Wednesday, 5 September 1984—Min, Italy

  11:00 AM — Runway Show: Missoni

  Signature knits, bold color patterns, curated imperfections

  4:00 PM — Runway Show: Franco Moschino’s debut

  Young, irreverent, dramatic silhouettes

  8:30 PM — Optional attendance at Young Designers Afterparty

  Any ideas that Aric might have had about the easy life lead by elite fashion models evaporated like morning fog under a summer sun. Early rise. Quick breakfast consisting mostly of air—accompanied by bck coffee, yogurt and nuts, Hair. Makeup. Wardrobe. Aric’s presence was quickly accepted, and just as quickly ignored in the pandemonium of pre-show preparations and jitters of the first two days:

  Monday, 3 September 1984

  11:00 AM — Runway Show: Armani

  Location: Armani Theater

  Cssic, confident silhouettes

  3:00 PM — Private Fitting: Valentino Studio (1 hr)

  8:00 PM – te — Industry Dinner: Vogue Italia x Armani. Exclusive guest list only.

  Tuesday, 4 September 1984

  12:00 PM — Runway Show: Ferré (Gianfranco Ferré)

  Architectural elegance, high fashion

  Afternoon — Rest, private lunch with Arianna, drink with Dior Rep

  7:30 PM — Strategic networking dinner with Valentino PR

  Aric stayed in the background as much as possible. The task was made easier on Wednesday after the lessons of Monday and Tuesday, the main lesson being don’t look like a model.

  “Why aren’t you dressed yet?” He’d been asked no less than four times on Monday, but only two times on Tuesday. By the time Delphine was headed down the runway on Wednesday—the first of two trips she would take—no one had asked him anything. But that situation changed dramatically after she’d returned.

  Delphine was only part way into her next outfit when Tai Missoni himself approached them. But it was not her he was interested in.

  “Tomas has food poisoning. He can’t show,” he said urgently.

  One of only five men scheduled to appear was a no show. They could have hidden it if it had been one of the women. But no staff on the pnet could change a wardrobe fast enough to show five ensembles with only four models.

  She was wearing next to nothing as he spoke, but she was not the least bit self conscious—partly because Tai wasn’t paying any attention to her.

  He was looking at Aric.

  “Can you do it?” he asked. “I’ll pay you twice scale.”

  Aric and Delphine were silent for approximately two seconds.

  “I’m not—” Aric began.

  “He can do it,” Delphine interrupted. “No problem.”

  The outfit wasn’t meant for him.

  It belonged to a thinner, taller man—one whose frame was longer in the leg and narrower in the chest.

  He wore a deep V-neck knit tunic, sleeveless and abstract, in earth tones woven with plum and saffron zigzags. The edges were slightly frayed—on purpose—a kind of deliberate imperfection. A long, slouchy cardigan in loose-knit wool, dyed in a burnished copper gradient, hung off one shoulder. It trailed behind him like a soft echo.

  But it was tight. In his chest and shoulders. His arms, and thighs. And the inseam…Aric felt like he was already on first name basis with the scks that hugged him a bit too tightly. The legs were too long, but the taper allowed him to bunch them up at his calves so at least he wouldn’t trip on them. The designer looked at the effect and nodded approvingly.

  But the shoes—sandals really—were a non starter.

  “I think he looks perfect going barefoot,” Delphine said as she inspected him. Tai’s wife Rosita nodded silently.

  Why did I ever agree to this? Aric sent to her.

  You can do it. You outran fighter jets. This should be easy.

  The fighters weren’t filled with a hundred people all looking at my—

  Delphine's next thoughts were colored with her distinct sense of humor.

  Welcome to the world of high fashion.

  Their silent conversation was interrupted by Tai Missoni.

  “I like it better on him. It’s the perfect combination of imperfections.”

  “I think he’s gorgeous,” Rosita said as her eyes lingered on certain points of interest.

  “What’s your name?” she asked when her eyes finally reached his face.

  “This is Rico,” Delphine stated ftly. “And he’s mine.”

  “Well,” Rosita said with a wide grin as she headed out to her seat in the audience, “in a few minutes he’s going to belong to all of us.”

  Help me, Aric cast to anyone who was listening.

  “Don’t be such a baby. I do it in high heels. Are you saying I can do something you can’t do?”

  “I say that about a hundred times a day,” Aric replied, walking as if he were on a tightrope—one foot in front of the other.

  Delphine smiled at that confession. Comparing what each of them could do was like comparing the Sun to a baked potato.

  “Chin up, head still. Shoulders back. Not that far back,” she added quickly, seeing how much strain he was putting on the too-tight clothes. “Rex your face. You’re bored. You’d rather be anywhere but here.”

  “You’ve got that right. I would rather be anywhere else. But I’m not bored—I’m terrified. Tomas isn’t the only one who’s going to be puking his guts out.”

  Delphine ughed.

  “Step, step, step. Turn left. Turn right, center, turn around. Walk back. A subtle sway of your hips as you walk away, and every woman in the audience will be dreaming about you tonight.”

  “There are only two women I want dreaming about me tonight,” he said absentmindedly.

  He kept practicing in silence—too focused on the looming moment to notice the way Delphine was watching him, love flooding out of her like light through a cracked door.

  “It’s time,” Tai said at st.

  Aric had a sudden fsh—like a prison guard approaching a condemned man’s cell, leading him to the electric chair.

  “Can I have a blindfold?” he asked dryly, joining four other men, all in shoes, while he padded barefoot beside them.

  “If you’re good, I’ll buy you an ice cream cone,” Delphine said, kissing the side of his face.

  They’d given him the barest yer of makeup, but she was still careful.

  Aric was in the middle. Two in front, two behind. They all stood back stage for a moment while a man’s voice announced to the audience what they would be seeing next. Each of the men had their own way of preparing, and Aric took comfort in the fact that they were all nervous.

  “Just like stepping off a cliff,” the man in front of him said to himself. Aric thought he’d spoken Spanish. He realized that he was beginning to sort out one nguage from another.

  The man’s words reminded him of Cornwall. The cliff. The beach. The children watching him as he walked across the surface of the water to retrieve their downed kite. It might have been for that reason that when it was his turn and he began to walk on the invisible tight rope that his feet hovered a few millimeters above the runway. The announcer was saying something, but he couldn’t spare any brain capacity to listen. He had begun to reach out for Delphine before realizing that this was his problem, not hers and it wasn’t fair to ask her to hold his hand through the ordeal.

  But as he approached the end of the runway he spotted a familiar face in the audience, right next to the ptform he was striding across. It was the woman from Sunday.

  Anna he remembered. He was so relieved to see someone he knew that he locked his gaze on her. He smiled slightly as the relief poured out of him before realizing that his bored mask had shattered. Something else cracked in that moment. He realized it too te, as the barriers between his mind and hers began to flutter. He could see it in her face. She’d felt it. His anxiety, and the relief that followed. As if he was a drowning man and she was a life preserver. It filled her completely and she stifled the cry with her hand before it escaped into the room.

  She remembered the first man she’d ever slept with. A model, like the man on the runway. Young. Beautiful. She’d convinced herself afterward that she loved him. But a few months ter he’d forgotten her name. That was why it hit her so hard when it happened now—when her name appeared in her head in his voice, like a memory.

  Anna.

  The word tasted like chocote. It sounded like a violin.

  Aric reached the end of the runway. He stopped, executed his turns, gave the crowd, and Anna, one final gnce before turning around and retreating back down the runway. A murmur had started in the audience as he stood at the farthest point on the ptform. Delphine could see it even from where she stood, peering from the wings.

  His turns. He wasn’t pivoting on one foot. His entire body was turning left, right, center, around. As if he was suspended on a string, rotating in an unseen breeze. Her suspicions were confirmed as he approached her. A sliver of daylight between his feet and the ptform.

  She was about to say something to him but the look of relief on his face when he finally made it off stage wiped the thought from her mind. His actual relief flooded over her and everyone nearby as it overwhelmed his mental barriers. Everyone affected began to ugh, though no one knew why.

  “See?” she asked. “You survived.”

  His feet finally settled to the cold floor.

  “By the skin of my teeth.”

  Anna grew more emotional with every step. She waved the security guard aside as she passed, and he let her go—recognizing her, or at least whose wife she was—and choosing not to intervene.

  Backstage, she found him—Rico, as she knew him—shirtless, not yet redressed after the show. One look at his bare chest and long, lean body made her legs go weak.

  By the time she reached him, her carefully applied makeup was a mess. She tried to speak his name, but only got part of it out.

  “Ri—”

  He’d glimpsed something on her face out there. He’d known it had struck her hard—that it had touched something raw—but not how hard. Not like this.

  “Hey,” he said softly, gently.

  She was shorter than he was. He had to lean down to hug her, and when her arms wrapped around him tightly, he didn’t hesitate. He returned the embrace—and then, almost instinctively, picked her up in his arms.

  “I’m—sorry—” she gasped. “I—don’t—”

  “It’s okay,” he said, his voice like balm. “It's okay. Give yourself time.”

  He held her close, one arm under her legs, the other around her shoulders, cradling her to his smooth, muscur chest. She wept silently, then began to calm. Her breath slowed. Her limbs grew less tense.

  Then, gradually, she became aware of where she was—and what she was doing. The man holding her. The eyes turning their way. Her ruined makeup.

  He noticed the change in her posture and gently set her down.

  “I probably look awful,” she said, self-conscious, dabbing at her eyes.

  Aric smiled, mischievous and kind.

  “Just your face.”

  She let out a soft, surprised ugh and swatted him in the abdomen with the back of one hand while she wiped her eyes with the other.

  “Asshole,” she muttered. But the sting was gone. The grief was still there—but it was bearable now.

  “Guilty as charged,” Aric replied as Delphine offered Anna a tissue.

  In the audience, and afterward, much was said about the new face, and his presentation.

  “Did you see that?”

  “What was that?”

  “How did he do that?”

  All were common questions. But the most common of all were:

  “Who is he?”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Who’s he with?”

  A handful of people could answer those questions, at least partly.

  The two who could answer them completely weren’t talking. Not about that anyway.

  Shortly after the show they were discussing something else.

  “I need to go home on Sunday,” Delphine said pinly.

  Aric didn’t understand.

  “We’re both going home on Sunday.”

  She shook her head. “Home. Saint-Christol. Sister Cécile is not well. Geneviève told me. She’s been sick for a while. I’ll be back a few days te. You’ll be fine getting back to Surrey on your own, won’t you?”

  Aric still thought of Sommerbridge as home. Still referred to it that way at times. He should have known what Delphine had meant.

  “Who is Sister Cécile?” he asked.

  They were walking casually to the trattoria where they would meet Gene for lunch. It was a little on the cool side, and Delphine shivered. Aric put his arm around her and fed her some of his warmth.

  “She runs the school we all went to. école Sainte-Angèle de Saint-Christol. It’s run by the Order of Saint Ursu. They were explicitly focused on the education and empowerment of girls and young women. They were among the first orders dedicated to teaching outside of a cloister, and they’ve had a long legacy of promoting intellectual development, independence, and service. Sister Cécile took me under her wing. She became a second mother to me.”

  Aric had thought she’d been preoccupied with something, but he didn’t want to pry.

  “When did you find out?” he asked as he pulled her a bit closer. She rubbed her cheek gently against his shoulder.

  “Sunday night, before I came into your room.”

  He’d only noticed the change the next morning. At some point she’d gotten good at hiding her emotions from him. Probably long before their trip to Min. Before Cornwall even. He hadn’t realized it had been so hard on her, watching him and Edith together. He would have done, if he hadn’t been a complete idiot.

  “I’m sorry, Elphie. I didn’t know. I wish you’d shared it with me. I could have helped.”

  “I didn’t want to spoil your trip with bad news.”

  He kissed the side of her head, and stopped.

  “It’s our trip. Together. You can share anything with me. You know that. I know how much it helps me to let you help me. It’s only fair to let me return the favor.

  He was right. She’d gotten bad news and her mind switched to auto pilot. Don’t show her sister how worried she was. Be strong for her. For her boyfriend. For everyone around her.

  But Aric was one of the most powerful—and vulnerable—entities she’d ever met. If he could show weakness without shattering, maybe she could too.

  She put her arm around his waist and they continued walking.

  “You’re right, I guess. I should have told you. Old habits. Curse of the eldest.”

  “Well, I say we break that curse for good. We can talk about how—on the train to Saint-Christol.”

  Now it was her turn to stop them.

  “The train to—”

  She stopped when she realized what he was saying.

  “I’m coming with you.”