The Paris Secret Read Online Free

Freddie? You have to
tell me.’ Her grip tightened on his arm. ‘You know we’re not getting down from here until you do.’
    He took a juddering breath. ‘It’s not true. You have to believe me.’
    ‘And I will, I promise. I already do.’
    ‘You don’t know what it is yet.’
    ‘No. But I know you. I support
you.
I love
you
.’
    He nodded and dropped his head down, letting the tears come first. And then, finally, the words.

Chapter Two
    London, one week later
    The auction room was packed, with every seat taken and people standing in a crowd at the back. Everyone was talking and laughing loudly, catalogues in hand and eyes skippy as
they evaluated who was here – and more importantly who wasn’t – and the deep banks of Sotheby’s staff manning the phone and internet bids.
    Flora shifted position in her seat, the bidding paddle obscured in her lap by the soft folds of her pink silk skirt. She made a point of never getting involved with this pre-sale gossip and
conjecture. It might be good for networking but she didn’t like to bring attention to herself when she wanted to clinch a sale; there was something to be said for understatement, a light
touch. And besides, in her opinion, networking was always far more effective with a good dress and a cocktail in one’s hand.
    She waited patiently while the Peter Doig oil painting was wheeled out by gloved porters and the room regrouped. The Warhol
Marilyn (Reversal)
, and the reason she was here, was up next
but that wasn’t why her boss Angus was texting her every third minute. She ignored his latest update through the traffic as it buzzed in her bag. If he was so anxious to see what happened
with the Bacon triptych, then he should learn not to fly in for the London Evening Sale on a New York flight that only landed forty minutes before the auction started. She exhaled her irritation
quietly. She didn’t understand his constant need for chaos and action. Her boss thrived on adrenalin rushes and perpetual near-misses, as though a result was only validated by a dramatic
narrative around it.
    A man with florid cheeks and a red tie imprinted with monkeys balancing on teacups – Hermès, then – caught her eye, wordlessly communicating his question down the aisle with
hitched-up eyebrows and a glance at the empty seat – the only one in the room – beside her. She shook her head sympathetically but firmly and, tapping at her watchless wrist, rolled her
eyes. The man got the point, his mouth settling into an irritated line, and returned to the back of the room.
    Flora brushed her blonde hair off her shoulders and fanned herself lightly with the paddle. It was a close night, the sky already blooming into a bruise as she had hopped out of the cab earlier,
and thunder was forecast. She hoped she could get home before that happened. She hadn’t had time to collect her jacket from the office in her haste to get here from an overrun appointment and
she didn’t fancy being caught in a downpour in this white silk shirt and her strappy red suede heels.
    The door behind the auctioneer opened and the tension in the room tightened again, like cloth being pulled across a loom, as the Warhol screen print was wheeled out. Flora remained impassive,
even though she felt the same quickening that made others gasp, murmur, smile. Unlike the bright rainbow colours of the better-known Marilyn screen prints which had been owned by stars almost as
famous as the subject, this reversal was dark and brooding, a subversion of the disco-happy original: smoky black with smudges of neon pink, the negative of a film photograph, it was perfect for
her clients, a young Russian couple who had swapped Moscow for Mayfair. She had worked carefully with them for the past eighteen months, building their bent for bold colour into a fledgling
contemporary art collection that was already worth more than £11 million. She had taken them to the Fine Art Fairs in Maastricht and Palm Beach,