The Mistress(35)
Her life with him made her think of her mother at times, and she wondered if she was anything like her. Her mother had traded her body, and sex, for money, as a prostitute. And Natasha couldn’t help asking herself if that was what she was doing, giving Vladimir her body and her freedom, her life and dedication to him, in exchange for the golden existence she led with him, and the gifts he showered on her. Or was this more like marriage, where a woman cares for a man, gives him her body, and has his babies, while he provides for her? Was it respectable or shameful? Sometimes she couldn’t decide and wasn’t sure. He was always kind and generous with her. There were no babies involved, and he didn’t want any, but she gave him every other part of her, and all she could give.
He lay spent and sated in her arms after they made love. He had roared as he always did, and was sometimes rough with her, but she knew that sometimes it was what he needed, as a release from the pressures he lived with every day. She was the escape he used to free himself from the tension he dealt with, some of which she never even knew about. But she welcomed him into her body whenever he chose. And it didn’t seem wrong to her, given all he did for her.
He was up at six the next morning, and she ordered breakfast for them. He left the hotel at seven and looked at her longingly for a moment. Her beauty never ceased to amaze him, and she had only gotten lovelier and more delicate looking in the past seven years.
“Start shopping for the apartment,” he said with a smile as he kissed her. She was standing naked in his arms, with the scent of their lovemaking on her, and he wished he could stay. But they had to be in the air on their way to Moscow by eight, and it would take him half an hour to get to Le Bourget.
“I’ll miss you,” she said softly, as she kissed him.
“I’ll miss you too. I’ll call you when we land.” And then he was gone. He rarely said he loved her, but she knew he did, just as she loved him, or believed she did. It was love as she knew it.
She started looking for things for the apartment that morning, at antique stores she had walked by often, and now she had a mission, and a job to do. She had never had as much fun in her life, and one of the antique dealers gave her the name of a woman who made fabulous curtains. For the next two weeks, she never stopped. She bought paintings, furniture, fabrics, two beautiful rugs for the living room, and one for their bedroom. She bought an antique canopied bed that had been enlarged. She bought everything they needed for the kitchen, and hired a Russian maid. And when they went back to London, she wanted to do more shopping there. Vladimir called her for reports daily, and before meeting her in London, he went back to Italy, to check progress on the plans for the boat.
It was a busy fall for both of them, and in December, Natasha oversaw the installation of everything she had bought, while Vladimir was in Moscow with the president again. By the time he met her in Paris the week before Christmas, the apartment looked as though they had lived there for years. And when he came to see it, Vladimir loved everything she had chosen, and was impressed by what a good job she had done. They decided to spend Christmas there, and flew to the Caribbean the day after, where Princess Marina was waiting for them. She had made the crossing in November, and he was planning to keep her there until April or May, and then bring her back to the South of France in late May or early June. It felt good to be on the boat and relax in familiar surroundings. They were returning to Paris in late January for the haute couture shows, where he loved picking clothes for her twice a year, in January and July. They had a month to relax and spend on the boat until then, while Vladimir worked from his high-tech office on the yacht.
He flew back to Paris with her two days before the couture shows, and it was wonderful having the apartment to stay in. It was beginning to feel like home.
There were only two haute couture houses left of the illustrious old ones, Dior and Chanel, and a third more recent one, Elie Saab, that created custom-made evening gowns, and a small group of new, young designers, whose work had never been considered haute couture by those knowledgeable in fashion. But the two big shows were fun to go to, and the clothes and the settings were spectacular.
The first show they were going to was Dior Haute Couture, which was held in a tent they had built specially, behind the Invalides on the Left Bank. It was a spectacular affair, heated and theatrically lit, all lined in mirrors, with a garden theme that looked like a movie set and had been inspired by the gardens of Versailles. Millions were spent on the décor for each couture show, as well as the ready-to-wear shows, which were almost as theatrical and also occurred twice a year. The ready-to-wear shows were big business and happened in four cities, and were put on to show retailers worldwide what was coming in the next season so they could place their orders, and attracted a host of celebrities and fashionistas as well. The haute couture shows were a different breed, and only in Paris. They were the last survivors of a dying art, and their clients had dwindled over the years to a precious few.
With clothes that cost anywhere from fifty to five hundred thousand dollars—entirely handmade, every single stitch, each one made to order, and never duplicated in the same city, social circle, or event—there were almost no haute couture buyers in the modern world. In years gone by, there were flocks of wealthy society women, many of them on best-dressed lists, who came from around the world to order their wardrobes twice a year. But as the big design houses closed one by one, and the price of couture clothes rose into the stratosphere, there were only a few young women now, the mistresses of very, very rich men, who bought them. The styles no longer suited older women who could afford them, and the young girls they were primarily designed for could never have bought them on their own.