Stronger Than Magic, page 9
The woman nodded as she drew the narrow petticoat up over Alys’s hips, then moved around to her back to fasten it. “It is my job as Madame’s assistant to dress and undress the patrons.”
“Then you have attended to Reina Castell?”
She could feel Claudine’s hands hesitate in her task of securing the petticoat. After several seconds of silence, she replied in a small voice, “Yes.”
“And she has mentioned Lord Thistlewood?”
Another lengthy pause and then, “Yes.” Her voice was almost inaudible now.
Alys waited until the woman had finished fussing with her petticoat and was reaching for her gown before continuing her interrogation. “Did Miss Castell, by chance, mention just how close her relationship with his lordship is?”
Apparently Madame’s hisses weren’t reprimands, but threats, for the girl looked terrified enough by her question to flee. Nervously smoothing the gown in her arms, she stammered, “I-I—uh—M-Madame Fanchon strictly f-forbids her workers to repeat gossip.”
“But she won’t know unless we tell her, now will she?” Alys retorted in a soothing tone. “And I promise you that I shan’t repeat a word of anything you tell me,”
Claudine looked up from the gown to meet her gaze with troubled eyes. “Excuse me for asking, miss. But are you wanting to know all this because you have feelings for his lordship like Madame said?”
“Hardly!” Alys expelled more forcefully than she’d intended.
The woman looked taken aback by the vehemence of her denial.
Cursing herself for her lack of finesse, she grappled for a way to justify her response. Thinking quickly as she spoke, she explained, “What I meant is that I wouldn’t presume to think that someone of Lord Thistlewood’s stature would lower himself to marry someone like me, an untitled miss.” She shook her head. “My reason for asking about Miss Castell has nothing to do with me, but with his lordship’s sister, Charlotte, uh, Lady Glassenbury. You know her, I believe?”
Claudine nodded. “She’s most kind. She gave me three crowns at Christmas.”
Alys smiled at her response. “Yes, she is a gracious lady. She’s also sick with worry over her brother. That is why she was unable to accompany us here today … she was simply too exhausted from fretting to move from her bed.”
“Oh! Her poor, dear ladyship!” The woman crushed Alys’s gown to her breast in her distress. “If only there was something I could do for her.”
“Ah. But there is. In truth, you might be the only one who can help her.”
Claudine let out a surprised squeak and pointed to herself as if to ask, “Me?”
Alys nodded. “You see, Claudine, Lord Thistlewood has been most lonely and miserable since the war ended. Her ladyship is certain that a bride is just what he needs to brighten his life. Now since he refuses to give her so much as a hint as to what sort of woman he might favor, she has no idea where to start in her matchmaking quest.
That is why I was so interested in learning if your remark about him fancying Miss Castell was true.”
“Oh, I—I see.” Claudine chewed her lower lip for a few moments, as if torn between loyalty to the generous Countess of Glassenbury and fear of disobeying Madame’s rules. Loyalty defeated fear, for after shooting a nervous glance at the door, she whispered, “Yes. It’s true that his lordship fancies her.”
“And what is she like?” Alys quizzed in a low voice.
Claudine slipped the gown over Alys’s head. “Very beautiful. Black hair and eyes to match. It’s said that his lordship prefers dark women with voluptuous figures.”
“And what makes you so certain that he prefers Miss Castell to all the other pretty brunettes in London?” Alys inquired, emerging from the enveloping folds of silk.
“She says so.” The girl stole another glance at the door, then leaned forward a fraction to confide in a whisper, “And it must be true, because he paid for the last five gowns she ordered. One even had swansdown trim.”
It must be true indeed, Alys thought as Claudine nimbly fastened the row of tiny copper hooks at her back. It made sense that Lucian would want his bride to be elegantly garbed. She was just about to ask the other woman if she thought that Reina Castell would make Lord Thistlewood a good wife when there was a knock at the door.
“Claudine?” called a lilting female voice.
Claudine looked alarmed, clearly worried that their discussion might have been overheard. Biting her lip once, as if to stop its trembling, she responded hoarsely, “Yes?”
“Lady Biddleton is here for the final fitting on her riding habit. Madame has requested that you do it. I’m to finish helping Miss Faire.”
Looking relieved enough to collapse, Claudine pulled the door open to reveal a thin, wiry-looking girl of about thirteen. “Miss Faire is all dressed,” she said, motioning over to where Alys stood. “You have only to escort her to Madame and Lord Thistlewood.”
Feeling as if this were the luckiest day of her life, and indeed it might be if her hunch about Miss Castell was correct, Alys followed the girl to the front of the shop. There she found a frustrated-looking Madame Fanchon flashing fashion sketches before the eyes of a visibly bored Lucian.
“And zhis one ees most stylish,” she was saying. “See ze Ilchester braces?” She tapped the feature with one long finger and flashed him a strained smile. It was obvious that, as usual, he was being completely unreasonable.
As Alys came to stand beside his chair, the dressmaker bound to her feet, exclaiming, “Ah! Miss Faire. At last. Perhaps now zhat you are here, his lordship will see how lovely zheese gowns will look on you.” As if to demonstrate, she pulled Alys to stand next to her and held up the sketch for his reference.
He merely frowned and shook his head.
The dressmaker sighed and tossed the drawing aside. After contemplating the man before her for several seconds, she snapped her fingers and uttered a triumphant “A-ha!”
Bustling to a table across the room, she picked up a bolt of rich purple velvet, on top of which she piled a length of black crepe and a long roll of tulle in a shade of purple one tone lighter than that of the velvet. Returning to Alys’s side, she expertly draped the velvet over the younger woman’s breasts and shoulders to form a bodice of sorts, then had her hold the crepe overlaid with the tulle in a skirtlike arrangement. That task completed, she presented the next sketch with a flourish.
“Perhaps by seeing ze fabrics on your ward, you can see how lovely she will look in zhis?” She glanced at Lucian expectantly.
The glaze had left his eyes and he looked alert for the first time since Alys had entered the room. Madame seemed to take that as a positive sign, for she further embellished, “Add ze beaded jet trim and feather boa, and voila! Stunning, oui?”
With unhurried grace he rose to his feet and slowly circled Alys, his frigid gray gaze sweeping her figure with every step. When he’d made a full rotation, he said in a soft, yet unmistakably exasperated voice, “Good God, Madame. Have you looked at the girl? There’s hardly anything to her. She would be lost in all this”—he waved his hand at the drawing—“fuss and feathers.”
Alys glanced from the materials in her hands to the rejected sketch. As much as she liked the gown, Lucian was right. She really was much too small and youthful-looking to wear such a matronly style. Ah, well. She regretfully handed the fabrics back to Madame. There would be plenty of time to wear such gowns when she’d regained her human life. In time her girlish body would mature to match her womanly mind.
With the same air of impatience he displayed in all matters concerning his ward, Lucian picked up the stack of remaining sketches and began to sort through them. He discarded first one, then another. When he got to the third, he paused.
Handing it to Madame, he said, “We shall have this gown—” He stalked to a shelf on the far wall and pulled down a bolt of celestial blue gauze shot with gold. “Made up in this fabric.” He tossed the gauze onto a worktable. In three purposeful strides he was at the rack of trims. “Embellished with this.” He pitched a roll of embroidered ribbon smoothly across the room to land on top of the gauze.
That done, he turned to Madame. “Do you understand now what sort of gowns I want for Miss Faire?”
Madame chuckled and nodded. “Oui. You want her to look like ze angel she ees.”
“Angel?” Lucian snorted. “No. I simply don’t care to have her parading around looking like a little girl dressed up in her mother’s finery.”
If they hadn’t been in such a public place, Alys would have voiced her objections to his scathing evaluation of her figure. Little girl indeed! Out of courtesy for Madame, however, she refrained from doing more than shooting him a dagger-sharp look. Lucian was making things unpleasant enough for the poor dressmaker without her adding to her discomfiture by starting a squabble.
From then on the selection process went much smoother. Madame Fanchon, now aware of Lucian’s desires, produced sketch after sketch of acceptable designs. There were gowns for morning, ones for afternoon.
Three were designated as opera gowns, five as promenade dresses. Though Lucian never once bothered to consult Alys on his selections, she could honestly say that she was more than pleased with everything he chose.
Just as he and Madame were trying to decide on the fabric for her coming-out ball gown, the front door opened and in rushed a harried-looking woman in her mid-thirties. In with her came the unmistakable stench of hob.
Alys groaned inwardly. Oh, perfect! Just what she needed. Hedley wrecking havoc in the shop.
“Did you get ze thread for—” Madame began. Then her face grew pinched, rather as if she’d eaten something that didn’t quite agree with her. “Mon dieu, Lucy! Did you step in ze horse—” She gestured to avoid uttering the vulgar word.
Lucy shook her head, her expression of repugnance mirroring her employer’s. “I noticed the awful smell coming from the gutter when I crossed the street earlier. It seems to have followed me in when I opened the door just now.”
“Well, we can’t have ze shop smelling like a chamber pot every time someone opens ze door, now can we?”
Directing the woman to the back curtain with an imperious wave of her hand, Madame directed, “Tell Benjamin that he ees to scrub ze gutter immediately.”
As the woman turned, Alys caught sight of Hedley clinging to the back of her cloak, bobbing his woolly head in time to whatever hob tune he was humming. When he saw Alys glaring at him, he gave her a saucy wink and jumped down.
“What’s taking ye so bloody damn long? I’ve only got two centuries worth of fairy essence left, ye know,” he groused, eyeing the contents of the shop in a way that Alys found most disquieting.
“No, that will never do,” came Lucian’s voice.
Both Alys and Hedley looked over to where the long-suffering Madame was holding up a length of pink silk worked with gilt spangles for his lordship’s inspection. He was shaking his head with a scowl dark enough to intimidate a whole legion of footpads.
Hedley heaved a much put-upon sigh. “Oh, I see the problem. Lord Tight-Arse is being a swelled-up looby again. Ah, well. Not to worry.” With a wave of his hand, he pulled a long, wickedly sharp-looking pin from thin air. Brandishing it as if it were a sword, he explained, “A few pricks with this, and he’ll be agreeable just so he can leave. Whadda ye say, Alys?”
“No. Absolutely not,” she hissed. Considering Lucian’s contrary nature, the hob’s trick would probably just make him all the more belligerent Then what would she and poor Madame do? Shaking her head firmly, she pointed to a small sofa in the far corner, adding, “What I want you to do is to go over there and sit quietly until we’re ready to leave.”
“Alys?” It was Lucian’s voice, and he didn’t sound pleased.
Still pointing, she glanced over to where he and Madame stood staring at her as if she’d lost her mind. Oh, perfect! They had caught her scolding Hedley. Improvising to the best of her ability, she shifted her finger a fraction to point at the nearest bolt of fabric and murmured, “I said that I like that material.”
By the looks on their faces, it was plain that her fabric selection had merely reinforced their opinion that she had something rattling around loose upstairs. And no wonder, Alys thought with dismay as she took a good look at the cloth. It was a heavy poplin in a truly hideous shade of greenish-yellow.
It was Madame who rescued her from the awkward situation. “Perhaps you didn’t hear us correctly, mademoiselle. We are choosing ze material for your coming-out gown.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Alys smiled what was intended to be a sheepish apology. “I thought you were still selecting walking gowns.”
Though Madame appeared satisfied by her reply, Lucian wasn’t as easily fooled. Pointing to the sofa where Hedley was now hunched on his hands and knees examining the cover of a fashion magazine, he said, “You look tired, my dear. Perhaps it would be best if you sat down and rested while Madame and I complete our business.” As usual it was a command not a suggestion.
Just as typical was how he promptly turned back to Madame and began to examine the ivory satin in her hands, clearly expecting her to obey without question.
Unwilling to be banished to the corner with the odorous hob, Alys started to protest. Then she saw the little man open the magazine and she snapped her mouth closed again. If Madame or Lucian were to look over and see the pages flipping by themselves, they’d probably accuse her of witchcraft. Wondering with horror if convicted witches were still burned at the stake, she hurried over to the sofa.
“Say, Alys,” Hedley said, surveying her figure as she approached. “Ye should ask his royal clodship to buy ye one of these tit improver things.” He pointed at a picture of an undergarment with bosom-enhancing padding. “Ye could use it ye know. It’d make ye look a hundred times more fashionable.”
Alys snatched the magazine from beneath his elbows, upsetting his balance with her abruptness. Like she needed more reminders of her shortcomings in that department! As the little man pulled himself up from his collapsed heap, muttering something about her being overly sensitive for a five-hundred-year-old wench, she whispered furiously, “You’re a great one to be criticizing another’s appearance! You! A slovenly, crude … smelly hob! As for this—this”—she consulted the magazine in her hand—“bust improver!—making me look more fashionable, what, pray tell, do you know about fashion? You don’t even wear clothes.” Like all hobs, Hedley scorned clothing, depending on his natural hairiness to protect his modesty, such as it was.
The hob squawked his affront. “Better to be smelly and naked than to look like a skeleton in crow’s clothes like ye. Lord Tight-Arse can dress ye up, but ye ain’t gonna look no better than—” He hopped from the sofa to the abutting table upon which stood a rather emaciated-looking fashion doll in court dress. Giving the wooden doll a kick that sent her clattering to the floor, he finished, “You ain’t gonna look no better than her, all titless and sour-faced.” With that proclamation, he flounced off.
Alys felt both Lucian and Madame’s eyes burning into her back as she bent down to retrieve the doll. “Wonder how that happened?” she muttered, clumsily trying to stuff the doll’s now detached arm back up into its sleeve.
Lucian wondered too. He’d been trying to keep Madame from noticing that Alys was whispering to herself when the mannequin had jumped off the table like a rat abandoning a sinking ship. He immediately regretted his mental simile when the scene of Alys talking to the dead rat began to reenact in his mind. As he once again saw her shrink back from the gutter, her face the color of his best port wine, a new thought struck him.
Could it be that Alys hadn’t been talking to the rat at all, but to an imaginary companion? It would certainly explain her horrified reaction when he’d pointed out the rodent to her.
He cast her a speculative look as she struggled to make the doll stand again. After three tries she gave up and placed it in a sitting position on the edge of the table. Then she followed suit, sitting on the sofa with her lower lip clenched between her teeth and her hands demurely folded on her lap.
Instead of the anger he should feel at her for making such a spectacle of herself, amusement bubbled up in his chest. She looked comically like a little girl who had been caught whispering in class and was now expecting a switching. Unable to repress it a second longer, he smiled the first genuine smile he’d smiled in years.
He continued to view her over the roll of silver gauze Madame had just shoved in front of his face. In truth, Alys Faire was little more than a girl. And according to the accounts related by the married soldiers around the battlefield campfires, children were prone to flights of fancy, among which was the creation of imaginary friends.
His smile faltered as he recalled some of those tales. Yes, imaginary companions were quite common, but in five- and six-year-olds, not chits of nineteen. An inaudible sigh escaped him.
Bloody hell. No matter how hard he might try to rationalize Alys’s strange behavior, it was clear that the girl was an eccentric, period. What other explanation could there be?
He paused from his musings just long enough to shake his head in rejection of the gauze. When he returned to them, a new, more edifying thought struck him.
Could it be that the chit’s eccentricity stemmed not from a defect of the brain, but from mere loneliness? Considering her appalling lack of discipline, it was plain that she had been left much to her own devices growing up. That being the case, could it be that she’d created this Hedley Bragg person for lack of human companionship?
There was a unfamiliar twisting sensation in the region of his heart as he contemplated that possibility. That anyone would have to depend upon a figment of their imagination for friendship left him feeling … what? Lucian winced as the nameless aching sensation increased, suffusing his entire chest with indescribable pain.
