Daughters of Fortune: A Novel

by Hyland, Tara

  She was still feeling morose when Elizabeth called five minutes later. Apparently the scandal had been reported by Heat magazine in the U.K., and her big sister had been elected by the family to stage some kind of intervention. Their call didn’t last long. Like Rich, Elizabeth was adamant that she needed to get help, and Amber was equally adamant that she didn’t.

  “For God’s sake.” Elizabeth made no effort to disguise her exasperation. “For once in your life can you think about someone other than yourself ? You know how ill Daddy’s been. The last thing he needs is to see something like this.”

  Amber slammed down the phone before she could finish. She wasn’t in the mood for another lecture. And why should she listen to Elizabeth, anyway? However smart her older sister was, she was still working for their father—and so was Caitlin now. It was only her, Amber, who’d made her own way. They were clearly jealous of her success. But the thought somehow didn’t make her feel any better. First Rich, and now Elizabeth. Were they both right? Was she making a mess of her life?

  Feeling low, she made her way to the rec room. Johnny was there, watching TV on the fifty-inch plasma screen that he’d insisted she buy. She managed to get him to turn the sound down long enough to sob the whole sad story to him. He was characteristically unbothered.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said carelessly, his eyes straying back to the action on the screen. “I’ve been through loads of stuff like this before. It’ll all blow over in a few days.”

  “Really?” she sniffed.

  “Yeah. Of course. Hell, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to you. There’s plenty of other people who’ll manage you. I’ll have a word with Brett and see what he can do.”

  Amber was on the verge of saying that Brett didn’t exactly seem to be having too much luck finding work for Johnny, but she decided against it. He could be a bit touchy if she brought up the fact that he hadn’t secured a record deal yet. Not that it meant anything. He’d explained it to her before. These things took time. He needed to wait until all the uproar surrounding Kaleidoscope had died down before starting a solo album. But in the meantime he was coming up with loads of ideas. As soon as he signed with a record company, he’d be back in the studio.

  Johnny patted the couch next to him. “Come over here, baby. I’ve got something that’ll calm you down.”

  She did as he asked. She watched as he emptied some brownish powder onto a square piece of foil and then took out his lighter.

  “When I heat this up, you wanna breathe the smoke in deep,” he told her.

  She eyed the substance suspiciously. “What is it?”

  “Heroin.” He said it matter-of-factly, as though it wasn’t a big deal.

  She recoiled. “There’s no way I’m doing that!”

  “Relax,” he said soothingly. “It’s no big deal. It’s not like injecting, you can’t get addicted this way. It’ll just relax you, take the edge off a little.” He winked at her. “Trust me, you’ll love it.”

  She hesitated. She wasn’t exactly a prude when it came to recreational drug use. Since her time back at Beaumont Manor, she’d regularly indulged in coke as a pick-me-up and was partial to the odd joint to mellow her out. Johnny had taken that further. Early in their relationship, he’d introduced her to having sex on Ecstasy, and it had blown her mind: the stimulant heightening every sensation, making her feel a warmth and empathy toward him that she’d never experienced with any other sexual partner. He knew other tricks, too—sometimes he’d rub coke on his dick; it acted like an anesthetic so he could go on and on for hours.

  Amber had never had a problem with any of that. But this was different. There was something about heroin . . . the connotations of what it meant, those eighties commercials showing junkies shooting up. But Johnny wasn’t like that. And neither was she. If he said it was okay . . . well, she’d just try it once.

  He heated the foil and she leaned forward, breathing the fine spiral of smoke deep into her lungs, the way he’d told her to.

  A wave of nausea engulfed her, and for a moment she wished she’d listened to her instincts and not gone through with it. But then a second later that didn’t matter anymore because the nausea was replaced by something she hadn’t been expecting—a rush of intense pleasure, a feeling of such euphoria that it was like every orgasm she’d ever had, rolled up into one.

  Johnny saw the look on her face and grinned knowingly. “I told you it was good, didn’t I?”

  46

  _________

  Elizabeth was rarely troubled by nerves. But as she arrived at Melville’s first fashion show since Caitlin had been appointed head designer, she felt her shoulders tense and a churning in her stomach that surprised her. She was half-expecting no one to turn up tonight.

  A month ago, she had asked the PR department to give her the latest figures for attendance at the show—and had been appalled to see that nearly half the invitations had been declined. Another 20 percent hadn’t even bothered to reply. She’d stormed upstairs to see Chantal, the PR director’s assistant.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Elizabeth slammed the list down onto Chantal’s desk. “Why’s no one coming?”

  Chantal’s voice shook as she explained, “We’ve got the final slot at seven-thirty in the evening. It’s after Stella McCartney’s show, which is over in W1. Everyone would rather stay in the West End than head over to East London.” The girl hesitated. “Most of them don’t seem to want to make the effort just for Melville.”

  It was a disaster. What was the point of Melville having a miracle transformation if no one was there to witness it?

  “Chantal, do me a favor, will you?” Elizabeth’s voice was softer now, needing to get the other girl on side. “Find out the shoe size and favorite color of every influential fashion editor in New York, London, Paris, and Milan for me. I’ve got a way to make sure that everyone comes.”

  The following day, Elizabeth sent out thirty pairs of Caitlin’s newly designed Juliet shoes: cute post-party ballet flats, in softest silver or gold leather embellished with sequins, which folded up into a matching drawstring pouch. Fun as well as practical, Elizabeth felt they showed a more innovative side to Melville and gave a nice taste of what the new collection would be about.

  The next morning, the switchboard was jammed with calls from editors who’d changed their mind and now wanted to attend the show. Elizabeth’s plan had worked, just as it had with Yamamoto’s wife all those years ago.

  Of course that hadn’t been the end of the problems. It was Murphy’s Law. She’d woken this morning to find that a blizzard had descended on the capital. As the day wore on, the pretty snowflakes turned to gray sleet, and she had spent the afternoon staring out at the dark skies in despair, wondering if the weather would keep fashion’s great from attending tonight. It was bad enough that Caitlin had decided to hold the show way out in Bermondsey, without having to contend with this.

  But now, as Cole turned off the road, she saw there was no reason to worry. A line of Bentleys and Jags waited for valet parking. Another line of black cabs dropped slick media types at the velvet-roped entrance.

  Cole glanced over at her. “Happy?” He’d borne the brunt of her stress these past few days.

  She smiled sheepishly. “Relieved.”

  “Good.”

  An usher with a giant golf umbrella rushed forward to open the car door. Elizabeth neatly side-stepped a slushy puddle, wondering again why she’d worn strappy sandals on a night like this. They were bound to get ruined. She put a hand to her poker-straight blonde hair. Thank God at least she wasn’t prone to frizz.

  Cole threw the keys at the valet and came around to join her. He took her hand. “Come on. Let’s go in.”

  Elizabeth glanced up at her husband and felt a sudden rush of pride. He always looked good, but tonight he was magnificent, his broad shoulders easily filling out his dinner jacket. He’d had to put up with a lot lately. Once this was out of the way, she would start con
centrating on him again.

  As long as everything goes well, that is . . .

  But there was no reason for it not to. The family had pulled together on this, and they were all here tonight, rooting for the evening to be a success. Well, all except Amber. Elizabeth felt the faintest prickle of guilt. Amber’s absence was partly her fault. Perhaps, with hindsight, she could have handled their phone call better. She’d just been so upset by those photos of her little sister in the papers that she’d lost her cool.

  Once Elizabeth had calmed down, she’d regretted the argument. Wanting to make amends, she had decided the best way to show support would be to invite Amber to model in tonight’s show. This time, she’d gotten Caitlin to call their younger sibling, deciding they were much less likely to rub each other the wrong way. However, Amber had stubbornly refused, saying she was quite capable of getting work for herself and didn’t need their charity.

  “She’s still angry,” Caitlin had reasoned. “Give her a few weeks, and we can try again.”

  Elizabeth knew she was right. However difficult it was for them, Amber was an adult, and they couldn’t force their decisions on her. Now, as she took her place in the front row, she put her troubled youngest sister from her mind and thought instead of Caitlin and how nervous she must be feeling right now.

  Backstage, Caitlin was thankfully too busy to have time for nerves. With only a few minutes to go, she was making a last-minute check of all the models.

  “Your tops must have become mixed up on the rail,” she told two of the girls, standing over them to make sure they swapped back before turning to another and saying, “Remember, wait until you get to the end of the catwalk, pause for a few seconds, and then take the jacket off.”

  She’d peeked out at the audience earlier and seen the stadium-size room filling up. So much was riding on tonight, and Caitlin knew it was her reputation on the line. Melville didn’t usually hold a show on this scale. For the first time, top models had been hired, and the crème de la crème of the fashion world had been invited to watch. She’d even thought about signing up one of fashion’s hottest producers to put the show together but in the end had decided to do it all herself. It was her vision—she didn’t trust anyone else.

  She’d come up with a list of venues. There were the usual suspects: hotels, museums . . . but she hadn’t liked any of them. She didn’t want to show her collection in one of the usual minimalist white rooms. Her designs were about London, a fusion of modern and historic London, and she needed somewhere which reflected that. So she’d found an abandoned warehouse in bohemian Bermondsey.

  “Why the hell are you holding it there?” Elizabeth had asked when she’d first heard. But as soon as Caitlin had walked into the building, which had once housed spices and teas from the Far East, she had known it was the ideal venue. It had that period feel she had been searching for—huge vaulted ceilings and cast-iron pillars. Given those features, she didn’t need to think about any further decoration. A runway, seating, and lighting had been easy to hire and assemble. And they were all set.

  Now, it was up to the designs to speak for themselves. She knew William, Elizabeth, and the rest of the family were out in the audience, rooting for her. And Lucien, too. He had sent a Good Luck bouquet that afternoon. It was all in white: white roses, lilies, freesias, and gerberas—simple, elegant. Pure Lucien. If everything went well tonight, she’d finally introduce him to William, she promised herself.

  The lights dimmed. And in that moment she put Lucien, her father, and everyone else from her mind. Adrenaline coursed through her. This was it. The moment she had been waiting for.

  Outside, in the auditorium, the air throbbed with expectation. The momentum around Melville’s latest collection had already begun to build even before London Fashion Week kicked off. As journalists, celebrities, and fashion commentators took their seats, they chatted and gossiped in excited anticipation.

  Usually, the Melville show was a fashion graveyard. But over the past couple of weeks it had become clear that something exciting was happening over at the English fashion house. The pre-show gift had piqued everyone’s interest. And then rumors had started filtering out of the Albemarle Street headquarters—most of them strategically leaked by Elizabeth—of changes afoot. “There’s something going on at Melville . . .”

  Now, press and buyers waited in eager anticipation to see if the hype was true.

  To set the mood, Caitlin had selected the Prelude to Purcell’s semi-opera, The Fairy Queen. As the triumphant sound of strings, trumpets, and oboes filled the air, everyone fell silent. Then the formal baroque music was joined by a driving hiphop beat booming out of the loudspeakers, a brilliant combination of classical and modern that a friend in the music business had mixed especially for Caitlin.

  A bright, white spotlight hit the runway, and model Sapphire Klint strutted out. Laced into a fitted corset in deepest purple, her legs encased in a pair of skin-tight black leather jodhpurs with matching riding gloves, she looked like a modern highwaywoman. She cracked a whip at the audience as she stalked by in fuck-me boots.

  “This is fabulous!” the senior buyer for Harvey Nichols whispered to her neighbor, but InStyle’s fashion editor was too busy scrawling down every detail to voice her agreement.

  The audience gasped and applauded as girl after girl hit the runway, looking ever-more-sensational, in crushed velvet jackets, satin halters, and elegant evening gowns made of yards and yards of lace. The collection was sharp, hip, and sensual—words no one would ever have associated with Melville.

  “The clothes were simply sumptuous!” gushed the fashion correspondent for The Times, when she phoned in her copy later that night after the show. “It was costume drama meets contemporary clubland.”

  “I haven’t seen anything so exciting since Tom Ford took over at Gucci,” the editor of Women’s Wear Daily was heard to remark over and over again.

  The after-party took place in the elegant surroundings of Annabel’s in Berkeley Square. The venue was William’s choice, a link to the sixties and seventies heyday of the company. As the Melville family arrived at the private club, journalists, photographers, and camera crews fought to quiz them about the company’s new look. Naturally, Caitlin was the focus of their attention. After the show, she had changed into a baroque-inspired gown of burgundy velvet, complete with fitted bodice and full skirt, trimmed at the bust and sleeves with antique lace. The decadent costume captured the mood of the collection perfectly, and everyone fought to get a photograph.

  William stepped forward and put his arm around her shoulders.

  “What you have seen tonight is our first step toward showing the world that Melville is still the great company that it has always been. And I’d like you to meet the person responsible—my wonderful, talented daughter, Caitlin.”

  He hugged her close as she smiled up at him. Flashbulbs blinded them as dozens of photographers immortalized the moment.

  Elizabeth stood to the side, looking on, wondering why she didn’t feel happier. This was exactly what she had wanted, the kick-start the brand desperately needed. But she was only human, and it was hard seeing Caitlin get all the credit. Especially when she knew that tonight would never have happened without her efforts.

  Around midnight, the PR team went out to collect the first editions and bring them back to Annabel’s. The fashion and business pages all led with the same headline: Father and Daughter Team Breathe Life into Melville, complete with a picture of William embracing Caitlin underneath. There was a look of pride on his face that Elizabeth had always wanted him to bestow on her.

  By Elizabeth’s side, Piers beamed. “Isn’t this fantastic? Your father’s so delighted with everything Caitlin has done.”

  On autopilot, Elizabeth smiled her agreement. She was so busy trying to appear pleased for Caitlin that she didn’t notice the appraising look Piers was giving her.

  Cole wasn’t sure what had gotten into Elizabeth. She’d been in such a good mood earl
ier, but now suddenly she seemed irritable and upset, insisting that they should leave right away. “But I haven’t even had a chance to speak to your dad yet,” Cole protested.

  “Well, you go and do that,” she snapped. “I’ll see you outside.”

  Cole knew she wanted him to follow her, but he wasn’t about to go without at least exchanging a few words with William. He knew how easily his father-in-law could take offense.

  He found Melville’s chief executive surrounded by a bunch of the company’s directors. It took a while, but finally Cole managed to get him alone. He made the appropriate noises about William looking better. “And how are you finding being back at work?”

  “Good,” William answered a touch defensively. He was always a little wary around his dynamic, successful son-in-law. “Frankly, I’m not sure how much more of this staying at home I could have taken,” he added. “Isabelle was beginning to drive me mad!”

  Cole smiled. “It’s definitely an exciting time for the company,” he said generously, happy for once to flatter William’s ego. He glanced around the room. “Tonight was a definite coup for Melville.”

  William visibly relaxed. “Yes,” he agreed. “I never doubted the show was going to be a great success. But it’s exceeded even my expectations.” There was a pause, and both men sipped their drinks. “And how’s everything going with you?” William asked.

  “Good,” Cole said, echoing William’s earlier sentiment. “It’s been . . . well, pretty hectic since we moved back.”

  He hesitated, wondering how to phrase his request. He’d been waiting for an appropriate time to ask William to have a word with Elizabeth about slowing down. Cole had tried to get her to relax, to take work a little less seriously, but he didn’t seem to be able to get through to her. But she listened to her father—maybe William would have more luck.