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“Hurry up,” Sophie called into my ear, urging me on to the gazebo. We stepped inside and a sharp odor assaulted my nose. Alcohol. The scent mixed with sweetness, as though someone had tried to cover the smell by dousing themselves in jasmine perfume. My eyes watered.

“Who’s there?” Swinging around, a woman listed toward me. She was done up in a hunter-green party dress with a luxurious fur-trimmed stole. Shades of green shimmered in the cloth, caught by the moonlight slipping through the rain clouds. Though the design was basic, the fabric and fur must have been exorbitantly expensive.

“Hello,” she said in a childlike tone. “Are you the newdesigner?” She took a tottering step forward and blinked at me with bright, round eyes. I’d never thought she would look so young.

“I am.” I stepped aside so I was standing next to Sophie. “I mean, we both are designers for the new line.”

“She’s drunk.” Sophie muttered under her breath. Cynthia was a duchess, but Sophie stared at her with annoyance. I understood the feeling. This woman was unstable, and we were about to trust her with our idea.

“You two? Designers? You’re both babies.” Her tone changed from giggly to suddenly sharp and aware. Perhaps she wasn’t as drunk as I’d first thought. “The reporter told me this was an official line!”

“I appreciate you coming to meet with us tonight,” I said, ignoring her protests. Light-headedness descended on me, and the gazebo started to swim, making me feel like I’d been the one nipping at whiskey, not Cynthia. Everything seemed like too much. Sophie and Mr. Taylor. Betraying Madame Jolène. I wasn’t quite sure when or where it had happened, but my life was all undone ends, an unraveled mess.

“This is ridiculous,” Cynthia said. “But then, I knew it would be. Why on earth would designers ask to meet me at a gala that I wasn’t even invited to?”

She pressed two fingers against her forehead. Her hand was trembling, like Sophie’s had been just a little while earlier. She fumbled her other hand within her brassiere, removing a small silver object. Unscrewing the top, she took a long drink from the flask, never once shuddering against its bite.

“Everyone thinks I’m a fool,” she murmured, more to herself than to us. I glanced at Sophie. Her arms were crossed tightly across her chest, and her foot tapped impatiently against the ground.

“We aren’t established yet, but we will be,” I said. Treating her like a respected client was our best option. My mother always knew how to handle our difficult customers, and I had spent my whole life watching her. Hopefully, I could cut through Cynthia’s drunkenness and help her focus. “The dress we make you will shape fashion in Avon-upon-Kynt.”

“You’regoing to make me a dress?” Cynthia demanded. “How canyoumake any gown that could compare to Madame Jolène’s gowns?”

I unsnapped my clutch, pulled out the sketches, and carefully unfolded them. Intentionally, I’d placed the sketches for her possible gowns on top. They weren’t as couture or avant-garde as the designs for the collection. I’d put the more extravagant gowns last, so she’d see them after the more traditional pieces.

“Look at these. Keep in mind, they are only ideas. We can easily redo them with your preferences.” I handed them to her, and she struggled to look at them in the darkness. I kept talking as she studied them. Some women couldn’t envision a sketch as an actual gown—I wouldn’t let that be the case with Cynthia. “Imagine being at the Parliament Exhibition in that first dress you’re looking at,” I said. “It’s a dusty purple. The skirt is covered in lines of dark crystals. Those points you see dotting the skirt are crystals, and there, there is exposed boning in the bodice.” I trailed off, and we stood in silence as the rain battereddown around us. Despite the situation, I wanted to smile. I loved designing, even if it was just spinning images into the air in lieu of thread and fabric. “You’ll feel different in it. Transformed. It’s one of those dresses that makes you stand taller and stronger, even if you don’t know why. It’ll show everyone you aren’t afraid to make your own choices.”

“That sounds nice enough, but it isn’t designed by Madame Jolène,” Cynthia said, almost sulkily, lowering the sketches. “The whole point is the label. I don’t care about anything else.”

“We don’t have the label, but you will be part of something new,” I said. “You will have something that isn’t defined yet. You’ve been wearing copies of fashions made by seamstresses. We will design you a dress no one has ever seen or worn before. Don’t you want to change the way people see you?”

“You think it’s that easy? That I can just wear a dress and everything will be undone?” Anger filled her eyes and flushed her face, making her look almost feverish.

Sophie cut in. “It was a dress that put you where you are today.” The vulnerability that had shrouded her like a black cloud was gone, replaced by poise and, as always, a touch of impatience. “A dress can return you to where you once were.”

“I can assure you that we will make you a gown of equal, if not superior, caliber to Madame Jolène’s pieces,” I said. “And, since our label is unknown, it will give you intrigue. It will have the magnificence of a couture dress, yet it will mystify. Times are changing. Didn’t you see the protestors outside the gala?”

Ever so hesitantly, Cynthia nodded, and a surge of victory ran through me. It wasn’t much, but she hadn’t left in a huff.

Yet.

“This is interesting,” Cynthia held the stack of sketches out to me. “I need to think about it.”

Think about it?There was no time for her to think about it. If we wanted to make her gown and the entire collection in time for the exhibition, we needed to startnow.I nearly said as much but stopped, biting the inside of my lip. The tinny taste of blood welled onto my tongue.

“What do you have to lose?” I asked. I didn’t take the sketches back, letting Cynthia remain holding them out to me—a reversal of when I’d held my sketch out to Madame Jolène and she hadn’t taken it. “As far as I see it, no one else is offering to design you a gown.”

In Avon-upon-Kynt, there was no greater disgrace. Cynthia knew it. She dropped her arm, still holding the sketches, her owlish eyes blinking furiously at me.

“I have plenty to lose,” she replied. “I could end up in a terrible dress and then people will be talking about me again—but for the wrong reasons. It’ll be like the queen’s jubilee all over again.”

Taking a decisive step toward me, she shoved the sketches into my hands. I grappled at them, two of them drifting to the ground. Sophie made one of her annoyed, soft sounds under her breath, one that seemed to indicate I wasn’t handling the situation very well. Frustration flickered through me—frustration at them both. As I bent down to pick them up, I closed my eyes for a moment. I needed to change tactics. I couldn’t act like Madame Jolène right now, because I wasn’t Madame Jolène.Cynthia was right. I didn’t have a real line behind my name, not yet.

“You have good taste, Cynthia,” I said, straightening and trying to sound friendly. She adjusted her fur stole, a hint of pleasure in her eyes at my compliment. “If you see the gown and you don’t like it, you don’t have to wear it. But I promise you, that won’t be the case.”

“Your sketches are quite lovely—from what I could make out of them,” Cynthia admitted.

“You should see them in good light,” Sophie said. “And you should know that Madame Jolène recreated an entire gown from one of Emmaline’s sketches.”