Chapter 12
Fair Is Foul and Foul Is Fair
Celine couldn’t hold back the wince that pulled her face into a grimace when Bastien popped open her rouge compact and began scraping the powder into his flask.
“I’ll buy you a new one,” he said, looking, to his credit, somewhat apologetic.
“With what money?” Celine scowled in return. She didn’t want to hit a weak spot, not after what he’d done for her, but Bastien simply laughed and told her about Ana?s’s coin bank.
Trust the process. He knows what he’s doing.
Meticulously, he twisted the lid of the flask back on and began shaking it vigorously.
Celine waited, her heel tapping an anxious staccato on the white polished floor.
The rest of the contestants had already begun sewing; Franz and Coco had their models up on the platform, adding the final details.
Celine pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, trying to calm herself down.
It was the third round. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—be eliminated this early on.
“Any time now, Bas.”
“Relax, baby vamp,” Bastien waved her antics off, resuming his strange potion-making. “Leave it to the professionals.”
Celine rolled her eyes and hoisted herself up on the desk, fidgeting with the bandage on her finger. She still couldn’t believe he had come to the rescue with no hesitation.
“I think it’s ready,” he said at last. Unscrewing the cap, he poured some of the mixture in the well of his palm and began sprinkling it onto the white fabric. Blossoms of dark cerise splotches bloomed along the half stitched gown, reaching out red tendrils.
From the corner of her eye, she could see Franz snicker as he took a pin from the cushion on his wrist and continued marking where he wanted to create a few more ruffles.
“Breaking more rules, Mademoiselle LeBeau?” he taunted from across their stations. Several heads spun their way, concern creasing their expression. “Where is your honesty now?”
Celine’s mouth went dry. “Bas, the rules—”
“Said nothing about this,” Bastien assured her.
“If Monsieur Baudelaire wanted to put a limit on creativity he should have been more particular about his directives. He only said we couldn’t get more supplies once we had gathered what we needed.
He said nothing about modifying what we already have.
Besides, wasn’t he the one who claimed there weren’t rules in the fashion world? ”
It should have had catastrophic outcomes for Bastien to be right. Celine waited for some sort of sign that she had entered an alternate dimension, where up was down and Franz Olivier had turned into a rat. When nothing happened, she nodded her approval. “Proceed then.”
Quickly, he masked the splotches of blood on the side by creating more, giving the design the illusion of a gash.
Celine recalled Lady Macbeth and her invisible spot.
If she added a few pearls and rubies to give it a stereoscopic illusion, she could recreate the image of an open wound on the ribcage.
Then she could string up a few rubies to create blood drops dripping from the gash.
“There,” Bastien said when he was done. “What do you think? You can even call it by one of those eccentric names.”
“Something like…Foul Is Fair?” Celine lifted a suggestive brow at him.
He returned the gesture, somehow managing to give it a whole other meaning. She let it slide this time.
“How did you come up with this idea anyway?”
“Oh, Celine, Celine, darling Celine.” Bastien shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the table, waiting for the alcohol on the dress to dry.
“You have yet to bear witness to all of my expertise.” Surveying the length of her skirt, he persisted where it had ridden up her knee a bit, exposing the lace cuff of her stocking, then flitted his eyes up to hers.
Had he ran a corporeal finger up her leg she would have felt it less than his pervasive gaze.
The smirk on his lips deepened. “Or you can ask Elana.”
Common ground my foot. He deserves to be smacked in the head with a Bible.
“No, thank you,” Celine replied, fixing her dress. She pushed herself off the table, landing on the floor with a hop. “I’ve seen enough of your panache to last me a lifetime. If you will excuse me, I have to finish sewing the dress.”
She tossed another glance around the hall to see if anyone else had already finished.
To her relief, even Franz was still struggling with the pleats on his assemblage of tulle.
Shaking off her stiffness, Celine returned to her mannequin and began fixing the ruffled collar around its neck.
It would then attach to the bodice through two clasps she had hidden in the back of the dress.
She picked up the gown and draped it over the mannequin—it fell down its frame in elegant ripples, enveloping the vague curves like it would the frame of a woman.
Celine drew a step back, and assessed the design.
To her astonishment, Bastien had done a great job with covering the blood drops, as well as adding more red patterns as strategically as he could to make them seem intentional, rather than an improvised plan B.
He really was his mother’s son. All that was left for Celine now was to sew the pearls and the rubies on it, which would take the better part of the day.
Even longer with the dull pain throbbing up her hand from the wound.
She sighed. Better get it over with; Monsieur Baudelaire might overlook Bastien dyeing the fabric, but he wouldn’t accept him sewing the design for her.
The rest of the afternoon passed laboriously.
It wasn’t until dusk turned to dark, and the entire hallway was glowing with warm, bright lights that Monsieur Baudelaire started making his rounds, nose wrinkled with an air of inspection.
Celine’s spine stiffened when he paused by their station, raising a brow at her dress.
Candid laughter rumbled suddenly from his chest.
“When you have limited resources, you need to think outside the box,” he said aloud, addressing the entire room. “I admire an imaginative brain. Incredible work, Mademoiselle LeBeau, bravo.”
And just like that, he strolled away.
Equally stunned, Celine and Bastien glanced at each other. There was a thank you at the ready on the tip of her tongue, but he beat her to it.
“You’re welcome, Celine.” His eyes fell to the bandage around her finger. Blood had seeped through the layers due to the strain she had put on it while sewing. Bastien’s lips parted, but she beat him to it.
“I’m fine, Bas. Really. Let’s forget about my mortifying freak out and finish this challenge.” Unhooking the dress from the mannequin, she handed it to him. “Go try it on.”
Bastien stared at it. He lifted a brow. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” He hinted at the scraps on the table behind her, then stooped towards her conspiratorially. “The buttons.”
“What?” Glancing over her shoulder, Celine saw six white buttons lying on the table. She tossed her head back with a groan. “I thought they were extra pearls.”
She wanted to cry.
“Come on,” Celine said, taking a deep breath. “I’ll help you into it.”
Bastien shrugged and walked behind the folding screen.
She followed suit, trying her best to avert her eyes anywhere she could.
She had never touched anyone before the way she’d had to touch Bastien these past few weeks.
Every time she smoothed out the fabric along his abdomen, she could feel the faint ridges of muscles underneath.
And when Bastien was up on the rotating platform and she had to grab his hips to turn him around, she could feel the soft curve of his waist, feel his hip bone jut out beneath the dress, and she would pull her hands away at record speed lest he noticed where her fingers had lingered.
Bastien was about to unbutton his shirt, when Monsieur Baudelaire’s announcement caused all activity around the cubicles to stop.
“That will be all for today,” he said, tapping his cane on the polished tiles. “You can proceed with the final touches tomorrow. Though I must divulge—I like what I’m seeing so far.”
Celine was only too glad to stick her needle into the mannequin and forgo dressing Bastien until tomorrow.
The day had been draining—quite literally—and all she wanted to do was go home and sleep the rest of it off until Francine came nagging at her ear the next morning to wake up. She started packing up her bag.
“I’ll drive you home,” Bastien offered, pushing himself off her working desk. “I don’t want you passing out in the middle of the street and being mistaken for a drunk.”
Celine was preparing a heavily ornamented remark when cold sweat broke across her temples and she started rummaging through her work space like a maniac.
“Of course,” Bastien continued babbling, “that would mean you’d have to sit in my car and—Celine, are you even listening?”
“I can’t find it!” she exclaimed, tossing a half-stitched corset over her shoulder. Bastien barely dodged it as it was about to smack him in the head. “It’s not here! It’s not here!”
“Jesus!” Bastien exclaimed as another half-stitched piece went flying over his head. “What are you looking for?”
“My sketchbook!” She thrust everything she had on the table out onto the floor.
Extra strips of fabric and a few pencils fell down with a soft clatter.
Celine’s shoulders slumped in frustration.
“I have everything in there. Measurements, ideas, old designs, new designs, I can’t—I can’t have possibly lost it! ”
“Okay, but you are losing it right now,” Bastien retorted. “Just calm down and I will help you look for it.”
“Are you not listening? I can’t find it anywhere!”
“Yelling at me won’t make it magically reappear,” Bastien went on in a calm tone. “Tell me when you last saw it.”
Celine sifted through her earlier actions. “I ripped off the page with your look on it to pin it on the board, then stuffed the notebook underneath some fabric on the table. And then nothing, I began working on the design.”
“And when you ran out?”
“I…”
They both sighed. Celine brought her hand up to her lips, then realising it was her injured one, she switched hands and started chewing on her nails.
“Do you really think someone stole it?”
“My bet is on Franz,” Bastien gritted out, glancing around the hall to see if he could spot the couturier. To their disappointment, everyone else had already left.
“Franz is provoking, yes,” she murmured, “but I doubt he would stoop that low.”
“He is desperate,” Bastien insisted. “Look at what he has to lose. His dignity and his atelier are both at stake. I doubt he would draw the line at pilfering.”
“But why mine? He hates me.”
“Maybe he doesn’t. Men have strange ways of showing they like someone.”
Celine planted her hands on her hips; cocked her head to the side. “The only way to get Franz Olivier to make heart-eyes at me is to plant my head on a stick outside of Maison Baudelaire. Now stop being funny and start searching.”
“Look,” Bastien attempted again, grabbing hold of her by the shoulders. “It’s getting late. I should take you home.”
“Bas”—Celine rooted herself at the edge of their cubicle—“everything I’ve designed so far is in that sketchbook. I can’t just simply leave without—”
“I know.” He tugged her away from the scene. “But you won’t be able to find it tonight. Everyone is gone. Whoever took it wouldn’t be sticking around for you to confront them.”
He was right. And even if they had any chances of finding her sketchbook, she wasn’t so sure she would want it anymore.
Whoever had gotten their hands on it would make sure to exhaust all the designs inked into those pages.
Celine kicked a spool of thread with the toe of her shoe.
“The world could end today and it wouldn’t surprise me. ”
To his credit, Bastien refrained from teasing her for being dramatic. He simply handed her the bag before she could forget it and led them outside. Celine sniffled as he opened the door to his car for her.
“You do know you have to drop me off at least three blocks away from my house, right?”
Bastien shook his head. “You are such a bizarre girl,” he muttered.
Celine tossed her purse onto the backseat and settled herself in the front. Too fatigued to argue with him any longer, she tilted her face towards the cool breeze and let it kiss her cheeks as they motored down the avenue.