didn't quite overshadow her concern for Chloe. As gently as possible, she tried to make Chloe understand how serious all this was. "You're forty, Mummy. You need to start taking better care of yourself. Gracious, you haven't had a facial in weeks."

To her dismay, she saw that she'd hurt Chloe's feelings. Rushing over, she gave her mother a quick conciliatory hug, careful not to smear the delicate taupe shading beneath her cheekbones. "Never mind," she said. "I adore you. And you're still the most beautiful mother in London."

"Which reminds me-one mother in this house is enough. You are taking your birth control pills, aren't you, darling?"

Francesca groaned. "Not this again…"

Chloe withdrew a pair of gloves from an ostrich-skin Chanel handbag and began tugging them on.

"I can't bear the thought of your becoming pregnant when you're still so young. Pregnancy is so dangerous."

Francesca flicked her hair behind her shoulders and turned back to the mirror. "All the more reason

not to forget, isn't it," she said lightly.

"Just be careful, darling."

"Have you ever known me to lose control of any situation invoiving men?"

"Thank God, no." Chloe pushed her thumbs beneath the collar of her mink and lifted the fur until it brushed the bottom of her jaw. "If only I'd been more like you when I was twenty." She gave a wry chuckle. "Who am I fooling? If only I were more like you right now." Blowing a kiss in the air, she

waved good-bye with her handbag and disappeared down the hallway.

Francesca wrinkled her nose in the mirror, then jerked out the comb she had just arranged in her hair

and stalked over to her window. As she stared down into the garden, the unwelcome memory of her old encounter with Evan Varian came back to her, and she shivered. Although she knew sex couldn't be that dreadful for most women, her experience with Evan three years ago had made her lose much of her desire for further experimentation, even with men who attracted her. Still, Evan's taunt about her frigidity had hung in the dusty corners of her consciousness, leaping out at the strangest times to plague her. Finally, last summer, she'd gathered her courage and permitted a handsome young Swedish sculptor she'd met in Marrakech to take her to bed.

She frowned as she remembered how awful it had been. She knew there had to be more to sex than having someone heaving away over her body, pawing at her most private parts with sweat dripping from his armpits all over her. The only feeling the experience had produced inside her had been a terrible anxiety. She hated the vulnerability, the unnerving sense that she had relinquished control. Where was

the mystical closeness the poets wrote about? Why wasn't she able to feel close to anybody?

From watching Chloe's relationships with men, Francesca had learned at an early age that sex was a marketable commodity like any other. She knew that sooner or later she wouid have to permit a man to make love to her again. But she was determined not to do so until she felt completely in control of the situation and the rewards were high enough to justify the anxiety. Exactly what those rewards might be, she didn't quite know. Not money, certainly. Money was simply there, not something one even thought about. Not social position, since that had been very much assured her at birth. But something… the elusive something that was missing from her life.

Still, as a basically optimistic person, she thought her unhappy sexual experiences might have turned out for the best. So many of her acquaintances hopped from bed to bed until they'd lost all sense of dignity. She didn't hop into any beds at all, yet she'd been able to present the illusion of sexual experience-fooling even her own mother-while at the same time, remaining aloof. All in all, it was a powerful combination, which intrigued the most interesting assortment of men.

The ringing of the telephone interrupted her thoughts. Stepping over a pile of discarded clothes, she crossed the carpet to pick up the receiver. "Francesca here," she said, sitting down in one of the Louis

XV chairs.

"Francesca. Don't hang up. I have to talk to you."

"Well, if it isn't Saint Nicholas." Crossing her legs, she inspected the tips of her fingernails for flaws.

"Darling, I didn't mean to set you off so last week." Nicholas's tone was placating, and she could see him in her mind, sitting at the desk in his office, his pleasant features grim with determination. Nicky was so sweet and so boring. "I've been miserable without you," he went on. "Sorry if I pushed."

"You should be sorry," she declared. "Really, Nicholas, you acted like such an awful prig. I hate being shouted at, and I don't appreciate being made to feel as if I'm some heartless femme fatale."

"I'm sorry, darling, but I didn't really shout. Actually, you were the one-" He stopped, apparently thinking better of that particular comment.

Francesca found the flaw she'd been looking for, a nearly invisible chip in the nail varnish on her index finger. Without getting up from the chair, she stretched toward her dressing table for her bottle of cinnamon brown.

"Francesca, darling, I thought you might like to go down to Hampshire with me this weekend."

"Sorry, Nicky. I'm busy." The lid on the varnish bottle gave way beneath the tug of her fingers. As she extracted the brush, her eyes flicked to the tabloid newspaper folded open next to the telephone. A glass coaster rested on top, magnifying a circular portion of the print beneath so that her own name leaped out at her, the letters distorted like the reflection in a carnival mirror.

Francesca Day, the beautiful daughter of international socialite Chloe Day and granddaughter of

the legendary couturiere Nita Serritella, is breaking hearts again. The tempestuous Francesca's

latest victim is her frequent companion of late, handsome Nicholas Gwynwyck, thirty-three-year-old heir to the Gwynwyck brewery fortune. Friends say Gwynwyck was ready to announce a wedding date when Francesca suddenly began appearing in the company of twenty-three-year-old screen newcomer, David Graves…

"Next weekend, then?"

She swiveled her hips in the chair, turning away from the sight of the tabloid to repair her fingernail.

"I don't think so, Nicky. Let's not make this difficult."

"Francesca." For a moment Nicholas's voice seemed to break. "You-you told me you loved me. I believed you…"

A frown puckered her forehead. She felt guilty, even though it was hardly her fault he had misinterpreted her words. Suspending the nail varnish brush in midair, she tucked her chin closer to the receiver. "I do love you, Nicky. As a friend. My goodness, you're sweet and dear…" And boring. "Who wouldn't

love you? We've had such wonderful times together. Remember Gloria Hammersmith's party when

Toby jumped into that awful fountain-"

She heard a muffled exclamation from the other end of the telephone. "Francesca, how could you do it?"

She blew on her nail. "Do what?"

"Go out with David Graves. You and I are practically engaged."

"David Graves is none of your business," she retorted. "We're not engaged, and I'll talk to you again when you're ready to converse in a more civilized fashion."

"Francesca-"

The receiver hit the cradle with a bang. Nicholas Gwynwyck had no right to cross-examine her! Blowing on her fingernail, she walked over to her closet. She and Nicky had had fun together, but she didn't love him and she certainly had no intention of living the rest of her life married to a brewer, even a wealthy one.

As soon as her fingernail was dry, she renewed her search for something to wear to Cissy Kavendish's party that evening. She still hadn't found what she wanted when she was distracted by a tapping at the door, and a middle-aged woman with ginger-colored hair and elastic stockings rolled at the ankles

entered the bedroom. As the woman began putting away the pile of neatly folded lingerie she had

brought with her, she said, "I'll be leavin' for a few hours if it's all right with you, Miss Francesca."

Francesca held up a honey-colored chiffon Yves Saint Laurent evening dress with brown and white ostrich feathers encircling the hem. The dress actually belonged to Chloe, but when Francesca first saw

it she had fallen in love with it, so she'd had the skirt shortened and the bust taken in before transferring

it to her own closet. "What do you think of the chiffon for tomorrow night, Hedda?" she asked.

"Too plain?"

Hedda put away the last of Francesca's lingerie and slid the drawer shut. "Everything looks grand

on you, miss."

Francesca turned slowly in front of the mirror and then wrinkled her nose. The Saint Laurent was too conservative, not her style after all. Dropping the gown to the floor, she stepped over the pile of

discarded clothes and began digging in her closet again. Her velvet knickers would be perfect, but she needed a blouse to wear with them.

"Would you be wantin' anything else, Miss Francesca?"

"No, nothing," Francesca answered absently.

"I'll be back by tea, then," the housekeeper announced as she headed toward the door.

Francesca turned to ask her about supper and noticed for the first time that the housekeeper was stooped forward farther than normal. "Is your back bothering you again? I thought you told me it was better?"

"It was for a bit," the housekeeper replied, resting her hand heavily on the doorknob, "but it's been

aching so these last few days I can hardly bend over. That's why I need to leave for a few hours-to

go to the clinic."

Francesca thought how terrible it would be to live like poor Hedda, with stockings rolled at the ankles

and a back that ached whenever you moved. "Let me get my keys," she offered impulsively. "I'll drive you to Chloe's physician on Harley Street and have him send me the bill."

"No need, miss. 1 can go to the clinic."

But Francesca wouldn't hear of it. She hated seeing people suffer and couldn't bear the thought of poor Hedda not having the best medical care. Instructing the housekeeper to wait in the car, she traded in her silk blouse for a cashmere sweater, added a gold and ivory bangle to her wrist, made a telephone call, spritzed herself with the peach and apricot scent of Femme, and left her room-giving no thought at all

to the litter of clothes and accessories she had left behind for Hedda to bend over and pick up when she returned.

Her hair swirled around her shoulders as she tripped down the stairs, a tortoiseshell cross fox jacket dangling from her fingers, soft leather boots sinking into the carpet. Stepping down into the foyer, she passed a pair of double-ball topiaries set in majolica pots. Little sunlight penetrated the foyer, so the plants never flourished and had to be replaced every six weeks, an extravagance that neither Chloe nor Franceses bothered to question. The door chimes rang.

"Bother," Francesca muttered, glancing at her watch. If she didn't hurry, she'd never be able to get Hedda to the doctor and still have time to dress for Cissy Kavendish's party. Impatiently, she swung open the front door.

A uniformed police constable stood on the other side consulting a small notebook he was holding in his hand. "I'm looking for Francesca Day," he said, coloring slightly as he lifted his head and took in her breathtaking appearance.

A picture sprang into her mind of the assortment of unpaid traffic tickets scattered in her desk drawer upstairs, and she gave him her best smile. "You've found her. Am I going to be sorry?"

He regarded her solemnly. "Miss Day, I'm afraid I have some upsetting news."

For the first time she noticed that he was holding something at his side. A sudden chill of apprehension swept over her as she recognized Chloe's ostrich-skin Chanel handbag.

He swallowed uncomfortably. "It seems there's been a rather serious accident involving your mother…"