Chapter 6
Vix turned to the side, holding a hand at her abdomen to consider the shape of the skirt as it was being pinned in draping loops around the waist of the dress, tilting her head this way and that.
“Yes,” she said after a moment to the kneeling modiste, whose hands were full to brimming with aubergine tulle. “Yes, I think that will move prettily as I walk down the aisle.”
“It will,” agreed Rosalind Murphy from the little sofa near the mirror, her hands on her cheeks as she watched with wide, glittering eyes. “Oh, Vix, it’s going to look spectacular.”
Vix shot her a little smile over her shoulder, always heartened by the uninhibited enthusiasm of the little Scottish miss who had joined their coterie today on the trip to the Clerkenwell modiste.
It was the third fitting in the assembly of Vix’s bridal trousseau. No longer would she be limited to her governess’s wardrobe of starched lilac simplicity and high-necked forced modesty. In the corner was a stack of lush fabric in varying textures and shades of purple.
The purple she’d decided to keep. She couldn’t wait to thank Mrs. Tolliver someday for bringing to her attention how well it suited her.
Hannah was also on the sofa, flipping through a pile of fabrics in her lap. Their third companion, Mae Casper, had wandered off to observe the new delivery of dress forms, each laced up with different structures of feminine underpinning in a dazzling array of colors.
Mae was squinting at a whalebone corset, running her fingers over the needle-thin detailing of the stays.
“You like bones,” Vix said to the other woman, drawing her attention and a smirk, “don’t you? Can’t stay away from them. You’re supposed to be here looking at pretty things, not fantasizing about all the gore you’re missing out on at the clinic.”
Mae straightened up, running her gaze over Vix in her pinned and pinched dress-in-progress, and cocked her head to the side. “Who says I wasn’t thinking of buying?” she asked, lifting her dark brows. “A healer needs good corseting just as much as the next girl.”
Vix scoffed and rolled her eyes. “I think you were lamenting a lack of bones to break and wishing you were back in your house of horrors.”
“Perhaps I was,” Mae Casper answered, flashing her incisors. “Are you offering yours?”
Vix smiled back, her own teeth just as sharp. “Come and try.”
“Oh, please be nice,” Rosalind said softly, wringing her hands together, even though she knew very well that Vix and Mae were perfectly fond of one another. After a fashion. “Vix is getting married.”
“Yes, she is,” Mae agreed with a chuckle, turning back to regard the corset again. “This is beautiful, isn’t it? I can’t wear this color, though. My skin won’t tolerate it.”
“It won’t?” Rosalind responded in a nervous little whisper.
“She means it doesn’t flatter her dark complexion, dearest,” Vix said soothingly to poor Rosalind, still only a few months out of her provincial Aberdeen into the wild world of London and all its exotic otherness. “Not that it harms her because she’s Black.”
“Oh, I didn’t … I didn’t think that …” Rosalind stammered.
“Leave her alone,” Mae said mildly, already bored with the display. “Maybe it would suit me in gold.”
“It would,” Hannah offered without looking up from her fabrics, then paused, pushing her finger into the pile like she was keeping her place in a penny novel and looking up at Vix thoughtfully. “Speaking of which, Thaddeus said you sent Mr. Aster to his tailor.”
“I did,” Vix said, blinking innocently. “There is none better, from what I can tell. My brother’s clothes are beautiful, and Ambrose must look perfect at his knighting.”
“Ambrose,” Mae mimicked with a snicker, drawing narrowed eyes from the bride.
“Oh, have a jest to make, Casper?” Vix asked archly. “Or shall we talk about who I saw you making eyes at during my brother’s wedding?”
Mae paused, her fingers still stroking along the whalebone as she turned her head toward Vix, her smug dimpled smile faltering for a moment. “You saw no such thing, Victoria Beck.”
Vix smiled. “Didn’t I?”
Hannah sighed and glanced at Mae with a shrug. “I saw it too,” she said, giving an apologetic little smile. “But at least it was mutual, Mae.”
“You’re both imagining things,” Mae said with a sniff, turning on her heel to move to the next dress form with her back to them. “Too much wine and revelry will scramble your brains. It’s understandable for Hannah, of course. She was the bride.”
Rosalind was watching the exchange, wide-eyed and blinking, looking like she was only moments away from either begging to be let in on the joke or insisting they all take a nice nap until their tempers were softer.
“And now I am,” Vix replied, tossing a wink at Rosalind in an effort to reassure her. “And I say you were flashing those dimples of yours at my dear friend Roland Reed.”
“Keep talking,” Mae suggested. “You’re right. I’m missing the feeling of bones snapping under my hands.”
“Oh dear,” Rosalind said again, frowning.
Hannah shook her head, looking torn between laughing and sighing, and set the fabric pile down on the arm of the sofa next to her, stretching her arms over her head. “What will Mr. Aster wear to St. James’s Palace?” she asked. “I’ve never been invited to something so official.”
“Breeches, if you believe it,” Vix answered, immediately distracted from her verbal sparring by the question of the knighting.
“And a sash. The tailor told me he has done the same kit for other knights prior to the event, so I am not concerned about the correctness. I’ll be wearing the indigo that night, to match his coat. ”
“Oh, the satin?” Mae asked, immediately distracted from her fury by the pull of a jewel tone in slippery fabric. “I haven’t seen that one on you yet.”
“Not ready,” the modiste mumbled through the pins in her mouth, reminding them all that they were, in fact, being observed in their bad behavior.
“It is getting warmer by the day,” Vix explained. “I thought I ought to embrace the opportunity to wear something light while I can, and Ambrose was amenable to the color selection.”
“You haven’t told us much about him,” Rosalind said, giving a helpless little sigh and cradling her chin in her hands. “Is he very handsome?”
“Of course he is,” Vix said with a quirk of her lips. “Hannah will tell you.”
“Very handsome,” Hannah agreed, nodding. “He looks exactly as one might imagine an aristocrat should.”
“Anemic?” Mae suggested, getting glares from the other three.
“He is pale,” Hannah conceded reluctantly.
“Not in a sickly way,” Vix amended immediately. “His mother is Swedish. It is just his coloring.”
“And he is very charming, I imagine?” Rosalind pressed, twirling one of her sandy ringlets around her finger. “Does he woo you?”
Hannah bit her lip and looked away.
“He has been everything I could hope for thus far,” Vix said, “but we have not spent much time together as yet.”
“I thought you went to his house,” Mae interjected, leaning against the arm of the sofa and crossing her arms. “Didn’t you?”
Vix released a little laugh before she could stop herself, quickly reaching up to cover her lips. “I did, yes,” she said, nodding. “After we registered the banns. It was … not a romantic outing.”
Rosalind frowned. “Why not?”
“Because Roland was with us acting as chaperone,” Vix said, losing yet another little giggle against her fingers. “I think my husband-to-be might have a propensity toward pouting, actually. Hannah, do you know why he hates Roland so?”
Hannah was still staring out the window, her lips pressed together in what looked like a matched attempt to suppress laughter. She glanced at Vix out of the corner of her eye and nodded, a short little jerking assent of her red head.
“Well?” said Rosalind, breathless. “Aren’t you going to tell us? Is it a rivalry?” She paused, giving a dramatic little gasp, her fingers coming up over her mouth. “Is Mr. Reed in love with Vix?”
“He had better not be,” Mae said flatly.
“He isn’t,” Vix assured her.
“No, no, nothing like that,” Hannah said, turning fully around and giving in to the amusement bubbling under her tongue. “It is very silly. Vix, I’m not sure Mr. Aster would forgive me if I told you.”
Mae scoffed. “That only means that you must.”
“Well, first you must understand that Mr. Aster is blessed with a sort of preternatural good luck,” Hannah said, opening her hands toward the others as she explained.
“Ember furiously explained to me once that she has never seen someone win so many times in a row without cheating, and that she would know if he was cheating because she herself is a cheater.”
“Why didn’t we invite Ember today?” Mae wondered idly.
“Anyway,” Hannah continued, “I suppose the other gamblers don’t take kindly to someone with that kind of luck, and men in their cups who repeatedly lose large sums of money to the same person, especially when that person seems rather disillusioned by their good fortune, may be inspired to violence. ”
“Oh, no!” Rosalind breathed.
Vix tilted her head, intrigued. “Oh?”
“Yes, and from what I understand, Mr. Aster feels resentful about the number of times Mr. Reed has prevented confrontations from actually reaching him,” Hannah said, giggling despite herself and shaking her head.
“I do not know if it is because he wishes to try his hand at fighting or if it is because his pride is wounded at not being able to talk down his opponent, but he is very testy about it every time Mr. Reed dispatches a would-be assailant.”
“He doesn’t like being rescued?” Rosalind asked, sounding truly baffled.
“Is that what Mr. Reed’s job is?” Mae said overtop of her. “Really?”
Vix turned back to the mirror thoughtfully as she listened to them chatter behind her, turning over this bit of information in her mind.
Preternatural good luck, was it? A talent for cards? An appetite for conflict?
That was worth considering.
“So what did you actually get up to, then?” Mae asked, drawing her attention back. “When you went to his house?”
“Oh,” said Vix, blinking. “Oh, I met his butler. Or manservant. A sort of competent assistant of all trades. German fellow called Zeller. He showed me some of the rooms on the ground floor and assisted me with a few matters of scheduling and particulars that I required. He seems very capable.”
“The butler?” Rosalind repeated, frowning. “What about your intended?”
Vix laughed. “He spent most of the time trying to elbow Roland out of the way and frowning every time I acknowledged anyone but him. It was almost charming, really.”
“Almost, hm?” Hannah asked, a knowing smile on her face. “I told you he was amusing.”
Vix did not reply, instead stepping off the little pedestal as the modiste motioned to her that she had finished with the alterations for the wedding gown and they could move on to the next piece, a tea gown in violet lace, which would not require half so much fussing.
By the time she returned in the new gown, the conversation had mercifully moved back to other topics that did not require her to reflect on how amusing or charming or anything else she found Ambrose Aster.
Instead, she was able to recruit Rosalind for a trip to the draper the following day, ensure that Hannah would chase Teddy for advance payment to the tailor, and discuss which unwholesome books she and Mae would be reading next.
It was, all in all, a very productive afternoon.