‘It didn’t take long for me to like you, though,’ she said.
‘Or for me to forget my grumpiness.’
She reached up on tiptoe and kissed him, letting her lips linger as they stood on the steps in the afternoon sunshine.
‘I should have taken you to my apartment for lunch,’ he moaned, his forehead touching hers as their lips parted.
‘No, this is exactly where we’re supposed to be,’ she said. ‘I can’t wait to see the collections.’
After he entered the code to let them in, Henri nudged open the door and then told her to close her eyes. Blake obliged, although she didn’t expect him to place his hands over her eyes as well.
‘I want you to take little steps, and I’ll tell you when you can look,’ he said, his body close to hers as she shuffled forward. ‘No peeping,’ Henri whispered into her ear and moved even closer, his chest against her back.
When they finally stopped moving, Blake waited, hearing Henri’s breathing increase behind her. He was nervous. She’d never known him to be anything other than confident before, but she could sense that this was why he was hesitating.
‘Can I look now?’ she asked, keeping her voice low as if she were in a library.
Henri finally uncovered her face and dropped his hands to her shoulders, and she opened her eyes.
‘Oh my goodness.’ The room was like the finest museum, only instead of artefacts, it was filled with tall glass boxes that displayed the most beautiful of dresses, somehow suspended in the air. ‘Henri,’ she said, turning to him, eyes wide as she stared at him. ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like it.’
‘Please, go and explore. I wanted you to have a private viewing before anyone else has even set foot in here.’
Blake didn’t need any encouragement. She went to the first box and immediately recognised the outfit. It was the blush-pink Louis Vuitton dress and coat worn by France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron, to the coronation of King Charles in London. It had easily been her favourite outfit from the entire ceremony, andshe loved that it was an ensemble by a French designer worn by a Frenchwoman.
‘This is stunning,’ she said, as much to herself as to Henri, who was trailing behind her, not wanting to interfere with her experience. ‘Such an iconic outfit, and an iconic woman.’
She moved slowly to the next box, and the next, the lighting on each showing the outfit perfectly, and taking her through each decade of fashion in the most thoughtful of ways.
But it was when she reached the 1930s that she found her favourite era.
‘Coco Chanel,’ she gasped. ‘It must have been so hard to decide which of her pieces to include.’
‘It was,’ Henri said, coming up to stand beside her. ‘And you’ll soon see that I also included her in the 1940s, to show how fashion changed post-war. I find her to be one of the most fascinating French designers.’
‘I feel like there’s abut,’ Blake said, as she moved around the glass box, wishing she could reach out and touch the jacket, to feel the fabric between her fingers. Since beginning to work with Céline, she’d come to realise how tactile she was, how much she needed to skim her fingertips across silk and velvet and cotton.
‘I thought this next one might interest you,’ Henri said, hovering in a way he hadn’t when she’d been inspecting the earlier works.
She was going to take her time, but she sensed that he was waiting for her to move on.
‘I hope you don’t try to hurry all your other guests through,’ she said, as she turned to the next box. ‘You chose to do a few designers for this same year?’
Henri stayed silent, and she studied the dress before leaning forward to read the display. But her lips never uttered a sound.
Evelina Lavigne.
She looked back up at the dress, then at Henri, who now had his arms folded across his chest. Blake looked back at the dress.
She knew now why it was familiar to her.
The almost sensual design, the way it skimmed the waist and hugged the figure, the dark grey velvet that she’d felt against her skin so many times already.
He’d found Evelina’s dress.
‘How?’ she whispered. ‘How did you, I mean…’
‘My greatest wish was to find out more about your great-grandmother for you,’ Henri said, as he took a key from his pocket and carefully unlocked the glass box, opening the door and then standing back. ‘I haven’t been able to find out anything more about Evelina that you don’t already know, or the details of what happened to her after she moved back to Provins, but I scoured France for one of her dresses.’
