Duchess by Design: The Gilded Age Girls Club

by Maya Rodale

  Before he could say more, a woman with flushed cheeks pushed through the crowds and came to stop at Miss Burnett’s side. “Ah, there you are, Harriet!”

  “Harriet?” Kingston echoed.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. This ballroom is a crush.”

  “I’ve been having a lovely conversation with the duke.”

  “Miss Harriet Burnett?” the duke questioned.

  “Yes. That’s me. Like I said, the one and only.” She gestured to the pink-cheeked woman beside her. “May I present my companion, Miss Lumley.”

  “How do you do,” Miss Lumley said perfunctorily. This woman had no time for the attentions of a duke; she turned to her friend. “Listen, Harriet, there’s someone I really must introduce you. Mrs. Belmont. She’s awaiting her carriage now.”

  “Oh! We must go at once.”

  “Wait—” he called out.

  Questions. He had questions. To start: how many Harriet Burnetts were there in this city?

  “Did you bring the calling cards?” Miss Lumley asked. Then Miss Burnett curiously reached into the folds of her gown to find them. “Yes, yes I have some.” And only then did she remember the duke—a duke!—standing there, desperately wanting her attention and utterly speechless as so many questions fought to be the first ones expressed. “Your Grace, it was lovely to meet you. If you’ll excuse me.”

  And like that, she was gone.

  Save for a letter that fluttered from her pocket to the parquet floor. He picked it up and recognized the stationery of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. He recognized the name upon the letter—Miss Harriet Burnett. He also recognized the handwriting. It was his own.

  Chapter Six

  The duke has been making the rounds of all the best Fifth Avenue ballrooms but no particular heiress seems to have caught his eye—yet.

  —The New York World

  The next morning

  The Fifth Avenue Hotel

  This. This is why a walk in the park was not just a walk in the park when a duke was involved. Especially a tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed duke who was prone to heroics and dashing moments of romance. To say nothing of tantalizing near kisses that made a girl forget sense and reason.

  Because here she was at the Fifth Avenue Hotel for another fitting with Miss Burnett, an unprecedented professional success, and all she could think about was the duke.

  They had almost kissed.

  She could not stop thinking about what might have been.

  Too bad about daylight, public spaces, a sense of courtship, romance, and decency. Such was a thought that had actually crossed her mind more than once ever since her afternoon walk with the duke, when in fact she should be offering a prayer of thanks for daylight, public spaces, a sense of courtship, romance, decency.

  Reason and decency had prevailed.

  She had not kissed the duke. Or he had not kissed her. Their lips had not met.

  And so, she had not excessively risked her reputation, her heart, or her future on a man who would never marry her for reasons of wealth, class, and expectations.

  Which was fine, because she wouldn’t marry him anyway.

  She had no wish to wed anyone at all, especially a man who did not hold women’s fashion in much esteem. How could she ever share her hopes and dreams with him, knowing he’d declare them frivolous? If they wed, he would likely insist she give up her dressmaking dreams. She could not. She would not.

  Adeline knocked on the door.

  To be specific, she knocked on the door to Miss Burnett’s suite of rooms. This time Adeline would do a final fitting for a variety of day dresses, riding outfits, evening gowns, and other ensembles, all of which she had customized. This might have been just a dress fitting for her client, but for Adeline it was a chance to finally see one of her own creations modeled by someone other than herself and her friends.

  In that sense, it would be momentous.

  While she rapped at the door to Miss Burnett’s, she eyed the door to the adjacent suite of rooms. The duke was in there, probably. Being lordly and ducal and whatever men did when they didn’t have a care in the world.

  The duke, not her duke, as Rose insisted on calling him. Of course, they hadn’t seen or heard from him after that walk in the park, which Rose had crashed under the pretense of being her chaperone.

  She hadn’t expected to hear another word from him, honestly.

  A man like Kingston must have a lot to keep his days and nights occupied. He probably had dozens upon dozens of eligible potential brides to meet, for example. He could not spend his precious minutes with a poor seamstress.

  She just hadn’t expected to feel forlorn about it. The world had returned to rights and she had the opportunity of a lifetime right in front of her. There was no reason for her to feel miffed that a man had pursued her and then disappeared.

  But she had liked him.

  She spoke freely to him and he seemed interested in what she had to say, even if he disagreed with it. She had almost kissed him and a small part of her regretted that they hadn’t seized the moment—scandal be damned—for a long, deep kiss.

  A maid opened the door, putting an end to Adeline’s thoughts of kisses and handsome British men next door, and showed her into Miss Burnett’s bedchamber, where Miss Burnett was writing a letter, and her friend, Miss Lumley, was sitting on the settee, reading. A small side table nearby was loaded with delicacies—a bowl of fresh grapes, a plate of pastries, a delicate silver teapot with a china cup.

  “The dresses arrived from the shop this morning, ma’am,” the maid said. “I’ll go ready the first one.”

  “Hopefully they should fit, save for a few final adjustments I can do on the spot.”

  “Splendid.” Harriet smiled. “I have an afternoon tea that I do want to wear something fetching for.”

  “Oh, the ladies of the club will be so jealous,” Miss Lumley said. “You’ll spend all your time talking about your new dresses—when there are real problems in the world!”

  “One might say that for half of humankind those problems include wearing gowns without pockets,” Miss Burnett replied to her friend. “A woman wears seven pounds’ worth of dress and hasn’t a spot to put anything! We need rational dress. Shorter skirts. Looser corsets. More pockets. Then we shall take over the world.”

  “But how will you catch a duke, dressed thusly?” Miss Lumley teased.

  Miss Burnett rolled her eyes. “Oh, the duke!”

  She turned to Adeline, whose every nerve had started thrumming at the mention of him. “Everyone in society is obsessed with the duke. All the young ladies hope to be his duchess.”

  That—that clenching feeling around Adeline’s heart, like a big fat fist squeezing a little rag doll—was why she should not entertain any thoughts of the duke. At all. Whatsoever. It would lead only to heartache.

  “But as I said,” Miss Burnett continued with a lingering glance in the direction of Miss Lumley. “I’m not inclined toward marriage.”

  Adeline murmured her agreement. A maid helped Miss Burnett into the first gown and Adeline stood back, appraising the fit. She would have to take the hem up another half inch. They proceeded to try on and make slight alterations to the remainder of the gowns. Time flew by, and the ladies’ idle chatter eventually returned to the subject of His Grace, the Duke of Kingston.

  “Speaking of the duke, what do you think of him, Miss Black?” Miss Burnett asked. “Did you enjoy your walk in the park with him?”

  For a moment, Adeline was terribly confused.

  “How did you know about that?”

  “He sent a letter to my rooms, but I quickly realized it was not intended for me. I didn’t recall enchanting anyone in the elevator. I assumed he meant it for you and so I sent it along to the shop.”

  “I wondered how he found me,” Adeline said as awareness dawned. “He caused quite a stir with my fellow seamstresses.”

  “Dukes tend to do that.”

  “Why did you not meet him
yourself, Miss Burnett? I would have been none the wiser.”

  “Well, to start, the jig would have been up the moment I arrived. It would have required an awkward explanation, to be followed by an even more awkward afternoon in the park together. No, I shan’t set myself up for such humiliations. Especially when I have more important matters to attend to.”

  “He must think that I am you,” Adeline whispered, as the implications began to crystalize. Adeline’s brain whirred and clicked and put it all together: the duke must have thought that she was Miss Burnett. He must have thought that she was an heiress, and a woman of great social standing. He must have discovered the misunderstanding and that was why she had not heard from him.

  It was to be expected.

  Truly.

  Even if they had this instant, magic connection. Adeline shook the thoughts out of her head and made a few more adjustments to the sleeve of the gown.

  “I wore one of your dresses to the ball last night, Miss Black, and more than one woman gave me a long second glance and inquired after the designer. Where shall I tell them to find you when they wish to get your designs for themselves?”

  “Madame Chalfont’s, of course.”

  “Do you ever think of having your own shop?”

  “I dream of it all the time.”

  “What’s stopping you?”

  “It takes money to open a shop, and I haven’t saved enough yet. I’m not sure that I ever will.”

  Given her wages, she would need to be saving for the next twenty or thirty years, but later was better than never, was it not? It wasn’t just money, though, that kept her diligently cutting and fitting in service of Madame Chalfont. Adeline was unsure of how to make the leap from here to there. She was just a girl with a daydream and calloused fingers. How was she supposed to convince a landlord to rent to her, or clientele to come to her?

  She had ambition to burn, but the confidence to pursue it and the money to do it eluded her.

  “Perhaps your duke will swoop in and save you,” Miss Lumley remarked from the settee. “They’re always doing that in the novels.”

  “He’s not my duke.”

  “No? Not even after a walk in the park together?”

  “Everybody knows that lords and dukes only come to America in search of wealthy brides.” There was a beat of silence in which each woman acknowledged that truth. And another truth: that Miss Burnett had money while Adeline did not. “Of course I have no plans to see him again. He will inevitably discover that I am not the heiress he needs and that he’s been misled about it—if he hasn’t already. I imagine he won’t be too happy about it.”

  A sharp, insistent knock on the door interrupted her.

  The women exchanged loaded glances.

  The knock on the door had escalated to a harder, heavier pounding.

  The knock of someone not used to being ignored.

  Adeline’s heart started to pound.

  “It seems like the inevitable is happening,” Miss Lumley said. “I told you, Harriet, that your matchmaking scheme wouldn’t work.”

  Harriet shrugged. “But this should be entertaining!”

  Adeline just took a deep breath and braced herself.

  In an instant, the duke’s presence filled up the space and sucked all the air out of the room. Every one of her senses sharpened their focus on him. She could see little else beyond him: the wide, cashmere wool-clad shoulders, the waistcoat highlighting his broad chest tapering to his trim waist. His dark hair pushed back from the beautifully defined planes of his face. There was something captivating about the way he stood, tall and proud and shoulders thrown back. He was so absolutely self-assured. Self-righteous even. Like he had centuries of proof that he mattered.

  When he saw her, his eyes flashed. His lips pressed into a firm line.

  There was no denying it: he was handsome when he was angry. And oh, he was angry. She badly wanted to press her mouth to his and kiss away his fury. Stroke her hands along the tense muscles of his shoulders and back until he relaxed under her palms.

  But this was not to be.

  It was a pity that this—whatever this was—would come to a definitive end. Here and now. In the middle of a dress fitting. Mindful of her professional reputation, she started to pray that this wouldn’t involve a scene. How embarrassing.

  “Good morning, ladies.” He spoke in a clipped, ruthlessly elegant tone. He was polite, even when furious. How ducal.

  The ladies murmured their reply, though each one was rendered somewhat mute in the face of such an overwhelming and awe-inspiring male. “I did wish to clear something up and it seems that I have done so. You two are not the same person.”

  His gaze shifted accusatorily from Adeline to Miss Burnett and back again.

  “No use protesting that one, I suppose,” Miss Lumley said cheerfully.

  “I’m Harriet Burnett. The one and only.” She flashed a grin and stepped aside. “And this is Miss Adeline Black, my dressmaker.”

  “Seamstress.”

  Beside her, Miss Burnett elbowed her in the ribs. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

  The point was moot in the eyes of the duke. Whether atelier or seamstress, Adeline was not an heiress and thus was a waste of his time.

  Oh, but she could see that he had feelings about it. The man was positively wracked with all sorts of intense emotions as he was forced to conclude that she wasn’t the girl he had imagined her to be.

  It was an honest mistake.

  Now he would think the worst of her character because of the fantasy he had spun about her—that she was a wealthy woman, an answer to his prayers—even though she’d never intentionally gave him reason to.

  His jaw set.

  He had been hurt.

  Even worse, he had been embarrassed.

  Like a wounded creature, he lashed out.

  “That would explain your presence here, but it does not explain why you allowed me to persist in believing you were a guest of this hotel and, as such, a woman I could consider making my bride.”

  How politely he lashed out.

  How elegantly he insulted her.

  The cut was sharp and effective all the same.

  This. This is why she knew better than to dally with a duke, a man so high above her station. They could flirt around the truth, but there was no denying that when it came down to it, that vast difference in his status and hers mattered more than anything else.

  Well. She did not have to stand for it or allow him to put her down because of it. This, this is why she insisted upon her independence; it gave her a measure of pride. Adeline couldn’t imagine what she had to gain by the good favor of an irate duke and so she wasn’t going to lose her own self-respect over his insults.

  “It’s perfectly fine,” Adeline said in her best Fancy Lady Voice, which she had learned from hundreds of dress fittings with the ladies of the Four Hundred. “And you needn’t concern yourself with my feelings; I’m not upset that you never once mentioned the fact that you were a duke, thus concealing an important facet of your identity.”

  He scoffed. As if that wasn’t the same thing at all, wasn’t just as important. But Adeline refused to be held to a separate standard because a man was upset.

  Miss Burnett interjected. “This is all just a silly misunderstanding. Nothing to get your unmentionables in a twist about. Perhaps you might resolve this matter elsewhere. Perhaps over tea in the lobby? Miss Lumley and I have a very important meeting to attend this afternoon.”

  “I really question your priorities, my dear,” Miss Lumley remarked. “One can always be late due to unfolding romantic drama.”

  “It’s not romantic drama,” Adeline insisted. “It is, as you said, a silly misunderstanding.”

  “More like a comedy of errors, I should think,” Miss Burnett quipped, and Adeline winced. It was the wrong thing to say, to make light of the Duke’s feelings. Like most men, he was not accustomed to them, especially so many, all at once. To find humor in thi
s momentous situation was possibly devastating.

  Adeline decided her presence was no longer required. The fitting had concluded and she had nothing further to say to the duke.

  “My apologies for any misunderstanding. If you’ll excuse me, I should go.”

  She gathered her things and made her way toward the door. Just as escape was imminent, his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist as she passed. “Not yet.”

  Chapter Seven

  No, I will not settle for the imitation. Stop. I must have the original. Stop.

  —Telegram from Her Grace,

  the Duchess of Kingston

  Kingston had done the unthinkable: he had fallen for a seamstress. A seamstress! He had traveled to New York with the explicit purpose of finding and wedding an heiress and instead he found himself enchanted with a woman who surely possessed no fortune and was of the trade that robbed him of his. His mother and her desperate need for the latest fashions had drained the estate’s dwindling coffers. Those girls, profiting off it.

  And yet.

  He had reached out and grasped her wrist. Don’t go. Not yet.

  The logical portion of his brain was still functioning and it informed him that this was all a simple misunderstanding that could be cleared up with a laugh. He was not that invested—after all, it had been just a walk in the park. He should have no further business with her, especially of the sort that necessitated touching her, even if it was only his big hand and her small wrist.

  None. At. All.

  Her gaze traveled slowly and pointedly from the sight of his hold on her, up the length of his arm and came to rest on his face. She fixed her cool, unflinching eyes on him. Kingston let her go.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I must return to the shop,” she said. “Miss Burnett, we will have the rest of your wardrobe ready within the week.”

  She left.

  And then he followed.

  Kingston could scarcely believe it, but he couldn’t stop himself. He was a peer of the realm, one of the highest-ranking men in one of the greatest countries in the world: he was Kingston. She was just a girl, just a seamstress. But there he was, taking one determined step after another, his footfalls silent on the plush carpet in the corridor. He was mesmerized by the sway of her hips and captivated by the rustle of her skirts as she walked away from him.