Briony had packed a couple of cotton dresses, her swimwear, jeans, tee-shirts and one thin jacket for chilly evenings, but there had been no time to think further than that. However, she had no intention of allowing Marian to spend any more money on her and said so quite firmly.
The older woman’s eyebrows rose.
‘My dear, I’d love to spend some money on you—I have far too much of the stuff—but your husband seems to share your views and I have strict instructions that all the bills are to be handed to him and that you’re not to be allowed to count the cost. His own words. I’m so happy for him, Briony,’ she went on. ‘There was a time when I thought I’d never see him smile again. You know, you aren’t a bit as I imagined,’ she added, going off at a tangent. ‘Let him spend his money on you if it gives him pleasure. You’re lucky, you know, so many husbands won’t.’
Having elicited the information that Briony didn’t have anything dressy with her, she took her to a small boutique in a shady courtyard filled with pots of geraniums tumbling over the grey stone in scarlet-orange splendour.
Madame was elegantly and chicly dressed in black. Marian said something to her in French and she clicked her tongue, assessing Briony with snapping black eyes.
‘Well, madame,’ she said at last in heavily accented English, ‘do you wish to be une grande madame; une coquette, or une fille bien élevée—with such hair and eyes all are possible.’
‘What she wants,’ Marian interrupted, ‘is a dress très romantique, for a husband from whom she has been parted for three years.’
Briony was just about to correct these misconceptions when the vendeuse rolled her eyes and said dryly,
‘Ma foi, what you ask for is impossible! You wish to be all three!’
Marian laughed. ‘And you will have the dress to enable her to do so, am I not right?’
The black eyes twinkled. ‘Perhaps. Sit down, madame,’ she instructed a bemused Briony, ‘and I shall see what I can find.’
She was gone fifteen minutes, during which time Briony tried several times to question Marian about what she had said to her, but each time her nerve failed. And then, when they heard her footsteps returning to the salon, Marian said quietly, ‘We shall talk later if you wish, Briony. I told myself before you arrived that I would accept you, for Kieron’s sake, but I find already that I’m beginning to love you for your own, and I’m sure.…’
She broke off as the door opened, Briony’s eyes widening appreciatively at the dress the vendeuse carried over her arm. In black paper taffeta, the full skirt billowed out over net petticoats and the top was little more than a brief backless shell, moulding her breasts.
‘Try it on,’ Marian urged her, watching her face.
The taffeta rustled pleasantly against her skin, the stark colour emphasising her pale, creamy skin and the vivid intensity of her hair.
When she stepped rather hesitantly out of changing cubicle to show Marian, the older woman caught her breath in delight.
‘Oh, my dear!’ she exclaimed softly, ‘you look quite ravishing!?
??
‘If I may suggest an ebony comb studded with diamanté, to catch Madame’s hair back so,’ interposed the vendeuse, pulling back Briony’s hair deftly. ‘Or even satin flowers…?’
The dress was boxed and they were on their way out of the boutique before Briony thought about the price.
Marian told her, chuckling at her stricken expression. ‘My dear, it’s a model and I’m sure it will be worth every penny in Kieron’s eyes. Surely you’re not frightened he’ll be angry?’
It wasn’t his anger that made her heart lodge uncomfortably in her throat, Briony admitted worriedly, but the thought of what conclusions he might draw when he saw her wearing the dress, that whispered seduction with every teasing rustle.
‘I think I’ll keep it as a surprise until we go out,’ she said nervously to Marian, suspecting that the older woman might suggest a fashion show of their purchases when they returned to the villa. To judge from her disappointed expression Briony’s suppositions had been correct, and her guilt at disappointing her kind hostess of this little treat was intensified when Marian insisted on buying Nicky a delightful lemon and white playsuit, which she told Briony defiantly was her present to him and was not going to be paid for by Kieron.
‘You can’t know how much seeing Nicky means to me,’ she confided to Briony as they drove back to the villa. ‘You see, Kieron is like the son I never had, and Nicky…well, he’s Kieron all over again and seeing him has revived many happy memories.’
‘And unhappy ones, I’m afraid,’ Briony said softly remembering what Kieron had told her about the death of his parents. ‘Don’t think me inquisitive, but have you never considered marrying again? You must only have been young when.…’ She bit her lip, fearing that she might be treading on sensitive ground, but Marian patted her hand and smiled.
‘Don’t worry, my dear, you aren’t upsetting me. I was thirty-two when Gérard was drowned. We’d been married eight years and although we hadn’t had the child we’d both longed for, our time together was so full of love and happiness that I could never bear the thought of another marriage. You see, Briony, when you’ve known true love, true happiness, you never want to replace it with counterfeit coin. The happiness I shared with Gérard has sustained me through the years of my widowhood. I have many pleasant friends, I have Kieron, and Héloise, and now I have you and Nicky, so I still have happiness—it’s just that it’s a mellower version than that one shares with a lover.’
The first thing Briony saw when she climbed out of the car was Kieron’s lean frame, sprawled out on a sun lounger by the side of the pool. The second was the curvaceous brunette bending over him and stroking suntan lotion into the smooth muscles of his back. Jealousy stabbed through her with white-hot knives, and she stood transfixed while Marian hurried past her, exclaiming in surprise, ‘Louise, I thought you were in Paris?’
The brunette poured more oil on to Kieron’s back, smoothing it in seductively.
‘As you can see, Tante Marian, I’m not.’ She shrugged petulantly. ‘It was hot and I grew bored. Where, I thought, will be entertaining?—and then I remembered my Tante Marian.’
‘And I thought I was the attraction,’ Kieron mocked lazily, rolling over to shade his eyes from the sun and stare unblinkingly at Briony. Compared with the French girl in her minuscule scarlet bikini Briony felt overdressed and pallid. Her blouse was sticking uncomfortable to her back, her thin cotton skirt suddenly schoolgirlish and old-fashioned.