“Questions, questions! Why not a simple thank-you?” Marla interrupted, clicking her tongue in disapproval.
“Although it is not quite time for this one. Don’t you agree, Marla?” Glenda asked in a low tone, giving her cohort a searing look. “As they say, timing is everything!”
“Very true, I do seem to lose track of time these days,” Marla answered quickly, grabbing the rack of pastel-colored ball gowns again. “Perhaps you can try it on at the next sale, my dear?”
Louise gently ran her hand over the wispy blue fabric; it felt like it could crumble to dust between her fingers. How old was this piece? Technically speaking, she knew that a dress like this would be too old to be considered vintage. It was most definitely an antique and, in that case, extremely valuable.
Tiff Freedman would never wear something this awesome. Todd would be forced to fall back in love, or like, with Louise after seeing her in this dazzling pale blue gown. For one glorious night she could pretend like she was rich and could actually afford to have a couture dress like this made just for her.
“Please,” Louise begged. “I’d really love to try this on.”
The two women exchanged nervous glances, but before they had a chance to respond, there was a loud knocking at the front door. In a cloud of dust and clanging bells, an angry-looking Brooke burst into the cottage.
CHAPTER 12
“Brooke? What are you doing here?” Louise asked, stepping away from the glass vitrine in total shock. She was left with that weird feeling when two totally separate compartments of your life collide.
“Lou, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were coming to another Fashionista Sale! It’s like you have a secret life or something. I thought we were best friends,” she cried, throwing her hands up in total confusion.
“We are…”
“Your mother had to tell me where you were,” Brooke added sadly, as though that were the ultimate betrayal. “I thought we shared everything. I know I don’t really get your obsession with used clothes…”
Louise saw Glenda instinctively scowl. “We prefer the term vintage, sweetie. Used sounds so… déclassé.”
“Okay.” Brooke rolled her eyes, still standing in the doorway. “With vintage clothes. But I still wish you’d talk to me!”
“Oh, dear,” Marla mumbled, quickly shoving the clothing rack of strapless gowns back in front of the glass case.
“I j-just…” Louise stuttered, not sure how she was going to talk her way out of this one.
“Brooke, my dear. How fabulously unexpected to see you again!” Glenda exclaimed in a much more chipper tone, quickly walking over and putting a protective arm around the distressed girl’s shoulders.
“You see, Louise didn’t want to tell you she was coming to visit us, as she wanted to surprise you with her dress for your party,” Marla added, stroking Brooke’s blonde head reassuringly.
“Wait, what are you wearing? Is that the outfit you plan on wearing to my birthday party?” Brooke asked, wide-eyed.
Louise looked down at her half-Japanese, half-eighties ensemble, now totally embarrassed. She’d forgotten about the bizarre kimono/minidress combination she was rocking.
“Not exactly,” she answered, blushing.
“Now what in heavens are you wearing?” Glenda asked loudly, stepping back to examine Brooke’s pink Juicy Couture hooded sweatshirt and black leggings, which were totally normal and cool at Fairview. Glenda shuddered as she ran her long crooked fingers along the velour fabric as though the sweatshirt were an alien artifact from the planet Bubble Gum. She took a peek at the tag in the collar.
“Juicy Couture? Ha! Let me show you what couture really means!” Glenda exclaimed, dramatically shaking her crazy red hair.
“I think we have something from a little designer named Karl Lagerfeld that would look smashing on you.”
“Sure.” Brooke shrugged indifferently, sending Louise a pointed look.
While Marla and Glenda guided Brooke over to the other side of the store to show her their extensive selection of Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, Louise quietly tiptoed behind the rack of chiffon to the vitrine and slowly opened the thin glass-paned door. She held her breath, half expecting an alarm to sound or a net to drop down from the ceiling over her head, but nothing happened. Something inside her told her that she needed to try on the magnificent antique dress and that this might be her only opportunity.
She slid off the teal silk kimono and struggled to peel off the ridiculously skintight Alaia before the others caught on. She felt drawn to this glass box, as strongly as if the material itself were whispering her name. The exquisitely embroidered satin fabric was clearly hand sewn, and the artistry that went into the ethereal design took Louise’s breath away.
She plucked the enormous robin’s egg blue gown from its installation, and a chill ran down her arms. Louise recognized that same prickly feeling from the last time, when she found the iridescent pink dress that had transported her back to the Titanic. An overwhelming wave of déjà vu washed over her.
“Darling, Louise! Brooke found something fabulous for you!” a raspy voice exclaimed from the other side of the crowded room. “Have you seen these adorable red Ferragamo wedges we left for you in the fireplace? Classics! And just your size! Where are you, dear?”
“I’ll be right there!” Louise shouted, trying to sound as normal as possible. She quietly stepped into the structured hoop skirt and shimmied the blue satin top of the dress up snugly around her, slipping her left arm into a puckered silk sleeve. So far, the dress fit almost perfectly.
“Lou, you have to check these out!” she heard Brooke say as the sound of someone’s footsteps started walking toward her.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Marla sang as the approaching footsteps continued to get louder and nearer. Louise was going to be discovered, and she was definitely going to be in trouble.
Without a moment to lose, she shoved her right hand inside the other teeny delicate armhole and was immediately blinded by a bright flash of sparkly blue-and-white light. With that, Louise instantly collapsed on the floor like a fancily dressed marionette whose strings had been cut.
“I don’t design clothes.
I design dreams.”
RALPH LAUREN,
American fashion designer
CHAPTER 13
When Louise awoke, she swore she was locked in a coffin. The air was still and stale, and she was crouched into a small wooden area that was as quiet as death. Her head ached and her body was sore, as if she had been frozen in this uncomfortably stiff position for hours. What had she gotten herself into this time?
Before she had a chance to ponder the question, a flood of sunlight abruptly filled the dark, stuffy space. Ouch. Louise rubbed her sleep-crusted eyes.
“My dear Gabrielle, what a marvelous hiding spot!”
Gab-who? A tiny white puffball jumped on Louise’s skirts and began licking her hand and barking.
“If I didn’t have my precious Macaroon, I don’t think we would have ever found you. Good little puppy,” a pretty blonde girl cooed, picking up the wisp of a dog and giving it a flurry of butterfly kisses on its nose. From Louise’s limited closet-eye view, the girl was tiny with flushed pink cheeks, alabaster white skin, a slightly pronounced lower lip, and wide pale blue-gray eyes.
Louise looked around, trying to get her bearings. She was squatting on top of a pile of silk dresses in what appeared to be an armoire. Something sharp was digging into her backside. She reached down and discovered she was sitting on a diamond-encrusted buckle clasped to an old-fashioned lemon yellow high-heeled shoe.
By the looks of that curved heel, she suddenly realized that she might not be in the right century. Louise had a flashback to the sketch in her history notebook and could have sworn she had drawn a similar shoe in Miss Morris’s class the other day. It was now a real object in her hand! She wished she had remembered to research it in her vintage book that night.
�
��Where am I?” Louise stuttered. Her voice sounded strange. French?
“Voilà!” the girl squealed, helping Louise to her shaky feet and leading her out into a marvelously decorated room. The light greenish-blue walls were inlaid with gold leaf detailing. A bronze-and-glass chandelier illuminated by dripping lit candles sparkled from the ceiling. Vases of pink-and-purple wildflowers were displayed on every available surface, and the flowers seemed to match the floral pattern in the needlepoint rug and gauzy muslin curtains that were fluttering in the ceiling-high open windows.
Louise blinked, trying to readjust to her new reality. The dress had actually worked! She wondered if anyone knew where she was.
“Your hair!” Louise exclaimed, surprised to see that the girl’s light blonde hair was teased into a giant beehive that towered a good twelve inches above her head. Stuck into the nest of hair were two white ostrich feathers that extended the hairstyle another few feet. It was a bizarre and incredibly dramatic look, but if you subtracted the projectile hair, the girl was short, about the same height as Louise. She also noted happily that beneath the layers of her white muslin empire-waist dress the girl appeared to be skinny and flat-chested, just like she was.
“Do you think it’s too much?” the girl asked, letting out a high-pitched giggle. “I think Leonard did a marvelous job with this pouf!”
“No, it’s amazing,” Louise quickly responded. “I’ve just never seen anybody have a hairstyle quite like that before.”
“Well, then you should look in a mirror!” She laughed. “It seems we left you in the wardrobe for too long. Come, have some orange blossom tea and croissants in the garden. The girls are waiting for us.”
Louise flashed back to her journey on the Titanic as Miss Alice Baxter and thought that as long as this girl was in the room, it was probably best that she didn’t have a look in the mirror. From her last experience, she learned that the mirror’s reflection was the one place where her true identity was revealed for everyone to see.
“Ummm. Okay. The garden sounds lovely,” Louise agreed, more confused than ever.
“Oh, dear, Gabrielle, your dress is a disaster. Why don’t you change into one of these for now?” The girl held out a pale lavender tea dress made in flowing gauzy chiffon and crinkled muslin that she’d plucked from the floor of the armoire.
Clearly this girl was mistaking her for someone named Gabrielle. Whoever that was. Louise looked down at her blue dress, which was a crumpled mess and halfway hanging off of her, and realized it was a breathtaking brand-new version of the one she had secretly tried on at the Fashionista Sale. The dress was definitely the same, but the bustle was severely lopsided now and the fabric, which was a much more vibrant shade than it had been in the vintage store, was all wrinkled from crouching in the closet.
“This will be perfect. That other style was so stiff anyway. I’m getting rather bored with all of this formality. I plan on banning corsets from Petit Trianon for good,” the gregarious girl said, rolling her eyes like any other twenty-first-century teenager.
Wait, Petit what? Where exactly was she? Wherever she was, it already seemed a lot more amazing than a class trip to France, Louise thought, looking around at the room, which was decorated with rose-colored, silk-upholstered love seats and foot stools and marble-topped tables. There was a large gold harp positioned in the center of the room next to a stand covered in sheet music, as though someone had just finished a lesson.
“Go change now. I’ll wait,” the girl ordered, yanking off the rest of Louise’s blue dress. She directed an embarrassed Louise, now wearing only a stiff old-fashioned undergarment, toward an ornately decorated changing screen that was hand painted with finely stenciled hummingbirds and flowers.
She didn’t want to leave the magical dress, but she didn’t seem to have a choice in the matter. Something about this girl’s bossy tone suggested that she wasn’t used to taking no for an answer. Louise made a quick mental plan to hide the gown in the wardrobe underneath the other dresses so she would always know where it was. Then she could go back to her life in Connecticut whenever she wanted since she now knew the magic was embedded in the fabric of the vintage dress. Hopefully that was how it still worked, she thought to herself with trepidation. She was definitely a long way from home.
“The palace is so beautiful,” Louise commented from the other side of the partition as she struggled to unlace the corseted cream-colored bodice, hoping to get a clue as to where she was.
“Palace? This is my playhouse, silly.” The girl giggled again. “Are you almost ready? Let’s get you some air. Those corsets are affecting the blood flow to your brain. I do wish that we could always wear our tea dresses.”
On second thought, if this was considered a playhouse, Louise never wanted to go home. It was the fanciest room she had ever been in—even the doorknobs looked like they were made of gold! This girl must have piles of money.
When Louise was little, she had drawn detailed plans of her dream playhouse. It had a rose garden, secret passageways, a water slide, and a tea room. When she showed these blueprints to her dad, he said he’d get someone working on it right away. Louise didn’t realize he was just playing along when she really meant it. Apparently, when this girl asked for a playhouse, someone listened. They took her seriously even though she was just a teenager and built her the most fabulous playhouse ever, one that was even more magnificent than most people’s homes, while Louise ended up building a fort with bedsheets and cardboard boxes in her walk-in closet and serving imaginary tea to her Barbie dolls.
“Your Highness?” A woman in a scarlet-and-silver uniform and crisp white apron walked in, averting her eyes and curtseying.
“Oui?” the girl responded nonchalantly.
This girl answered to Your Highness? She must be a princess, which meant Louise was now apparently friends with royalty. Awesome!
“Tea is served.”
CHAPTER 14
“Pardonnez-moi. This just arrived from your mother in Austria.”
Another scarlet-uniformed servant had walked into the room and, with a slight curtsey, offered the beehive-haired girl a thick white envelope from a sterling silver tray. She grabbed the envelope and carelessly ripped it open, then sat down on a powder pink upholstered love seat, concentrating intently on the words, her finger slowly tracing underneath the individual letters as though reading was a great challenge for her. As the princess gradually made her way down the page, Louise saw tears welling up in the corners of her blue-gray eyes. She abruptly threw down the letter in a fit and ran out of the room.
What just happened? Louise wondered, picking up the tear-stained parchment lying on the needlepoint carpet. She quickly read the letter, which was written in thick black calligraphy ink.
My dearest daughter,
Do not be negligent about your appearance…. I cannot caution you enough against letting yourself slip into the errors that the members of the French royal family have fallen into of late. They may be good and virtuous, but they have forgotten how to appear in public, how to set the tone
Whoa, this was not exactly the most nurturing or understanding message coming from her “tender mother.” This young girl was expected to set the tone… at Versailles… through her clothing choices? Louise felt a slight jolt of recognition. Louise’s mother may have given her a hard time about her vintage clothing, but this sounded almost like a threat! Why was the girl’s mom writing her letters, anyway? Didn’t she live with her? Wait, wasn’t Miss Morris just lecturing about Versailles? Louise’s mind was racing. This girl seemed so young to be living away from home, although maybe she was better off, as this lady sounded
more like a wicked stepmother.
She discreetly set the letter down on the pink velvet love seat and left the room to try to find the princess. Maybe Louise could comfort her. Stepping into a grand black-and-white-tiled entry hall, Louise’s breath got caught in her throat. She was immediately confronted with a gilded arched mirror hung above the teak hall table on the opposite wall. She didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t help it. It was as though there were a magnetic field drawing her in. Slowly, Louise walked over to see her reflection.
She was expecting this, but still it was jarring. She was immediately confronted with the image of her twelve-year-old self hesitantly smiling at her from the other side of the glass, frizzy hair and all, dressed up in a lavish purple gown. To see her familiar brace-face staring back at her from the cloudy mirror was both comforting and depressing. She hadn’t had time to miss her old self yet and turned around quickly to make sure no one else was watching her.
Louise hurried out of the grand French doors, running away from her reflection in the mirror, and discovered she was in a beautiful garden that looked like it was out of a children’s fairy tale. A round table was set with delicate pink china plates and teacups and a blue-and-white porcelain pitcher filled with freshly cut white lilies and fragrant purple lilacs. Platters of tea cakes and pots of bright red jam were scattered around on the white linen tablecloth. Little yellow honeybees darted around the sweet red raspberry jelly.
Two ladies were sitting at the table. One girl looked to be around Louise’s age. She had pale skin, soft blue eyes, and golden blonde hair done up in a less dramatic version of the princess’s. She was wearing a muslin dress like Louise’s, but hers was pale green. The other woman was much older, with drab brown hair and hard steel-colored eyes, and was dressed in a more formal, stiff, long-sleeved beige dress. She had a heavy build, and her wrists looked like they were squeezed into their sleeves like sausages stuffed in a silk casing. Maybe she was the chaperone or something.
Time-traveling Fashionista at the Palace of Marie Antoinette (9780316202961) Page 5