“No, I’ll want you fresh tomorrow,” Marcelline said. “Lady Clara Fairfax’s ball dress must be ready to deliver at seven o’clock sharp in the evening. I shall want all my seamstresses well rested and alert. Better to come in early. Let us say eight o’clock in the morning.” She glanced at her pendant watch. “It’s nearly eight. Send them all home now, Pritchett. Tell them we want them here at precisely eight o’clock tomorrow morning, ready for a very busy day.”
She rarely kept her seamstresses past nine o’clock, even when the shop was frantically busy, as it had been when Dr. Farquar’s daughter had needed to be married in a hurry—or when Mrs. Whitwood, having quarreled with Dowdy, had come to Maison Noirot to have herself and her five daughters fitted out in mourning for a very rich aunt.
Marcelline’s personal experience had taught her that one did better work early in the day. By nightfall, spirits flagged and eyesight failed. The workroom had a skylight, but that was no use after sunset.
“Yes, Madame, but we have not quite completed Mrs. Plumley’s redingote.”
“It isn’t wanted until Thursday,” Marcelline said. “Everybody is to go home, and prepare for a long, hard day tomorrow.”
“Yes, Madame.”
Marcelline watched her go out of the showroom.
The trap she and her sisters had set yesterday morning was simple enough.
Before they went home at the end of the workday, the seamstresses were required to put everything away. The workroom was to be left neat and tidy. No stray bits of thread or ribbon, buttons or thimbles should remain on the worktable, the chairs, the floor, or anywhere else. The room had been perfectly neat early yesterday morning when Marcelline deliberately dropped a sketch of a dress for Mrs. Sharp on the floor.
The first seamstress arriving in the morning—and that was usually Pritchett—should have noticed the sketch, and turned it over to Marcelline, Sophy, or Leonie. But when Sophy went in, shortly after the girls’ workday began, the sketch was gone and nobody said a word about it. It didn’t turn up until this morning. Selina Jeffreys found it under her chair when she came to work.
Pritchett had scolded her for hurrying away at night and leaving a mess. She’d made a great fuss about the sketch—Madame’s work was never to be carelessly handled.
But Marcelline, Leonie, and Sophy knew there hadn’t been a mess, and that Jeffreys’s place had been as clean and orderly as the others. Nothing had been lying under her chair or anyone else’s.
Well, now they knew. And now they were ready.
The shop door swung open, setting the bell jangling.
She looked up from the dress, and her heart squeezed painfully.
Clevedon stood for a moment, his green gaze sweeping the shop and finally coming to rest on her. He frowned, then quickly smoothed his beautiful face and sauntered toward her. Riveted on that remarkable face, too handsome to be real, it took her a moment to notice the large box he was carrying.
“Your grace,” she said, bobbing a quick curtsey.
“Mrs. Noirot,” he said. He set the box on the counter.
“That cannot be Lady Clara’s new dress,” she said. “Sophy said her ladyship was delighted with it.”
“Why the devil should I be returning Clara’s purchases?” he said. “I’m not her servant. This is for Erroll.”
Marcelline’s heart beat harder, with rage now. She was aware of her face heating. It probably didn’t show, but she didn’t care whether it did or not. “Take it back,” she said.
“Certainly not,” he said. “I went to a good deal of trouble. I know nothing about children anymore, and you will not believe the number and variety of—”
“You may not give my daughter gifts,” Marcelline said.
He took the lid off the box, and lifted from it a doll—such a doll! She had black curling hair and vivid blue glass eyes. She was dressed in silver net and lace, trimmed with pearls. “I’m not taking it back,” he said. “Burn it, then.”
At that moment, Lucie burst through the door from the back. She stopped short at the sight of the doll, which the beast hadn’t the grace to return to its box.
She’d been watching the street from the window upstairs, no doubt, as she always did. She’d recognized his fine carriage.
She was six years old. It was too much to expect her to resist the doll. Her eyes widened. Yet she managed a creditable “Good evening, your grace,” and a curtsey. All the while, her eyes never left the doll. “My, that’s a fine doll,” she said. “I think it’s the most beautiful doll I’ve ever seen in all my life.”
All six years of it.
“You’re going to pay for this,” Marcelline said under her breath. “And painfully.”
“Is it, indeed?” he said to Lucie. “I’m not a good judge of these matters.”
“Oh, yes.” Lucie drew a step nearer. “She isn’t like ordinary dolls. Her eyes are blue glass, you see. And her face is so lifelike. And her hair is so beautiful, I think it must be real hair.”
“Perhaps you’d like to hold her,” Clevedon said.
“Oh, yes!” She started toward him, then hesitated and looked at Marcelline. “May I, Mama?” she asked in her best Dutiful Child voice.
“Yes,” Marceline said, because there was nothing else she could say. She was hardheaded and practical, and any mother would know this was setting a terrible precedent as well as compromising her reputation.
But to deny her child—any child—such a treat, after the child had seen it and had done nothing wrong to be punished for, was wanton cruelty. She was a strict mother. She had to be. But too many cruelties, large and small, had marked her own childhood. That was one legacy she wouldn’t pass on.
Folding his large frame, he crouched down to Lucie’s level. Solemnly he held out the doll. Equally solemnly, she took it, holding her breath until it was safely in her arms. Then she held it so carefully, as though she believed the thing was magical, and might disappear in a minute. “What is her name?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” he said. “I thought you would know.”
Oh, the wretched, manipulative man!
Lucie considered. “If she were my doll, I should call her Susannah.”
“I think she would like to be your doll,” Clevedon said. He slanted a glance upward, at Marcelline. “If she may.”
Though she was captivated by the doll, Lucie didn’t fail to see whose permission he sought. “Oh, if Mama says she may? Mama, may she? May she be my doll?”
“Yes,” Marcelline said. What other answer could she make, curse him!
“Oh, thank you, Mama!” Lucie turned back to Clevedon, and the look she sent him from those great blue eyes was calculated to break his heart, which Marcelline sincerely hoped it did. “Thank you, your grace. I shall take very good care of her.”
“I know you will,” he said.
“Her limbs move, you see,” Lucie said, demonstrating. “She needn’t wear only one dress. This one is very beautiful, but she’s like a princess, and a princess must have a vast wardrobe. Mama and my aunts will help me cut out and sew dresses for her. I’ll make her morning dresses and walking dresses and the most beautiful carriage dress, a blue redingote to match her eyes. The next time you come, you’ll see.”
The next time you come.
“Why don’t you take