“Help her dress, Tilda. She needs to be at the showcase in five minutes.”
The maid smirked, as though pleased at my dilemma.
“Fine.”
“I have to go, but come down as soon as you can.” Kitty smiled at me. I figured she meant it to be comforting, but it was the sort of pitiful smile one gives a chicken before its head is chopped off.
Tilda followed me into my room, sighing. The soft soundsent something else through me. Anger. I turned to her as she opened my wardrobe.
“Were you supposed to wake me up?”
She pulled out (yet another) pink dress with an asymmetric neckline and soft ivory overlay and pursed her lips.
“Did you put in a request?”
“A request?” I pulled my nightgown over my head, motioning for her to hurry. Just the day before, I’d been embarrassed to be naked in front of her. Now I only cared about the seconds tick-ticking away and, with them, my Fashion House future.
“You must register wake-up requests the night before.” Her tone was excessively innocent and she smiled sweetly at me. “Isn’t that how it works in the country, too?”
How was I supposed to know these things? These questions were like a corset, constricting tighter and tighter around me until every bit of air was forced out of my lungs.
With the dress over her arm, Tilda opened the top drawer of my vanity. She took out a simple daytime corset and brought it over to me, each step long and measured.
“Hurry,” I urged, my fingers jumping around the corset, trying to help her fasten me into it.
“I am,” she huffed, yet it seemed to take forever for her to lace up the corset strings, lift the dress over my head, and brush my hair into something resembling a decent hairstyle. “It’s the first challenge today, isn’t it?”
“Yes, so please go faster!” I implored.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” she said, twisting my hair up. “The first challenge is always the most... amusing. To me, anyway.Girls always try to go too big and do something impressive. They hardly ever succeed, and the results are simply hilarious.”
“It won’t matter if I’m not there to compete.” I struggled to step into heels while she tried to push a few more pins into my locks. By then, I was sweating, and the gown stuck to my legs. “That’s enough.”
“No accessories?” Tilda asked, eyeing me as I stumbled toward the door, grabbing my brocade sketch.
“No time.”
I dashed out into the hall and to the staircase. As I tried to run down the steps in heels, while also holding the brocade sketch and the banister, thoughts rose one after another in my mind. Maybe someone had told Tilda not to wake me, so I’d miss the showcase. Could it have been Sophie? Or one of the other girls?
That was the alarming thing. Not knowing if someone was intentionally trying to force me into missteps... or if I simply didn’t know the ways of the city. Whatever the case, I needed to figure things out, and quick, before anything like this happened again.
I slowed my pace once I got to the sewing room, my mind a buzzing hornet’s nest of thoughts. Perhaps I could slip in when no one was looking? Then Madame Jolène wouldn’t even know I was late. The double-wide doors to the sewing room stood open, and I cautiously peeked inside.
The ceiling soared far above everyone’s heads. A sea of iron sewing machines anchored to cutting tables stretched out inrows. Natural light spilled into the room from a series of windows running just beneath the ceiling. While it didn’t have the glamour of the wallpapered, chandelier-lit lobby, the room was artful in its simplicity and balance.
Sophie, Alice, Ky, Kitty, and Cordelia stood at the tables. Madame Jolène faced them, flanked by Francesco and two women from her design board—I recognized one of them as the horsehair woman from my interview. They wore matching dresses with bateau necklines.
Standing against the far wall were a group of men in plaid shirts and denim trousers with overcoats and women in peplums and ruffled skirts. They held notepads and pens. Reporters, I assumed.
Reporters.
I ran my eyes over them, looking for a shock of blond hair and flash of blue eyes.
Almost immediately, I found them—found him. The reporter from yesterday. He was standing near the back, notebook and pencil poised and ready. My heart seesawed up and down, torn between a new form of excitement and nerves.
Focus.I tore my gaze away from him. The last thing I needed right now was to be distracted from the task at hand by a boy. Carefully, I took another quiet step forward.
Madame Jolène wore a voluminous burgundy gown embroidered with cuttleworms and a dark-blue head wrap that covered every wisp of her hair. She must have been speaking, because the thrill of the room was palpable, and every eye was fixed on her.
