The Ugly Duckling Read Online Free

you are. It’s about time.” She took the vase away from Nell and placed it on the marble table beneath an elaborately gilded mirror. “I’d think you’d be more considerate. It’s not as if I don’t have enough to worry about. I still have to speak to that little man who’s going to shoot off the fireworks, talk to the chef, and I’m not even dressed yet. You know how important this night is to Martin. Everything has to be perfect.”
    Nell felt the heat flush her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Sally.”
    “An executive’s wife is important in advancing his career. Martin would never have become vice president if I hadn’t been there helping him. We don’t ask much of you, do we?”
    Nell had heard this self-laudatory lecture many times before. She felt a ripple of annoyance but quickly smothered it. “I’m sorry, Sally,” she repeated. “Is there anything else I can do to help?”
    Sally waved a beautifully manicured hand. “I’ve invited Madame Gueray to the party. Make sure she’s comfortable. She’s deplorably awkward in public.”
    Elise Gueray was even more shy and out of her element at a party than Nell. She didn’t mind that Sally usually gave all the misfits to her. She received a deep satisfaction from making their way easier and less painful. God knows, she’d have been passionately grateful to anyone who’d have eased her way during those first few years after she had come to Europe.
    “I don’t know why Henri Gueray ever married her.” Sally glanced at Nell with guilelessness. “Yet youso often see these powerhouse men with meek, inadequate wives.”
    A swift jab and then a turn of the knife. Nell was too accustomed to barbs to give Sally the satisfaction of reacting. “I found her very pleasant.” She turned away and moved hastily toward the staircase. “I have to get back to Jill. She has to have her bath and dinner.”
    “Really, Nell, you should get a nanny.”
    “I like taking care of her myself.”
    “But she does get in the way.” She paused. “I spoke to Richard about it this afternoon, and he agrees with me.”
    Nell went still. “Did he say that?”
    “Of course, he realizes that the higher up he moves in the company, the more duties will be expected of you. When we get back to Paris, I’ll contact the agency I used when Jonathan was a child. Simone made sure he gave me no trouble at all.”
    And Jonathan was now a thoroughly obnoxious and rebellious teenager hidden away in a boarding school in Massachusetts. “Thank you, but I’m not that busy. Perhaps when she’s a little older.”
    “If Kavinski can be persuaded to give us his foreign investments, Richard will be in line to manage them. You’ll be expected to travel with him. I think he’s quite right to break in a nanny before she becomes a necessity.” She turned away and moved toward the ballroom.
    Sally was acting as if it were already settled, Nell thought frantically. She could not give her daughter up to one of those serene-faced women she had seen walking with their charges in the park. Jill belonged to her. How could Richard even consider taking her away?
    He wouldn’t consider it. Jill was everything to her. She did everything he asked of her, but he couldn’t expect her to—
    “Don’t let the old witch bother you. She just wants to see you squirm.” Nadine Fallon was coming down the steps. “Bullies always pounce on the gentle ones. It’s the nature of the beast.”
    “Shh.” Nell glanced over her shoulder, but Sally was already gone.
    Nadine grinned. “Want me to spit in her eye for you?”
    “Yes.” She wrinkled her nose. “But somehow she’d find out and then Richard would be upset.”
    Nadine’s grin faded. “Then let him be upset. He should know you’re no match for her. He should be the one spitting in that barracuda’s eye.”
    “You don’t understand.”
    “No, I don’t.” She passed Nell and continued downstairs in a cloud of Opium perfume and Karl Lagerfeld