Fancy Pants Read Online Free PDF

shook loose her chestnut curls from the confines of
the black velvet hood. Mummy had promised her a special trip to Madame
Tussaud's if she cooperated, and Francesca loved Madame Tussaud's. Even
so, she wasn't absolutely certain she'd driven the best bargain
possible. She loved Saint-Tropez, too.

After consoling the photographer over his injured hand, Chloe reached
out to straighten her daughter's hair and then pulled back with a
sudden yelp when she received the same treatment as the photographer.
"Naughty girl!" she wailed, lifting her hand to her mouth and sucking
on her wound.

Francesca's eyes immediately clouded with tears, and Chloe was furious
with herself for having spoken so sharply. Quickly, she pulled her
daughter close in a hug. "Never mind," she crooned. "Chloe isn't angry,
darling. Bad Mummy. We'll buy you a pretty new dolly on our way home."

Francesca snuggled securely into her adoring mother's arms and peeked
up at the photographer through the thick fringe of her lashes. Then she
stuck out her tongue.

That afternoon marked the first but not the last time Chloe felt the
sting of Francesca's tiny, sharp teeth. But even after three nannies
had resigned, Chloe refused to admit that her
daughter's biting was a problem. Francesca was merely high-spirited,
and Chloe certainly had no intention of earning her daughter's hatred
by making an issue out of something so trivial. Francesca's reign of
terror might have continued unabated if a strange child had not bitten
her back after a tussle over a swing in the park.
When Francesca
discovered that the experience was painful, the biting stopped. She
wasn't a deliberately cruel child; she just wanted to get her way.

Chloe purchased a Queen Anne house on Upper Grosvenor Street not far
from the American embassy and the eastern edge of Hyde Park. Four
stories high, but less than thirty feet wide, the narrow structure had
been restored in the 1930s by Syrie Maugham, the wife of Somerset
Maugham and one of the most celebrated decorators of her time. A
winding staircase led from the ground floor to the drawing room,
sweeping past a Cecil Beaton portrait of Chloe and Francesca. Coral faux marbre columns framed the
entrance to the drawing room, which held
a stylish mix of French and Italian pieces as well as several Adam
chairs and a collection of Venetian mirrors. On the next floor
Francesca's bedroom was decorated like Sleeping Beauty's castle.
Against a backdrop of lace curtains swagged with pink silk rosettes and
a bed topped by a gilded wooden crown draped with thirty yards of filmy
white tulle, Francesca reigned as a princess over all she surveyed.

Occasionally she held court in her fairy-tale room, pouring sweetened
tea from a Dresden china pot for the daughter of one of Chloe's
friends. "I am Princess Aurora," she announced to the Honorable Clara
Millingford on one particular visit, prettily tossing the chestnut
curls she had inherited, along with her reckless nature, from Black
Jack Day. "You are one of the good women from the village who has come
to visit me."

Clara, the only daughter of Viscount Allsworth, had no intention of
being a good woman from the village while snooty Francesca Day acted
like royalty. She set down her third lemon biscuit and exclaimed,
"I
want to be Princess Aurora!"

The suggestion astonished Francesca so much that she laughed, a
delicate little peal of silvery sound. "Don't be silly, darling Clara.
You have those great big freckles. Not that freckles arenH perfectly
nice,
of course, but certainly not for Princess Aurora, who was the
most famous beauty in the land. I'll be Princess Aurora, and you can be
the queen."

Francesca thought her compromise was eminently fair and she was
heartbroken when Clara, like so many other little girls who had come to
play with her, refused to return. Their abandonment baffled her. Hadn't
she shared all her pretty toys with them? Hadn't she let them play in
her beautiful bedroom?

Chloe ignored any hints that