The Vespertine (7 page)

Oh, a hot, flashing grasp overwhelmed me, evident even in my voice. "An opportunity, then, to be seen."

"And incidentally socialize," Zora said. "They eavesdrop, and should we happen to mention there's a dance at nine o'clock, and where it might be..."

The grip round me loosened a bit, and I turned back to my thimble and thread. "And directions to the back doors and masks to disguise themselves."

"Show some spine," Zora said.

I laughed, for hadn't I? "Your mother didn't care much for the spine I showed our teacher."

"But Papa laughed and said it's no matter. Thus, it's no matter."

"Do you give your mother fits, I wonder?"

Zora tugged her robe closed and graced me with a smile. "I do hope it's so, for I'm very like her. She married for love, you know."

"I didn't."

"And now you do," she said, and gazed out the window.

When her lashes slipped low and her lips parted on a breath, I could see no reason why Thomas shouldn't propose at once. I wondered if I could ever be so polished, so ideal. I felt very far from that ideal, and I longed to approach it. But then a sudden, contrary fire lit inside me. What good did goodness do me? Nathaniel had no use for it...

"Do you think we'll come to our senses?" I asked suddenly.

Raising one finger to touch the glass, Zora traced a
Z
in the fog there and murmured, "I hope not."

I
WAS BOTH ASHAMED
and shameless to find myself offering Mrs. Stewart a lie. Though I trembled with an anxious rush, I looked right in my cousin's eye and said, "I'm only worried that if I wait until later, it will rain."

Mrs. Stewart glanced at the dark clouds, then turned to me. "I don't know about this."

"But it's just a block or two, isn't it?" I clutched the whole family's mail, holding it against my chest. "I've been remiss; I haven't mailed a single letter home yet."

"Will You be telling them you got sent home from school the first day?"

Heat stung my face, and I quailed. Truth was, I'd written half a page about nothing in particular, except that I had arrived and the Stewarts were very fine people, indeed. Trying to guess at what answer she expected of me, I finally said, "I wouldn't want to worry them."

Cruel as cruel, she let me hang there a long moment in silence. Then she squinted at the weather again and relented. "Straight to the corner, a right, and then the next left. If You should get lost, ask a lady to direct you."

"Yes, ma'am," I said, half out the door.

"Take my umbrella. And don't speak to any men!"

Her warning echoed behind me, and my nerves were so excited, I almost tripped over my feet. Though the sky hung heavy over me, I felt impossibly light beneath it.
Look at me,
I wanted to cry—I wanted to spin in circles on the curb and laugh.
I'm doing what I like in the city!

Plainly, I would have been drunk on my freedom, anyway. But the secret truth of my errand was still more intoxicating. Minding Mrs. Stewart's directions, I found the post office in short order and reveled in going into it alone.

How simple I must have looked, but I was entranced by the drawings of outlaws posted to the walls. As I waited in line, I lost myself to reading the descriptions of their wicked deeds. Murders, bank robberies—all terrible and, for their novelty, fascinating to me. Thunder rolled, atmosphere for my scandalized reading.

"I'd like to mail these," I said, when it was my turn to approach the window.

"See, you, get out!" the clerk shouted.

My face flamed. I turned to go, when he reached a crabbed hand out to catch my wrist.

"Not you," he said, leaning to peer around me. "That one!"

I turned just in time to see a little boy make a very rude gesture. He hardly reached my waist; I couldn't believe he was out of short pants, let alone loose in the city on his own watch. This was my first walk alone, and I was barely sixteen!

The boy hopped onto a bench, puffed with tiny bravado. "It's raining out there, innit?!"

"Then go lay about the telegram office!" The clerk hesitated and then slammed a CLOSED sign on his window. He disappeared, only to burst from a door with a broom. "This here's the federal government, you gibbous brat. No loafing! Out!"

I clapped a hand over my mouth to silence a gasp. But the clerk didn't just threaten with the broom—he used it! He hit the boy with the brush end of it and swept him into the rain-dark streets. Then he returned to his side of the counter and smiled at me. "Where was we, hon? Posting some letters?"

With a nod, I pushed my bundle toward him. "There's one to Maine, the rest are Baltimore."

Mumbling to himself, he pulled out a measure and a tray of vulcanized stamps to get to his business. With him busy marking his ledger, I asked as innocently as I could, "Oh, sir, could you tell me how to get to Mount Vernon Place?"

I felt effervescent, a bubble that swelled as I waited for his reply. As I waited for directions that would take me to Nathaniel Witherspoon's door. I didn't intend to use them. Of course not, but I savored the wickedness in the asking.

"Halfway between here and the Inner Harbor," he grunted, pulling out a great mechanical stamp. He used all of his weight to work it, slamming the handle down to cancel the postage on each letter. "North Avenue car to Calvert Street. Visiting the Stewarts, areya?"

Shivering, I wondered how he could know. Then, instantly sheepish, I realized—didn't he have my mail in his hands? "Yes, sir."

"Mr. Stewart's office is down about that ways."

The rain outside roared, and my heart pounded to match the thunder. My wicked bubble popped, and I swallowed nervously. What if the clerk mentioned my inquiry? How could I explain wanting directions that I didn't ask the Stewarts for? Oh, horror, I was so caught in the idea of the city that I forgot a neighborhood is no more than a small town in it.

Fishing my purse from my coat, I fumbled a few thick coins onto the counter. "Thank You kindly, sir."

"Enjoy Your stay, hon," he answered.

The stamp crashed down again, filling my ears as I slipped, considerably dimmed, into the rain.

***

Complaining bitterly, Mrs. Stewart herded Zora and me into the dressmaker's shop.

"After that performance at school, you're lucky I don't throw you in the cellar to grow eyes with the potatoes," she said, hooking her umbrella on the coat stand.

Since Zora kept her tongue, so did I. The trouble and the blame were all mine, and I couldn't argue that I deserved leniency for such bad behavior. And yet I got the most distinct impression that we were not so much contrite as making ourselves deliberately deaf.

The prismatic glory of a full wall of fabrics beckoned us near. I joined Zora in front of it, and we rubbed corners of velvet and serge, marveling at weight and hue. The variety staggered our senses. Sedate colors seemed to fade to shadows, because the upper selections screamed brightly with the new aniline dyes.

"Can't you just see a sheath of this," Zora said, touching apple-green satin, then reaching across to caress a cream brocade patterned with violet and pinks, "under a polonaise made of this?"

I nodded, but the sunny oranges and yellows drew my eye. They were so lush that I wished I could soak in all their warmth just by rubbing my cheek against them. Before I gave it serious consideration, the dressmaker came to greet us.

The script on the front window proclaimed that this shop belonged to Mademoiselle Thierry, but the woman who parted the narrow shop wasn't a miss at all. She wore her silver-shot hair in a tight crown of braids. Lines gracefully marked her walnut face with age. She nodded to Zora and me, but welcomed Mrs. Stewart with wide, gracious arms. The woman was no fool. She knew
we
were nothing but the mannequins to be dressed.

Her voice lilted, a marvel of an accent not quite French, but not quite Maryland, either. "What a day for necessaries, mm?"

"And one just started," Mrs. Stewart agreed, walking with her toward the back of the shop. "You got my note about our cousin Amelia?"

Mlle. Thierry nodded, pulling a huge book from beneath her counter. It landed on her cutting board with a thump, splitting open to the middle-most pages without bidding. "
Mais
yes, and I marked out these on your budget. It's the lace that troubles me."

"I have two yards besides on reserve," Mrs. Stewart said, which put that strange conversation to rest.

"Then all I need is my tape and"—Mile. Thierry's voice rose, plainly intended to draw my attention—"this little
missié
to come to the back room. 'Zelle Stewart, you've kept that seal cape fine as the day it left my hands."

Warmed by the compliment, Zora nodded. "Always and always, mademoiselle. I treasure it. May I sit for the measurements?"

Mlle. Thierry waved us both back. "Hurry up. You heard your mother. A long day ahead, and I won't be the one to keep her. Hup, hup, faster,
s'il vous plaît.
"

So faster we went, and Mlle. Thierry left us alone in the back to do the business work while I undressed. Slowly, I hung my muff and cape on hooks. Dawdling, I folded my gloves, then finally stepped onto the measuring block.

"She's from New Orleans," Zora told me, working the endless string of buttons on my polonaise.

"I admit, I wondered."

Lowering to a whisper, Zora said, "I heard she held a salon there so exquisite that people clamored for invitations. Ambassadors and barons and every fine family in the city came. If she would see you, you were all but royalty!"

"How did she come to own a dress shop in Baltimore, then?" I asked.

"She doesn't speak of it." Zora stepped onto the block to help me and whispered in my ear, "But when she raises the measure over your head, look into her cuffs. Scars, awful ones."

I blinked at Zora. "Truly?"

"Oh, yes," she murmured, then shut her mouth before she was caught gossiping.

Something shadowed and uncertain prickled along my skin as we bared it, bit by bit. Trying to put thoughts of dark secrets and hidden scars from my mind, I sadly reminded myself that I was stripping off in public. Shivering, I clapped my hands together and gazed at the ceiling in a quiet sort of terror.

True, no one could see into the back room, but I felt unnatural. And cold—my skin tightened everywhere, a rush of chill on it. That made me feel all the more wanton and obvious! I tried to distract myself with my surroundings.

The stove in the corner threw off little heat, though the room was cheery in its own way. Pinned to the wall, fluttering scraps added color between big sheets of patterns marked in oil pencil.

I felt no small measure of envy that Mile. Thierry had a sewing machine—a black, glorious monster worked by a foot pedal beneath it. Lizzy and I kept Oakhaven in clothes and linens by hand. My stitches were good—even and tight—but I guessed that an entire gown could come out of a machine like that in days, not the weeks it took me.

Appearing with a knotted rope, Mile. Thierry circled the block, measuring first with her eyes. She hummed and
ahhed
, sounds meant for herself that nonetheless set my nerves alight. Did she find me lacking? Was I too tall to be fashionable? And on top of it, I felt like a gawker, constantly trying to peer into her sleeves.

She made a noise at me, which I took to mean I should raise my arms, and I did.

"Mm," she said, looping the rope around my waist, then quick as a sparrow, she raised it to span my bust. "Is Your corset as tight as it goes?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said, cutting a plaintive look in Zora's direction. She answered with a shrug.

Mlle. Thierry hummed again, spanning my hips with the measure, before unfurling it to its full length and trailing it from my hip to my ankle. "Let's see your boots, Zelle van den Broek."

Puzzled, I rucked my skirts in my hands, lifting them and sticking my foot out for her consideration. In my estimation, my boots were quite fine—nearly new kid leather accented with black ribbon, turned out with black glass buttons.

But it seemed she cared less about the fineness of the construction than she did the height of the heel. "Not a full inch," she told herself, then stood. "Undress to the corset.
Je me reviens.
"

I said nothing; I only gaped at her, wide-eyed and openmouthed, as she bustled into the next room again. Though I heard her speaking to Mrs. Stewart, I was too shocked to understand either of them. "To the corset?"

"Quit complaining," Zora said, on her feet again to help me. "I bet she's got a finished dress that might fit."

Fingers numb, I clumsily worked my ties and hooks. "Whose?"

"Yours, if we pay for it. If an order goes unclaimed, she'll sell it off at a discount. I got my cape that way." Zora gave me a pinch and squinted up at me. "Help me, you goose. This could be glorious."

Or it could be a disaster. With wary hands, I bared myself to find out which.

***

On Saturday Zora and I abandoned our aprons for our capes and fled to Druid Hill.

"Cut across the lawn," Zora said, veering off the path and leaving me to follow or not. She wound through a cloud of toddlers in matching pinafores and bonnets. I scattered the darlings like little pink ducks, cutting down the middle and apologizing to their nurse as I passed.

Down a slope toward the lake, Sarah waved at us, as Mattie squinted beneath her gloved hand. Settled on a blanket, they seemed almost at picnic, except for the longbow. A target stood behind them, and Sarah looked wonderfully athletic in a suit cut just for archery.

"I wondered if you were coming," Sarah said, leaning in to press her cheek against Zora's and then mine.

Mattie squeezed my hand, with no more grip than the weight of a butterfly. "How do you do, Amelia?"

"Very well, thank you."

Zora picked up a nude shaft, one encumbered by neither arrowhead nor feathers. With a wink to me, she told Sarah, "This won't do."

"There are four in the quiver all ready," Sarah answered smartly.