Page 56 of A Dress for the Wicked
“I know. It’s a lot to ask. But if you break this, it’ll be huge. And times are changing. I’ve heard people say that soon theTimeswon’t answer to the queen.” I spoke more confidently than I had the right to. “Besides, aren’t there some editors at theTimeswho want to curry favor with the Reformists?”
“Yes...” He picked at some dried skin around his fingernail. For a moment, this uncharacteristic pensiveness made me question myself. What right did I have to ask him to do this? To endanger his career? And for what? A slim hope of something that might not even happen. He had a job and a place in thiscity—and I was asking him to risk both.
“How about this?” When I met his gaze, his eyes were bright again, and that bewitchingly sly smile was back, pulling at the left side of his mouth. “I’ll tell Cynthia about the plan. And if you are successful and pull off an actual fashion show, I’ll write the story.”
“Really?” I smiled back at him, unable to hide my relief. “Thank you.”
“Yes. Just promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“That you’ll be really careful and you won’t get caught.”
“Promise.”
There was a sudden flash of lightning, and it made us both jump. Tristan glanced across the pub to one of the grimy windows. Dark clouds gathered in the gloomy sky, and thunder rumbled, low and growly.
“It’s going to rain. You need to get back. Also, Grayson might have us wash dishes in the back if we stay.”
He was right. I needed to go home.
Correction. I needed to get back to the Fashion House.
Chapter Thirteen
THAT NIGHT, SOPHIE WAS GONEas usual, so I had our chamber to myself. I was glad. I could think in the empty silence of our room. Think, and plan.
I got out my sketchbook and sat down at my vanity. To make a full collection, I would need at least eight pieces. Ten, if I wanted to appear like a real designer. Madame Jolène’s collections always had at least twelve, but that was impossible. Eight would have to do, and I’d be lucky if I managed that.
The easiest part was deciding on a theme. My collection would tell the story of a girl who came to the city for a better life. The first dresses would be clean, asymmetrical factory shifts that would slowly transition into fantastical gowns, fit for the noblest woman in the city.
I closed my eyes, letting a fog of watercolors wash over me, holding my pencil over my sketchbook. Slowly, the fog turned into wispy forms, purply shadows of shadows. I pressed the pencil to the paper, and the shadows turned to shapes and the shapes to styles, streaming out of me. A hooded tunic over a long shift. A two-piece dress cut from plain cotton. A structured nude overcoat with a sheer slip underneath.
I stopped with the three, staring down at them. I loved them. But from a practical standpoint, they were difficult. It would take lots of time and effort to make even one. And I wasn’t about to simplify them, not when I needed them to prove my skills and vision. There was no way I could do everything I needed on my own in the three weeks before the exhibition. And if this collection didn’t astound the press, I wouldn’t stand a chance at starting a new fashion house.
The unexpected desire to ask Kitty for her help came over me. I quickly banished it. There was no way I could trust her, even if I wanted to. We’d seen each other frequently these past two days, but we hadn’t spoken since I’d discovered her letter.
Sophie, though, might just have everything I needed, including quickness. In addition to her skills and creativity, she never ran up against the clock with the challenges. With her at my side, I’d be unstoppable. I looked over to her always-changing side of the room. Her wardrobe door sat open, her black dresses hanging partway out of it. The burgundy dresses Madame Jolène wanted her to wear were pushed to the back, as though Sophie couldn’t stand the sight of them.
When my mother was considering hiring a new vendor, she’d make them a pie and have them over so she could “look them in the eye and get a real feel for them.”
I pushed my stool back from the vanity. Before our falling-out, Kitty had given me a velvet box of white chocolates and a small bottle of wine from the hamper her parents sent. I grabbed them. Now I just had to find Sophie.
She probably wasn’t in the dining room. Maybe the sewing room or her fitting room. I was in my nightgown, and I put onthe filmy blush retiring robe that hung on a hook by my bed each night. I would start with the fitting rooms.
Throughout the day, the stairway down to the fitting rooms was constantly filled with the contestants, the design board, Francesco, and Madame Jolène’s servants, tramping up and down in a ceaseless march. But at night, it was completely empty and unlit. White moonlight filtered in through the windows high above my head, but the slender shafts didn’t quite penetrate the murky darkness. The only sounds were the soft padding of my feet, muffled by the long Turkish runners covering the stairs and the low swish of my nightgown.
The doors to the hallway swung open on their well-oiled hinges. Peering down the hall, I glimpsed a sliver of light shining beneath the curtain to Sophie’s room and heard the familiar whir of a sewing machine. No one else had a sewing machine in their room. She must have specially requested it.
I walked over to it and knocked on the doorframe before slipping inside. I had never been in her fitting room before.
Sophie sat on an upholstered bench running along the far wall. She was wearing a thin black satin romper with a sheer champagne robe tied over it. Half her hair was wrapped up into a knot on the very top of her head while the rest lay over her shoulders. White silk spilled across her lap. She was working on her wedding gown.
“Emmaline?”
“I...” I moved to stand in the center of the fitting room so we weren’t so far apart. This room was clearly her domain, and I was an intruder. “Hello.”
I tried to focus on her, but the surrounding details drew mein. Surreptitiously, I glanced around at the designer’s dreamworld that Sophie had created. Swatches of cloth arranged by color created a perfect rainbow better than anything seen in nature. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but it seemed that the swatches were also arranged by texture: thicker matte fabrics to the right, thinner ones on the left. I had never even considered such an arrangement.
