Fancy Pants (Wynette, Texas #1)(20)

His blunt response shocked her. “Actually, no.” Pushing himself back from the table, he stood abruptly. “I don't understand at all.” He looked down at the floor and then up again at her. “I must confess I've rather fallen for you, Francesca, and you gave me every reason to believe that you cared for me.”

“I do, “ she replied earnestly. “Of course I do.”

“But not enough to put up with all that goes along with me.”

The combination of stubborn pride and hurt she heard in his voice made her feel horribly guilty. Weren't the royals supposed to hide their emotions, no matter how trying the circumstances? “It is rather a lot,” she reminded him.

“Yes, it is, isn't it?” There was a trace of bitterness in his laugh. “Foolish of me to have believed you cared enough to put up with it.”

Now, in the privacy of her bedroom, Francesca frowned briefly at her reflection in the mirror. Since her own heart had never been affected by anyone, it always came as something of a surprise to her when one of the men with whom she was involved reacted so strongly when they parted.

Still, there was nothing to be done about it now. She recapped her pot of lip gloss and tried to restore her spirits by humming a British dance hall tune from the 1930s about a man who danced with a girl who had danced with the Prince of Wales.

“I'm leaving now, darling,” Chloe said, appearing in the doorway as she adjusted the brim of a cream felt bowler over her dark hair, cut short and curly. “If Helmut calls, tell him I'll be back by one.”

“If Helmut calls, I'll tell him you bloody well died.” Francesca splayed her hand on her hip, her cinnamon brown fingernails looking like small sculptured almonds as she tapped them impatiently against her green suede slacks.

Chloe fastened the neck clasp of her mink. “Now, darling...”

Francesca felt a pang of remorse as she noticed how tired her mother looked, but she repressed it, reminding herself that Chloe's self-destructiveness with men had grown worse in recent months and it was her duty as a daughter to point it out. “He's a gigolo, Mummy. Everyone knows it. A phony German prince who's making an absolute fool of you.” She reached past the scènted Porthault hangers in her closet to the rack holding the gold fish-scale belt she'd bought at David Webb the last time she was in New York. After securing the clasp at her waist, she returned her attention to Chloe. “I'm worried about you, Mummy. There are circles under your eyes, and you look tired all the time. You've also been impossible to live with. Only yesterday you brought home the beige Givenchy kimono for me instead of the silver one I asked you to get.”

Chloe sighed. “I'm sorry, darling. I—I've had things on my mind, and I haven't been sleeping well. I'll pick up the silver kimono for you when I'm out today.”

Francesca's pleasure in hearing that she would get the proper kimono didn't quite overshadow her concern for Chloe. As gently as possible, she tried to make Chloe understand how serious all this was. “You're forty, Mummy. You need to start taking better care of yourself. Gracious, you haven't had a facial in weeks.”

To her dismay, she saw that she'd hurt Chloe's feelings. Rushing over, she gave her mother a quick conciliatory hug, careful not to smear the delicate taupe shading beneath her cheekbones. “Never mind,” she said. “I adore you. And you're still the most beautiful mother in London.”

“Which reminds me—one mother in this house is enough. You are taking your birth control pills, aren't you, darling?”

Francesca groaned. “Not this again...”

Chloe withdrew a pair of gloves from an ostrich-skin Chanel handbag and began tugging them on. “I can't bear the thought of your becoming pregnant when you're still so young. Pregnancy is so dangerous.”

Francesca flicked her hair behind her shoulders and turned back to the mirror. “All the more reason not to forget, isn't it,” she said lightly.

“Just be careful, darling.”

“Have you ever known me to lose control of any situation involving men?”

“Thank God, no.” Chloe pushed her thumbs beneath the collar of her mink and lifted the fur until it brushed the bottom of her jaw. “If only I'd been more like you when I was twenty.” She gave a wry chuckle. “Who am I fooling? If only I were more like you right now.” Blowing a kiss in the air, she waved good-bye with her handbag and disappeared down the hallway.

Francesca wrinkled her nose in the mirror, then jerked out the comb she had just arranged in her hair and stalked over to her window. As she stared down into the garden, the unwelcome memory of her old encounter with Evan Varian came back to her, and she shivered. Although she knew sex couldn't be that dreadful for most women, her experience with Evan three years ago had made her lose much of her desire for further experimentation, even with men who attracted her. Still, Evan's taunt about her frigidity had hung in the dusty corners of her consciousness, leaping out at the strangest times to plague her. Finally, last summer, she'd gathered her courage and permitted a handsome young Swedish sculptor she'd met in Marrakech to take her to bed.

She frowned as she remembered how awful it had been. She knew there had to be more to sex than having someone heaving away over her body, pawihg at her most private parts with sweat dripping from his armpits all over her. The only feeling the experience had produced inside her had been a terrible anxiety. She hated the vulnerability, the unnerving sense that she had relinquished control. Where was the mystical closeness the poets wrote about? Why wasn't she able to feel close to anybody?