was much neater and less dingy than it used to be.
The explanation, Sophy saw, stood behind the counter.
Dowdy had hired a Frenchwoman. She was pretty and elegant and graceful. Her fair hair was arranged becomingly under a splendid lace cap.
Her poise didn’t falter although her welcoming smile did, a little, as she took in Sophy/Gladys. The woman’s light brown gaze turned with obvious relief to Longmore.
Subtle as the rebuff was, it wouldn’t be too subtle for a sensitive soul, as Sophy imagined Gladys to be. The Frenchwoman shouldn’t have given any sign of dismay. She should have looked as delighted to see her as she would be to see Queen Adelaide.
Many specimens as unpromising as the faux Gladys came into dressmakers’ shops. How one served them made all the difference in the world. The Frenchwoman seemed to see Lady Gladys Fairfax as an ordeal to endure, rather than as an exciting challenge, as Sophy and her sisters would view her. Their faces would have lit up when she stepped through the door.
“Mrs. Downes?” Sophy said.
“I am Madame Ecrivier, mademoiselle,” the Frenchwoman said. “Madame Downes is occupied at the moment, but I—”
“Occupied!” Longmore said, startling Sophy as well as Ecrivier. “Where in blazes would she be occupied if not in her own shop? This is her shop, I presume? It had better be. I had the devil’s own time getting here. Accident on Oxford Street and everybody stopping to gawk and slowing travel in three directions.”
Sophy was too experienced in deceit to show her feelings. She didn’t gawk at him, except in her thoughts. He’d said he was confused, and she’d had a moment’s alarm, that subterfuge was beyond his intellectual abilities.
But whether by accident or not, he’d created a beautiful opening, and she knew how to play along.
“Did Lady Warford not tell Mrs. Downes to expect family members this week?” she said. “Her daughter, Lady Clara—my cousin, you know—is getting married. Surely my aunt must have informed you. I don’t see how she could have failed to do so. She told me she’d ordered a dress to wear to the wedding. She ordered it from this shop. On Monday, I believe.”
And she’d thrown a spectacular fit, according to Lady Clara, when she learned that the latter hadn’t gone to Dowdy’s.
“Oui, mademoiselle—milady. And most certainly—”
“Here’s my cousin, come to be fitted out for my sister’s wedding,” Longmore said. “The first wedding in the family, I might add. And where’s the proprietress? I say, this is a fine way to treat clients. Well, Gladys, we’d better be off. Who was that other milliner Clara mentioned? French name, wasn’t it? On St. James’s Street. If I’d known we’d get the cold shoulder here, I could have saved myself a bothersome journey.”
Madame Ecrivier was all but dancing with panic. “Oh, no, oh, no, milord. There is no coldness of the shoulder. Only a moment, if you please. I will send someone to inform Madame. A thousand apologies. Certainly Madame will attend the young lady. If you will pardon me for a moment, I will arrange this.”
The Frenchwoman glided away and vanished through the door behind the counter. Though she closed the door behind her, Sophy could hear her voice, high, communicating via the speaking pipe to somebody somewhere.
Longmore strode to the window and looked out. “The carriage is still there,” he said in a low voice. “Fenwick hasn’t sold the horses yet.”
When he lowered his voice, it became husky, and the sound made Sophy go still, like an animal catching the scent of danger. It took her a moment to shake off the feeling.
“Your cattle couldn’t be safer,” she said. “He’s thrilled.”
“It doesn’t show.”
“He’s learned to hide important feelings,” she said.
He gave a short laugh and left the window. He wandered the showroom. He fingered a length of muslin. He turned pages in the pattern book. He moved with careless grace, but his wasn’t the usual lazy ease of an idle aristocrat.
Her skin prickled with awareness. He was a man, merely a man, she told herself. Yet an aura of danger surrounded him, and it seemed as though a wolf prowled the room.
She detected footsteps and voices approaching the door to the shop’s back rooms.
“If I’d known this was the way London shopkeepers treat their best patrons, I should have had my dress made in Manchester,” she said more audibly. “To be kept waiting endlessly—when there isn’t another customer in the shop! I’m sure I should have something quite as elegant made at home as anything on offer here. And at a fraction of the price.”
Dowdy burst through the door. She was a painfully thin woman of medium height. An elaborate pelerine of embroidered cambric, extending over the wide à la Folle sleeves of her printed muslin dress, helped create the illusion of a fuller figure. Large, round dark curls framed her face under the lacy tulle cap.
The ensemble was handsome, one must give her that. It was a shame she didn’t dress her ladies as carefully as she dressed herself.
“My lady, my lord, my apologies,” she said breathlessly. “I never expected you so early in the day.”
“The shop opens at ten o’clock,” Longmore said. “Or so I was told.”
“The sign in the window says so,” Sophy said.
“You are quite right, miss—my lady.” Dowdy bustled out from behind the counter. “I was called away. A—erm—a little difficulty in the workroom. But we are all in order now. A dress for the nuptials of Lady Clara Fairfax, is it not? Would her ladyship care to peruse the pattern book? We have all the latest styles from Paris, and a splendid selection of silks.”
Judging by the crumbs on the pelerine, she must have been enjoying a leisurely breakfast.
“My aunt says I’m to place myself in your hands,” Sophy said.
“And mind you do her up well,” Longmore said. “None of your fobbing off that putrid green you bought too much of on account of seeing it in the wrong light.”
Sophy strangled a laugh.
“My cousin may be a rustic,” he said, “but—”
“I! A rustic!”
“My dear girl, your idea of sophistication is attending a lecture on stuffed birds at the Manchester Museum.”
“England’s finest mills are in Manchester!” she cried.
“Certainly, your ladyship,” Dowdy said. “But I must say a word for our Spitalfields silks, you know. And as to that, I do believe we have exactly the thing for you. Madame Ecrivier, kindly show her ladyship the silk I mean.”
Ecrivier gave Sophy a swift survey, then glided away to a drawer. She withdrew a length of blue silk.
“Blue!” Sophy said. “But I never wear blue.”
“With
