Five years later
Claire and Hervé’s wedding reception was held in the private rooms at Le Chat-qui-Pêche. Instead of opening a separate restaurant serving haute cuisine, Claire and Hervé had sectioned off part of the brasserie for private parties, where the world’s greatest gourmands came to appreciate the finest haute cuisine in Paris (according to the chef’s papa).
True to his word, Hervé had bided his time, allowing Claire to develop her talents as a chef independently of him. She’d gained a wide range of experience at the highest level, catering for everything from state banquets to intimate dinner parties for movie stars. Hervé had waited some more while Claire struck out on her own as chef de cuisine for the Paris branch of an international boutique hotel chain, and watched as she discovered that what Hervé had said about working for hotels was true for her, too. She didn’t like having to satisfy shareholders and boards and three levels of management. All she wanted was to create for her patrons unforgettable experiences that delighted every sense.
Finally Hervé’s patience was rewarded and Claire returned to Le Chat. They spent the bulk of their time in the brasserie, but they took bookings for an extravagant private party one night every month. In very little time, they had established such a grand reputation that their private dining room was booked two years in advance.
Six months ago, they had finally achieved their dream of attaining a three-star rating from the Michelin Guide. The day the guide was published, they set a wedding date.
“At last!” said Margot, who was now living in New York with Andrew Mountbatten. “I get to plan this wedding!”
On the morning of the wedding, as Margot put the final touches to Claire’s makeup, Gina brought in a box—dove grey with a white ribbon. Claire recognized it at once. “Dior?”
Smiling, Gina lifted the lid and set it aside. Then she put on cotton gloves and took out the embroidered and beaded stole that Margot had brought up to Gina’s fitting all those years ago.
“You didn’t!” Claire rose from the vanity and stared at the exquisite piece that Margot was carefully unfolding.
“We couldn’t resist,” said Gina.
“But how . . . ?” Claire stared from one to the other of them. The stole that matched this gown must have been sold long since.
Margot tapped the side of her nose. “I still have contacts. We asked a special favor and had this copied from the archives.” She sobered. “I only wish Monsieur Dior was still here.”
Tragically, Christian Dior had died in 1957 while on vacation in Italy. Madame Delahaye had foreseen a calamity should he travel to Montecatini, but this time she had warned him to no avail. Margot, Gina, and Claire had joined the sea of mourners at his funeral, their sadness at his passing only lessened by the knowledge that his legacy would live on.
It was the 1960s now and things were changing. Fashion lines were slimming down, hems were going up. But the beauty of their special gown was timeless, and the love and memories of joys and hardships that it held in every stitch and sequin would be with them forever.
Claire’s happiness overflowed. She had everything she’d ever wanted, right here, under this roof.
“You are beautiful,” said Gina, as she put the stole with tender care around Claire’s shoulders. “Isn’t she, Margot?” Blinking back tears, Margot nodded.
Claire had never in her life thought of herself as beautiful. But as she stared and stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror, she saw herself transformed. The warm, creamy tone of the silk complemented her skin. The happy light in her eyes gleamed as brightly as the rhinestone beads on her gown. Her red hair was shining and luxuriant, piled high in a becoming style only Margot could achieve.
Despite the long years she had waited to be his bride, Claire had never doubted that Hervé was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Only he understood and respected her passion and drive. With a secret smile, she reflected that the coming months would bring new challenges of a completely different nature from the restaurant and brasserie, but having established a firm foundation as to how their partnership worked, Claire was confident she wouldn’t regret her decision.
“I’m ready,” Claire said at last.
After the wedding ceremony, Gina and Aunt Vo-Vo squeezed into the back seat of Andrew Mountbatten’s Aston Martin and they drove with the top down back to Le Chat.
“Perfect!” murmured Gina, lifting her face to the breeze. Paris had turned on the kind of spring day people wrote songs about. Gina was soon to go on tour to promote the second novel she’d published since her debut had won both critical acclaim and massive sales, thanks to Margot’s astute negotiation skills and her passionate advocacy for Gina’s writing every step of the way. Gina hated to say goodbye to Paris, but it would only be for as long as she could stand to stay away.
From the back seat she had a good view of the way Margot’s head leaned toward Andrew Mountbatten’s, the way he smiled at her as they sped along the cobbled streets. Margot’s divorce had finally come through after five long years of separation, but there was no sign of a wedding on her horizon.
Margot always insisted she didn’t want to marry again, and besides, she refused to be the cause of a rift between Andrew and his family if he flouted tradition by marrying a divorcée. She’d been heartbroken to discover that she couldn’t have children, so the one reason she might have wished to marry no longer existed.
These days, Andrew and Margot were living in sin, as Claire termed it, in a lavishly appointed Manhattan apartment, and loving every minute of their work and life.
Still, attending a wedding always brought questions of marriage and commitment into sharp focus—at least, that tended to be the case for women, Gina supposed. The love of her life was now running for the Senate after a successful term as governor of New Hampshire. He was also married with three children. The thought of him made her only a little wistful, these days.
Vo-Vo, who spent the entire wedding ceremony looking like the cat who got the cream—or, more appropriately, the cat who had caught the fish—claimed she had planned Claire’s triumph all along. “Who do you think asked Hervé if he wanted to buy the brasserie?” she’d exclaimed. “If only the silly girl had done this sooner, she could have had babies by now, but that’s our Claire.” She sighed. “I suppose we ought to be grateful that she gets around to things eventually.”
Turning her head, Vo-Vo pinned Gina with her sharp gaze. “And what about you, miss? Are there any men in your life?”
Gina grinned. “There have been several,” she said. “Does that shock you?” She had yet to meet the man for whom she would be tempted to surrender her independence, but she wouldn’t rule it out. Life was good, and she earned enough money from her novels that she didn’t need to moonlight as anything else. She’d bought her own apartment in Paris and spent part of the year in New York when she wasn’t on tour.
“Hmph!” For the wedding, Vo-Vo had dyed her hair a spectacular shade of peach, which reminded Gina of sunset over the Seine. “Aren’t any of you girls going to give me great-nieces and -nephews?” She poked at Gina’s shoulder with a lacquered fingernail. “You’ll end up like me at this rate.”
Gina caught Vo-Vo’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “Would that be so bad?” She grinned to think of herself aging into a Vo-Vo–like state, old and cantankerous, writing novels in a villa in the south of France. The only part she balked at was the thought of having a head like an Easter egg.
Margot sipped champagne and looked around her with satisfaction. Months of planning had come together in the most delightful way. The wedding reception was intimate and elegant and filled with love.
“I can’t believe you’re finally married!” Margot kissed Claire’s cheek.
“And just in time.” Claire patted her abdomen and winked, causing Margot and Gina to stare at each other, then burst out laughing.
“Talk about burying the lede,” said Gina, pulling Claire gingerly into an embrace.
Margot rested a hand on Claire’s arm. “How do you feel? You must be tired.”
“I’m fine,” Claire said, but put her finger to her lips as Vo-Vo called her over.
“And she teases me about living in sin,” murmured Margot, making Gina chuckle.
“Speaking of babies, did you see who slipped in during the ceremony and sat all the way at the back of the church?” Gina asked. “Madame Vaughn! And she had the sweetest little girl with her, too. Dressed head to toe in Dior, if I’m any judge.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry I missed her!” exclaimed Margot. “Claire told me she’d invited her but I know she likes to keep a low profile when she’s in Paris, these days. I wasn’t sure she’d come.”
“She really was our fairy godmother, wasn’t she?” said Gina. They had reignited their friendship and learned much about themselves because of that Dior gown. Living together in the apartment, which Claire and Hervé now owned, had been a precious gift.
Someone asked Gina to dance, and then Margot was alone. She watched the dancing, unsure of her feelings about the future. How had she missed Claire’s news? Usually she intuited things like that. She’d been so busy with the wedding preparations, not to mention arranging the last-minute details of Gina’s book tour and dealing with a million issues for her other clients, that any signs of Claire’s pregnancy must have passed her by. Though delighted for her friend, sadness welled up inside her. She’d always wanted children of her own.
The insistent chink of a fork tapping on a glass broke in on her reverie. The music stopped. “It’s time for the bride and groom to depart,” announced Papa Bedeau. “But before they do, the bride will throw the bouquet.”
Laughing, Claire turned her back as the unmarried women crowded around her, giggling and jostling, all eager to catch the bouquet. Margot wanted to tell them not to be in such a rush.
But when Claire threw her bouquet, the old gold roses and trailing tendrils of ivy bound with satin ribbon did not sail through the air in a graceful arc. It came like a bullet, aimed straight at Margot, and hit her squarely in the chest.
“Oof!” Automatically her hands came up and she crushed the blooms to her, holding the bouquet upside down.
A wail of disappointment from the unlucky single ladies mingled with laughter and clapping. Over the sea of guests, Margot’s gaze found Andrew and their eyes locked.
As if that look had been an explicit invitation, he crossed the room to her in three strides and pulled her into his arms. In front of everyone, he kissed her as if he needed air from her lungs to breathe, as if he’d never let her go. “I will love you forever, Margot,” he said in her ear. “That’s my vow to you.”
Blushing madly as she emerged from that embrace to catcalls and whistles from the rest of the guests, Margot laughed up at him, tears in her eyes. Almost imperceptibly over time, the wounds inside her had healed. She was ready to move into the future with him at her side.
“Forever.” She put a hand up to his lean cheek.
He took the bouquet of flowers from her loosened grip and tossed it back into the startled crowd. Then he bent his head to kiss her again. “You know I’d marry you in a heartbeat,” he murmured into her ear. “I don’t care what my family says.”
“I know that.” And as long as she knew it, she didn’t need him to prove it to her. They chose to be with each other every single day.
Upstairs in the apartment, Margot and Gina helped Claire out of the Dior gown so she could change into her going-away outfit. “You can’t imagine what it’s meant to me, having you both here. I’ll miss you so much,” said Claire. “I can’t believe we’re spending two whole weeks away from Le Chat on our honeymoon!”
“I think Papa Bedeau is quite pleased to be back in charge,” said Margot with a chuckle. Putting on her white cotton gloves, she laid out the Dior gown on the bed and went over it, inch by inch, taking note of loose threads and dangling beads for Béatrice to repair. A couple of small stains she spot-cleaned then and there with a secret preparation Béatrice had given her.
Then she carefully hung the Dior gown in Claire’s closet. Later, she would take it to a specialist cleaner Dior used, before packing the gown away in tissue paper, adding sprigs of lavender and lily of the valley to the box. She couldn’t help but feel it would be like laying out a body for burial. There was a tacit agreement among the three friends that no one would wear this gown again.
Well, perhaps not until Claire’s daughter grew into womanhood. But that was a question for the future.
Gina sighed as the gown sparkled and gleamed in the light of the dying day. “Doesn’t it seem like a lifetime ago that this beauty came into our lives?”
“And Dior brought us together again,” said Claire. “Would we ever have found Margot without this gown?”
“I would have come crawling back here some time, I expect,” said Margot. With a twinkle in her eye, she added, “But I’m glad you came across me sooner rather than later. The Pigalle was an awful place to live.”
Gina laughed as she zipped up Claire’s cream going-away dress. She set her hands on Claire’s shoulders and looked past her at Margot. “Are you going to marry Mountbatten, after all? You nearly upstaged the bride and groom with that kiss.”
“I can’t believe he did that,” said Margot, blushing all over again. “And you, Claire! You hurled that bouquet right at me.”
“Well, I had to do something,” Claire retorted. “You two would have gone on the same way forever if I hadn’t, and I couldn’t stand it one more minute.”
“So . . .” Gina prompted. “What was the outcome of that passionate smooch, hmm?”
Margot shrugged. “We love each other. What more is there to say?”
“You’re not getting married?” asked Claire, disappointed.
“No, but if . . . Oh!” Claire’s going-away dress was formfitting, and when she’d turned side-on, Margot could see a small, sweet swelling where Claire’s flat stomach used to be.
She jumped up and crossed to Claire. Bending over to address the bump, she said, “Hello, little bubba. You be good for your mamma now, won’t you? Let her enjoy her honeymoon.”
Gina watched this nonsense with a lifted eyebrow. “Here,” she said, holding out the stylish swing coat that went with the dress to Claire. “This will cover everything nicely until you’re ready to tell everyone.”
Claire let Gina help her on with the coat, then she hugged her two friends hard. “Promise me we won’t ever let another thing come between us. We won’t need a gown to bring us together again.”
“I’d say we’re pretty much stuck with each other by now, wouldn’t you?” said Gina as they left the apartment together. Her words might have been flippant, but her tone was soft and warm.
“Do you know what I think?” said Margot.
“No, what?” said Gina, but the quirk of her lips said she knew what was coming.
Margot grinned. “I think this definitely calls for champagne.”
Then the three of them linked arms and went down to meet their future.