The Wedding Dress

by Danielle Steel

  The furniture they uncovered consisted of some of the finest pieces that had been in the Deveraux mansion, of museum quality, none of it had suffered from being stored in the barn. It had been carefully covered, and looked as pristine as ever, upholstered in exquisite fabrics. Louise had even saved many of the curtains, some of which were antiques they’d brought back from France along with the furniture.

  “What are we going to do with all this?” Alex asked, wheeling his chair around it, admiring the obvious quality that had previously been so familiar to him in his own home too. His old possessions were scattered to the winds now. Eleanor still owned a mountain of fine antiques from the barn, and had no way to use them in their real life. Louise had also saved a number of their very good paintings by well-known artists. They would have gotten nothing for them in 1929 and 1930, when they sold the house for a school.

  “We should sell it, I guess,” Eleanor said, remembering how everything had looked in their home. Seeing it brought back so many distant happy memories. It was like a trip back in time for her.

  They got it back in the barn after she inventoried what was there, and photographed it in order to send a list of the barn’s contents to an auction house, possibly Parke-Bernet in New York. Eleanor lay in bed thinking about it that night, all the beautiful things her mother had left her. She’d been right to keep them and not sell them at the time, fifteen years later, they were worth a fortune again, and people could afford to buy them. That night she dreamed about selling all of it. When she woke up in the morning, she went to find Alex in the kitchen, having breakfast with their daughter.

  “Alex, I’ve had an idea,” she said, eyes bright with excitement, after she’d kissed them.

  “You want to go on a boat ride with me after breakfast?” he said happily, looking at his wife.

  “No, I’m serious!”

  “So am I,” he teased her, and Camille asked if she could come too. Eleanor gave her some paper and crayons to keep her busy so she could talk to Alex. They weren’t financially desperate now with what her parents had left her, but the contents of the barn represented a considerable amount of money, or an opportunity. In fact, in the current climate of growing national prosperity, the contents of the barn, and the remaining smaller piece of property in Tahoe Eleanor owned now were worth a small fortune. Not the kind of fortune she’d grown up with, but very solid money, and more than enough to start a business, or buy a larger house if they wanted to. They were cash poor, but had her father’s investments, and her parents had lived frugally.

  “What if we don’t send my parents’ things from the barn to auction? What if we sell them ourselves?”

  “How? Privately, or take out an ad in a newspaper? ‘Fabulous antiques for sale’? It would make a hell of a garage sale.” He smiled at her.

  “I’m serious,” she said again as her eyes lit up with excitement. “What if we open a really high-end antique store?”

  “Here?” It was a quiet community, and no one had fancy antiques worthy of Versailles at Lake Tahoe.

  “No, in San Francisco. We could rent a shop in the right neighborhood. People have money now, and they’re willing to spend it. We have enough in the barn to supply a store for a couple of years.”

  “And when we run out of your parents’ things?” He looked skeptical. It sounded a little crazy to him. Selling them at auction would be simpler.

  “Then we go to Europe and buy more. The war will be over by then. I suspect there will be a lot of people there who have lost their fortunes, and will have to sell their chateaux and will want to sell their antiques. People don’t live like my parents did anymore. They want smaller homes, simpler things, but there must be a market for beautiful things, for people with money, just not on the grand scale that we grew up with. I don’t think any of us realized how remarkable it was. It seemed normal to us then. It was the only life we knew. We were the children of a golden era. I think we could have a very successful business with an antique store,” and it was something he could do too. He could help her run the business end, and he didn’t have to be able to walk to be an antique dealer. “What do you think?”

  “Do you really want to be a merchant?” he asked, looking surprised and she laughed at him.

  “Don’t be such a snob. You sound like my father, or my grandparents. Yes, I do. I’m not afraid to be ‘engaged in commerce,’ as my grandmother would have said. I’d love to try it. We could open a shop instead of my going back to teaching. And if it doesn’t work and no one buys anything, we give up the store and send everything to auction. Why not give it a try?” He thought about it and started to be intrigued by the idea. Successful businesses had started in stranger ways, and they certainly had more than enough merchandise to get started.

  “You don’t mind moving back to the city? I love it here,” he said wistfully.

  “We can come for weekends and holidays.” They had lived there for nine months, and it was beautiful, but very quiet. Eleanor was thirty-four years old, and not ready for a bucolic life yet. She missed seeing people, having a job, and keeping busy. With her mother gone, there wasn’t a lot for her to do there. And eventually, she wanted to put Camille in a good private school in the city, although she wasn’t four years old yet. Alex would have been content with a quiet country life forever, but Eleanor wasn’t there yet.

  She suddenly loved the idea of running an antique business and had never thought of it before, and they might meet interesting new people running an antique store.

  They talked about it for several days, and she convinced Alex to let her go on a reconnaissance mission to the city, and see what was available in the way of shops to rent. They could make a decision after that, depending on how high the rents were. She didn’t want to invest too much in it, and risk what they had or gamble all of it, in case it failed, but they already had a full inventory, so all they needed was a store where they could sell it.

  She left three days later, and had already called a commercial real estate agent, to show her some shops to rent in San Francisco.

  “Don’t go too crazy,” Alex warned her when she left, but he was intrigued by the idea too.

  It all happened very quickly after that. Eleanor said it was destiny. She saw four shops that afternoon, and one of them was absolutely perfect in an area called Jackson Square. A small brick building was available with two floors they could use to show the antiques, a third floor where they could store them, and a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor. It even had an elevator. It was just what they needed, they could even live there. They could leave some of the extra larger pieces in the barn in Tahoe, where they were safe, and had been for many years. And in what felt like a moment of madness, she convinced Alex to let her rent the house the next day, when she called him. By the time she got back to Tahoe two days later, they had a store in San Francisco, and the start of a business. Eleanor wanted to call it Deveraux-Allen, which sounded very distinguished to both of them. The store itself needed a coat of paint inside, and some spotlights to focus on the best pieces.

  Her excitement was contagious, and by mid-April, the store had been painted, the lighting installed, and they were ready to move into the apartment above the store, and open the business.

  Two long moving vans came to take a large number of the antiques to San Francisco. Eleanor drove down to meet them, and start furnishing the apartment, and tell them where she wanted the antiques placed in the store. Some of them looked truly magnificent. Her parents had left her a barn full of treasures, and she realized again that her mother had been right to keep them. They were an important inheritance for Eleanor and for their future, although her mother had kept it all out of sentiment.

  They opened at the end of April, and the store looked impressive. Eleanor had found the guest list from her wedding in her mother’s papers, and sent everyone on it an elegant-looking invitation to come and see the
store. She knew that once they did, they would want to buy something, or tell friends who could. She put one of their most beautiful Louis XV commodes in the front window. It had previously been in their drawing room, and was a magnificent piece. It was signed and worthy of a museum, the most elegant drawing room, or a chateau.

  They made their first sale four days after they opened, to a woman who had just moved to San Francisco from New York. She asked Eleanor if she would come to her new home to give her advice about what to place where. Her furniture had just arrived from New York.

  Eleanor went to her address the following afternoon, she had just bought a beautiful mansion on upper Broadway, not far from Alex’s old house, although much less grand. The house had good proportions and pretty rooms, but she had no idea how to decorate them. She explained to Eleanor she wanted to have the most beautiful home in San Francisco, and she wanted Eleanor’s help to achieve it. She was a widow and her industrialist husband had left her a great deal of money, and she wasn’t sure how to spend it.

  Eleanor spent two hours with her, making suggestions, and the woman bought three more pieces from them the next day. Eleanor’s goal was to fill the rooms with beautiful furniture and objects that the woman loved and help her to establish the elegant home she wanted. Eleanor was happy to introduce her to other dealers too, although she didn’t know many, and what Eleanor’s mother had left her was prettier than anything else in town, in any other store.

  Business was excellent in May and June. Some of her parents’ friends showed up and it was nice to catch up with them. They came out of nostalgia and were sad to learn of her parents’ deaths. Many had had severe reversals and had never recovered and had come to the shop out of curiosity. Others still had some money left and bought a piece or two of the Deveraux furniture they had always admired. And there were total strangers who came, had money to burn, and Eleanor was happy to help them do it. Most of them relied on Eleanor’s taste, and loved what they bought from her.

  By July, they had a thriving business on their hands, and Alex and Eleanor were enjoying it thoroughly. Eleanor’s idea had been brilliant, and the experiment had worked. Alex and Eleanor were ecstatic. Alex said it was much more fun than working in a bank and a lot more lucrative. And she was enjoying it more than she had teaching although she’d been grateful for the job.

  The best news of all was that Deveraux-Allen was a resounding success, and Alex and Eleanor could work on it together. Decidedly, their new chapter had begun with a bang.

  Chapter 12

  Deveraux-Allen rapidly became the most respected antique shop in San Francisco, almost from the time they opened it, given the high quality of what they had to sell. Eleanor was knowledgeable about the periods the pieces had been made in, had researched their provenance carefully, and their makers, and even found some of her mother’s records on it. And Alex was interested in learning more about it. He loved the history of what they sold and who had owned it, or which French and British royals and aristocrats it had been made for, at what time.

  They added a decorating component to the business, based on Eleanor’s excellent taste. Their lucrative venture allowed Eleanor to stop teaching. It only took a few large purchases to get them going, and everything they sold was of high quality and value. And their success allowed Alex not to return to the bank. He regained his strength steadily after his war injuries, and owning the shop gave him the leeway to make his own hours and work at his own pace. He tired easily at first but got steadily stronger. He continued to run the Tahoe estate from a distance for the English lord who owned it. Alex spent a few days there twice a month, which was enough to make sure that everything was running smoothly, and they stayed there as a family during holidays and long weekends.

  Camille was four when they started the business, and as soon as they were able to, which happened quickly, Eleanor hired a young girl to help her with Camille. They took on a young man, Tim Avery, to help with moving some of the heavy furniture at the shop. He was almost like a son to Alex. He had been injured in the war himself, and he drove Alex anywhere he needed to go. He was devoted to them. And Camille loved Annie, her babysitter, who reminded Eleanor a little bit of Wilson. Annie was Irish too, and very loving. She sang to Camille to calm her down, and Camille easily imitated her pretty voice, singing Irish ballads. The child seemed to have a real talent for music, which neither Alex nor Eleanor could lay claim to.

  Eleanor had stayed in touch with Wilson after they left and she became Mrs. Houghton. They had given up their jobs in London once the bombing of London started, and had retired to Ireland, and were saddened to hear of the deaths of Eleanor’s parents and impressed by the antique business they had started and sorry not to be there. The Houghtons had fared well, saved their money, and been married for fifteen years by then, and still cherished their memories of their years with the Deveraux.

  Alex and Eleanor’s first year in business was the last of the war in Europe. The news was alarming at times, but the Allies pressed on to victory. They liberated Paris in August.

  Alex had sacrificed his legs for his country, but they had a good life, and with Alex running their finances, and Eleanor’s hard work, they were able to buy the building where the shop was and they lived. They had a simple life, based on their diligence, good management, and their stable marriage. Camille remained the joy of their life.

  By the time Deveraux-Allen had been open for two years, in 1946, the war was over at last and they had sold almost all of her parents’ furniture, and the barn was empty in Tahoe.

  “We need new merchandise,” Eleanor told Alex one afternoon when they were going over the books. She still couldn’t believe how well they had done with the business. They had clients coming from other cities now, from word of mouth, and her decorating was much in demand in San Francisco. The country was flourishing and they had caught the wave at the right time. “There’s nothing to buy here,” she said. “Wilson says that half the castles in Ireland are up for sale, and there are some beautiful antiques there.” She still called her Wilson, and couldn’t imagine calling her by her first name, Fiona, or even Mrs. Houghton. “And the French are selling everything too.”

  A year after the war, Europe was still ravaged, and its people starving. But in recent months, travel had become easier. Alex and Eleanor hadn’t gone anywhere since their lost days of grandeur, except to Lake Tahoe, but if they were to keep their shop doors open, they needed something to sell, and all the fine pieces in San Francisco had been sold during the Depression, and taken elsewhere. They both still grew nostalgic when they drove past their old homes. Alex refused to enter the hotel his family home had been turned into. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He hadn’t seen his brothers in seventeen years by then, since they left San Francisco, but were still in touch with occasional correspondence. They seemed like strangers to him now and the life they had once shared a distant dream that had no reality to it. He had never met their wives or children and didn’t know if he ever would.

  The school that had been established in the Deveraux mansion, the Hamilton School, was still there, and Eleanor pointed to the house whenever she and Camille drove past it, and she told her that it was where her mama had grown up, which didn’t interest Camille particularly when her mother said they couldn’t move back there. It was just a big house to Camille. It was a time and a home that had no bearing on their present-day life. It was merely history, and beloved memories to Eleanor and Alex. The gardens had been sold off by the school as a separate lot, and another wealthy family, with new riches, had built a rambling modern house there. Their old home still made Eleanor’s heart ache a little when she drove past it.

  Alex booked passage for them on the RMS Aquitania again sailing from New York in June of 1946. She was still in “austerity service,” with valuable art removed, and was still painted gray after serving as a troopship during the war. They had fond memories of her from the
ir honeymoon, even if she was less luxurious now. Alex insisted that they travel in first class, which Eleanor thought was extravagant, but he said they could afford it. Annie agreed to stay with Camille, and Tim Avery was excited about running the shop in their absence, and he could reach them by telegram if he had to. He had learned a great deal about the antiques they sold in the two years that he had worked for them. He was young, bright, conscientious, and proud to be part of a successful enterprise, with kind employers.

  They knew that the stewards on the ship would assist Alex with his personal needs, and Eleanor could help him too. He managed extremely well on his own, and they were planning to hire someone in Europe to travel with them during their trip. They had plans to be in France, England, and Ireland for a month, and already had a long list of towns and chateaux where they thought they would find new merchandise to bring home. Boarding the Aquitania in New York brought back vivid tender memories for Eleanor, of her trips with her mother to buy her debutante gown and her wedding dress, as well as their honeymoon on the same ship. She had read that Jeanne Lanvin was not well, and her daughter, Marie-Blanche de Polignac, was running the famous couture house. The House of Worth was still functioning, still run by Charles Worth’s great-grandson Jean-Charles. Chanel was closed after the war, since Gabrielle Chanel had fled to Switzerland, after collaborating with the Germans during the war. Their earlier crossing to Europe, and hers with her mother on the SS Paris, seemed so long ago, and was part of another life. Eleanor didn’t mourn it, or even miss it anymore. It felt like someone else’s life, and she was happy with Alex. She was thirty-six years old and he had just turned fifty. His mind and spirit were young, Eleanor had infused new life into him with their growing business, but his war injuries had taken a toll on him and he looked older than his years. More than once, people inquired if he was her father, which shocked her. She never thought about the age difference between them, and they were closer than ever.