Page 43 of A Dress for the Wicked
I drew quickly, the sketch spilling across the page. It sprang from my heart, easily, effortlessly. I was lost to it until the door opened and Tilda came in, wielding her feather duster. Immediately, I flipped my sketchbook closed. The last thing I needed was for her to weigh in.
“I heard your sketches were destroyed,” she said, waving the duster around my vanity.
“Yes. But Madame Jolène was still able to judge them.”
“Oh, was she?” Tilda’s voice was airy and light, but I frowned. There was something about the way her lips tightened. She seemed... disappointed.
“She quite liked them.” I watched Tilda carefully. She might not have had any real power at the Fashion House, but she was a maid, and that meant that people would talk freely aroundher—she was practically invisible. In fact, she might even know who destroyed my work. “You wouldn’t happen to know who did it, would you?”
“Of course not,” she answered quickly. A little too quickly. I set my sketchbook down and stood up. She noticed my movements and lowered her feather duster, watching me warily as I approached her.
“Are you sure?” I tried to look her in the eye, but she avoided my gaze. “Please, I could use your help. I’m—”I’m barely surviving here.The thought struck me hard. Unexpectedly so. “Please, Tilda.”
“Don’t bother asking. I can’t help you.” For once, her voice wasn’t tinged with that fake sweet tone she always used with me. “If you can’t handle this competition, you shouldn’t be in it.”
“I don’t understand,” I said slowly. “We’re similar. I’m not fromthis, Tilda.” I gestured to the opulence around us.
“I know that.” Her words were short and snippy, all artifice of sweetness gone. “That’s what makes it worse.”
“Makes it worse?” I knew everyone else here would never deign to have such a discussion with a maid, but I was tired of doing things the Fashion House way. So far, going along with things had only gotten me limited competing time and a wardrobe of repulsively pink dresses.
“You’re no one. If the Fashion House didn’t need you to posture for the press and you’d come to the city for a job, you’d be a maid, just like me. I have to put up with everyone else here, but I shouldn’t have to put up with you.”
“You don’t understand.” I wanted to tell her everything, thatcoming here had been my lifelong dream but how, since arriving, I’d realized that the dream didn’t exist—that I was blocked at every turn, dismissed, sent this place and that to look like a “country” girl—and that most of the time, I felt like I was falling down a bottomless hole. But even though Tilda resented everyone at the Fashion House, she was more like them than I ever would be, and like them, she wouldn’t care.
“I don’t understand what?” She challenged me with her gaze. Abruptly, I turned away and went back to my chair by the window.
“Nothing,” I said. “Never mind.”
She pressed her lips together in a thin line and raised her feather duster. She started dusting, and I started drawing, and there was complete silence again, a silence full of strain. My hand moved about my page, automatically filling in parts of the sketch, but all I could feel was the lump in my throat and the tears that stung the backs of my eyes.
We were supposed to go to the Fabric Floor the next morning, but I was scheduled to attend a reading by the new poet laureate. Even though it would limit her time, Kitty agreed to pick out my fabric. I gave her a list:
Warm ivory duchess satin
Silk-covered buttons
The list was sparse compared with Kitty’s, which was full of different types of laces, silks, and embroidered appliques. Ky brushed by with hers, and it was covered with words likeembossed taffetaandruffled tulle.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to get you anything else?” Kitty asked, frowning at my two-item list. “I can throw in some extra beads or lace.”
“I’m sure.” And I was. It was all I needed to make the gown in my head, and that was the secret of it: it would let Lady Harrison shine and enhance her figure without the distraction of frills and laces. “But can you please make sure it’s the right shade of ivory? I want that hue that’s just between candlelight and champagne.”
“Between candlelight and champagne,” Kitty repeated. Her brow crinkled. “I’ll do my best.”
I nearly launched into a description of the color that I could see so clearly in my mind. But that was the thing with colors—one had to see it in person to know it. I smiled reassuringly at Kitty, but the minute she looked back down at the list, I gritted my teeth, praying desperately that somehow she would get the right materials.
After the reading, I hurried to my chamber to see the silk that Kitty had selected for me. It waited on my bed, an ivory cutout against the blush duvet. I frowned, running my fingertips over it. It wasn’t the right shade of ivory—there was way too much yellow in it. A package of buttons sat next to it. I spilled them out across the bed, my frown deepening. The buttons matched the silk, but they were much too small. They wouldn’t look right at all. Defeated, I sat down on the edge of my bed, staring at the too-yellow silk and too-small buttons.
Chapter Ten
THE NEXT DAY,I wanted to start the pattern for my wedding gown, but we were scheduled for Fashion House duties because of the gala. The number of customers had doubled, and everyone was needed—including me, for once.
I headed down to my fitting room, stepping around the handymen bringing down extra mirrors and the maids clearing out the spare dressing rooms that stored extra mannequins.
When I got to my fitting room, I took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the fresh flowers the Fashion House received every day to perfume the hallways. I pulled back the curtain to my room and stepped inside, shaking off my despondency at the silk and buttons. Every fitting room was the same—furnished with a trifold, full-length mirror, a circular pedestal, an upholstered bench pushed against the wall, and a garment hook on the wall.
Despite the uniformity of the rooms, I’d learned the nuances of mine, how my pedestal listed just slightly to the side when anyone stepped on it and how the mirror needed to be adjusted for the best light.
