Amber had never seen such a physically beautiful human being. He was almost too perfect, surely far too beautiful for a man: tall and slender, with very dark wavy hair, brilliantly green eyes and very pale skin. His profile made the artist within her catch her breath. He was dressed in a suit that fitted him like no suit she had ever seen any man wear before, the fabric so fluid and yet so perfectly cut that her greedy gaze wanted to absorb every detail of it. What was it? Wool with silk? She ached to reach out and touch it.
‘Do you have a particular interest in the Medici?’
His voice was as rich as the best quality velvet, changing tone and colour, warming and cooling in a way that mesmerised her.
‘Not really. My father loved this painting, although he said that there were others he had seen in Leningrad that were even better. My parents used to bring me here and tell me all about the history of silk.’
‘Silk?’ He was being polite.
‘I’m sorry. I’m keeping you and being very dull.’ She made to move away, but he shook his head and told her firmly, ‘No such thing. I confess I know very little about the history of silk. Look, there’s a bench over there; let’s go and sit down and you can enlighten me.’
Amber opened her mouth to refuse politely, but somehow she found that before she could do so she was seated next to him, answering his questions about her family and her home, and confiding in him in a way she could never have imagined herself doing with a stranger.
‘So your grandmother refused to allow you to go to art school and instead she has sent you to London to learn to curtsy so that you can be presented at a drawing room under the auspices of Lady Rutland, and thus find a titled husband, only you won’t be able to do so because you can’t curtsy?’ It was an admirable précis of her garbled explanations.
‘Yes,’ Amber admitted. ‘Louise – that’s Lady Rutland’s daughter – says it’s because I’m not … because I haven’t got … well, she says one needs breeding in order to be able to curtsy properly.’
‘Ah, breeding. Your friend, it seems, has yet to learn that true breeding is a state of mind and cannot be conferred via a coronet.’
He was making fun of her now, Amber was sure of it, but he looked serious.
‘Should we introduce ourselves?’ he asked her. ‘You are … ?’
‘Amber,’ Amber told him shyly. ‘Amber Vrontsky.’
He reached for Amber’s hand, taking it in his own as he stood up and then made a small half-bow.
‘Pray allow me to present myself to you. I am Herr Aubert,’ he told her, adopting a stilted foreign accent that made Amber giggle, in spite of herself. ‘I have the honour to be the world’s best teacher of ze Austrian Curtsy, if you will allow me to demonstrate.’
And then, before Amber could stop him, he released her hand and sank into a perfect curtsy, complete with a simpering expression on his face that made Amber want to laugh again.
‘Come now, Miss Vrontsky, enough of this unseemly levity. You will pay ze attention and copy me, if you please.’
The gallery was empty and, somehow or other, Amber found that she was on her feet too and joining in the game. She dropped into a deep curtsy and then rose from it as effortlessly and as perfectly as though she had been doing it for ever.
Half an hour later, breathless with laughter as her unusual and unrepentant ‘teacher’ insisted she repeat her curtsy half a dozen or more times, Amber shook her head and protested, ‘I can’t do any more. I’ve got a stitch from laughing so much.’
‘Laughing? What is this laughing? You are here to learn ze curtsy. You do not laugh.’
When she did, he feigned outrage, and told her firmly in his normal voice, ‘And now I think we should celebrate your great victory over the curtsy with tea at the Ritz.’
Amber’s face fell. ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t.’
‘Of course you can, and you shall.’
It was very wrong of her to go with him, of course, but somehow or other it was impossible to refuse.
They took a cab to the Ritz, and as they entered, the doorman bowed and said, ‘Good afternoon, Lord Robert. Mr Beaton is waiting for you at your usual table.’
‘Thank you, Mullins,’ he responded, instructing Amber, ‘Come, child.’
Lord Robert, the doorman had called him, Amber noted.
Amber had been to the Ritz before, with her grandmother, but she was still awed by its magnificence.
As they approached the table occupied by another young man, two waiters sprang forward to pull out chairs for them.
‘Cecil, my dearest.’ Lord Robert was speaking in a lazy drawl now, and it seemed to Amber that his whole manner had changed subtly. No longer was it teasing and amused but instead, languid and elegant. ‘I am sorry to be late but you will forgive me when you learn that I have been the saviour of this poor wretched child.’
‘It is not a child, Robert, it is a young woman,’ the other man’s voice was waspish.
‘Ah, yes, but a young woman who studies Lorenzo’s portrait because she wishes to analyse the quality of his silk coat. I suspect she fears that such a vivid shade owes more to the artist’s palette than the dye shops of Bruges.’
‘Indeed.’ This was said with a sharp glance in Amber’s direction.
‘Cecil here is obsessed with colour, princess – the poor models he photographs for Vogue are driven to madness by him.’
Cecil? This was Cecil Beaton! She was actually in the presence of the great photographer whose work she had gazed at with such admiration in Vogue. Amber was tongue-tied with awe.
‘You are talking nonsense, Robert. Now tell me properly, who is this child?’ the photographer demanded.
Amber gave Lord Robert a pleading look but it was no use.
‘She is Amber Vrontsky, her father was Adam Vrontsky, and she is to be one of this season’s débutantes. I found her in tears in the gallery over the ordeal of The Curtsy. However, now all is well, isn’t it?’ There was a look of wicked amusement in the beautiful man’s eyes.
‘A Vrontsky? Indeed?’ Cecil Beaton’s gaze had narrowed. ‘Well, child, was your father the prince or the count, because I recollect that they share the same name.’ He was opening his cigarette case as he spoke to her, offering it to her. Amber shook her head, watching as he turned to Lord Robert, who took one of the Black Russian cigarettes.
‘My father was neither,’ she told the photographer, who was watching her, his eyes narrowed as he blew out a cloud of strongly scented smoke. ‘He was an artist and fabric designer.’
She held her breath, waiting for the familiar disdain, but after the merest indrawn breath, Cecil Beaton said smoothly, ‘A prince amongst men indeed then.’
‘Yes, he was,’ Amber agreed proudly. ‘And I wish more than anything else that my grandmother would have let me go to art school as he wanted.’
‘You wish to become an artist?’
‘No,’ Amber replied. ‘I want to do what my father did and create new designs for our silk – my grandmother owns a silk mill.’
The tea things arrived, and after their tea had been poured the two men began discussing a social event they were both attending, leaving Amber free to study her surroundings, whilst keeping one ear on their conversation. Here and there she managed to grasp a name, only to recognise with awe that it belonged to someone famous, but for Amber, far more exhilarating and exciting than the conversation were the women’s clothes, and her senses fed greedily on them.