Sweet Revenge

Hollywood. Is there any chance that you’ll make another movie, Your Highness?”
    Phoebe swallowed more coffee and prayed that it would stay down. “My priority is my family.” She touched Adrianne’s hand under the table. “Of course I’m thrilled to have been asked to come here, to see old friends. But the choice I made, as you said, was made for love.” Over the table her eyes met Abdu’s and held. “Where there is love, there is very little a woman won’t do.”
    “Hollywood’s loss is obviously Jaquir’s gain. There is a great deal of speculation that you’ll wear The Sun and the Moon tonight. It’s considered one of the world’s greatest treasures. Like all the great jewels, The Sun and the Moon has legends and mystery and romance attached to it andpeople are eager to see the fabled necklace. Will you wear it?”
    “The Sun and the Moon was a gift from my husband on our marriage. In Jaquir this is considered the bride price, a kind of reverse dowry. It is, second only to Adrianne, the most precious gift Abdu has given me.” She looked at him again with a hint of challenge. “I’m proud to wear it.”
    “There won’t be a woman in the world who won’t envy you tonight, Your Highness.”
    With Adrianne’s hand still caught in hers, Phoebe smiled. “I can say only that I look forward to this evening more than any other in years. It will be glorious.” Her eyes met Abdu’s again.
“Inshattah.”
    As Phoebe had suspected, they were joined by two guards and a driver when they left the hotel. She was ecstatic over her first victory. She had stopped at the desk and requested her passport on which Adrianne traveled as her minor child. The guards were chattering, apparently believing she was inquiring about the performance of some trivial service, and never even noticed when the clerk returned from the rear office and slipped the leather-encased document into her hand. She could have wept with joy … and the first glow of pride she’d felt in years, but she disciplined herself to betray nothing. Now she had no real plan, only a fierce and edgy determination. Beside her in the limo, Adrianne all but bounced with excitement. They were truly in Paris now, with hours to spare before she would have to go back to the hotel. She wanted to ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower, to sit in a café, to walk and walk and walk and hear the music of the city she had only imagined.
    “We’ll shop a little.” Phoebe’s mouth was so dry she had to force her tongue from the roof of her mouth. “There’s Chanel, Dior. Wait until you see all the beautiful clothes, Addy. The colors, the materials. But you have to stay close to me, very close. I don’t want to lose you. Don’t wander. Promise.”
    “I won’t.” Adrianne felt her own nerves begin to rise. At the times when her mother talked like this—very fast, with the words jumping out on top of each other—she soon and always fell into depression. Then she would grow so quiet, soremoved, so closed in upon herself and unmindful of others that it terrified Adrianne. Frightened about what she knew was about to happen, Adrianne kept up her own chatter, staying glued to Phoebe’s side as they were escorted into the most exclusive shops in Europe.
    It was like another dream, different from the vision of Paris at dusk. The salons were bright with gilt tables and velvet chairs. In each one they were ushered in with a deference Adrianne had never received in her own country. She was cooed over by women with glossy faces, served lemonade or tea and tiny sweet cookies while models with thin limbs and frail-looking bodies glided out draped in the latest fashions.
    Phoebe ordered with abandon, dozens of cocktail dresses with skinny straps and layers of beads, slim suits in raw silk and linen. If her plan succeeded, she would never wear a stitch of what she recklessly purchased. It seemed a kind of justice to her, the smallest and sweetest of revenges. She swept from salon to salon, ladening the silent guards with boxes and bags.
    “Well go to the Louvre before lunch,” she told Adrianne as they settled in the limo again. She checked her watch, then sat back and shut her eyes.
    “Can we eat in a cafe?”
    “Well see.” She groped for Adrianne’s hand. “I want you to be happy, darling. Happy and safe. That’s all that matters.”
    “I like being here with you.” Despite all the cookies and tea and lemonade at the couturier’s she was hungry, but she