by Darcie Wilde
***
Adele showed Mademoiselle Marie to the door herself. Miss Sewell kept very few servants. Then, she walked along the narrow corridor to the back parlor, which had been converted to a book room. Miss Sewell herself sat beside the fire with Madelene and Helene, with Helene’s fat, detailed visiting book spread open on the table between them, along with several stacks of notes and a few visiting cards.
“Is Mademoiselle Marie gone?” asked Miss Sewell. “She must be almost ready to begin your fittings.”
“Yes,” said Adele. “Her progress is really remarkable.” She paused and looked directly at Miss Sewell. “I did not know she was James Beauclaire’s sister.”
“Well, think of that!” cried Madelene.
“Yes, think of that,” repeated Helene, only much less happily. “She is capable of doing what we need, isn’t she, Adele?”
Miss Sewell didn’t say one word. She didn’t even blink under Adele’s steady regard.
The truth was, Adele didn’t entirely know what to think of the woman who had agreed to be their chaperone. She had never met anyone like Miss Sewell. There were times when she called to find the woman with her hair down about her shoulders, clad in nothing but a nightdress and a silk wrapper, her hands covered with dust and ink from perusing old manuscripts. She never changed if she didn’t feel like it. She ate sandwiches and drank tea at her desk, laughed out loud, and even whistled tunes as she worked. She received men singly and in groups, sometimes in that same costume, with her ink-stained hands on full display.
It wasn’t that she had no care of her appearance. When she chose, she could dress as carefully and elegantly as any society hostess Adele had ever seen.
“It’s a costume,” she told Adele. “The great thing is to be aware it’s a costume, one I put on and take off when I choose. This”—she gestured at her bronze silk gown —“means as much about who I really am as the color of its hide means to the horse.”
The idea had stunned Adele. Aunt Kearsely had always taught her nieces that their clothes, their appearance, their demeanor were the deepest and truest expressions of themselves and their breeding. All her education—all those lectures and lessons—had been to make sure that appearances, and therefore the girls, were perfectly correct.
If her appearance wasn’t herself, who was she? And who were all those women in all those parlors and ballrooms?
“But isn’t that what we’re doing?” murmured Adele. “Aren’t we all working to become something we’re not?”
“If you were, I’d never have joined your project,” Miss Sewell answered. “But you three, I am pleased and proud to say, are working to become more yourselves every day.”
Adele heard this, and she went away. She couldn’t quite make herself believe it. But she wondered, and she thought, and she looked at the women and girls around her, and she kept on wondering.
Just as she wondered who Miss Sewell really was, and why she’d decided to take on their project. Oh, when she agreeed she’d answered breezily enough. “I accept your proposal, and you may keep your money. You’ll need all of it. As a critic of the haut ton, the spectacle of you three standing society on its head will be payment enough for me.”
But her last set of critical observations about the haut ton had ended up in the pages of a novel. Was she planning another even now, and would it feature three audacious girls who dared to take on society? And just what ending did this woman with her razor wit and laughing eyes intend for those girls?
Not that Miss Sewell had been anything but generous so far. Perhaps most importantly, she’d secured them all invitations to Mrs. Wrexford’s ball for the opening of the season proper. While not on the scale of Almack’s, Mrs. Wrexford’s ball was highly popular, and the cream of the ton would be in attendance, eager for a chance to view one another and what the season might bring.
“Adele?” Miss Sewell said. “I believe Helene asked if Mademoiselle Marie is capable.”
“What?” Adele shook herself. Of course the others knew of her attraction to James. It had been impossible to keep the secret from the two girls who had over the course of the past month become not only her coconspirators, but her best friends. “Oh yes. She’s more than capable. Her ideas are improving everything. Although she does say she may have to take on another assistant to have things ready in time.”
“Th-that will mean an extra expense?” asked Madelene.
“I’m afraid it will. I told her no, but . . .”
“Oh no. I can manage. That is, I think I can. Mister Thorpe has been very supportive so far.” Mr. Thorpe was Madelene’s principal trustee. It was another year before she had full control of her own money and so must go through him to request any advance over her monthly allowance. Adele had no idea what Madelene was telling the dour banker, but he’d been astonishingly forthcoming.
“I’m afraid we’re asking a lot of you,” Adele said to Madelene. “I will pay you back, I promise.”
“I don’t mind, really. It’s . . . it’s nice for once to have the money going to, well, something that I can be happy about.”
None of them had any answer to that. Adele remembered Madelene’s brother, Lewis, and his horrid behavior at the house party, including those times she’d glimpsed him in the card room and wondered just where he got the money to keep playing, and losing.
“Come help us update the visiting lists, Adele.” Helene shifted sideways on the sofa. “I’ve just procured a card from Mrs. Trentwell. I think that’s one Madelene and I might well take ourselves, which would free you for another meeting with Mademoiselle Marie, if it’s needed?”
Adele dutifully took her seat and picked up her own visiting book from the stack. Helene’s approach to the social world made Patience and Aunt Kearsely look like raw beginners. Whenever the girls met at Miss Sewell’s, Helene had the name of a new matron with whom an introduction needed to be managed. This, ideally, should lead to an exchange of cards, which, ideally, would lead to an opportunity to call, which in itself would lead to a new introduction, or even a formal invitation. Helene tracked the tree of acquaintances across the pages of her visiting books, for she kept more than one. Each call paid successfully was written down along with notes on how it had gone, what the topics of conversation had been, and any names that had been particularly mentioned, and in what context.
“It is like being a spy,” Helene said when Adele tried to make a joke out of it. “We are engaged in a siege of the fortress of society, so we need to gather all the intelligence we can.”
“It’s almost exciting to look at it that way,” said Madelene. “I like telling myself that I’m working for Wellington. It makes sitting in all those drawing rooms so much easier.”
The mention of spying made Adele glance toward Miss Sewell again. If Miss Sewell noticed, she gave no sign. Adele might feel uneasy, but what else were they to do? They needed her, as much as they needed this house. No. 48 was the one place they could talk and act freely.
Well, Adele told herself, if Miss Sewell did intend to write anything mischievous, she would find what it was to have a daughter of the Windfords to deal with. Not to mention the duke himself.
***
March paraded down London’s streets, dressing itself first in snowdrops, then crocuses, and finally daffodils. The three girls paid calls, meticulously following Helene’s schedules and lists. They went together, and they went separately. As they did, they slowly refashioned their apparel.
A new bonnet made an appearance here, new gloves there, or perhaps it was a new detail to a dress, such as lace or a new bag or shawl. But those were not the only changes. Nor were their growing circle of acquaintances the only ones to remark on them.
Adele had just come out of her closet to find Aunt Kearsely standing in her bedroom and staring.
“Adele, what on earth is the matter with that dress!”
Well, the color, the ruffles, the . . . Adele clamped her mouth shut. She’d hoped that watching her new wardrobe take shape under Marie’s clever fingers would give her more patience with the dresses her aunt selected, but it wasn’t working. Still, she had to keep quiet. The success of the entire plan depended on Aunt Kearsely not knowing that any plans existed.
“It’s positively bunched up.” Her aunt strode forward and began fussing with Adele’s dress, tugging at the shoulders, attempting to resettle the waist. “Don’t tell me we need to let it out again!” She paused then and looked at the twist of fabric in her fingers. “No. It doesn’t need to be let out. This needs to be taken in.” She stared at her niece. “Adele, have you lost weight?”
“I . . . well . . . it’s possible, I suppose.”
“Turn around.”
Adele did. Aunt Kearsely watched. Then she walked around Adele on her own. “I . . . well . . . I must say. I . . . It is very well done, Adele. I will send a note to Madame Flaubert asking her to come and make the alterations. I . . . well.”
With that, Aunt Kearsely took her leave. Adele walked back into her dressing room and, for the first time in her life, it seemed, stood in front of her mirror and took a very long look.
She was slimmer. It wasn’t her imagination. The loose-fitting dress told the truth. How had that happened? When had that happened? She’d been eating just the same, and the weather had been too foul for regular exercise . . .
It was the work, she realized. Usually, Adele’s little season consisted of eight weeks of tedium, with nothing to look forward to but another season of sitting by the wall. She ate to pass the time. She ate because it was comforting and, if she admitted it, because it was forbidden.
These past weeks, though, she’d eaten only at mealtimes, and then distractedly. There’d been so much to do. Designing full wardrobes for three very different girls was no small thing. There were a thousand details to be considered. Even with Mademoiselle Marie’s expert help, the effort had been absorbing all Adele’s time and attention. Was the weather bad? It didn’t matter. She must venture out to meet with the others, or to stop by Mademoiselle Marie’s workroom to see her progress and review plans and patterns; or she must be off to the warehouses with Marie to select silk and ribbons and beads and lace. She hadn’t walked so much since she was a little girl in the country, and she’d done it in all weathers.
And this was the result. Adele pressed her hands against her flattened stomach, and then against her blushing cheeks. She wasn’t slender, not like Patience, but she was undeniably slimmer than she had been just at Christmastime. The morning dress was still awful, but for the first time, the ruffles didn’t look quite so outrageous; the gathers around the waist were, well, they were gathered, and hanging neatly, not straining out. It looked almost . . . almost . . .
She stood straight. She struck a pose. She laughed and clapped her hand against her mouth to smother the sound.
“Look at me,” she whispered behind her fingertips. “I’m pretty.”
XII
Marie Beauclaire was beginning to regret saying yes to milady, and to James.
It was not that she regretted taking on the task of milady’s dresses. The dresses were going beautifully. Against expectation, James’s new heiress had taste that came close to being French in its excellence and sophistication. She was also unexpectedly willing to listen when Marie suggested alterations to her designs. Even more unexpectedly, when presented with the bills, milady paid, and paid in full.
No, it was her stupid, sentimental yielding to her brother’s curiosity that she regretted. Her foolish agreement to carry that first note between James and milady led to endless questions of “How did she look?” from him and “What did he say?” from her. Any hint that they might easily meet in a park or some private, friendly home was met with sound rejection. They had made a bargain. They would keep it.
“But Marie, how . . .” she muttered in imitation of James’s eager interrogation as she carefully stitched the beading into the latest skirt. “But Marie, what . . . Ow!” she cried as her needle jabbed her finger. She popped the wounded digit instantly into her mouth, while she smoothed out the skirt to see if any blood had marred the shimmering white fabric.
This, she decided, was the limit. One made allowances for foolish brothers and silly clientele, but not when their distractions made one clumsy and in danger of ruining good silk, most especially when there was no time left to order more before the ball.
Something must be done.
***
“They’re here!” Madelene ran into the green parlor where Adele and Helene were sitting with Helene’s latest lists. “The gowns have arrived! Miss Sewell is having them taken upstairs.”
Both girls dropped the papers they held and hurried after Madelene. Adele’s heart was in her mouth. Of course she had seen much of the progress during her frequent visits to Mademoiselle Marie’s little workroom, but there was so much beading and tucking and trimming to be done, work had gone on until the very last moment. It was only three hours until Mrs. Wrexford’s ball. Three hours until the season began and they would know if there was even a possibility that their plans for transformation would succeed.
Three hours until she would know if she and James might have a chance.
All the girls had arranged to spend the night at Miss Sewell’s. Aunt Kearsely had demurred. Adele was presuming too much on Miss Sewell’s time, she felt. Adele was spending too much time with Lady Helene, and this Miss Valmeyer, what were her connections? Adele had come close to panic. If Aunt Kearsely was getting suspicious or uneasy, everything would be over before it truly began.
Most unexpectedly it was Patience who came to her rescue. “Oh, let her go, Aunt,” she said loftily. “It’s only one party. I’m sure she’ll be home much more after this.” And she smiled with all the warmth of a snowstorm.
Adele packed and took Bridget and went, but all the time, she wondered just how much Patience knew, and what on earth her sister might be planning.
But Adele set all that aside as she gazed at the two great boxes laid out on the bed in Miss Sewell’s spare room.
Two?
“This came with the others, Adele.” Miss Sewell handed her a note.
While Bridget helped Helene and Madelene open the boxes and peel back the layers of tissue, Adele opened the note. Her hands were shaking.
“Oh!” Madelene cried, holding up the sparkling champagne-colored gown.
“It’s perfect,” said Miss Sewell. “Well done, Adele!”
“I . . . I’m almost afraid to wear it. It’s too lovely.”
“Well, if you don’t wear it, Madelene, all Adele and Mademoiselle Marie’s work will be wasted,” Helene said. She was running her hand across the folds of her silver gown, with its trimming of glittering glass diamonds.
“Oh well.” Madelene giggled. “I would not want that. But, where’s yours, Adele?”
“Marie writes she’s still finishing it.” She held up the note. “Some last-minute work on the beading. She promises it will be here in two hours.”
Adele tried to smile. She tried to accept the exclamations and promised to help the other two by playing lady’s maid along with Miss Sewell and Bridget. She tried to ignore the feeling of approaching disaster that lurked in the back of her mind with the memory of Patience’s smile.
***
“What?” James stared at his sister. She was sitting placidly at her worktable with her foot propped up on a stool.
“I cannot go,” she said again. “I fell off the stool and twisted my ankle.” She gestured toward the bandage binding the wounded body part. “I cannot deliver the ball gown to milady Adele.”
“Then you must send Aimee,” James told her. Sacré bleu! Did the confounded girl not understand? Tonight was everything to Adele, and to him.
“Aimee has gone home,” sh
e replied placidly. “Her little brother has fallen ill, and she was needed. You must take the dress, James, or Adele will not have it for her grand evening.”
“You’re doing this on purpose, Marie. There is nothing wrong with your ankle.”
She shrugged. “Fine. Do not go. It makes no difference to me. The gown is paid for. But how will you explain to milady that it is your fault she has no dress? Because I will tell her, you understand.”
“Yes, Marie,” James growled. “I understand you perfectly.”
***
In the tiny foyer of No. 48, the case clock chimed eight.
“You should go,” whispered Adele to Helene and Madelene, who stood, in their gowns with their fans and their reticules, ready to leave. They both looked truly wonderful.
“No,” said Helene stubbornly. “You’ve worked too hard for this. We are not going without you.”
“You have to,” she answered, striving to be firm, even though it felt like every bone in her body was crumbling to dust. “You, and the gowns, have to be seen. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? This is our first act. You’ve said it yourself. If it isn’t completed, there won’t be a second.”
“You go, Helene,” murmured Madelene. “I’ll wait with Adele.”
Miss Sewell locked eyes with Adele and saw her agony of indecision. “I think not. It would look odd for two of you to be missing. There will be the wrong kind of talk.”
“But . . .” began Madelene.
“I’ll be fine.” Adele mustered a smile. “The gown will certainly be here soon. I have Bridget to dress me, and I’ll be along well before the supper dance.” She lifted her chin in her best imitation of Patience. “I shall be fashionably late, that’s all.”
“Which will not cause any kind of talk,” muttered Helene. “But only if you’re sure. We’re in this together, and I won’t see you left behind because of a silly dress.”