CHAPTER ONE
‘AREN’TTHEYTHEmost incredible things you’ve seen?’
Liane Blanchard gave a rueful laugh of acknowledgement as Ella twirled around, blonde curls flying, her musical peal of laughter echoing through the living room, its windows open to the summery breeze wafting in from Central Park.
‘That’s certainly one word for them,’ she replied with a smile. With five-inch platform heels, encrusted with diamantes and made entirely of glass, the shoes really were incredible. They also looked painful and potentially impossible to wear, not that either of those, Liane knew, would put Ella off for a second. ‘You’re wearing them to the ball, I presume?’
‘Of course. I’ve got quite a plan for these shoes, as it happens.’ Ella winked as she slipped the shoes off, replacing them in the layers of tissue paper in the silver shoe box that came from one of Manhattan’s up-and-coming fashion designers. As a self-made social media influencer, Ella was often getting samples from desperate designers who longed to be the next big thing, just as she did. ‘You should see the dress I’m wearing. It goes perfectly with the shoes.’
‘Not made of glass, I hope?’ Liane joked, only to have Ella give her another wink.
‘No, but the fabric version of it! But don’t worry, don’t worry.’ She held up one hand as she shook back her long, tumbling blonde hair. ‘It’s perfectly decent. Not too see-through.’ She giggled while Liane smiled and shook her head wryly. Ella was twenty-two, gorgeous, and as happy and carefree as a lark. At twenty-seven innately quiet and cautious, Liane sometimes felt like she was the only thing keeping her younger stepsister from falling headlong into disaster—or at least chaos—again and again.
‘What a ridiculous pair of shoes.’
Along with her mother, Liane amended silently. Amelie Ash stood in the doorway of the living room, tall, grey-haired and unsmiling as she looked down her long thin nose at the ridiculous shoes Ella had just put back in the box.
‘They are ridiculous, aren’t they?’ she agreed cheerfully as she put the lid back on the box. ‘That’s the point.’
Liane had always admired the way Ella refused to let her stepmother get her down. They’d blended their families when Ella had only been six, a cherubic little girl with rosy cheeks and candy floss curls. Amelie, the mother of two awkward preteen girls at the time, had not taken to her at all.
It hadn’t helped that her new husband, Robert Ash, had loved to lavish presents and attention on his only child, since her mother had died when Ella was just a baby. And yet even though Ella had certainly been indulged by her father, Liane reflected with affection, she hadn’t actually been spoiled. At least not too much. She was simply high-spirited, full of fun—and the complete opposite of her stepmother—as well as Liane—in every way.
‘Where on earth are you wearing them?’ Amelie asked with a sniff.
‘To the ball, of course!’
Liane tensed instinctively as her mother’s face became pinched, her cold grey eyes narrowing, lips pursing like a particularly withered prune. She knew that look, had seen it many times over the years as life—as well as her daughters—had continued to disappoint her mother, and she’d done her best to mitigate against it, placate and persevere and please, usually to little avail.
‘The ball?’ Amelie repeated icily. ‘Ella, my dear, you are not going to the ball. You weren’t invited.’
For the merest second Ella’s laughing expression faltered, and her china blue eyes widened as she shot Liane an uncertain, questioning look.
‘No, she wasn’t invited,’ Liane interjected quickly, ‘but she’s coming as my guest. I checked with the assistant handling the RSVPs, and plus ones are allowed.’ She could have never gone otherwise, knowing Ella would have to stay at home. She’d offered to give Ella her own invitation, as she wasn’t much of a one for parties, but Ella had insisted they go together.
Her mother’s lips thinned. Liane knew she would much rather Ella didn’t attend what was billed to be the event of the season—a ball hosted by the notoriously reclusive hotel magnate Alessandro Rossi, to celebrate a hundred years of his family’s luxury hotels, for the crème de la crème of New York society. Not that they could actually count themselves one of that number, but Liane’s father, Michel Blanchard, had been a minor diplomat and a casual acquaintance of Alessandro Rossi’s father, Leonardo, a long time ago. Liane had been as shocked as anyone when the invitation on thick, creamy card had been slotted through their letter box, although her mother had been smugly exultant.
‘Of course we’d be invited,’ she’d scoffed, preening. ‘Your father was a dear friend of Leonardo Rossi’s. You know how he lent him money when he needed it.’
A hundred francs at a casino, thirty years ago, hardly the lofty business deal her mother made it seem. Of course Liane did not say any of this. She had long ago learned to hold her tongue around her mother; it made everything easier for everyone if she placated rather than poured oil onto the flames of her mother’s ire.
In any case, she was looking forward to going to the ball, admittedly with some apprehension; as a French teacher working at a girls’ school on the Upper East Side, she’d chosen to live a quiet life with her mother and sisters, rather than step into the spotlight that Ella launched herself into, again and again, in pursuit of fame and fortune. Liane had no interest in either; the losses she’d experienced in life had taught her to be cautious, to stick to the shadows. When you didn’t, you got hurt. She’d seen it with her father, she felt it with her mother. Putting yourself out there could hurt, and Liane had decided long ago that she’d rather not even try.
But, she thought as Ella put the shoe box away, attending a ball would certainly be a nice change, even if she knew she would stay on the sidelines as she always did.
‘I doubt you have anything appropriate to wear,’ Amelie remarked with another sniff as her stepdaughter came back into the living room. Ella might own the house they all lived in, given to her by her father with the proviso that her stepmother and sisters could live in it for all their lives, but otherwise she did not have a penny to her name and was dependent on her stepmother’s grudging generosity.
‘Oh, but I do,’ Ella replied sweetly. ‘A fashion designer friend of mine has made the most glorious gown—don’t worry, Belle-Mère, I promise I won’t embarrass you by wearing rags.’
Which was hardly her mother’s concern, Liane knew. No, her mother’s concern was quite the opposite—that gorgeous, laughing Ella would show her and her sister Manon up, which she undoubtedly would, without even trying. Liane was used to it, Manon didn’t really care, and her mother became coldly, quietly infuriated. She had aspirations of her daughters marrying wealthy, well-connected men, the kind of men who would be guests at the Rossi Ball. Liane couldn’t see it happening herself. She’d be afraid to say boo to a man like that, if truth were told, while Ella could turn flirting into a competitive sport.
‘How fortunate for you,’ Amelie stated coldly. ‘Liane? Has your dress come back from the seamstress?’
‘Yes, I picked it up this morning.’ Liane forced a smile even though she partly dreaded wearing that old blue bag of a dress—a castoff of her mother’s, hardly flattering, yet all they could afford.
‘And just in time too, considering the ball is tomorrow night,’ her mother replied, and, with another narrowed look of dislike for her stepdaughter, Amelie stalked out of the room. Liane gave her sister a sympathetic look.
‘Don’t mind her.’
‘I never do,’ Ella assured her sunnily. ‘But you haven’t shown me your dress. Let’s see it.’
‘It’s nothing much—’ Liane said hurriedly, knowing what an awful understatement her words were.
‘Oh, come on, Liane! I bet you’ll look amazing in it. Show me?’
‘Very well.’ She never could resist her sister’s puppy dog eyes. ‘But it really isn’t much at all.’ With a sigh she headed upstairs, Ella following her to her bedroom on the first floor, its long sash windows facing the house’s narrow back garden, Central Park visible in the distance. Ella had the small room at the top of the house by her stepmother’s decree, but she had always insisted she didn’t mind.
‘More privacy,’ she’d assured Liane when she’d offered to switch. ‘And you know what a night owl I am. I’d hate to disturb everyone with my noise.’ Liane still felt guilty. Ella had been short-changed in so many ways since her father’s death three years ago, but she never put up a fuss, no matter how her stepmother tried to limit her life.
‘Now show me this dress,’ Ella commanded as Liane reached for the plastic-swathed gown hanging from her wardrobe door. ‘I hope it’s sensational.’