“Well, she clearly didn’t succeed—” Lindsay said.

“She tried really hard,” Pixie continued, launched now, and speaking fast. “She thought that if she managed to hide the fact that she was totally crazy about him, she had a chance. I mean, she’s having the most incredible sex of her life, she figures there must be progress of some kind. Only there wasn’t.” Pixie sighed. “And the instant he realized how she felt—well, one night she was so overcome she just told him—that was it. Curtains. Kind but immovable. The end.”

Lindsay had begun to move toward the door.

“She tried everything,” Pixie went on, and Lindsay stopped. “She was getting so desperate, she was so madly in love, she hit on this really crazy plan. She’d get pregnant. She was sure, if she could just do that, she’d change his mind. So she stopped taking the pill and she never said a word. Only, of course, that didn’t work either. Condoms.” Pixie gave Lindsay a significant look. “Always. Because he’s careful as well as wild. And no way could she get around that—believe me, she’s inventive, and she tried.”

Lindsay had blushed crimson. She turned back from the door. “Pixie, stop this at once. We shouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Why not?”

“Because we just shouldn’t. I don’t expect you to understand. Let’s put it down to the generation gap. This is someone’s private life, someone we both know and like.”

“I thought you didn’t like McGuire? You said he was arrogant.”

“Never mind. Like him or dislike him, it makes no difference. That kind of gossip always ends up causing trouble, and pain. I don’t want to hear any more. I don’t want you passing this kind of rumor around. If there are rumors, those rumors are untrue…”

“If you say so.” Pixie shrugged.

“I mean it, Pixie. Just keep your speculations to yourself, and don’t damned well encourage them in other people. I assume you have work to get on with—because if you haven’t, there’s something badly wrong.”

Pixie gave her a look of astonishment.

“Everything’s under control, Lindsay.”

“Just make sure I get the transparencies from the Chanel and Gaultier shows by nine tonight. Make sure Markov’s there, at his hotel, before you bike his invitations around to him, and remember, Pixie, any hitches, one fuckup, and you’re unemployed.”

Pixie had colored. “I’m good at my job,” she protested. “This is going to run like clockwork.”

“It had better,” Lindsay said, walking out, and just managing to prevent herself from slamming the door. She knew Pixie would probably be making some face at it once it was closed—and she was, of course, fully justified. Lindsay’s cheeks were still bright scarlet. She quickly left the hotel, went out into mists and soft rain, and took in deep breaths of damp air.

She was furious with herself. How could she reprimand Pixie for gossiping, when she had just been listening avidly to gossip herself? How could she then compound her own felony by picking on Pixie’s work, when that work was always excellent? She had just set Pixie an appalling example, and if she had succeeded in stemming the tide of gossip about Rowland and Gini, she would not have done so for long. She glanced back at the hotel. The lobby had been seething with journalists, with TV crews. In that kind of hothouse atmosphere, gossip bred faster than germs.