I didn’t even recognize her. In the morning light, she looked nothing like the drunken woman who had met us outside the gala in the rain. For the first time, I noticed her eyes weregreen, not brown. They were piercingly alert as she leaned forward on the edge of her chair, as though waiting for something.
“Who has been handling your fashion?” Madame Jolène asked. Even though Cynthia was a titled, affluent woman, Madame Jolène ran her eyes over her clothing as though she was no more significant than one of us contestants. A flicker of annoyance flashed over Cynthia’s face, but she answered with poise.
“I have a private dressmaker.”
“Ah,” Madame Jolène said. “A seamstress. That makes sense.”
“I beg your pardon?” Cynthia asked.
“Oh,” Madame Jolène said insouciantly, “I was just noticing your outfit. It’s very well made. In fact, I dare say it’s perfect.”
“Thank you,” Cynthia said. This time, she faltered just a little and her brows furrowed, confused at the compliment. She glanced down at her cowl-neck, rose-print dress.
“It’s so hard to find good seamstresses.” Madame Jolène was not done. “Then again, I wouldn’t know very much about that. I never hire experienced seamstresses here. Certainly, I hire girls who sew and train them in the art. I’ve discovered seamstresses are good for, well,copyingoutfits. They hardly have the imagination to design their own. But yours did a wonderful job replicating my gown.”
Two red spots stained Cynthia’s cheeks, and her hands, folded in her lap, shook just a little bit.
“Of course,” Madame Jolène continued, “there are risks to hiring young girls. They are so... ambitious.”
A gasp escaped from my throat, strangled and alarmed. Sheknew. She had to know. Yet Madame Jolène’s attention was fixed on Cynthia with such intensity that she didn’t even seem to remember Sophie and I were there. Sophie’s fingers touched mine again and I closed my eyes for a second, trying to collect myself even though I knew each passing second was bringing us toward disaster.
“Well, I did hire some of your former contestants to work for me,” Cynthia said. Despite her gravelly, uncertain cadence, she went on. Unable to hold still, I fidgeted, lacing and unlacing my fingers. “Of course, they had plenty to say about you. But I hardly think it’s fair—it’s terribly hard for a woman to run a business and not be, well, a littlesnippety.”
Madame Jolène’s eyes hardened, and Cynthia straightened up, a gleeful smile coming to her mouth. I’d never seen anyone get under Madame Jolène’s skin before. Weak as she seemed, Cynthia was surprisingly sly.
“Now, I understand you need a gown.” Madame Jolène ignored Cynthia’s insult, her eyes as cold as her voice. “Since this will be the first piece of mine that you’ve worn in quite some time, it will need to be special. Something fresh and fashion-forward, to commemorate our renewed relationship.”
“I agree,” Cynthia said. She matched Madame Jolène’s stony tone. Their polite words contrasted with their taut faces and icy voices. “Something magnificent for the Parliament Exhibition.”
I took a raggedy breath and my knees went weak. Step by step, they were inching toward the truth—the truth they both so obviously knew.
“I have some ideas,” Madame Jolène said. “How about a dress like this?”
She picked up the sketchbook and flipped it open. There, right underneath the cover, was a loose piece of paper: my sketch for Cynthia’s gown. The air in my lungs escaped out of me in one single breath, and a heady sense of disbelief rushed over me.
“It’s lovely,” Cynthia said. A satisfied smile settled onto her face. “It’s exactly what I had in mind.”
“That’s what I thought. Cynthia, will you excuse us for a few moments?” Madame Jolène asked. With a breezy huff, Cynthia stood up and swept out of the room. Madame Jolène didn’t say anything until the door closed.
“Where did you get that from?” I asked, stumbling but trying desperately not to sound like I was. “That’s a sketch I was doing for fun.”
“Forfun?” Madame Jolène spoke in a slow measured pace. “So, was it justfor funwhen you contacted Cynthia and offered to make her a new gown under a different label? Your label?”
“I...” I glanced at Sophie, but she was still, her face as white as mine felt. “There’s been a mistake.”
“Cynthia came to me,” Madame Jolène said. “She requested a custom gown in exchange for information about my Fashion House Interview candidates. And imagine my horror when I learned that you two had told her you were starting a new fashion line. I had Francesco ask around—it seems theEagleand even theTimeswere invited to some sort of fashion debut. Even Tilda has been strangely jumpy—at the slightest questioning, she started babbling on about you, Emmaline, and how she didn’t steal any beads. I had her look in your sketchbooks, and this is what she found.”
Slowly, deliberately, she crumpled the sketch in her handsand tossed it aside. It landed at my feet, rolling to a stop just a few inches from my red heels.
“I—I was just trying to design something beautiful,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.”
“So you betrayed the Fashion House? Aligned yourself with desperate social climbers? Even as the Fashion House clothed you and fed you?”
“What did you expect?” My voice was a strange echo of itself. I wasn’t even sure what I was going to say, I just knew that I had to speak. “My whole life I’ve admired you. All I wanted was to come to the Fashion House and show you I could be one of your apprentices. But you never gave me the chance, even though you know I can design.”
“This is my Fashion House.”Madame Jolène’s tone dripped with passion I’d never heard before. “I create it and make it what I will, and I will not answer to anyone else. You understand things in your silly, dim way. You don’t realize that your very existence here signifies that I’ve—” She stopped, and I saw her drawing her persona back to her in the way one puts on a garment, her face cloaking itself in coolness and control. “That things are changing.”
“We are talented,” Sophie cut in. Anger, unbridled and undisguised, flared in her face, distorting her beautiful features. “You know we are.”
