Chapter 6
It made me nervous, leaving the Astral Library.
Some atavistic terror in my gut was convinced that if I walked out the door back to the real world, the one that held only my own deeply shitty little life, currently being ruined by Libby Bibb, I’d never find that door again.
But there’s nothing like an old lady in rectangular spectacles saying “Rubbish” with a truly epic snort to make you feel stupid for applying words like atavistic terror to what was essentially preflight jitters, so I gulped and put out my hand meekly for my library card.
Just an ordinary paper card, the old-fashioned kind where you’d write your book in with a stub of pencil and get a stamped due date.
“You keep that on you,” the Librarian dictated, “and you can always come back. So don’t blither around daydreaming about dragons and drop it down a grate, Miss Watson. ”
“What happens if I do that?” I couldn’t help asking, just so I could chant right along with her: “Ask the Library Board.”
“Smart-ass,” she growled, stamping back to the broad counter.
“Better than a dumb one,” I caroled back over my shoulder, bounding up the stairs and out the door—straight into the shadowy coolness of the Boston Public Library Reading Room.
I stood a moment just breathing, wondering why the space felt so dead, and then realized it was the books.
The books here weren’t moving. I had a bizarre urge to cup my hands around my mouth and call out, Wake up!
“Alix?” A concerned voice, a hand on my arm. I blinked and saw my boss Elizabeth, tattoo sleeve and purple-framed glasses and all. “Are you okay?”
Right. I’d walked straight back into the moment I’d left, running in tears through the Reading Room on a Tuesday evening.
She was eyeing my skirt and blouse with a puzzled look, probably wondering if her eyes were playing tricks since I’d been wearing old jeans and a coffee-splashed T-shirt just a few apparent minutes ago. “Did you change just now?”
“In the closet just there. Gotta run,” I said hastily, and dashed for the stairs.
“Hey there, missy, no running in the library—” Chester tried to stop me, Chester the wannabe tough guy on Library Security who thought he was Wyatt Earp, but I didn’t have time for Library Security today. I flew around him and out of the BPL into a cool, damp April evening.
One street over and down a block, and in no time at all I was waltzing through the shop door of Brummell’s. A voice floated out from behind the vast metal horse of an industrial sewing machine before I could speak: “Bespoke or off the rack?”
I blinked, rummaging through my wallet and peering over the machine at the most fashionable man in Boston. “Sorry?”
“I’ve got a special-commission gown to finish for a movie premiere, and until that’s done I’m open by appointment only—at least if you want something bespoke.
But if I can help you with something off the rack, something needing minimal adjustment—” Beau Sato-Jones finally looked up, lean brown hands still flying as he fed some sparkling fabric through the sewing machine, and blinked at the sight of me. “Hey there, czarina.”
“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.” I held up a certain engraved business card, soft around the edges from being carried for so long in my wallet, scribbled across the back with a man’s elegant writing: IOU—Beau Sato-Jones owes Alix Watson the unconditional loan of one (1) fabulous outfit for the event of her choosing. “You’re my only hope.”
“I’ll say.” His eyes traveled over my fusty skirt and yellowing blouse.
“Oh, honey, serge? No. Absolutely not.” From anyone else it would have sounded snide but the smile that put a crease in his lean cheeks was cheerful, not jeering.
It wasn’t a You’re not wearing that, are you?
sneer; it was a We can fix this! smile. “Come on in,” he said, rising from behind the sewing machine, and even at the tail end of a long day he looked like a page out of Vogue if they published Vogue in 1810: taut pearl-gray breeches, silver brocade vest that hugged like a glove, and one of those white shirts with billowy sleeves that men always wear in period movies, striding out of ponds or banks of mist. “I have been waiting for the chance to sling some silk around you, Alix Watson. What are you looking for?”
“Um . . .” I pushed my frizzed-out hair behind my ears, feeling more and more out of place in this jewel box of a shop.
When I’d come here two years ago to set up his QuickBooks account, the space had still been unpainted and heaped with boxes—now it was all creamy whites and silvery blues and dove grays, silver-framed mirrors everywhere to double the space, lush blue velvet drapes and dressmaker forms with sumptuous clothes on them: a Japanese kimono embroidered with mountains and clouds; an Elizabethan doublet in chocolate-brown brocade paired with a shirt covered in blackwork stitching; a Greek chiton in flame orange with gold key patterns rippling around the hem.
“I’m going to a book-themed costume party.
” The excuse I’d prepared in advance. “I was wondering if you can help me spruce up this outfit I’m wearing? Put a nice cloak on top or—”
“What’s your book?”
I took a deep breath. My book, the book I’d be headed into as soon as I was done here. “Around the World in Eighty Days.”
A book I’d read around age fourteen, rolling my eyes at the more colonialist aspects but envious down to my bones of the whole idea of throwing a few belongings in a satchel and heading off for the ends of the earth.
A good Goldilocks book, I thought: adventurous, but everybody comes through unscathed.
I didn’t see myself staying in Jules Verne Land forever, but that was all right: the Librarian said I could try up to three books, and until I found my forever book, I wanted an adventure.
I’d never left Massachusetts in my life, and now I was going to go around the world with Phileas Fogg, or at least live adjacent to his adventures in some way.
I was going to cross the Red Sea in a steamer, I was going to go up in a hot air balloon (all right, he didn’t ride a balloon in the book, only in the movie, but maybe I could nudge the plot just a little?), and if I couldn’t ride a dragon I could at least ride an elephant.
So what dress did you need to go elephant riding in the nineteenth century?
“Jules Verne, that’s 1870s.” Beau’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, scrutinizing my outfit. “You going steampunk Victorian here, or historically accurate?”
“Historical,” I said, and his eyes lit up.
“A girl after my own heart.” He beckoned me as he turned on his booted heel and strode back behind a painted screen where the real work of Brummell’s was clearly done: bolts of fabric lining the walls, a worktable strewn with pins and swatches and bits of trimming.
“Eighteen seventies British fashion,” he rattled off, sweeping a tape measure up from the table and stringing it around his neck like a strand of pearls.
“One of my favorite eras for clothes. The heyday of the bustle and loads of trim: pleats, flouncing, ruching, ruffles, ribbons, tassels. Tight waists, leading toward the more fitted princess line in the latter half of the decade, based on the then Princess of Wales . . .”
He went rummaging along the shelves and I wondered for a moment why he didn’t seem to have any clerks or assistants, but then he was back with a big coffee-table book, flipping pages to show me various full-color plates.
“Evening dress or day dress? We’re talking square or V neckline, sleeves with a slight flare at the wrist, some fairly major corseting . . .”
I looked at the pictures he was showing me with a sinking feeling.
How was I supposed to ride an elephant in all those ruffles?
And I did not see my size 22 fitting into that particular silhouette no matter how much whalebone was involved.
“You do realize there’s no way you’re squeezing me into Scarlett O’Hara territory, right?
” I indicated my own midsection, trying to stretch tall because someone as long and lean as Beau probably hadn’t had to work around a waist roll like mine in a long time.
Nothing but model types named Deryk and Ysabel for him, and with a sudden flush of embarrassment I realized what a bad idea this was.
“Look, maybe I should just go—you probably don’t have a thing that will fit me, and you’ve got that red-carpet dress to finish. I’ll just—”
“Not so fast.” He stopped me from going by tossing his tape measure around my shoulders like a lasso, bringing me to a halt.
“First thing, czarina: it’s true I haven’t got a lot of spare time right now, thanks to that movie premiere commission, but if I don’t get a break from couch stitching crystal beads the size of protons onto raw silk, I’m going to strip naked and run screaming down Newbury, so you’re the one saving me here. ”
Frankly I enjoyed the thought of Beau running naked anywhere, and I tried my best to banish that thought, considering he was stepping closer to take a measurement along the line of my shoulders.
“Second thing, I promise you I can get you rigged out in half an hour flat, period appropriate to the last detail. Arms out—”
“In something like that?” I raised my arms so he could measure, nodding at the coffee-table book where a flock of Tissot beauties promenaded on a yacht in huge gowns that exploded out from their tiny corseted waists like upside-down flowers. “Nothing like that is going to work on me.”
“I thought we’d go a different angle.” Taping around my rib cage now, touch featherlight and expert. “Have you heard of the Victorian fashion called artistic dress?”
I shook my head.
“Kicked off, among other things, by the Pre-Raphaelite artists and their craze for the medieval. A softer style, no corseting. Very flowing, very romantic, very King-Arthur-and-the-Round-Table—”