Read Online Beautiful People by Wendy Holden - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Wendy Holden
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and shouted until someone—usually the long-suffering Brazilian plastic surgeon on the ground floor— got up and let you in.
A sweeping, red-carpeted staircase with mahogany banisters rose up the entire six floors of the building, but Darcy, who lived in the penthouse, took the old-fashioned cage-style lift at this time of night. Pressing the lift button and hearing the doors clang shut somewhere above, Darcy allowed herself to luxuriate in the cosseting feeling of home.
But what made this impressive place home to her had nothing to do with the fact that flats here were expensive and sought after. To Darcy, the apartment had for years simply meant her beloved grandmother. Anna de Blank had lived to the age of eighty-five and left it to her favourite—and for that matter only—granddaughter upon her death two years earlier. Whereupon Darcy, resisting heroically her mother's pressure to sell the place and donate the proceeds to one of her causes, had lost no time moving in.
Inside the flat, Darcy glanced at the answerphone on the small Florentine table by the door. The green light winked steadily back. No one had called during the evening.
All was quiet and still and glowing with lamps whose pink shades were fitted with pink bulbs. Anna had been a reluctantly ageing beauty who believed rosy light was the most flattering for the face.
Darcy smiled, as she always did, at the enormous portrait of her grandmother in the entrance hall, resplendent in lemon-yellow chiffon, smiling faintly and beautifully, and holding a plate of her favourite indulgences, macaroons.
From her earliest childhood, macaroons and her grandmother had been associated in Darcy's mind. There had always been a white card box of them in the refrigerator, beribboned and stamped with the address of a smart baker in flowing gold letters. Darcy had been entranced with the colours of these strange, exotic confections, half cake and half biscuit, that came in exquisite, old-fashioned colours.
But Anna, even as she sank her small, white teeth into them and rolled her eyes in delight, would exclaim that even these, baked as they were by the best confectioner in London, were not to be compared with those she had tasted in France.
"But you know, my darling," she would say, "they are the hardest thing in the world to get exactly right, and no one makes them like they do in Paris."
Anna had travelled widely as an actress, and her stories of the great European cities, Paris and Rome especially, as they had been in the 1950s, entranced her granddaughter, but not as much as the macaroons did with their intense sweetness and intoxicating lightness. She could not imagine anyone making a better job of them.
She loved the fact that her grandmother had taken her passion for macaroons as the guiding inspiration for her apartment's decorative scheme. Each room was painted in a different pastel colour: lemon in the study, pink in the master bedroom, pistachio green in the dining room, lilac in the sitting room, and pale orange in the hall. It was one of the whimsical jokes that Darcy felt were entirely typical of her grandmother.
Darcy had kept the décor exactly as Anna had left it. It was as ornate and feminine as she remembered it from her childhood, all florals, silks, and delicate furniture with oval backs and slender gold legs. Small, round tables still held Anna's collection of bibelots and small antiques. In the master bedroom, muslin and toile de Jouy curtains still swept up into a crowned half-tester above the big, white, flounced bed Darcy remembered bouncing on. The rosy light on the white, oval-mirrored dressing table made small decorative boxes and silver-backed brushes glitter just as Darcy, as a child, remembered them glittering.
There was still a big, old-fashioned roll-top bath in the ornate bathroom, which was entered through a pair of white double doors
A sweeping, red-carpeted staircase with mahogany banisters rose up the entire six floors of the building, but Darcy, who lived in the penthouse, took the old-fashioned cage-style lift at this time of night. Pressing the lift button and hearing the doors clang shut somewhere above, Darcy allowed herself to luxuriate in the cosseting feeling of home.
But what made this impressive place home to her had nothing to do with the fact that flats here were expensive and sought after. To Darcy, the apartment had for years simply meant her beloved grandmother. Anna de Blank had lived to the age of eighty-five and left it to her favourite—and for that matter only—granddaughter upon her death two years earlier. Whereupon Darcy, resisting heroically her mother's pressure to sell the place and donate the proceeds to one of her causes, had lost no time moving in.
Inside the flat, Darcy glanced at the answerphone on the small Florentine table by the door. The green light winked steadily back. No one had called during the evening.
All was quiet and still and glowing with lamps whose pink shades were fitted with pink bulbs. Anna had been a reluctantly ageing beauty who believed rosy light was the most flattering for the face.
Darcy smiled, as she always did, at the enormous portrait of her grandmother in the entrance hall, resplendent in lemon-yellow chiffon, smiling faintly and beautifully, and holding a plate of her favourite indulgences, macaroons.
From her earliest childhood, macaroons and her grandmother had been associated in Darcy's mind. There had always been a white card box of them in the refrigerator, beribboned and stamped with the address of a smart baker in flowing gold letters. Darcy had been entranced with the colours of these strange, exotic confections, half cake and half biscuit, that came in exquisite, old-fashioned colours.
But Anna, even as she sank her small, white teeth into them and rolled her eyes in delight, would exclaim that even these, baked as they were by the best confectioner in London, were not to be compared with those she had tasted in France.
"But you know, my darling," she would say, "they are the hardest thing in the world to get exactly right, and no one makes them like they do in Paris."
Anna had travelled widely as an actress, and her stories of the great European cities, Paris and Rome especially, as they had been in the 1950s, entranced her granddaughter, but not as much as the macaroons did with their intense sweetness and intoxicating lightness. She could not imagine anyone making a better job of them.
She loved the fact that her grandmother had taken her passion for macaroons as the guiding inspiration for her apartment's decorative scheme. Each room was painted in a different pastel colour: lemon in the study, pink in the master bedroom, pistachio green in the dining room, lilac in the sitting room, and pale orange in the hall. It was one of the whimsical jokes that Darcy felt were entirely typical of her grandmother.
Darcy had kept the décor exactly as Anna had left it. It was as ornate and feminine as she remembered it from her childhood, all florals, silks, and delicate furniture with oval backs and slender gold legs. Small, round tables still held Anna's collection of bibelots and small antiques. In the master bedroom, muslin and toile de Jouy curtains still swept up into a crowned half-tester above the big, white, flounced bed Darcy remembered bouncing on. The rosy light on the white, oval-mirrored dressing table made small decorative boxes and silver-backed brushes glitter just as Darcy, as a child, remembered them glittering.
There was still a big, old-fashioned roll-top bath in the ornate bathroom, which was entered through a pair of white double doors
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