Passion Wears Pearls

by Renee Bernard

  Miss Maggie Beecham shrugged cheerfully. “I’ll say what I like, if it’s true.”

  Eleanor shook her head and rebalanced a blue-striped gabardine on top of her pile. “I wish I had your confidence. I need this position too badly to be flippant, but I appreciate your sentiments. I only wish I knew how to make a better go of it. I’m working as hard as I can, and even so, I’m falling short each week.”

  Maggie’s cheer evaporated as she nodded in sympathy. “It’s a tangle, miss.”

  “I am as careful as a miser with every penny. I overheard one of the other girls talking about side work, but I cannot imagine how there can be more hours in the day!”

  “You’ve only been here a few months, and you haven’t seen the way of it, yet. But with your pretty looks and fine manners, there’s no telling how—”

  “Miss Beckett! Time is money, and when Mrs. Lawson and her daughter come, I want that first dressing room completely ready. If you have time for idle chatter, perhaps you can afford a few less shillings in your pocket at the end of the week.”

  “No, Madame Claremont. I shall see to it immediately.” The bolts of weighted fabrics and silks were heavy enough to make her shoulders burn, but she wrestled them down the narrow hallway as gracefully as she could. The first dressing room was cheery enough, and Eleanor was glad to have the use of it since it had a small coal stove in the corner to fend off the wintry chill of January in London. Areas of the shop were always kept warmed for their customers’ comforts during fittings, and it hadn’t taken her long to learn the advantages of where to go to banish the numbness in her fingers.

  Within minutes she had the bolts arranged attractively on a side table and all her fashion plates were preselected and in a good order to allow the young Miss Lawson to choose her trousseau for her spring wedding. She had risked one ivory satin and a stunning peach organza, just in case. Mrs. Lawson had already decreed that the wedding gown would come from Paris, and Eleanor didn’t wish to argue against it. But it never hurt to let a young lady change her mind if she wanted to. …

  Especially if it meant Madame Claremont might add a little money to my wages instead of constantly taking some away.

  “Miss Beckett! What a pleasure to see you again!” Mrs. Lawson greeted her from the dressing room’s doorway, ignoring the custom of waiting to be escorted into the shop’s interior rooms. “You remember my daughter, Claudia?”

  “Of course! Miss Lawson, thank you for gracing our showroom.” Eleanor reached out to take her hand, genuinely happy to see the pair. “But have you come early? Or was I just caught daydreaming?”

  Mrs. Lawson laughed. “We are early because Claudia cannot stop talking about preparing for the wedding, and undoubtedly, I am just as eager to see her happy!”

  “Ah, Mrs. Lawson!” Madame Claremont came up behind them. “How rude of Miss Beckett to force you to wander back here alone!”

  “Not at all! I knew we were several minutes ahead of our appointment and it is not exactly a labyrinth, is it?” Mrs. Lawson waved her hand in the air, carelessly dismissing the subtle accusation that she’d somehow trespassed. “I am an intrepid woman, madame, but perhaps you could offer me a cup of tea?”

  Madame Claremont sputtered for just a moment before recovering her composure and remembering the promised business that Mrs. Lawson represented. “I’ll have Bridgette bring you a tray.”

  Eleanor knew she’d pay for having witnessed Madame Claremont’s comeuppance, but there was nothing she could do at the moment. “Miss Lawson, would you care to take a seat and look at a few sketches? I selected these with you in mind.”

  Claudia smiled, meekly taking both the offered seat and the fashion book. Plump and pretty, Miss Claudia Lawson was a shy creature with a mild disposition. Like a quiet foil for her mother’s saucy wit and temperament, she was the living embodiment of a content and dutiful daughter. “Thank you, Miss Beckett.”

  Mrs. Lawson walked over to the table of fabrics, removing her gloves to finger the organza. Eleanor watched her out of the corner of her eye, praying she hadn’t been too bold as Madame Claremont also noticed the unexpected choices.

  Madame Claremont clasped her hands together. “A mistake, Mrs. Lawson! I specifically told Miss Beckett—”

  “It’s beautiful,” Mrs. Lawson said quietly, her attention arrested completely by the shimmer and weight of the silk organza in her hands. “It’s almost gold, isn’t it? But in the light, then you can see that it’s more peach. I am quite enamored, madame.” She lifted the bolt and brought it to her daughter, settling down next to her on the sofa. “Isn’t it divine, Claudia? Wouldn’t it make a lovely wedding dress?”

  Claudia brightened immediately. “I love it! But surely it’s too grand for …”

  “Nothing is too grand for you, dearest.” Mrs. Lawson gave her daughter’s hands a caring squeeze, then turned back to the business at hand to address Madame Claremont. “Can you manage a wedding dress, along with the travel clothes and day dresses we had planned?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Lawson! I have the very latest designs for you to choose from, and we can deliver everything she needs as promptly as she requires!” Madame Claremont said, openly excited at the order. “I’ll leave Miss Beckett with you for a few minutes while I gather some bridal samples for you to view.”

  She left and Eleanor did her best not to openly sigh in relief. “Shall we see the peach organza next to your skin, Miss Lawson? If you stand there, I can hold it up and you can see yourself in the mirror and better imagine how it will look.”

  Claudia stood eagerly, and then colored nicely when Eleanor draped the fabric over her shoulder and lightly around her waist.

  “See? The color suits your skin and makes your hair look even more golden,” Eleanor said. “You are so lucky to have such beautiful blond hair, Miss Lawson.”

  “Hair like an angel, her father says!” Mrs. Lawson sighed from her perch on the sofa. “His gilded girl. …”

  “I like your hair better,” Claudia countered, eyeing the strands of Eleanor’s bright copper hair that had escaped to frame her face.

  Eleanor blushed furiously, tugging on the lace caplet to hide her unruly curls. She disliked her garish red hair and had grown up with all the jokes about being a ginger top or a firecracker. “You couldn’t.” She smiled and tried to deflect her customer’s attention with humor. “Not if you were the one to try to brush it into submission!”

  Standing next to Claudia, their reflections couldn’t have shown two more different young women. Where Claudia was petite, Eleanor was a good deal taller. Claudia was like a peach confection, with her pale blue eyes and blond curls. But Eleanor felt like a wraith behind her, wearing her dark plain work dress with jet buttons and black trim. Her figure was balanced and firm, but not voluptuous to lend itself easily to the desired hourglass effect of fashions. She was envious of Miss Lawson’s petite beauty and respectable coloring. Eleanor was naturally pale, her face angular and lean with what her mother had once called “wild green” eyes. She said I was a changeling from some forest fairy who thought it a grand jest to leave a red-haired child on their doorstep. And it somehow made me mind my hair less and daydream about doing magic to escape the nursery and acquire more sweets.

  Eleanor lifted the organza and then added some of the satin for effect, determined to steer the conversation toward firmer ground. “You must tell me about your fiancé, Miss Lawson.”

  “He’s a barrister and Father says he’s the fiercest debater in all of Britain.”

  “Mr. Lawson said he’d never seen a man bellow a court into submission like our dear Mr. Tupman! But you should see him around Claudia!” Mrs. Lawson began to thumb through the fashion plates, sorting through her choices. “He’s as mild as a cucumber sandwich.”

  Claudia blushed on cue, then shyly looked up through her lashes. “When he called on me, I told him I was far too quiet to interest him … but he said he likes the quiet for a change.”

  Mrs. Lawson was bea
ming and stood up to come forward to squeeze her daughter’s arm. “He adores you!” She looked at Eleanor. “He truly does! I thought it a ridiculous notion at first, he was such a growling thing and far too rough for my sweet girl. But the man is putty in her hands, and I’ve never seen a more dramatic change. I swear he starts to stutter every time she pouts.”

  “I do not pout!” Claudia protested softly, her bottom lip betraying her argument as it jutted out in a pink bow. “And Samuel is always well spoken.”

  Mrs. Lawson awarded Eleanor with a conspiratorial wink but held her peace.

  Eleanor stepped back to let them admire the drape of the satin. “He sounds delightful, Miss Lawson, and how lucky he is to have you. See? You’ll be the envy of every woman in England!”

  A lump formed in her throat at the tender scene. What woman didn’t wish for it? To be the choice of a man with a good future ahead of him and to know yourself adored and cared for? She had always assumed that her own plans would include having her choice of a husband and one day standing on a dais and being fitted for her new trousseau. There’d been a huge dowry and every luxury in her life—including an education to prepare for the management of a home.

  But it wasn’t the loss of fortunes and luxuries that stung now.

  She missed her parents. She grieved their deaths and the death of her dreams. She would never stand with her mother at her back and see herself in a wedding dress or sit with her father and read aloud his favorite books.

  Gone, all of it. Like a dream. So strange and stupid to imagine myself before—content and sure that nothing would change unless I wished it to.

  “Miss Beckett? Are you unwell?” Mrs. Lawson’s well-meaning question abruptly brought her back to the present.

  “I’m fine, I just—”

  Madame Claremont cut her off as she swept in from the doorway. “She is just overly warm from sitting so close to the stove. Refresh yourself, Miss Beckett, and I will finish attending the Lawsons and gather the details of their order.”

  The dismissal was too curt and firm to argue against in front of customers, and Eleanor was forced to retreat from the dressing room while Madame Claremont skillfully distracted the ladies with a flourish of ribbons and feather samples.

  Too warm, indeed! I can’t feel my fingers, you cruel bird!

  Bridgette passed her in the narrow hallway with the promised tea tray and gave her a smug look. “The red velvet gown is waiting for you on your worktable, miss. But madame said to be sure to tell you to check first with the others to see if they needed a hand with their appointments. She said you had all the time you needed for the day’s work ahead, so you could spare a hand with ours.”

  “Did she?” Eleanor bit off the sarcastic question, aware that antagonizing Bridgette would gain her nothing.

  “She did. But then, I wouldn’t worry if I were you.”

  “Why ever not?” Eleanor hesitated, dreading the girl’s answer.

  “Because”—Bridgette’s smile was slow and frightening—“red becomes you.” And with that, she continued on her way with a wicked saunter.

  “Any more candles and you’ll start a house fire, sir.”

  The houseman’s acerbic comment lacked bite as he gingerly added another candelabra to the table at his employer’s bidding. It audibly anchored onto the table with a wet squish, sinking into a quarter of an inch of melted wax as it joined dozens of other candlesticks and platforms all covered in candles of every height and width, all demonstrating proof of Josiah Hastings’s eccentric demands for more and more light.

  Josiah smiled. He’d hired the old man and his wife after returning to England, his wariness of servants and being seen as taking on airs yielding to their stubborn and incessant kindness. “I have a bucket of water and ash at the ready, Mr. Escher, and every confidence that you’d be at my elbow before I could sound an alarm.”

  “Right you are, sir.” The affirmation rang with gruff pride as Mr. Escher left to return to his living quarters on the third floor, two levels below them. Josiah’s apartments encompassed the top two floors of the brick building that had once served as a furniture maker’s small factory and home. He’d bought the building and converted it for his own purposes as an art studio for his painting on the uppermost floor and a home below. The first two floors were abandoned, a fact that drove his friend Michael Rutherford insane with worry. Michael retained a soldier’s strategic view of the world, and Josiah often jibed that the poor man thought of the defensibility of a host’s parlor long before he bothered to notice the carpets.

  But Josiah had had no interest in walls of security that would shield him from the world and no fear of its inhabitants. Surviving imprisonment in India had stripped away his regard for what he now considered minor threats like burglars, cutthroats, and assassins. The group of Englishmen who’d escaped that prison together with rags on their backs and jewels in their pockets in a ridiculous twist of fate—none of them looked at their world the same way they once had.

  Time changes a man. Well, time and a few months of eating mush and brackish water.

  Even so, recent events had forced him to accept that the time for complacency had vanished. Ashe’s wife had nearly died from poison intended for her husband—a direct attack on the Jaded that Rowan had narrowly averted. As of now, their plan to flush out their unknown enemy was close to execution. They had delayed only for Rowan’s wedding, but as it stood, all of the men were anxious to see things under way.

  He turned his attention back to the canvas on the easel next to the table. In practiced movements that had the solemnity of ritual, he cinched his waist with an apron and tied his long hair back with a strip of leather from his pocket. The additional candles gave the blank space a compelling glow even with the afternoon sunlight pouring in through the room’s large multipaned windows. The smell of linseed oil and paint beckoned, and he retrieved a paintbrush from the bowl. The heft and diameter of it was comforting to him.

  Very well, Hastings. Hell, let’s paint a stick-figure dog and call it a triumph, but by all means, let’s paint something, shall we?

  Josiah Hastings closed his eyes and waited as the natural gray and black that danced there had settled into a reasonable calm slate that gave his imagination reign. Each deep breath was an invitation to inspiration, and he tried to be patient as nothing more than watery shadows of stale landscapes marched through his mind’s eye.

  He sighed.

  Come on. If ever a man needed a divine push …

  But nothing came. He opened his eyes again, disgusted at the elusive chase. For weeks and months, he’d found nothing to stir his soul and provide the courage he needed to paint. Josiah ran a hand over his eyes. “Gray, gray, gray. How is it even possible that all a man can think of and perceive in the world is gray?”

  “Would a change of scenery help, perhaps?” Rowan West answered unexpectedly from the doorway.

  Josiah wheeled around, nearly knocking over his canvas’s frame. “Are you gifting people with heart attacks this afternoon?”

  “I apologize. I never blink when my friends stroll into my library, so my social graces have grown rusty.” The good doctor began to shrug out of his coat. “We’re turning into hooligans, Hastings.”

  Josiah had to smile since it was all too true. The members of the small circle known as the Jaded had a terrible habit of informality and access to each other’s lives. Rowan’s study was like a hub for meetings and conversations, and they thought nothing of arriving or calling unannounced whenever need dictated. None of them bothered with the restrictions of etiquette or class when those rules threatened their bonds. The men were like brothers, and as a result, easily forgot things like knocking before entering.

  Rowan laid his coat over a chair by the door. “Is this the immoral den of a painter? It looks just like an ordinary workshop, Josiah. Or does your man hide the empty liquor bottles and escort naked women into cupboards when you have guests?”

  “Very funny. If Escher had t
ime to do that, I’d expect him to have time to let me know that I had a guest in the first place.”

  “Don’t blame him. I caught him on the stairs, and since you’ve no bell below, I told him it wasn’t worth the trouble.” Rowan walked over to the table, then stopped at a respectable distance. “It’s the middle of the day, Hastings. Is there a reason you’ve got three dozen candles blazing in a room with afternoon sunlight pouring through the windows?”

  “I’m experimenting with light.” Josiah sounded defensive, even to his own ears, but he disliked being surprised and was instantly wary. “Was there a reason for this call? Has something happened?”

  Rowan shook his head. “No. As far as I know, we’re all safe and sound. Ashe is drafting the notice for the Times, with Michael’s help, and then we’ll meet when it’s finished to discuss how to best proceed.”

  The plan was simple enough. They were going to respond to the anonymous villain who was stalking them by publicly challenging him in the newspapers. The time was fast approaching when the Jaded would take their futures into their own hands instead of hiding from the shadows. The treasures they’d stolen from their Indian warlord’s hold during their escape had done more than provide for safe passage home to England. The gems had given each man a solid fortune and the security to build a new life for himself.

  What they hadn’t anticipated was that anyone would notice or care enough about a few handfuls of stones to cause all this grief. …

  “I’m painting, Dr. West. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m … busy.” It was a ridiculous thing to say. He was a man standing in front of a blank canvas without a single thought of what he was doing, but Josiah wasn’t going to confess it. He was far too stubborn to admit that his battles had less to do with muses and more to do with the gray that pooled behind his eyes.

  Rowan pointedly ignored him. “Odd, isn’t it? It’s a divine act, this quest for spiritual inspiration and the conveyance of beauty. The subjects I’ve seen at the museum seem lofty enough. So why is it that painters are seen as scandalous more often than not?”