Visconti's Forgotten Heir(37)

Andreas didn’t respond as he pulled into a well-maintained car park.

‘Come on. Let’s get you kitted out,’ he said a few minutes later, taking her hand.

The only dress shop in the village, Magenta realised, was an exclusive bow-windowed boutique. The type of place that looked as though it would stock just one of each luxuriously designed item displayed in its minimally dressed window.

‘They must have known you were coming.’ Andreas pulled a wry face. ‘That dress was obviously made for you. Didn’t blue used to be your favourite colour?’

It still was, Magenta thought distractedly, gazing up at the chic, exquisitely tailored dress in the window.

A sleeveless little number in royal blue silk, in a wrap-around design that moulded itself beautifully to a slender figure, the dress had a plunging neckline that was low enough to be alluring without being immodest, and a hemline that was cut just above the knee. It was tied with a side-fastening sash that emphasised the waist and the bustline, and the long, loose ends of the sash fell freely against the flatteringly curved skirt.

‘You have to be joking, don’t you?’ Magenta felt wounded anger welling up inside her. ‘You know this sort of thing is way out of my league. I wouldn’t have a thing to wear with it even if I could afford it—which I can’t!’

A silver clutch bag and a silver and blue sequinned stole draped over a marble pedestal spoke of elegance in the extreme, while on another lower pedestal a pair of silver high-heeled sandals looked like something even Cinderella would have thought twice about losing. Pinpricks of small blue stones graced the sides of straps which were little more than silver strands across the ankles, so elegant they might have been real sapphires. They probably were, Magenta thought, if the fact that nothing in the window carried a price tag was anything to go by!

‘I would have thought it wouldn’t have taken much working out for you to realise that High Street is more within my budget.’ Ridiculously, she was fighting back tears as she made to swing away.

What she didn’t expect was to feel Andreas’s firm hands upon her shoulders.

‘Think of it as a business expense,’ he drawled, and before she had time to argue he was hustling her into the shop. In response to the incredulous upward glance she shot him, he added, ‘There are some perks to being at my beck and call.’

Evidently there were, Magenta agreed mentally as she tried on the dress in the scented changing room at the back of the shop. The shop owner had had to take it off the model, as the only similar one by the same designer had been too large. But this one, she realised with a lick of pleasure running through her, was a perfect fit.

‘Do you think these shoes will look all right with this?’ she asked Andreas when she came out of the changing room. She was frowning down at the dainty low-heeled black sandals she wore every day.

He had been talking to the owner, a rather glamorous, middle-aged woman, who was smiling at Magenta from behind the counter. Now, as he turned and saw her standing there, he gave a low whistle under his breath.

He looked totally taken aback—unable to speak. But then he seemed to give himself a mental shake before glancing down at her very inappropriate footwear.

‘Doesn’t she look beautiful?’ the shop owner enthused.

‘Exquisite.’

Andreas couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her, Magenta noticed with warm sensations infiltrating her blood, and for a few moments it felt as though there were only the two of them in the shop.

But he had totally forgotten what she had asked him! she realised, when he turned away towards the counter again and she saw him reaching into the top pocket of his jacket for his wallet.

‘How much for the window?’

She couldn’t believe what he had just asked, but the woman was jotting something down on a piece of paper, and after a nod from him started bustling around like a bee that had just scented a rare and beautiful pollen—which somehow indicated that Magenta had heard correctly.

‘You can’t,’ she whispered behind his broad back, when the woman had moved into the window area to claim the shoes and bag and the matching stole.

‘Go back to the changing room,’ he said without looking at her as he took a credit card out of his wallet.

As she didn’t feel like protesting in front of an audience, Magenta could only comply.

She didn’t know if the shoes the woman brought her were the ones in the window, or if there had been another pair in her size, but the ones that had been handed round the heavy velvet curtain for her to try fitted her like hand-made gloves.

Or glass slippers, she thought wryly, remembering what she had been thinking outside.