Godfrey handed Irene her glass, and gently abstracted the precious envelope from her other hand before she could object, just as she was about to tear it open.
He stepped into the hall, leaving her open-mouthed, and returned a moment later bearing the console table’s gilt letter-opener with the dolphin’s head handle.
“If you have been waiting that long,” he said, slitting the creamy parchment, “you can wait a bit longer to open it neatly.”
Reproved, Irene demurely sipped her sherry, then handed him the glass in exchange for the envelope. Her husband’s calming presence had quieted her immoderate spirits, for she drew the folded paper from its sheath as delicately as a wine steward decanting a rare vintage.
I held my breath. Irene adored dramatic moments, but she also had a genius for attracting to herself the outré, the deadly, and the puzzling. Perhaps the missive held some news of Quentin’s survival, his whereabouts.... It would be like Irene to inquire into the matter privately, and surprise me—us—with the results.
Her face was study in perfect beauty poised upon the brink of expression as her eyes darted back and forth to read, or, rather, consume in quick visual gulps, the contents of the page. Joy dawned on that still perfection, and flooded it with bright relief.
“As I thought,” she announced. “My carefully laid plans have come to fruition. My dears”—her triumphant eyes sparkled in each of our directions in turn, indeed, encompassed even cat and parrot, both of whom grew eerily quiet—“I have an appointment on twelve September on the rue de la Paix with the maestro himself.”
“Maestro?” The operatic term confused me. Surely Irene could not be contemplating a return to the stage?
“The rue de la Paix?” Godfrey echoed with lawyerly precision. His handsome face puckered as he mentally envisioned the addresses to be found on that highly fashionable street that began at the place de l’Opera and swept like a red carpet of luxury to the old royal promenade of the Tuileries via the rue Castiglione.
“I am to see Charles Frederick Worth himself,” Irene explained. “I have a personal fitting with the king of couture. I am truly Parisienne. I have joined the aristocracy of artifice. I shall be dressed by Worth at last!”
Godfrey and I exchanged a polite but puzzled glance of mutual mystification. Irene, clasping the stiff parchment to her bosom like a debutante’s first bouquet, noticed nothing.
Over dinner, Godfrey and I were educated on the subject of Charles Frederick Worth far more than we wished to be.
“Have you not several things already from the House of Worth?” Godfrey asked quite innocently, and unleashed what became a cataract of retort.
“Nothing from the mind of Worth himself.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
“Who is he?” Irene cried. “What a question! Only the architect of the world’s finest gowns, a monarch of material, a king of cut, a prince of profile—for it was he who invented the princesse line—the man for whom the word couturier was coined in the masculine gender, a master who dresses queens and empresses from the tundra of Russia to the castles of Austria as well as queens of society from St. James to Newport.”
Godfrey’s dinner fork dissected an odd arrangement of asparagus and chestnuts created by our cook, the maid Sophie’s Aunt Nathalie. “I suppose that such concoctions of the maestro himself are exceptionally... expensive.”
Irene looked insulted. “Cost is no consideration. Genius does not come cheap.” She reconsidered. “Or it should not, in a perfect world.”
“In a perfect world,” he pursued wryly, “to how many works of Worth genius should an incognito opera singer aspire?”
“I had not considered. His evening gowns are sublime, but then so are his visiting ensembles. I do not wish to appear... tightfisted. And then, as long as one is ordering, one might as well lay in a season’s worth of gowns.”
“As long as one is paying, what will so many Worths be worth?” he asked.
“More than enough,” she admitted, laughing, “but this is the opportunity of a lifetime. Worth at this stage in his career does not accept just anyone as a client, and seldom sees them in person. Besides, we have plenty of money left from the sale of the Zone of Diamonds.”
“No doubt,” I put in, “Sarah Bernhardt put in a good word for you with this man-milliner.”
“I hope not! When she was still with the Comedie Français years ago, Sarah insulted Worth by ordering five of his gowns for a play, then using only one and filling in with dresses by other designers he considered lesser. Worth was livid, as Sarah told me. He is a tyrant in the fitting room who tolerates no rivals. No, I have won this coup on my own, by a careful campaign of dropping a word in the right ears.”
Godfrey shook his head, smiling. “It is your money, Irene; you may spend it as you wish. I can’t help thinking that an idle mind is the couturier’s workshop, though. I have seen your boredom rise at the quiet life in France after our latest adventure. You must do what you will to occupy yourself. Nell and I will have to take your word that it is ‘Worth’ it.”
“Do not include me in your approval,” I told Godfrey. “I am not convinced that it is proper for a man to involve himself in the intimacies of women’s dress.”
Irene folded her napkin and tossed it to the tablecloth. “Your ‘respectable’ reservations are thirty years behind the time, Nell. That issue was decided in Mr. Worth’s favor when he first began dressing the Empress Eugenie in the sixties. Now she is in exile, empires have toppled, but Worth still reigns supreme. Besides, he is an Englishman born and reared, so how can he even dream of being improper? Such old-fogeyism is old hat.”
“No,” said Godfrey, installing peace, “it is new hat. I imagine we will see a good deal of those as well.”
“And gloves and parasols, boots and slippers, jewelry,” Irene enumerated happily. “Worth dresses the whole woman.”
“Until she has a hole in her pocket,” I mumbled to my own mutilated asparagus.
“Wait to judge, Nell, until you see number seven, rue de la Paix,” Irene said.
“I? I never intend to see such a place!”
“But you must.”
“Why?”
“Godfrey has no interest in the rituals of commissioning gowns, and I can hardly be expected to make up my mind on such vital matters alone. Worth gowns cost a king’s ransom, after all.”
Irene’s husband and I stared at each other in the face of this sudden confession from a woman who recently had faced down a murderous heavy-game hunter and hooded cobras.
“Please, Nell,” she pleaded very prettily indeed. “You can’t allow me to go unchaperoned into such a den of mousseline and man-milliners. Godfrey is right; boredom is fatal to me. I must make my forays into something new, even if it is only as frivolous as fashion. I require a witness, a supporter, a recording angel. You cannot deny me, dearest Nell.”
As usual, she was quite correct. I could no more resist an appeal to my governess instincts than Irene could resist the siren calls of imagined luxury and calculated risk.
Godfrey had done with dinner and laid down his fork. He regarded Irene with an indefinable glint in his silver- gray eyes. “As for your assertion that it is impossible for an Englishman to be improper, I will be forced to put your theory to the test.”
“I will take a great deal of convincing,” she suggested.
“I do hope so,” he responded in a baritone purr.
I, of course, could make no more head or tail of this last exchange than I could discern front from back on a Liberty silk gown.
Pleading headache, I excused myself immediately after dinner to withdraw to my room with my peculiar new gowns. Neither Irene nor Godfrey seemed discernibly bereft by my absence.
Chapter Two
ENTER MADAME X
Even the weather cooperated with Irene’s desire to make a grand entrance the day our carriage first drew up before No. 7, rue de la Paix. Silken swaths of dove gray cloud shrouded the Parisian sk
ies. Some sober sprite had draped the same dull veil over the stone streets and building façades, turning them into a dreary blank canvas awaiting a splash of pigment.
Despite a ground floor of display windows flaunting fine fabrics and costly accessories and the word “Worth” blazoned in strong gilt letters above the double door, Maison Worth was the usual five-story edifice that lines the rue de la Paix. Such buildings are pierced by narrow, long windows stretching from floor to ceiling behind fences of wrought iron, and crowned with a rickrack of gables and a grim, charred forest of chimney pots.
When our driver helped Irene alight before the central archway, her crimson and gold Liberty silk gown flamed like an illustration from a Medieval book on a dirty page.
Heads all along the thoroughfare turned to see Irene in the high-waisted gown, her dark hair drawn into simple wings that covered her ears and gathered into a loose chignon low on the back of her head beneath a small red velvet bonnet.
I, of course, would never dream of wearing a Liberty silk on the street for all to gawk at.
“Such unconventional dress may annoy Mr. Worth,” I warned Irene in a whisper as we were ushered through the portal by a white-gloved page boy.
“Quite true,” she surprised me by admitting, “but it is better to beard a fashion lion wearing exquisite unorthodoxy rather than inferior conventionality.”
“Since I am the picture of such inferior conventionality,” I protested, “I will wait outside.”
“Nonsense. Exquisiteness requires contrast to set it off; your ordinariness is absolute perfection.”
By then we—she—had glided into a richly upholstered salon in which fashionable ladies sat and strolled like figures from La Mode lllustrée come to life.
Even Irene paused at such intimidating perfection reflected in gilt-framed minors. One of the strolling women approached us, her gown a marzipan triumph fashioned of gathered tulle frosted with glittering beads and lace.
“Mesdames require a vendeuse? she inquired.
Irene flushed, as I had not seen her do since Bohemia. “I have an appointment with Monsieur Worth,” she said, “for half past three. I am Madame Norton. My companion is Miss Huxleigh.”
“You are early, Madame Norton, and Monsieur Worth is a bit behind. One of his migraines. Please observe the mannequins. If a particular gown strikes your fancy, it can be made for you in a manner to suit. Meanwhile, you and Miss Huxleigh may stroll or sit, as it pleases you.”
The woman wafted off in her sparkling cloud while Irene’s inquisitive expression silently consulted me.
“Please let us sit,” I suggested. “I need to absorb the surroundings.”
She did not argue, perching quickly on a huge tufted ottoman, her reticule centered on her lap, as mine invariably was when I was nervous. In fact, as my reticule was always placed when I sat, just as my feet stayed as tightly paired as empty shoes.
We sat there, silent and side by side, for several minutes while unknown women—elegant, exquisitely attired women—swirled around us in a grande promenade, twitching their trains and plucking at the airy sleeves that thrust above their shoulders like butterfly wings.
At last Irene leaned toward me to employ a genteel whisper in English. “I see now. Some of these women are mannequins employed by the house to model dresses; some are vendeuses—shop assistants who sell the gowns. The others are clients like ourselves.”
“Speak for yourself! I am no client. And you are the only woman present dressed in the aesthetic style. No doubt Monsieur Worth abhors such unorthodoxy. And what kind of Englishman would allow himself to be bowed to as ‘Monsieur this’ and ‘Monsieur that’ at any rate? It smacks of Frenchification.”
“Monsieur Worth has lived in France for some decades, Nell. His wife, Marie, is French. His sons are named Gaston and Jean Philippe.”
“Oh, dear. He has been thoroughly corrupted, then,” I began, only to stop short as our greeting angel rustled toward us again.
“Monsieur Worth will receive you in the salon above,” she announced with pleasure. “If you will come this way.”
We followed in her meringue-like wake, a froth of lace and tulle that reminded me all too well that the prized black silk “surprise” dress I wore made me a crow among birds- of-paradise, despite its embroidered old-rose reveres and the overskirt coyly caught up at the hem on one side to reveal more old rose and embroidery.
On the other hand, I did not attract the untoward attention that Irene did. Every eye in that room glittered like furtive jewels behind downcast lashes, watching Irene’s flagrant Liberty gown retreat up the carpeted stairs to the lair of the master of Maison Worth.
The private rooms upstairs were as grandly furnished, if less populated, than the imposing salon. Our guide led us to a chaise longue on which a gentleman reclined, a compress clinging damply to his temples.
At the sight of Irene, he leaped up, flinging the compress aside, where it landed wetly on the wine-colored brocade upholstery. His sofa partner, a large spaniel, lowered its black muzzle to the castoff.
Monsieur Worth stared at Irene (I do not think he even noticed me, at least not until much later in our encounter) and Irene stared right back with her brand of distilled American forthrightness. And well she might.
This so-called Englishman-born was a man of ordinary stature attired in a velvet beret of excessive dimension. He also wore a “poet’s” shirt, which is to say a sloppy one; a soft tie of spotted silk; a reasonably respectable buttoned vest and some silly shapeless brocade jacket banded in black velvet. No wonder the man’s head pained him.
Beyond his manner of dress, he was unprepossessing. In an uncharitable mood, I should have called him uncomely. Certainly, compared to Godfrey, he left much to be desired. I could have pitied him for his lack of attractions had he not chosen to surmount an insufficient chin with a great, bristling, overhanging eave of rusty mustache, much resembling a walrus’s.
Irene was not the slightest taken aback by this bizarre appearance. The man eyed her up and down most intently, then lifted a pudgy hand, let the forefinger droop down and twirled it.
‘Turn,” he ordered in English.
Irene lifted one eyebrow, at which she was most adept, then spun away from the man-milliner in a sweep of red-and-gold silk that echoed the highlights in her hair.
“Ah!” Monsieur Worth clapped his palms together in an irritatingly French fashion, although he had spoken thus far in English. “Marie must see."
This last phrase, in French, was directed to our guide. She rustled away while Monsieur Worth cast himself to the sofa, nearly sitting on the damp compress.
“Walk,” he instructed, again in English. Irene paraded back and forth a few times before coming to a stop before this would-be Napoleon of costume.
“Her future Serene Highness of Monaco, Princess Alice,” he said in the same high, slightly strained voice, “speaks well of you, Madame Norton. I have no favorite clients, but some are more likable than others, and she is one of the most charming.”
Irene curtsied her silent thanks for the compliment to her friend. The motion made her gown hem pool on the carpet in liquid metal rivers of red and gold.
“Liberty of London,” he noted approvingly. “I have a great affection for the aesthetic dress, but most women are too timid to wear it. The Duchess Alice assures me that you are not timid, and I see that she is right.”
I didn’t miss the triumphant look Irene shot me from under her veiling eyelashes.
“What kind of gown do you require?” he demanded next.
“I require nothing.” Irene’s stage-supple voice had a husky tone all the more arresting. It commanded the attention as imperiously as a low, trembling chord on a cello.
Monsieur Worth (he was English in surname only now, I saw) nodded again, as if further pleased.
“What I desire is a gown of your own special design,” she said. “Perhaps an evening gown, since that is your specialty, and mine.”
Ret
urning rustles announced the advent of the angelic model and the mysterious “Marie.” This personage, I am happy to report, was clad almost entirely in dignified black—a solid, maternal figure of sixty-some years.
Despite this, her hair was as dark as her dress and drawn tightly from a center part into a curled chignon at the back of her head. She possessed a Gallic nose (no doubt useful for endless sniffing of wine “bouquets”), long and strong. Her eyes and brows were almost black, and all of these sternly handsome features were inlaid into a placid moon of face that cast its own soft radiance no matter the hour.
“My wife,” the miserable martinet announced, enough proud fondness in his voice to redeem him somewhat in my eyes.
Irene’s curtsy was deeper and yet more playful this time. She reminded me of a school-girl on her best company manners. “All Paris knows of Madame Marie, who was the first and most fortunate woman to model a Worth creation.”
I had never heard of the woman, nor that she was the first of these scandalous walking fashion dolls.
“We were poor,” Madame Worth said with a nostalgic smile. “Almost thirty years ago, I took my courage in hand and approached the Austrian ambassador’s wife with some of my husband’s sketches. Princess von Metternich almost refused to see me—until her waiting woman persuaded her to glance at the designs. Yet I must admit”—she glanced at her husband—“that it took more courage to wear Charles’s early creations to the races at Longchamps when he dispensed with shrouding shawls and deep-brimmed bonnets. Had I not been a respectable married woman, I wonder what would have been said about such unprecedented exposure.”
“You are a wonder,” he replied, “and went among the great ladies on your own terms, just as I clothe them on mine. As for my early innovations, they are as nothing today.”
Madame Worth shrugged her broad shoulders, removed the abandoned compress from the sofa, shooed the spaniel and sat in its place. Here indeed was a formidable woman. I detected the power behind the throne, or, in this case, the pincushion and the poppycock.
Another Scandal in Bohemia (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 2
