CHAPTER 52 – Moth to a Flame (2)

Eppie did not need to walk far.
Vaughan was holding court in the far corner, speaking to one attendee at a time, giving each attendee ample time to lay out their pitch or grievance.

Her mentor dismissed whoever she was talking with a smile and a personable touch on the shoulder. The woman, a finance type, looked satisfied as she turned, saw Eppie, gave her an acknowledging nod, then moved back into the main social circle.

“Is the party to your taste?” Vaughan had a smile that told Eppie more than she needed to know. “You seem to be doing well until you ran into Mister Morris Grein. He must be quite taken with you. To my knowledge, you are certainly not his type.”

“He gave me his card,” Eppie retrieved the cream and gold thing like a lizard tail.

“They always do,” Vaughan snorted derisively. “It’s in their nature, dear. Producers, that is.”

“Just to clarify,” Eppie’s voice grew a little quieter. “My gift.”

“Your gift.” Vaughan’s lips became a thin red line.

“It’s not Valorie Sanders, is it?”

“Do you want her to be?” Her mentor’s coolness was all she needed.

From across the room, like a cat having seen the fishermen reeling in the catch, Diane Mirabelle made a beeline across three conversations, flute in hand, to join them, her eyes flashing with unmistakable schadenfreude.

“Has it happened? Did I miss it?” the Vogue editor slid around Eppie, whispering, “Oh, so exquisite. I shall give myself a raise.”

Gazes in the room converged, having followed Mirabelle to the private gathering. In the discreet corner of the room, under Turner’s Fishermen at Sea, the three of them stood together, a Chief Curator in her sixties, a Chief Editor in her forties, and a pixie dream girl in her teens: Balenciaga, Chanel, Givenchy, a triumvirate of French Fashion houses. The elderly ladies were teasing their young protégée, and the look on the face of their stunned child companion told the onlookers all they needed to know.

These people were not acquaintances, like they were.
They were members of a generational legacy.

Valorie Sanders felt like a girl being borne away on strange tides.

Her father, his tone less than pleased, had called her directly, and so she had no choice but to pack her bags, cancel Christmas with her boyfriend, then book it for the Four Seasons, NYC, while Woodhouse made the arrangements.

A day ago, he had given her the good news.
Last time, she had failed to cosy up to the high society of the arts world.
For a young lady with her ambitions, failing the first step had completely derailed Sr Woodhouse’s promise to her father, and so she had been put in cold storage while things blew over.

Now, things had blown over.
Out of the blue, Sir Woodhouse received a missive stating that he and the young lady from last time had been invited to the Winter Gala. Lady Vaughan had apparently felt that the expulsion was too harsh, and seeing that Valorie and Eppie were schoolmates, she had reconsidered.

And so, Woodhouse had thrown his weight, opened up bookings, passed her through the pipeline, and dressed her up in the only thing he could book in her size, a somewhat overbearing Alexi McQueen. The current line-up took the theme of Gothic Rose, fresh off his boundary-pushing runway shows.

Presently, it was pushing more than Valorie’s considerable assets toward the Gothic Romantic.

For a while, she had been perfectly managing her orbit of young men. Woodhouse had introduced her as a Senator’s daughter, not an aspiring starlet with a handful of roles under her belt, and so the lads had kept their distance, even if their eyes weren’t shy.

Then, across the gallery, Valorie Sanders saw Tinkerbell in Givenchy.

She saw Euphemia Fontaine standing with Juliana Vaughan and Diane Mirabelle, laughing, joking, being teased. The three of them together in the amber light of the gallery, Eppie in her black chiffon, Vaughan in her column of dark wool, Diane with the architectural certainty of classic Chanel, looked completely natural.

For a brief spell, she reached out to one of the young men, only to realise that this wasn’t William.

There was no William here.

She felt irrevocably lost.

From across the room, Eppie’s eyes turned toward her.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
They were talking about her.
Eppie was talking about her, and smirking, and joking, and suddenly looking upset, while the other two women fell about themselves, one with quiet control and the other with classy mirth.

Her ears burned like fire. A blush of blood rose from the centre of her body to flush her limbs, making her appear drunk. Something akin to a violin string was being tuned in her head, and all she could hear was the sound of horsehair on wax, making a cacophony that drowned out all sound.

Euphemia Fontaine looked her way again.
This time, she looked worried.

What was that look? Sympathy? Why would she need HER sympathy of all things? This… No, she was NOT nobody anymore. Eppie had proven herself beyond all doubt, and this was the thing.
The thing.
The thing that William’s sweet Val could not stomach.

She felt dizzy.
She wanted to run to the balcony and purge herself of the booze and the canapé.

But she couldn’t.
She had promised Sir Woodhouse. As the man said, even if she had to kiss Eppie on the mouth, she would make things right with Juliana Vaughan.
This was her final chance.

All she had to do was hold on.

“Hello there, young lady,” a deep, baritone voice penetrated her chest and brought her tumbling consciousness to heel. “I saw you from across the room, and I simply could not help myself. May we speak for a moment?”

Valorie nodded. The man’s undivided attention was a rock in the world of her roaring surf.

“You may have heard of me,” the man’s voice came from somewhere above her, even though she stood half a head taller in heels. “Even though I am but a humble producer from the Greins Group.”

The Greins Group? The thrashing sea grew suddenly silent. The company responsible for one in six Oscars, in any given year? The producer of Shakespeare’s Lover? Of Stone Mountain? Her favourite film?

All thought of Eppie Fontaine quietened at once.
The violin halted its cacophony.
She still felt drunk, but not enough to hurl.

“Hello,” Valorie spoke sincerely for the first time since entering the room, her sparkling eyes addressing the man with a kind smile. “I am Valorie Sanders.”

“Ooo…” Mirabelle placed her face close enough for Eppie to kiss. “There it is. Hook, line and sinker. Good thing our Eppie was totally disgusted. Good job, Eppie.”

Vaughan shook her head with disappointment. “I am not sure what I expected. LAPA specialised in Shakespearean Pedagogy and Presentism, or so I thought. All that theatre, all that Titus, has she learned nothing? Frederick is right. Your school needs a deep cleanse.”

Eppie stared at the two women, her mentors, her powerbrokers, her Aaron the Moor in Couture.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? Was the roaring thought in her head.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Oh no,” Mirabelle moved back a bit. “I think we upset Eppie.”

“Are you upset, Eppie?” Vaughan turned her attention so completely away from Valorie that Eppie felt second-hand whiplash. “I don’t mean that as disapproval.”

“Why is Val even here?” Eppie demanded. She felt oppressed, and she lacked the [Script Analysis] to explain the knotted feeling in her chest. “So she IS the gift?”

Vaughan studied her for a moment, then led the trio a little further away, so that they were nestled near the resting nook with the bookshelves.

“I think you know the answer,” Vaughan spoke with the idiosyncratic register of a world-renowned curator. “But I shall clarify, if only for Mirabelle.”

“First, the objective purpose,” Vaughan took her hand and clasped it between her bony fingers. “A week after your In the Pines, a not very happy Frederick Curon called me with an update. He told me, as some men like to do when they feel that they’ve reached the limit of suffering alone, that his daughter had been mercilessly bullied at her school. His pet Newfoundland had been working with a reporter from the LA Times, and they had dug up some truly heinous things which her school had swept under the rug. The culmination of those sins, some little, some not so little, was his formerly flightless songbird leaping from the roof.”