by Evie Dunmore
The shop window of Mrs. Winston, the most recommended dressmaker on Oxford’s High Street, displayed three mannequins which she supposed were fashionably dressed. The interior beyond was small but neatly organized, with tightly spaced rolls of fabric affixed to the walls and a gleaming cherrywood counter at the center of the room.
She entered, and a deafening clanking sound nearly made her jump out of her walking boots.
“Good gracious!”
She glared up, her hands covering her ears. A large . . . cowbell was swaying menacingly right above her face. It was most definitely a cowbell because it looked exactly like the ones she had seen on cows in Switzerland when visiting there as a girl.
“Good morning, missus. How may I help you today?” From the corridor leading to the depths of the shop’s back room emerged a tall, thin woman with a measuring tape coiled around her neck. A pair of glasses was hanging on to the tip of her nose. Already her brown eyes were moving over Lucie from head to toe, taking mental notes—height, notably short; waist, notably small; bosom, largely absent.
Lucie placed her card on the countertop. “I require seven dresses after the latest fashion.”
Mrs. Winston frowned at her, confounded by an accent announcing a lady while the card introduced a plain Miss Morray. Well, she could never be certain where she ran the risk of being recognized, and whether she would be served. Today, she had no time to waste.
Mrs. Winston picked up a pen and a wooden board with a sheet of paper attached to it.
“One morning dress,” Lucie said. “A carriage dress, three walking dresses, and two evening gowns, complete with matching gloves. These are my measurements.” She slid a note toward the scribbling Mrs. Winston.
Mrs. Winston side-eyed the note. “I prefer to have my assistants take the measurements.”
“I’m rather pressed for time. The figures are accurate.”
The seamstress put down her pen, her expression grave. “With all due respect, it is my experience that measurements tend to fluctuate greatly between a customer’s measuring tape and the tapes we employ here.”
Fluctuated greatly between reality and desirous thinking, rather.
“I suffer no illusions in regard to my size,” Lucie said. Her skin itched at the thought of being stripped and measured and turned to and fro. The sooner she could go to the Randolph to plan her next moves, the better.
“Very well.” Mrs. Winston’s eyes flitted between the figures on the paper and Lucie’s torso. “These measurements do not seem to account for a proper corset.”
“They do, but it laces down the front and I prefer it to be quite loose.”
Mrs. Winston’s brows nearly reached her hairline. “I suspected this was the case.”
“I expect it shall pose no problem for a seamstress as acclaimed as you?”
“None at all,” Mrs. Winston said coolly. “We are proud to deliver outstanding elegance no matter the challenge. Have you any preferences regarding the fabrics and colors?”
She eyed the fabric bales on the walls. Pale hues of pink and blue and sunshine. Gatherings of ladies everywhere resembled baskets full of Easter eggs this season.
“Cotton in lemon yellow for the morning dress,” she said. “Tafetta silk for the walking dresses in light blue, powder blue, and mauve. Cerise silk for the evening gowns. Finest new wool in dove gray for the carriage dress.”
Mrs. Winston nodded along with revived enthusiasm; as usual, Hattie’s color choices pleased the experts in the field.
“No trains on the carriage dress or the walking dresses,” Lucie said.
Mrs. Winston stilled. “No trains?”
“Not one inch.”
“Very well,” Mrs. Winston said after a poignant pause. “I do recommend adding some strategic applications to create an illusion of buxomness.”
“You mean ruffles? No ruffles, please.”
“Very well. May I suggest velvet details for the walking dresses? I had some exquisite navy-blue velvet delivered yesterday; it would make an excellent contrast with both light blue and powder blue.”
“Approved,” Lucie said. “I also need three pockets in each skirt.”
Mrs. Winston nearly dropped the pen. “Three pockets?”
“Yes.”
“There is one pocket at the most in the skirts we order in or fashion ourselves, and in the walking dresses only.”
“Well, I need three in each skirt, in convenient reach and quite large.”
Mrs. Winston had a hostile look about her. “It is common to have one pocket, a small one, in the skirts of a walking dress. But three is quite unheard of.”
“I have a lot of items on me,” Lucie explained. “I’m quite discerning, you see.”
“With all due respect, you required dresses after the latest fashion. The latest fashion can be described in one word, snug, but in any case, bulging pockets destroy the lines of any kind of skirt and thus the look of a lady.” Mrs. Winston’s voice had steadily risen and she was quite agitated on the last word.
Lucie reached into her reticule and placed coins onto the counter. “This lady pays extra for them.”
Mrs. Winston picked up her pen again with pointy fingers. “It can be paid for, certainly,” she muttered. “It does not, however, make it any less of a crime against a perfectly innocent skirt. Say, are you part of this new Rational Dress Society?”
“I am not,” Lucie said, but drat it reminded her of the pile of correspondence back at home. Somewhere in the stack lurked her unfinished reply to Viscountess Harberton, newly minted founder of the Rational Dress Society. Should said society dare to postulate a recommendation on women’s unmentionables (no woman shall wear undergarments exceeding seven pounds in combined weight), Lady Harberton had asked. And: would Lucie support a campaign in favor of women riding bicycles? The answer to both questions was yes, and she’d prepare a bicycle petition, but so far, she had not found the time. No thanks to the added work on London Print. Damn Tristan Ballentine, obstructor of women’s progress on every front.
The cowbell exploded behind her as the shop door opened again.
“Good gracious,” came a woman’s aristocratic voice, “have we entered Switzerland?”
Lucie froze.
No.
No, this was not possible.
Mrs. Winston was looking past her at the new customer, her lips moving with a greeting.
She couldn’t hear over the heavy silence filling her head. It had been ten years since she’d last heard that voice.
She glanced back over her shoulder with some hesitation.
An angel had entered the shop. Glossy curls in hazel shades. Large crystalline blue eyes. A mouth poets would have likened to a rosebud. She had never beheld this paragon of womanhood before. But next to the young lady, with her thin brows raised in consternation, stood—her mother.
So she hadn’t imagined it. It was Lady Wycliffe, clad in high-necked pale silk and lace.
She had used to wonder how it would be to see her mother again. Her stomach had plunged at the thought. And now she felt—nothing. Just her heart beating away with eerie calm.
The countess looked thinner; she was stretched tight over her fine bones. Or perhaps it was the shock—first the cowbell, now her daughter.
A footman had accompanied the women; he stood back against the wall, bedecked in bags of varying sizes.
“Lucinda.” Her mother was still staring at her. A lady does not stare.
“Mother.”
Her eyes on Lucie, the countess gripped the angel’s upper arm. “You remember your cousin Cecily?”
For a moment, she remembered nothing.
The young woman, Lady Cecily, tilted her head. “Cousin Lucie.”
At the sound of the sweet voice, she knew. Memories returned, of a six-year-old girl who easily cried. Ceci
ly’s parents—her father one of Wycliffe’s first cousins—had perished in a train accident, so she had come to live at Wycliffe Hall. At now one-and-twenty, she was a beauty, no doubt a toast of polite society.
“May I offer the ladies some refreshment?” Mrs. Winston’s voice was unnaturally bright.
“Cecily excels at watercoloring,” her mother said. “She was immediately accepted by Professor Ruskin for a place in Oxford’s Summer School program.”
“How delightful,” Lucie said.
The air in the shop was suddenly thick as London fog. Had her mother just announced that she and Cecily were in Oxford for the summer?
“Are you often in this part of town?” her mother asked.
“It is a small town, Mother.”
They were bound to cross paths. It was hard to tell who of them resented this more. The countess had finally released Cousin Cecily’s arm, but a displeased flush reddened her cheeks.
“Cecily, we are taking another turn outside. This is a small shop, it cloys easily.”
“Yes, Aunt,” Cecily said softly.
“I was about to take my leave,” Lucie said quickly. There was no need to cost Mrs. Winston an order, as reticent as the woman was on the matter of pockets.
Her mother gave a contemptuous sniff.
Lucie turned back to the seamstress. “Have you any crimson silk?”
Mrs. Winston looked at her sharply over the rim of her glasses. “I do. In the back room. Do you wish to take a look?” She said it reluctantly, no doubt worried the ladies would leave after all.
“Crimson is crimson, I suppose. I need a ball gown fashioned from it by next week. Feel free to embellish it, but no ruffles.”
Mrs. Winston blinked. “By next week?”
“I shall pay double.”
“Well, it’s certainly possible,” Mrs. Winston said, her pen flying over her paper.
“Excellent,” Lucie said, and a little louder: “And do make the waist a few inches smaller, because for this one, I shall tighten the laces.”
* * *
She could not remember the route she had taken to the Randolph and was vaguely surprised to find herself standing in the doorway to Annabelle’s study.
Annabelle was seated behind her desk, surrounded by open books, translating something, for her lips were moving silently. The heavy mass of her hair had been pinned haphazardly on top of her head.
She glanced up. “Lucie.” She cast a confused look at the clock on the mantelpiece while rising. “Forgive me, I had not yet expected you—I’m covered in ink.”
“I just ordered a crimson ball gown.”
Annabelle chuckled as she wiped her fingers. “Oh dear. Hattie has finally worn you down, has she not? Do not feel bad, we all succumb in the end.”
“No. It was my mother.”
Annabelle’s brows lowered. “Your mother?”
“The very same. She did not look much changed.”
Annabelle was by her side. “What happened?”
She must have looked rattled, as Annabelle spoke to her in a soft, concerned tone.
“I must apologize—I’m calling on you too early.”
“Nonsense. Come.”
She followed Annabelle into the drawing room, onto the green divan.
“She just walked into the tailor shop on High Street,” she said. “With my cousin Cecily. I understand they are staying in Oxford for the summer so Cecily can improve her excellent watercoloring techniques at Ruskin’s school.”
Watercoloring—one of few pursuits a lady was encouraged to study in depth. Many young women had enjoyed a trip to Europe, even, to perfect painting techniques. Her mother had used to exclaim in despair over Lucie’s lack of finesse with a paintbrush; no tour across Europe would have improved her.
Annabelle had paused the process of ringing for some tea. “Oh Lord,” she said. “They will be in town for the whole summer?”
“It appears so. I reckon they will stay here, in the Randolph—it is the best hotel in town, after all.” Today’s awkward encounter might well repeat itself. And here she had thought the matter of Tristan owning half her business was troubling enough.
“I was petty,” she said. “I ordered a red dress and ensured that they heard about how I wear my unmentionables.”
“It was a shock,” Annabelle said, quick to excuse her pettiness, as a good friend would.
A shock? She refused to admit to anything of such magnitude.
“It could have been worse—she could have given me the cut direct.” Her brows pulled together. “She and Cecily seemed close.”
“Were you close to your cousin?”
Lucie shook her head. “She was still a child when I left home. We never had much in common.” By the time she was eleven and Lucie was leaving, Ceci had had one face and voice for men, and another for the women, and it wasn’t quite clear which was the real one, something Lucie had found disconcerting. “Cecily is lovely, I suppose,” she said. “And she liked Lord Ballentine. She followed him around every summer as if he had her on a string, like one of those wooden ducks on wheels.” And Tristan had indulged her, with comments on her dolls and her ribbons. Sometimes he had made coins dance between his fingers, or toffees had appeared from midair. Even Lucie had been impressed by these tricks.
“If you are ordering ball gowns, may we assume you are coming to our house party?” Annabelle said with a smile.
“You may,” she said, her own smile a little forced. “All four of us will be together. Hooray.”
We assume . . . our house party. It grated a little, how husband and wife ceased to exist as I and became us. Annabelle had been changing accordingly since her wedding; her country accent was making way for the steeper vowels of the upper classes, and her hand-altered dresses had been replaced by the constraining gowns befitting a duchess. It was reassuring to still see ink stains marking her fingers, even though her study was now located in a plush hotel rather than her little student room at Lady Margaret Hall. Still, as she sat here in Annabelle’s rooms and enjoyed the comforts of their close friendship, she was painfully reminded that some day soon, Annabelle would be lost to their circle of friends and the Cause, because at the end of the day, she was a married woman. And while Montgomery granted her time away from Claremont, he was an excessively dutiful man, and he would soon require his duchess to have his heir. . . .
“Oh.” Annabelle made a face. “I’m scatterbrained these days. The going back and forth between Claremont and Oxford, and learning duchess duties . . . Lucie, I think your mother and your brother are on the guest list. As I believe is one of your father’s cousins, the Marquess of Doncaster.”
Her stomach gave an unpleasant twist. “Don’t you worry,” she said lightly. “I shall be on my best behavior—and avoiding relations during such gatherings is impossible; we are all, more or less, related.”
“I never doubted your behavior.”
“I just ordered a crimson ball gown. Clearly my comportment cannot be accounted for in their presence.”
“Families are complicated,” Annabelle murmured. She knew this from personal experience, judging from the few glimpses Lucie had caught of her friend’s past.
She leaned back into the soft upholstery of the divan, the tensions slowly draining from her limbs. “I never told you why my father banished me, have I?”
“No,” Annabelle said carefully. “I always suspected it was because of the incident with the fork and the Spanish ambassador.”
“Ah. But no. It was because of the Contagious Diseases Act.”
Annabelle’s green eyes widened. “The same act we are still trying to have repealed?”
Lucie nodded. “I was seventeen years old and restless to do something other than just read about the adventures of Florence Nightingale and annotate Wollstonecraft essays. Whenever my family was in
London during the season, I had access to newspapers other than the Times—and by chance, I came across Josephine Butler’s manifesto against the act in the Manchester Guardian.”
Annabelle bit her lip. “I imagine it was eye-opening?”
“Spectacularly so. Mrs. Butler had just founded the Ladies National Association to repeal the act and she was touring the country to gain support. Around this time, a factory girl had nearly drowned at the London docks, because she had jumped into the Thames to evade the police. It made headlines; the patrolling officers had thought she looked like a prostitute and wanted to apprehend her. At the time, word had already spread among working women that they would be subject to a forcible examination if caught—sometimes in view of male workers. Oh, I feel angry just thinking of it. Anyways, the girl flew into a panic and jumped to spare herself the humiliation, and Annabelle, I was enraged. Forcing examinations for venereal diseases on any woman struck me as abominable.”
Annabelle visibly shuddered. “And all to protect men who use prostitutes from catching the pox.”