The It Girls Page 9

  Lucile had to smile at that. “I’ve designed for it and hope to do more.”

  “If I had champagne here—the finest of it is a bit harder to come by lately—I would toast you again, Lucile. But now, please make me the most wonderful creation so when I reinvent myself again, I shall do so with beauty and aplomb!”

  “I have the perfect design and color combination in mind,” she told Lillie. “Let me draw a quick sketch to show you my plan.”

  It was as if, Lucile thought, this woman commanded the stage of life. Despite her tarnished reputation and hardships, Lillie Langtry was an inspiration.

  CHAPTER Ten

  I hate to ask this, Mrs. Wallace, but—”

  “Please call me Lucile, Edith,” she interrupted her latest hired helper. She was both a seamstress and good at fittings. She had seemed quick to learn new work, though she was a bit of a stickler, which could be good or bad. A sturdy blond girl, Edith was a hard worker. “I know you are new here, but you are to call me Lucile, never the other,” she reminded the young woman.

  “Yes, Lucile. I just wanted to say that the box full of receipts and notes of payment might be better separated into groupings of what we sell.”

  In frustration, Lucile almost sent her back into the third room downstairs of the small Davies Street house she’d nearly taken over for Lucile Ltd., but the girl probably had a point.

  “I have a lovely, leather-bound order book to keeps things straight,” she told Edith, looking up from her sketches of satin and lace underclothes that were selling so well among London ladies. “Frankly, I see myself as an artist, not a tradesperson.”

  “But the book lists what is ordered, not what is sold. We could divide the paid receipts into dressing gowns, morning gowns, walking suits, tea gowns, and dinner parties, maybe even divide those into opera frocks or theater. Then there are the bridesmaids and bridal, riding habits, debutante gowns,” she went on, ticking the various design lines off on her fingers. “And now those of so lovely, naughty underthings, besides the corsets.”

  Lucile frowned and narrowed her eyes, but she was only thinking all that over. Despite the clever girl’s Germanic-sounding last name, she had a slight French accent and that was an asset around here.

  “I’m sure you’re quite right, Edith. Would you have the time to—”

  “Oh yes, I can do that much, but just don’t ask me to add and subtract, Madame Lucile.”

  Margaret, one of Lucile’s best seamstresses, rushed in. One thing after another, Lucile thought, and it was beginning to annoy her.

  “Lucile, an irate husband is returning his wife’s underclothes and saying they are indecent! That the Queen would close us down if she knew what we are selling to virtuous wives of the realm. He’s waiting and insists he see you.”

  Lucile sighed and rolled her eyes. “In the library?” she asked as she rose.

  “In the hall. He would not enter farther.”

  Lucile had handled this problem before, but, on the other hand, she had heard how much certain husbands adored the silk and lace garments their women wore in place of scratchy, wrinkled linen shifts and woolen winter drawers. She prayed again that her reputation would not be sullied by whispers that a woman suing for divorce was selling racy unmentionables out of her home. Indeed, they were things of comfort and beauty, and women adored them.

  “Yes, I am Lucile,” she told the storm cloud of a man who was pacing in the tiny hallway. He had at least removed his hat.

  “And you designed and sold these to a fine, Christian, upstanding mother of four children, my wife?” he demanded, spilling the contents of his sack onto the banister of the stairs. The door opened behind her with a sweep of cool autumn wind, and a few crisp leaves skittered across the floor. Hoping it wasn’t Mother and Esme back from the park to witness this dressing-down, Lucile nonetheless did not turn round to look.

  She adeptly caught each beautiful silky item as it skidded off the banister before it could fall to the floor. “I designed and sold them and Lady Derby bought them,” she said calmly, recognizing the articles. “She wanted to look lovely for you and for herself.”

  “For herself! I have told her she will shop elsewhere now, where morals, our Queen, and the empire are respected! Good day to you!” He slapped his hat on his head and started out, but encountered another man on the doorstep. “Excuse me, sir! If you have a wife,” Lord Derby muttered to the tall mustached man who seemed to fill the doorway, “I would keep her far from this place of dangerous trade!”

  Lord Derby ducked out, and there stood the next stranger. “Have you come to fetch your wife, sir, or to lodge a complaint?” Lucile asked, her voice so sharp it surprised her. Somehow she’d managed to remain calm during that telling off, but she couldn’t take another right now.

  When the new caller doffed his hat and smiled with a flash of white teeth under his mustache, she felt the earth move. No, that was just the wind on this brisk day, she told herself. As properly as he was acting, he reminded her of a pirate with that black mustache and thick raven hair—and the black leather patch over his left eye. He was taller than most men she knew and good-looking in a rakish way, which no doubt the pirate look enhanced.

  “May I close the door?” he asked. “I was about to knock and it blew open, so I surmise your previous caller didn’t close it well.”

  But it was as if, she thought, fate had opened it for them and pushed him right inside. Though she was no silly romantic like Elinor, she felt actually blown away. She got hold of herself as the man extended his calling card toward her. Suddenly, she had an inkling who he was, for he had the slightest burr of a Scottish accent.

  “Oh, Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon,” she said, glancing at the card. “My brother-in-law, Clayton Glyn, mentioned you, but that was a while ago.”

  “It was indeed. He thought I might be of service to your new endeavor, to your schemes for expansion. He said you might need a steady financial hand, some advice. I saw you from afar at the theater the other night and remembered that I’d told Clayton I’d call months ago—and then didn’t. I’m always looking for investments, offering advice to others on various trade endeavors.”

  She felt like a fool when he reached over to close the door soundly behind him. Why had she stood there in the brisk wind with things blowing in?

  “I—I did mean to write you but things here have changed so fast, my business, I mean. Actually, I don’t intend to take on investors, but to keep it in my own hands. Please, would you step into the library, and I’ll ring for some tea? My workrooms are a bit noisy and busy right now.”

  “That would be fine. I am regretful I waited so long to make your acquaintance,” he said, bowing slightly and taking her hand.

  Oh no. Lightning seemed to crackle up her arm. His gaze jolted her more than had any man’s perusal for years—since that silly infatuation with that boy Cecil in Jersey that had caused her so much trouble. But this was a man, one with a deep voice that sent shivers through her. Danger! her rational inner voice shouted at her. She must hear him out, then move him out.

  “I’m afraid I cannot afford financial services, still building my fashion trade as I am,” she said and indicated the horsehair sofa for him. Oh, she should not have closed the door behind them. She should have taken his coat. What was wrong with her? It was just that she hated dealing with money matters at all. And why had she said that she would ring for tea when there was no bell cord here and Mother had let Cook take the afternoon off? This man was scrambling her brain, and she didn’t need that, though if she could wheedle just a bit of advice from him, before she politely turned him down . . .

  Yet she found herself saying, “I could, however, pay you by making garments for your wife.”

  He smiled that flash of teeth again. Though it was autumn, he seemed to have good sun color on his face. No doubt, an outdoorsman, but then weren’t most of his class sporting men?

  “I have no wife,” he told her with a steady look. “But if I did, I�
�d buy her those bonnie, wee fripperies you are still holding in your left hand.”

  She felt a huge blush begin from her throat upward. She dropped the silk and satin scraps into the velvet high-backed chair and sat on them. “A sideline. We do mostly frocks.”

  “I do not disapprove, lass.”

  That last word seemed so intimate. So—caressing. She was in over her head and she’d just met him. Probably over her head with too many orders, too few staff, too many bills yet to be paid—who knew? But she did know this man, however helpful, could be dangerous. She wanted nothing but nothing to do with the complications of a man ever again.

  “I do hope to move out of these crowded quarters and let a shop and work area soon,” she admitted. “My staff is growing of necessity.”

  “And that means more salaries. Is it true you still deliver garments yourself?”

  “I—yes.”

  “I overheard that at the theater. That indicates to me that you cannot afford a page boy to do so.”

  “It’s just a matter of pride—delivering gowns of personality and emotion to my customers.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  “However much you’ve been inquiring, I doubt if you do, Sir Duff-Gordon. This endeavor is my future, my daughter’s future, and I cannot keep living off my mother.”

  “Mothers,” he said with a slight shake of his head. “Can’t live without them or with them sometimes. I have one of those at home, quite formidable yet.”

  Lucile nodded, and he seemed to mirror that motion as he nodded too. Instead of continuing to sit ramrod straight, he shifted sideways and leaned forward, quite intimately. “Your backbone as well as your talent, Mrs. Wallace—”

  “Lucile.”

  “Lucile. That is a sign of sure success, your fierce passion for this endeavor. I’ve seen your wares and heard talk of them. But your brother-in-law is under the impression that your finances are handled willy-nilly, though he should talk. At least he knows not to counsel you about staying out of debt.”

  Lucile’s head jerked up. Clayton had debts? Elinor had never whispered one word about that, and he had that fine estate.

  “Let me tell you true,” he said, “because I always do. It might serve you well to hire a bookkeeper, even part-time, to keep records and hold you to a budget, so that—”

  “I don’t need a budget or a naysayer, sir. I need to grow. I need a larger place than this. And I have a young woman who will be overseeing the books.”

  “Then be sure to oversee her. There will no doubt be a later time for expanding to new premises. If you would like me to assess your standing and then advise on how long it will take you to be able to have your own establishment, and how much you could afford to spend, then—”

  “Not at this time,” she interrupted. Her dander was up now. As attractive, as solid and sure as this man seemed, just crashing in like this—with a disparaging remark about Clayton, too—she had to send him away.

  Almost panicked by her own feelings, she stood. He rose too. “I thank you for coming, Sir Duff-Gordon. But I am too busy now to restructure things here.”

  “I see,” he said and gave her another little bow. “Then I shall only watch from afar and perhaps at another time you can use my services, Lucile. Please call me Cosmo as my friends do. Although I am often here in the city, my home is in braw, bonnie Scotland, and I see you are as brave as you are bonnie—that is, beautiful. But be wise, too. I’ll show myself out then and call at another time.”

  She felt terrible that she had handled this so badly. She almost reached out to seize his arm. He opened the door to the hall and turned back to look at her again with that one intense eye. Yet he seemed to her more whole and strong than any man who had two. She felt the impact of his gaze as if he’d touched her.

  Then he was gone, and she felt so very alone.

  CHAPTER Eleven

  Girls certainly seem to run in our family,” Lucile told Elinor as the Glyns’ new nanny took two-month-old Margot back to her nursery at Sheering Hall. “And she’s a darling, growing fast.”

  “If only I felt better to enjoy her,” Elinor admitted and reached back to punch at the pillows plumped up behind her on the divan in her sitting room. “This fever has laid me low too long. But,” she said, reaching for Lucile’s hand, “it was so kind of you to bring me that lovely traveling suit. Clayton’s promised me a trip to Egypt when I’m able, but then he’s also promised me the moon. Thank heavens, Clarissa was willing to come see me and amuse him with a walk on the grounds to tend to his precious game birds today.”

  “She bought one of my riding outfits a week or so ago. She’s stuck rather close to you, hasn’t she? I hardly see any of my bridesmaids anymore, except you, of course. I noticed Clayton has started to smoke cigars. I haven’t seen it but his clothes reek of it, so keep smoke away from that new outfit and your other gowns.”

  “As if I could. Cigars and brandy, brandy and cigars.”

  She heaved a huge sigh, and Lucile tugged her hand free. Elinor was surprised she still held it. They’d had some spotty times lately—different lifestyles and financial positions hadn’t helped.

  “I’m still writing, you know,” she confided. “If I can’t travel right now, I shall travel through my heroine’s adventures, some of that my memories of people and places, of course.”

  “I’m glad writing helps,” Lucile said. “I suppose it’s a kind of escape. And speaking of traveling, remember the doctor said that you are to get your strength back by walking. Come on then, we’ll stroll this room you’ve decorated so beautifully. Let me help you up.”

  Lucile half-propped her, half-pulled her to her feet. Elinor’s Lucile Ltd. printed silk robe that had been a wedding gift swirled around her feet and she nearly tripped, but Lucile held her steady. Slowly, they walked the length of the room Elinor had worked so hard to decorate to suggest the days of the old French kings with its brocades and gilt and Louis-style furniture—and the chinoiserie statue of a stalking tiger that was her pride and joy. Early in their marriage, Clayton had told her to spend whatever she wanted on the decor, to buy whatever clothes she wanted from Lucile, but lately he’d been touchy about spending money. It all sounded entirely too familiar—and foreboding—to Elinor, because Lucile had suffered through such in her own marriage. Clayton had also still insisted they live here at Sheering instead of at the Durrington House she had her eye on.

  They walked back across the flowered carpet toward the divan, but Lucile wheeled her around for another turn.

  “So are you going to accept help from that Scotsman, Clayton’s acquaintance he recommended last year?” Elinor asked.

  It helped to talk to shift her thoughts from how tired she was. Little Margot’s birth, then the energy-draining typhoid fever that had followed, had nearly done her in. Clayton’s delight was to tramp all over the estate, let alone shoot and travel. Even when she was healthy, it was hardly, as they say, her cup of tea, and she struggled to find time to write. But his promise they would see Egypt, see the Sphinx, that half lion, half woman . . . see exotic lands . . . none of that had materialized and she feared it never would.

  Lucile was saying she was trying to watch her finances better, that she hadn’t seen Lord Duff-Gordon again, but Elinor wasn’t really listening. Her thoughts drifted. She was recalling that tiger she’d seen at the Gardens in Paris years ago and how her romantic beau had tried to talk her into running away with him and had whispered to her, Belle Tigress! How far she had come from that romantic dream, but she would live it through her book.

  With a glance out the window on the next turn around the room, Lucile gasped and Elinor muttered, “Damnation!” Because there was Clayton, heading back through the flower garden from visiting his precious pheasants with Elinor’s friend Clarissa. And he was kissing her. Hard. On the mouth!

  Elinor’s knees buckled, but Lucile held her up, got her to a chair.

  “He—how dare he! But—but it’s the world we live in,” Elinor
declared, bending over her knees as if she’d be ill. “Oh, you should see how lovers pair up at the country houses, but I thought—I thought . . .”

  “Will you say something to him?” Lucile asked, kneeling by her chair.

  “I don’t know. I surely haven’t been a wife to him—well, physically—since several months before Margot was born. But it’s the way they all act, my new friends. My dear Daisy Warwick has a long liaison with Prince Edward, her Bertie, others, too. I shall write about it, but I’ll not succumb to it.”

  Lucile was startled at first, but it was the way of the world, at least among the so-called uppers, especially the noble and royal set. She gave Elinor’s shoulders a one-armed hug and whispered more to herself than her sister, “I’ll not succumb to it either, for I am never getting entangled again that way.”

  “Famous last words,” Elinor told her and swiped at tears on her cheeks. “But then, I prefer that other old adage, I shall have the last laugh, though I don’t feel like laughing.”

  Lucile kept ahold of Elinor while she wept.

  Cosmo Duff-Gordon had not called on Lucile again, and, she fretted, he probably thought her a rude shrew with an empty head who could not control her own finances. The truth was, even with Edith’s help, she really couldn’t. It took a year for her to take his advice and hire a small, trustworthy lad to deliver most of her new creations to their owners. Mostly, she kept designing and fitting women, providing endless work for her staff and herself.

  Fittings were taking longer now that her reputation had spread. Mamas with money, both English and American, were coming to her for debutante gowns, then later, wedding dresses and honeymoon garments. They expected Lucile herself, not Edith, to do the fittings and, to her amazement, she’d become not only a couturiere but a counselor, too.