Silk Is For Seduction by Loretta Chase

Author:Loretta Chase
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance.Historical
ISBN: 9780062092366
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 2011-06-27T21:00:00+00:00

The gown Mrs. Whitwood had returned lay on the counter. The enraged customer had come and gone while Marcelline was dancing attendance upon Lady Clara Fairfax at Warford House.

Sophy had soothed Mrs. Whitwood. Sophy could soothe Attila the Hun. The dress would be remade. The cost was mainly in labor, the smallest cost of making a dress. Still, it cost time—time that Marcelline, her sisters, and her seamstresses could be spending on other orders.

If this kept up, they’d be ruined. It wasn’t simply that they couldn’t afford to keep remaking dresses. They couldn’t afford the damage to their reputation.

Marcelline was studying the dress, deciding what to change. “Who worked on it?” she asked Pritchett, her senior seamstress.

“Madame, if there is a fault with the workmanship it must be mine,” Pritchett said. “I supervised every stitch of this dress. But madame can see for herself. It is precisely as madame ordered.”

“Indeed, and the details, as you know, are of my own design,” Marcelline said. “It’s very strange that another dress should appear, bearing these same details. The angle and width of the pleats of the bodice was my own invention. How curious that another dressmaker should have precisely the same idea, in the same style of dress.”

“Most unfortunate, madame,” Pritchett said. “Yet some would think it a miracle we haven’t had this problem before, when you consider that we take in all sorts of girls, from the streets, practically. One doesn’t wish to be uncharitable. Some of them don’t know any better, I daresay. Never taught right from wrong, you know. I shall be happy to work late—as late as needed—to make the dress over, if madame wishes.”

“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.

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