Aric finally figured out why he was so comfortable.

  He was in a sea of beauty. No one was paying him special attention.

  Most of the male models were taller than he was. Taller, but lighter by fifteen pounds in some cases. Thin and lean seemed to be the fashion. Many of the women were just as tall as he was. The room reminded him of Massachusetts in the fall—trees filled with leaves of every shade. Here it was hair, and skin, and clothes. A room of moving flora, each with its own arrangement of beauty.

  He watched his favorite beautiful creature as she navigated the crowd. Delphine was in her element. Her other element. She was, without doubt, the brightest star in the room—physically, intellectually. In time the others would fade, but not her. She would be immortalized alongside giants like Marie Curie and Rosalind Franklin. There was no doubt in his mind.

  He was so distracted watching Delphine that he hadn’t noticed the man and woman approach until one of them spoke.

  “I don’t recognize you. Who are you with?” said a tall woman with hair so blond it was nearly white. Her eyes were an astonishing shade of violet, and Aric stared into them for several seconds before realizing he was doing it. Unlike most women he’d met, she didn’t flinch under his gaze. It seemed she was just as accustomed to being admired as he was.

  “I’m with Delphine,” he said innocently, trying to force his eyes elsewhere.

  I wonder if she’s wearing colored contact lenses?

  The man next to her couldn’t have looked more different: warm skin the color of rich coffee, dark eyes, short bck hair. His voice was also different.

  “She means, which board are you on? Who’s got you? Elite? IMG?”

  “I’m sorry—I don’t understand,” Aric replied, then realized—too te—that they had been speaking two different nguages and he’d answered without thinking first.

  “You’re not with anyone? You’re not a model?” the woman asked.

  Italian, Aric realized. Not Delphine’s accent, but the same nguage.

  “No, sorry. I’m here with Delphine Moreau. I’m her plus one.”

  The looks he received told him that phrase didn’t transte well.

  “It’s a common phrase in the States,” he expined. “When you’re invited somewhere and allowed to bring one person. We call that person your ‘plus one.’”

  The blonde woman nodded. “We would say L’invito vale per due persone."

  She looked at her friend. “How would you say that?”

  “Puedes venir con acompa?ante.”

  Aric nodded.

  The invitation is valid for two people.

  You can bring a guest.

  “So you’re here with Delphine. You her escort?” the man asked.

  Spanish? Aric wondered. It reminded him of Carlos. But Carol’s current lover spoke two different nguages when he was angry or excited. One of them Aric understood completely. With the other, there were gaps.

  “In America, the word escort has a—well, it’s sort of a—never mind.” He smiled. “We’re good friends, and she invited me to come with her.”

  Delphine picked that moment to look his way and smile. It was not the smile of a friend. It was a lover’s smile. The man and woman recognized it immediately, and the same thought passed through their minds.

  Just friends? I don’t think so.

  Delphine watched the three of them as they talked. No one who walked into the crowded room would look at Aric and think he was mispced. Gianluca had done a marvelous job—but he’d had marvelous raw material to work with. Even in this room, Aric’s beauty stood out. And his fresh face—seen for the first time by the movers and shakers of European fashion—drew a fair amount of interest.

  A man’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Delphine, who was that man on your arm earlier? I don’t recognize him. Is he new?”

  Jasper Klein was tall. Rail-thin. He wore a cobalt blue shirt that set off his pale hair, sculpted into an undercut. He was Dutch, but most people who didn’t know that assumed—because of his accent—that he was German.

  “That’s Rico, cheri. He’s not in the industry. He’s mine. My Rico.”

  “You should get him signed. He could go global,” said the Creative Director of De Stijl Casting Agency for Amsterdam & Min.

  “His interests lie elsewhere,” she replied cryptically.

  She would bet actual money that within thirty minutes Jasper would be offering Aric a contract himself.

  “Rico—” Jasper asked implicitly.

  Delphine smiled. “Stel.”

  “Rico Stel,” Jasper repeated, already wondering how fast he could get a contract written up. Someone was going to snatch up the youth before the night was out. Jasper pnned for that someone to be him.

  He would not have been at all surprised to learn he wasn’t the only one thinking it. Fresh talent was always welcome—especially when it looked like that.

  Delphine turned and looked at Aric again. He was talking to Mateo Cruz Delgado and Livia Conti. Together they made a striking group. Contrasting beauties. Mateo said something that introduced the room to Aric’s unrestrained ugh. There was something about it that allowed it to carry—and several heads turned toward the musical, uninhibited sound. Livia responded the way most women did, giggling and pcing her hand on his arm.

  Delphine decided it was time to appear by his side again and reassert her cim.

  Her silver stiletto, nearly strapless sandals were almost invisible from a distance, and to Aric it looked like she floated across the floor as she approached.

  “I must steal Rico away from the two of you,” she said as she hooked her arm in his. She rested her head on his shoulder, rubbing her cheek against him like a cat ciming what was hers—and felt the warm brush of his lips on her hair. Arianne would have huffed out an objection to anything firmer that endangered her hard work.

  Nadine Vallon was even shorter than Siobhán. Ptinum blond pixie-cut.

  “Nadine, this is the face I promised you,” Delphine said as she and Aric approached.

  Nadine Vallon, Booking Editor for L’Uomo Vogue, hadn’t waited for permission to inspect—admire—the young man on her fellow Frenchwoman’s arm. She liked what she saw.

  This edition is going to fly off the stands, she thought.

  “Franco Moschino is going to owe you for this,” she said to Delphine. “Does this face also come with a name, or should I just call you Adonis?”

  Her accent reminded Aric of Roz.

  “Rico Stel, meet Nadine Vallon,” Delphine said. “She’s arranging my special gift for you.”

  Aric looked at her quizzically. He sent her a memory of the two of them together—which caused her breath to catch.

  “Another special gift?” he asked.

  Wicked, she sent back, as her legs went slightly weak. She curled her fingers and used the backs of them to gently stroke his smooth cheek.

  “A different kind of gift.”

  2 September, 1984 — Guildford, Engnd

  Not being the biggest wine drinker, Ed Martell still had four bottles in his celr after the July party. That number was now two. Roz and Tess had accounted for more of it than Edith and Ed, but he’d done his part. Not because he liked it necessarily, but because if he didn’t, his daughter and her new friend would drink it—and they’d already had enough, in his opinion.

  He needn’t have worried. Both women were happy—giddy, even. But the wine was not the reason. And while they were both slightly tipsy, they were still in full possession of their faculties. It was one faculty in particur that was the cause of their happiness.

  Tess had been surprised by the invitation. She’d certainly not put her best foot forward on her first visit. Even if she had, it had been covered in horse shit, which tended to strip the gilding from the lily. She’d believed Roz’s expnation that my father would like to invite you to Sunday dinner. It didn’t take long to realize whose idea it had been—which had surprised her even more. She’d been so distracted—so distraught—on her st visit she’d barely looked at Roz. She’d only remembered three faces from then, and Roz’s wasn’t one of them.

  But it was a nice face. Pretty. Honest. Tess wasn’t used to women in this country being quite so open about—those feelings. She certainly hadn’t encouraged Roz. Unless she was into red-eyed, tear-stained women covered in manure.

  Which wasn’t necessarily a showstopper for Tess. She just wanted to be sure.

  “Why did you invite me?” she’d asked pinly when they were alone in the backyard. Both of them still held on to a half-full gss. Roz took a sip before answering.

  “I wanted to see you again,” she said into her gss before looking up directly at Tess.

  Tess couldn’t remember the st time anyone had said something that sweet to her. She thought Evie might like Roz—which, for Tess, was the highest form of compliment.

  “How do you know I don’t have a boyfriend?” she asked. It was a silly question, really. She’d had her st boyfriend at the tender age of nineteen—her final attempt at the life her parents wanted for her. Husband. Children (for her). Grandchildren (for her mother). She’d abandoned that lie shortly after. She’d left her childhood home not long after that, no longer welcome.

  “Do you?” Roz asked, both hopeful and fearful of the answer she would receive.

  Tess smiled, and then put Roz out of her misery.

  “No.”

  “He didn’t consult you first, then?” Edith asked.

  Ed’s attention had been on his daughter—and his guest.

  Roz’s guest, he corrected himself. He could see them through the rge patio door, standing in the illumination of the outside light. Their conversation seemed to veer between solemnity and levity by turns. At least, that was how he interpreted the moments of silence followed by bursts of ughter.

  Roz had been sequestered in his study—her study now—for several months, and it was nice to see her get out and meet people. He had to admit total ignorance as to his daughter’s sexuality. They’d been apart more often than not, and he’d had little opportunity to observe or inquire. Add in the minor detail that it was none of his business, and he cared not in the slightest. If she was happy, he was happy. If she was unhappy—well, it was more socially acceptable to beat an abusive boyfriend senseless with a cricket bat than it was a girlfriend.

  But could a woman who shows her animals so much love be capable of such abuse? he wondered.

  “Ed,” Edith said sharply.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “Did Don Dreyer talk to you about Aric doing his postgraduate work in Edinburgh?”

  He brought his mind back to the topic at hand.

  “No, he didn’t. But it’s not like he needs my permission to talk to Aric. And he’s right—it’s a good program. A good fit for our d—for Aric.”

  “For our d?” Ruth asked merrily. “Did we adopt him and you didn't tell me?”

  Ed smirked, but only to cover his slip. He’d begun to think of Aric as his son—maybe a nephew. Certainly someone much closer than just a student. And he hadn’t been blind to how Aric looked to him for advice, for direction—counsel. He’d been fttered when the first thing the boy had done on his st visit was to admit what had happened during the trip.

  “You know what I mean. We’ve invested a lot of time and effort in him. We want what’s best for him, wherever that may take him. But it’s natural that we’d like to keep him around. He’s part of the team.”

  She smiled at his much younger face—to cushion the blow before it nded.

  “Your team is not immortal, Ed. It’s going to dissolve eventually. These wonderful young minds need the freedom to grow as they may. The winds of change will blow them to the four corners of the Earth. It’s perfectly natural.”

  He nodded. “I know. It still hurts.”

  “We’ll come visit,” Edith promised. She formed an image in her head—of her and Aric, towing three children of various ages, into Schuster Lab to visit the man who—according to local rumor—had a picture of himself in his attic, one that aged in his pce.

  “That reminds me,” Ed said. “We need to start looking at how to make Aric’s flights quieter. After everything we’ve been doing tely, it should be pretty easy.”

  “You’re teaching post-graduate fluid dynamics this semester,” Edith reminded him. “Give it to your css when you get to aeroacoustics.”

  Ed thought about it for a second.

  “That’s an excellent idea.”

  Sunday, 2 September 1984 — Min, Italy

  Geneviève was te.

  She’d had to wait her turn for hair and makeup. And Franco had discarded seven or eight outfits as not worthy of her—even though they were his designs—before nding on one that he liked. She’d deduced that mostly from the look on his face, and the animated way he’d spoken as he nodded his approval. Her Italian was nowhere near up to the challenge of understanding him. He’d realized that finally and switched to French. It wasn’t perfect, but it was much better than any attempt she might have made to speak his native nguage.

  “La Nouvelle Révolutionnaire. Parfait.”

  She knew Min was his hometown, and that his family owned an iron foundry—from which he’d run away (both the family and the foundry) to study at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. His star was on the rise. As was hers—thanks to him.

  A pleated navy skirt, high-waisted and short. A red bzer cropped at the ribs, with gold buttons and white piping. White gloves and a beret worn cocked to the side—and a slogan pin that read: I’m not your muse. Very Moschino: chic, subversive, political in a wink-and-nod kind of way.

  “Your youth will make this ensemble electric,” he said in broken Fran?ais.

  Compared to some of the other outfits that now y scattered around her it was positively tame.

  She studied herself in the mirror for a moment.

  It was finally happening. She was stepping into the world of professional modeling.

  Just like her sister.

  “Hurry,” he said as he smiled at her in reflection. “You’ll be te.”

  He’d been right. Barely thirty minutes remained of the official reception. She stood at the door and took in the opulence of the room, and the elegance of the attendees, as a woman in a navy dress holding a clipboard approached her. Unlike she had with the other attendees, she didn’t smile.

  “Posso aiutarti?” she asked in a tone of voice that was meant to announce that she thought not. Can I help you?

  Geneviève handed her the printed invitation that indicated she was a special guest of one of the designers. Giulia Moreschi looked at the name on the card, made the connection with the outfit this very young girl was wearing, and finally smiled.

  “Benvenuta, signorina...?” Good evening, miss...?

  “Geneviève. Geneviève Moreau.”