“I’ll just ignore it. Sure it’s only some mischief to scare me,” Pauline muttered. But should she? And was it? She really wanted to pretend she never received such a note. The truth was, she was tired. She needed the rest as much as anyone after working harder for Lady Bridlington than she ever had for Madame Noelle. After all, she was working for herself as much as for Augusta, who, with little more than blind faith, trusted Pauline to see that the business ran perfectly. If she failed her now—and at Christmas—Pauline would never forgive herself.
Come Miss Pauline, no time to be blue deviled!You wasn’t put on this earth to give up so easyshe admonished herself. So after taking no more than a moment and a deep, steadying breath, she stood tall—or as tall as her diminutive stature would allow—and resolved to fulfill the order, one way or another. Or at least try. Not try! Succeed!
Pauline rang the bell for Sally, who came running up the stairs and into Pauline’s parlor wearing her nightcap and dressing gown and a concerned frown.
“I shall be going out,” Pauline said. “You needn’t wait up for me, but keep a candle lit downstairs and try not to let the fires go out.”
“Ma’am?” she said, frowning and stifling a yawn.
But Pauline was already off to her bedroom where she pulled her warmest pelisse, muff, and woolen scarf out of the wardrobe and donned them as quickly as she could.
Within a few moments, she locked the door of the shop behind her and hastened as fast as the icy flagway would allow to the nearest hackney stand. “Conduit Street!” she ordered the jarvey, and suddenly what had threatened to be an idle, depressing evening full of shadows from her past became something completely different. She had a mission now—and no time to feel sorry for herself.
A mission! A challenge! She was not one to be fooled into failure. She would find a way to complete the garments—and complete them to the high standard patrons had come to expect from Madame Pauline’s. Just see if she wouldn’t.
Except there was still that niggling little question of how.
CHAPTER 2
Benjamin Cooper felt heartily sorry for himself. Here it was, the day before Christmas Eve, and he was stuck at Meyer’s finishing work he was given late that afternoon. He would so much rather be at the tavern near his lodgings sat before a roaring fire with a pint of porter. That’s no doubt where most of the other tailors already were. But as he was relatively new and still being tested by the crotchety Mr. Meyer, he agreed to whatever anyone asked of him without complaint in order to retain his position—or one day rise from men’s waistcoats to more challenging garments.
He’d just about finished the final seam on the last silk waistcoat on his pile and thought he'd be ready to leave in at most half an hour when a peremptory knock on the back door interrupted his ruminations. As the supercilious doorman had left some time ago—and Cooper’s workroom was closest to the tradesmen’s entrance—Cooper realized he would have to see who it was.
Just my luck,he thought. Probably some drunk baronet had sent his servant with a torn coat that needed mending. He gave an exasperated huff, put down his work and, grumbling, went to find out who could possibly want anything at that hour. He flungthe door open and prepared to give whatever urchin or delivery boy had disturbed his peace a flea in his ear.
But all remonstrations died on his lips. To his great astonishment, he found himself confronted with someone he had been thinking about ever since his first, disastrous meeting with her a few weeks after he started working at Meyer’s
Miss Pauline Dawkins, the proprietor of Madame Pauline’s.
He hadn’t seen her since then, but he would have recognized her anywhere. Her face was pink from the icy wind and she breathed little puffs of steam as though she’d dashed there in a panic, just as she had months ago. Yet as far as Cooper knew, none of the orders from the modiste were due until well after Christmas.
Once he recovered his composure he said, “Mr. Meyer is not here, nor is Mr. Baker, but you might’s well come in as stand there?—”
“I don’t need to see either of them.” She interrupted him and strode in. “I’d close the door if I was you.”
Cooper quickly did as she said, although the room had already cooled by at least ten degrees, he thought. “Then, how may I be of… Miss, service. I mean, Ma’am. I mean, Madame.” He was so tongue-tied, his effort to adopt the polished voice he’d been cultivating in imitation of Mr. Gordon was rendered completely ineffectual.
Miss Dawkins pressed her lips together, whether in vexation or to suppress a smile, he couldn’t tell. “I believe Aloysius—Mr. Gordon is here?” She began stripping off her gloves and unwinding a long gray muffler from around her neck as if she intended to stay for a while.
“Y-yes,” Cooper said. “I’ll tell him you’re here. Please sit. Have a seat. If you want to. Of course, you don’t have to. It’s not a very comfortable chair …”
“I’ll stand,” she said, with an enchanting lift of her chin that made her look both commanding and vulnerable at the same time.
I’ve done it again,Cooper thought after a brief bow to Miss Dawkins. She’ll think me a simpleton without a sensible thought in my head. Which is exactly what she must have thought after the first time he saw her.
Every detail of that previous unfortunate day ran through his mind as he hurried through the warren of corridors and workrooms that led to Mr. Gordon’s office.
It had been a fine, bright October Wednesday about a month after he’d started working at Meyer’s. Miss Dawkins had come without an appointment in a state of high agitation because the riding habit ordered by the Duchess of Hartland hadn’t been delivered as it should have been, and the duchess wanted it before she and the duke left for his hunting box in Leicestershire. Cooper happened to have walked into the fitting room to find a petite lady standing straight and proud in the middle of the floor. She was obviously trying very hard to preserve her dignity. But her diminutive stature, along with the fact that her brown hair was starting to come loose from its pins—under a hat that clearly had been hastily fixed to her head—presented a picture of such delightful contradiction that he wanted to laugh out loud .
Cooper had been so surprised that he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Later, he tried to figure out what it was that had so captivated him. Perhaps it was the saucy upward tip of her nose and her eyes that flashed with indignation. It might have been the way she tapped the toe of her little foot impatiently on the floor, or cast her gaze around quickly and appraisingly at the coats, breeches, and pelisses on display in the fitting room. Whatever it was exactly, in that moment, he fell instantly, hopelessly in love. Oh, he’d loved before, even had a few women,but that was different. It had never taken him quite like that. No other woman of his acquaintance had ever affected him in a way that made his insides turn themselves upside down and kindled warmth in the center of his body. He recalled with painful accuracy how he’d stopped dead and stared at her, incapable of moving.
“Don’t just stand there gawking!” she’d said that time, her eyes glancing all around the room. “Fetch Baker, and tell him he’d better be about to snip the last thread on Her Grace of Hartland’s habit or—” She interrupted herself when her eyes met his at last, and a wash of delicate pink rose from under the collar of her pelisse into her face. She continued with a slight catch in her voice, “Or I’ll have to consider taking our business elsewhere.”
By then, Cooper had figured out that this must be Miss Dawkins, having heard through the workshop gossip about the luxurious pale-blue velvet riding habit for the duchess. But nothing had prepared him for the feeling that came over him standing there. It completely upended him, severing the connection between his brain and his mouth. At least, that’s how he explained it to himself later. He said something to fill the silence, without thinking. What was it? Oh yes. Some nonsense like, “I doubt you’d do any such thing without Lady Bridlington’s say so. She’s the brains they say. Yer just a common seamstress. Or you was, anyway. Though I don’t know what you are now. Sit yerself down. I’ll fetch Mr. Baker.” His voice had come out clipped, sharp, nervous—not at all as he intended.
He'd berated himself over and over again since that day, wishing for an opportunity to apologize to her, to explain himself. He hadn’t meant it at all. He meant to simply say, “Of course, Madam.” But instead, he’d landed himself right in it.
Miss Dawkins only came to Conduit Street once more after that. Cooper tried to find an excuse to go into the front of theshop on some errand when he heard she was there, but by the time he’d managed it, she’d gone.
