by Gwyn Cready
“What are you doing?”
He leaped out before the carriage ground to its unsteady stop. “You can turn around and pick up your friends. I’ll walk from here. With any luck, I can get Elizabeth Hiscock to cough up the location of the warehouse during the first dance. Then I can go home and everyone can enjoy the party.”
He slammed the door hard enough to rattle her teeth, and she closed her eyes, trying to sort out the tangle of emotions—the red coals of anger that burned behind her eyes; the buzzing shame, like a cloud of bees around her; oh, and we mustn’t forget the jealousy, that cold, black stone weighing down her heart. But more than anything, what she felt was the bone-deep sorrow of losing him. He’d seen her for what she was, and he’d been ashamed of it.
She managed to lean out the window to tell the driver to return to the inn before losing herself in tears. When she opened her eyes, she saw it—across from her, still on the bench where he’d been sitting. The parcel was large—it took up half the bench, and tucked under the twine holding it together was a folded piece of paper. “Serafina” had been carefully written on it in a neat script. She picked it up and opened it.
Dear Serafina,
When this idea popped into my head, I didn’t know you and I would be saying good-bye. I don’t know what I thought exactly. I guess I wasn’t thinking at all. (Being around you can do that to a man.)
I’ve loved every moment I’ve spent with you—some more than others, and a few a lot more than others—and I can only hope that you felt some of the same joy.
You are a remarkable woman for the eighteenth century—Strike that. You are a remarkable woman for any year, in any century, in any era of the world. And, as you occasionally remark, I am in the position to judge. But nothing in my experience could’ve prepared me for you, just as nothing in my experience could’ve made me deserving of the time I’ve passed in your company.
I have no gift to give you but this. I hope, nonetheless, you will find it a helpful one. I’ve told you about the value buyers can impute to a product beyond the absolute value of its parts. Tulips, remember? As you are a merchant now, it’s incumbent on you to create this additional value. Doing so requires faith. If you understand what intrigues potential customers about you and your product, then the tiniest push can turn intrigue into heartfelt desire (in the way a love potion from Undine can only work if a person is already inclined toward the other.) Note that I said “intrigue” not “like.” Dislike can be exceptionally intriguing and can be turned into a strong like with the right push.
Of all the things I thought I might give you (and at one time the list was quite long), this lesson is the last thing I would have imagined. But in this world, it’s all that I have. Please know that I give it with gratitude, admiration, and great affection.
Your friend across time,
Gerard Innes
Serafina’s hand dropped slowly into her lap. I give it with gratitude, admiration, and great affection. She could hear his voice, see the earnestness in his eyes. This was not a man who was worried about her shame. He was a man who cared for her and wanted to give her something useful. She read the letter again, heart tight with regret.
With trembling hands, she loosened the twine and peeled back the paper. Immediately, a tightly packed heap of snowy white burst, wave after wave, from its bindings.
Muslin?
It was her muslin. She recognized the intricate patterns—stripes and dots and crosshatching. Then a tiny satin ribbon in the sea of fabric caught her eye, and another and another. A long line of bows had been sewn into the muslin. She lifted this curious length of tailoring from her lap and a skirt dropped to the floor—not just any skirt, a billowy, tiered marvel of muslin that seemed to fill the floor of the carriage and rise almost to her knee. The tailor must have used thirty yards of fabric. It was an ocean of gleaming muslin, and each pattern caught the candlelight differently, shining as if the threads had been polished by hand.
Speechless, she wrestled the chemise around to look at the front and nearly cried out in joy. Dozens of precise knife pleats ran across the low-cut, fitted bodice, one muslin pattern alternating with another in a pastiche of subtle, monochromatic textures, and this is where she found the bows. Each pleat was anchored under one arm with a tiny, white bow. The close-fitting capped sleeves were entirely sheer and the back nearly so. She couldn’t see her fingers when she ran her hand inside the bodice, but the fabric emanated the faintest pink blush of her flesh. The knife pleats pulled the garment, just barely, from the edge of scandal.
It was the most breathtaking, gasp-inducing, attention-grabbing chemise she had ever seen—the chemise of a French princess or the wife of an Indian potentate. She loved it.
But would she dare wear it?
Forty-six
Gerard paced the edge of the dance floor, his gaze sweeping the lines of men and women. He told himself to just get done what he’d promised to get done so he could get out, but he couldn’t keep the memory of Serafina’s words from his thoughts. He’d never wanted a woman the way he wanted her, and he’d certainly never put his heart at risk by exposing his feelings. He felt as if he’d exercised a set of muscles he’d never known he’d had, and now he ached from it. Jesus, would he ever recover from Serafina Fallon?
He’d been keeping a close eye on the staircase in the center hall, down which guests made their grand entrances, and as near as he could tell, Elizabeth Hiscock had not arrived, nor had his party, except possibly for Undine, who seemed to be able to materialize and dematerialize at will.
“Good evening, Lord Hiscock,” a nearby man said in passing.
Gerard turned to see the man responsible for so much mischief in Edinburgh. Hiscock, who stood with his wife, was a wiry man with a granite face and the sort of calculating eyes he was accustomed to seeing in clients with no appreciation for anything but money. His wife, on the other hand, reminded Gerard of the talking wardrobe in Beauty and the Beast and looked entirely affable.
He spotted Undine moving through the crowd. She wore a green gown that shimmered like the scales of a fish. He hurried over and hooked her arm.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Follow my lead.” He led her to the Hiscocks.
“They know me.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Lady Hiscock,” he said, “so good to see you again. I trust you’re in good health. Good evening, my lordship. May I introduce my sister, Undine, er…” He realized he’d never heard her last name, if she even had one. “Undine.”
“Quick-witted,” Undine said under her breath.
“Have we met?” Lady Hiscock asked, blinking at Gerard owl-like through her lorgnette.
“You wound me. ’Twas at the party last year. You remember, right after the musicians played? I am Bond, James Bond.” He bowed. “I admired the tasteful glimpse of white at the hem of your gown, or rather, I did after my sister pointed it out.” He nodded apologetically to Lord Hiscock. “But it got me to thinking: Why shouldn’t the merest glimpse of a chemise please the eye? Should not even the most minute slice of a lady’s life bring her pleasure? Well, my brother knows an excellent tailor—”
“We have a rather large family,” Undine said.
“And together we dashed off some patterns,” Gerard said. “The muslin is the finest I’ve ever seen, and, thanks to your inspiration, I do think we have created some very winning designs. Just the thing for the most elegant, admired gentlewomen in the city.”
He elbowed Undine, and she lifted her gown to her knee, uncovering the elephants.
Lady Hiscock gasped. “They’re enchanting!”
“Oh, I’m so glad you think so. We call this—and I do apologize—the Hiscock model. We will, of course, not use that name when we sell them.”
“Why wouldn’t you use it?” Lady Hiscock said, enthralled. “Did you forbid it, Geor
ge?” she said pointedly.
Her husband shook his head, disavowing such an act. “I was never asked.”
“You must use my name,” she said. “And I insist on being the first customer.”
“Oh, dear,” Gerard said. “That’s a bit tricky. I believe Lady Kerr is set to be my first customer. In fact, I may have to use all the current muslin I have. She’s ordered five.”
“What? No! I’ll give you twice what she’s offering.”
“My dear!” Lord Hiscock said, shocked.
“I have my own money,” she said. “’Twasn’t all yours upon marriage. You seem to have no trouble spending money when it’s warehouses in squalid little neighborhoods like—”
“Mama?”
Lady Hiscock started, but not quite as much as Gerard. Elizabeth laid her hand on her mother’s sleeve. She wore the gown from Edward Turnbull, which Gerard had dropped off that morning, as well as the chemise the tailor had made out of Serafina’s muslin. Gerard, or rather Mr. Bond, had made her promise she would not tell anyone he’d given her the chemise. Gerard knew enough about seventeen-year-olds to know that meant she would certainly tell all her friends.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “Good evening, Papa.” She curtsied and gave Gerard an uncomfortably warm smile.
“Bond, you’ll have to excuse me,” Hiscock said, obviously eager to extricate himself from the discussion of ladies’ undergarments. “I have my guests to attend to.”
Gerard nodded, ready to kill the girl.
“Will ye not introduce me?” Elizabeth said.
Hiscock waved his hand. “This is Mr. Bond. He’s an acquaintance of your mother’s.”
Elizabeth curtsied and Gerard bowed. When she straightened, she met his eye and cast a knowing glance at the glimpse of muslin at her feet. Then she lifted the edge of her skirt higher…
“Your daughter is lovely,” Gerard said, feeling the sweat break out on his forehead.
She beamed. “Papa, Anne Dillon and Catherine Alistair were in the orangery with Lord Finch and said he brought a sloth. May I go?”
Hiscock’s gaze went to the dark sky beyond the windows. “Ladies should not go unescorted.”
“Will you take me, Papa? Oh, Mr. Bond, have you seen a sloth?”
“No, I can’t say I have.”
“Oh, Mr. Bond, you must!” Elizabeth cried. “They’re absolutely remarkable. Anne says they are a cross between monkeys and hedgehogs.”
“Bond, if you’re going,” Hiscock said, “would you escort Elizabeth?”
She grinned. Christ, she was terrifying. “Certainly,” Gerard said. “I’d be honored.”
Hiscock excused himself, taking his wife, and Elizabeth threaded her arm through Gerard’s. “I’m not afraid of the dark,” she said matter-of-factly when they entered the hall.
“And here I thought you were afraid of everything.”
She laughed. “You know me too well, Mr. Bond. Some girls wring their hands and throw a fuss. Not me.”
“Fearless, are you?”
“Very.”
He led her through the ballroom, past the couples joining in circles and lines, the violins lifting the room in a lively tempo, and into the center hall. He knew the best way to loosen her tongue was to surprise her enough to unbalance her.
“Do you have any interest in dancing, Mr. Bond?”
He said, “The only interest I have, Miss Hiscock, is—” But he was unable to add “pulling you into a dark corner and kissing you” because a collective gasp shook the hall.
Serafina stood at the top of the stairs. He would say she looked like an angel atop a Christmas tree if angels atop Christmas trees wore their undergarments in public. The many-layered skirt, like petals of a upside-down rose, stretched from newel post to newel post, and in the candlelight of the chandelier, the muslin’s satiny trim became a sartorial aurora borealis, its flickers and gleams hypnotizing the room’s enchanted observers.
Gerard hadn’t seen the finished product, but he’d described to the tailor what he wanted and taken it on faith the tailor would meet his objective, which was to ensure Serafina had the most beautiful, eye-catching chemise of any woman in the British Isles. He’d given the man extra time to ensure the work was perfect, and Gerard’s faith had been rewarded.
But he’d designed a chemise, not a gown.
Serafina met Gerard’s eyes, and the corner of her mouth rose. It was a chemise, and dammit, she knew it!
The partygoers were both fascinated and aghast. Gerard could feel the mood shifting infinitesimally back and forth across the line dividing the two emotions, and he could see the elbows nudging, the looks being exchanged, the heads bowing in unheard asides as she made her way through the crowd. His heart ached for her vulnerability, and his fists twitched, ready to fight any and all who thought to offend her.
Someone whispered, “That’s Serafina Fallon,” and he wheeled to look at the sea of faces. The men were transfixed. How often does one see a woman as striking as Serafina striding into a party in a bedroom fabric, after all? The muslin was yin and yang, and Sera had seen that—innocent and knowing, covered and sexy, pure and…quick and dirty. There was nothing untoward to be seen, nothing at all, save the delicate roundness of her shoulders through the sheer white, yet in the men’s widened eyes, he saw only collective and palpable fornication.
And he wanted to blacken the eye of every bloody, goddamned one of them.
The fascination on the women’s faces was more intense, and Gerard knew the next few seconds would determine Serafina’s fate.
“She shouldn’t be in the house of a gentleman,” Elizabeth said under her breath.
“Why’s that?” he said, unable to take his eyes off Serafina.
“She lived with her lover. ’Tis quite scandalous.”
“I don’t think this town knows what ‘scandalous’ means. I must say, she does the dress proud.”
“Did you design that too?” Elizabeth asked, shocked.
“I did.”
An attractive young brunette next to Elizabeth turned to Gerard. “You designed that?”
“Aye. In partnership with a tailor, of course. I sell them.”
Elizabeth stamped her foot. “You didn’t tell me you made gowns too. Look,” she said to the dark-haired woman. “He made this for me.” She lifted her skirt.
“Do you take orders?” the brunette said, adding to the woman next to her, “Look at Miss Hiscock’s chemise.”
“Several ladies have commissioned pieces,” Gerard said. “That muslin’s in short supply.”
“But you can take one more order?”
“Or two?” the woman next to the brunette asked.
“Well, the dresses are rather costly—”
“Cost is no object to me, sir,” said the husband of the brunette, stars and something more prurient in his eyes.
“Or to me,” said the husband of the second.
Gerard said, “In the end, the garment proves economical, you see, as it can be used both for parties and, shall we say, more private events. And I encourage gentlemen to accompany their ladies to fittings. We offer private fitting rooms and want to ensure all customer requirements are met.”
“Exceptional approach,” the first husband said.
* * *
Serafina had begun her descent, a cloud floating slowly, regally down to earth. Where was Duncan? Gerard wondered. She needed someone to anchor her journey, someone to deflect criticism, someone to keep her safe.
“Would you excuse me?” He shoved his way through the partygoers and met her at the bottom of the stairs.
“Aren’t you supposed to be with Elizabeth Hiscock?” Serafina whispered, taking his proffered arm.
“Screw Elizabeth Hiscock.”
She laughed. “Is that how all citizens of the twenty-first
century solve their problems—with a vulgar dismissal? Or just the unimaginative ones?”
“You want to see imaginative? Get me to an out-of-the-way closet.”
“Oh, indeed?”
“You realize that’s a chemise, don’t you?”
“Is it?” She looked down with mock concern. “Oh, dear!”
“I’ve already sold at least three.”
“I figured a gown might attract more interest than a sliver of white at the bottom of a dress. And what better way to leverage my brand. I knew my disgrace would come in handy at some point.”
“You definitely bring a fallen angel–sex goddess aesthetic to it. I’m pretty sure you’ve blown away the adolescent fantasies of every man in this room.”
“‘Blown away’?”
“Destroyed,” he said. “Replaced their daydreams of Queen Anne in a bikini with Sera Fallon sashaying into a party in her underwear.”
“I dinna know what a bikini is, but clearly you’ve never seen a portrait of Queen Anne. Now, if you can sever your gaze from my muslin for a moment or two, I urge ye to recall we’re here for a reason.”
“Procreation, isn’t it? That’s what the Lord says.”
“At this party, sir.”
“Ah. Let me see… Where did the young Miss Hiscock get to? I’d nearly gotten the location of the warehouse out of Hiscock himself when she arrived and killed the conversation. To be honest, I’d prefer to wring that girl’s neck than involve myself with anything lower on her.”
Someone behind them cleared her throat. Gerard and Serafina turned to find Abby with a troubled look on her face.
“What is it?” Serafina asked.
Abby said, “I have a rather unorthodox proposal for you.”
“No,” Gerard said. “I don’t care if the guy offers enough money for two ships. I refuse to let Serafina be sold to the highest bidder.”
Serafina lifted her shoulders. “A quarter of an hour? For two ships? Let’s not be too hasty.”
“’Tis not quite like that,” Abby said, clearing her throat. “Elizabeth Hiscock has offered thirty pounds for your gown.”