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THE LADIES’ DRESS-MAKER. Under this head we shall include not only the business of a Mantua Maker, but also of a Milliner…In the Milliner, taste and fancy are required; with a quickness in discerning, imitating, and improving upon various fashions, which are perpetually changing among the higher circles.

The Book of English Trades, and Library of the Useful Arts, 1818

London

March 1835

Marcelline, Sophia, and Leonie Noirot, sisters and proprietresses of Maison Noirot, Fleet Street, West Chancery Lane, were all present when Lady Renfrew, wife of Sir Joseph Renfrew, dropped her bombshell.

Dark-haired Marcelline was shaping a papillon bow meant to entice her ladyship into purchasing Marcelline’s latest creation. Fair-haired Sophia was restoring to order one of the drawers ransacked earlier for one of their more demanding customers. Leonie, the redhead, was adjusting the hem of the lady’s intimate friend, Mrs. Sharp.

Though it was merely a piece of gossip dropped casually into the conversation, Mrs. Sharp shrieked—quite as though a bomb had gone off—and stumbled and stepped on Leonie’s hand.

Leonie did not swear aloud, but Marcelline saw her lips form a word she doubted their patrons were accustomed to hearing.

Oblivious to any bodily injury done to insignificant dressmakers, Mrs. Sharp said, “The Duke of Clevedon is returning?”

“Yes,” said Lady Renfrew, looking smug.

“To London?”

“Yes,” said Lady Renfrew. “I have it on the very best authority.”

“What happened? Did Lord Longmore threaten to shoot him?”

Any dressmaker aspiring to clothe ladies of the upper orders stayed au courant with the latter’s doings. Consequently, Marcelline and her sisters were familiar with all the details of this story. They knew that Gervaise Angier, the seventh Duke of Clevedon, had once been the ward of the Marquess of Warford, the Earl of Longmore’s father. They knew that Longmore and Clevedon were the best of friends. They knew that Clevedon and Lady Clara Fairfax, the eldest of Longmore’s three sisters, had been intended for each other since birth. Clevedon had doted on her since they were children. He’d never shown any inclination to court anyone else, though he’d certainly had liaisons aplenty of the other sort, especially during his three years on the Continent.

While the pair had never been officially engaged, that was regarded as a mere technicality. All the world had assumed the duke would marry her as soon as he returned with Longmore from their Grand Tour. All the world had been shocked when Longmore came back alone a year ago, and Clevedon continued his life of dissipation on the Continent.

Apparently, someone in the family had run out of patience, because Lord Longmore had traveled to Paris a fortnight ago. Rumor agreed he’d done so specifically to confront his friend about the long-delayed nuptials.

“I believe he threatened to horsewhip him, but of that one cannot be certain,” said Lady Renfrew. “I was told only that Lord Longmore went to Paris, that he said or threatened something, with the result that his grace promised to return to London before the King’s Birthday.”

Though His Majesty had been born in August, his birthday was to be celebrated this year on the 28th of May.

Since none of the Noirot sisters did anything so obvious as shriek or stumble or even raise an eyebrow, no onlooker would have guessed they regarded this news as momentous.

They went on about their business, attending to the two ladies and the others who entered their establishment. That evening, they sent the seamstresses home at the usual hour and closed the shop. They went upstairs to their snug lodgings and ate their usual light supper. Marcelline told her six-year-old daughter, Lucie Cordelia, a story before putting her to bed at her usual bedtime.

Lucie was sleeping the sleep of the innocent—or as innocent as was possible for any child born into their ramshackle family—when the three sisters crept down the stairs to the workroom of their shop.

Everyday, a grubby little boy delivered the latest set of scandal sheets as soon as they were printed—usually before the ink was dry—to the shop’s back door. Leonie collected today’s lot and spread them out on the worktable. The sisters began to scan the columns.

“Here it is,” Marcelline said after a moment. “‘Earl of L____ returned from Paris last night…We’re informed that a certain duke, currently residing in the French capital, has been told in no uncertain terms that Lady C_____ was done awaiting his pleasure…his grace expected to return to London in time for the King’s Birthday…engagement to be announced at a ball at Warford House at the end of the Season…wedding before summer’s end.’”

She passed the report to Leonie, who read, “‘Should the gentleman fail to keep his appointment, the lady will consider their ‘understanding’ a misunderstanding.’” She laughed. “Then follow some interesting surmises regarding which gentleman will be favored in his place.”

She pushed the periodical toward Sophia, who was shaking her head. “She’d be a fool to give him up,” she said. “A dukedom, for heaven’s sake. How many are there? and an unmarried duke who’s young, handsome, and healthy? I can count them on one finger.” She stabbed her index finger at the column. “Him.”

“I wonder what the hurry is about,” Marcelline said. “She’s only one and twenty.”

“And what’s she got to do but go to plays, operas, balls, dinners, routs, and so on?” said Leonie. “An aristocratic girl who’s got looks, rank, and a respectable dowry wouldn’t ever have to worry about attracting suitors. This girl…”

She didn’t have to complete the sentence.

They’d seen Lady Clara Fairfax on several occasions. She was stunningly beautiful: fair-haired and blue-eyed in the classic English rose mode. Since her numerous endowments included high rank, impeccable lineage, and a splendid dowry, men threw themselves at her, right and left.

“Never again in her life will that girl wield so much power over men,” Marcelline said. “I say she might wait until her late twenties to settle down.”

“I reckon Lord Warford never expected the duke to stay away for so long,” said Sophy.

“He always was under the marquess’s thumb, they say,” Leonie said. “Ever since his father drank himself to death. One can’t blame his grace for bolting.”

“I wonder if Lady Clara was growing restless,” Sophy said. “No one seemed worried about Clevedon’s absence, even when Longmore came home without him.”

“Why worry?” said Marcelline. “To all intents and purposes, they’re betrothed. Breaking with Lady Clara would mean breaking with the whole family.”

“Maybe another beau appeared on the scene—one Lord Warford doesn’t care for,” said Leonie.

“More likely Lady Warford doesn’t care for other beaux,” said Sophy. “She wouldn’t want to let a dukedom slip through her hands.”

“I wonder what threat Longmore used,” Sophy said. “They’re both reputed to be wild and violent. He couldn’t have threatened pistols at dawn. Killing the duke would be antithetical to his purpose. Maybe he simply offered to pummel his grace into oblivion.”

“That I should like to see,” Marcelline said.

“And I,” said Sophy.

“And I,” said Leonie.

“A pair of good-looking aristocratic men fighting,” Marcelline said, grinning. Since Clevedon had left London several weeks before she and her sisters had arrived from Paris, they hadn’t, to date, clapped eyes on him. They were aware, though, that all the world deemed him a handsome man. “There’s a sight not to be missed. Too bad we shan’t see it.”

“On the other hand, a duke’s wedding doesn’t happen every day—and I’d begun to think this one wouldn’t happen in our lifetime,” Sophy said.

“It’ll be the wedding of the year, if not the decade,” Leonie said. “The bridal dress is only the beginning. She’ll want a trousseau and a completely new wardrobe befitting her position. Everything will be of superior quality. Reams of blond lace. The finest silks. Muslin as light as air. She’ll spend thousands upon thousands.”

For a moment, the three sisters sat quietly contemplating this vision, in the way pious souls contemplated Paradise.

Marcelline knew Leonie was calculating those thousands down to the last farthing. Under the untamable mane of red hair was a hardheaded businesswoman. She had a fierce love of money and all the machinations involving it. She labored lovingly over her ledgers and accounts and such. Marcelline would rather clean privies than look at a column of figures.

But each sister had her strengths. Marcelline, the eldest, was the only one who physically resembled her father. For all she knew, she was the only one of them who truly was his daughter. She had certainly inherited his fashion sense, imagination, and skill in drawing. She’d inherited as well his passion for fine things, but thanks to the years spent in Paris learning the dressmaking trade from Cousin Emma, hers and her sisters’ feelings in this regard went deeper. What had begun as drudgery—a trade learned in childhood, purely for survival—had become Marcelline’s life and her love. She was not only Maison Noirot’s designer but its soul.

Sophia, meanwhile, had a flair for drama, which she turned to profitable account. A fair-haired, blue-eyed innocent on the outside and a shark on the inside, Sophy could sell sand to Bedouins. She made stonyhearted moneylenders weep and stingy matrons buy the shop’s most expensive creations.

“Only think of the prestige,” Sophy said. “The Duchess of Clevedon will be a leader of fashion. Where she goes, everyone will follow.”

“She’ll be a leader of fashion in the right hands,” Marcelline said. “At present…”

A chorus of sighs filled the pause.

“Her taste is unfortunate,” said Leonie.

“Her mother,” said Sophy.

“Her mother’s dressmaker, to be precise,” said Leonie.

“Hortense the Horrible,” they said in grim unison.

Hortense Downes was the proprietress of Downes’s, the single greatest obstacle to their planned domination of the London dressmaking trade.

At Maison Noirot, the hated rival’s shop was known as Dowdy’s.

“Stealing her from Dowdy’s would be an act of charity, really,” said Marcelline.

Silence followed while they dreamed their dreams.

Once they stole one customer, others would follow.

The women of the beau monde were sheep. That could work to one’s advantage, if only one could get the sheep moving in the right direction. The trouble was, not nearly enough high-ranking women patronized Maison Noirot because none of their friends did. Very few were ready to try something new.

In the course of the shop’s nearly three-year existence, they’d lured a number of ladies, like Lady Renfrew. But she was merely the wife of a recently knighted gentleman, and the others of their customers were, like her, gentry or newly rich. The highest echelons of the ton—the duchesses and marchionesses and countesses and such—still went to more established shops like Dowdy’s.

Though their work was superior to anything their London rivals produced, Maison Noirot still lacked the prestige to draw the ladies at the top of the list of precedence.

“It took ten months to pry Lady Renfrew out of Dowdy’s clutches,” said Sophy.

They’d succeeded because her ladyship had overheard Dowdy’s forewoman, Miss Oakes, say the eldest daughter’s bodices were difficult to fit correctly, because her breasts were shockingly mismatched.

An indignant Lady Renfrew had canceled a huge order for mourning and come straight to Maison Noirot, which her friend Lady Sharp had recommended.

During the fitting, Sophy had told the weeping eldest daughter that no woman in the world had perfectly matching breasts. She also told Miss Renfrew that her skin was like satin, and half the ladies of the beau monde would envy her décolleté. When the Noirot sisters were done dressing the young lady, she nearly swooned with happiness. It was reported that her handsomely displayed figure caused several young men to exhibit signs of swooning, too.

“We don’t have ten months this time,” Leonie said. “And we can’t rely on that vicious cat at Dowdy’s to insult Lady Warford. She’s a marchioness, after all, not the lowly wife of a mere knight.”

“We have to catch her quickly, or the chance is gone forever,” said Sophy. “If Dowdy’s get the Duchess of Clevedon’s wedding dress, they’ll get everything else.”

“Not if I get there first,” Marcelline said.