Chapter 4
Peter reviewed the servants’ measurements, each recorded in a neat ledger half an hour past. Where was Miss Cooper? It was folly to send her untrained into Mrs. Gainsworth’s lair, but what else could be done?
The door to the parlor banged open. Miss Cooper entered, a hint of triumph on her lips, a mound of silk held so high it nearly obscured her face. “Come along. I fear if she dresses quickly, she will find us and alter the style of this gown again.”
She bent to lay the silk on a sofa, a coil of rusty hair escaping her mobcap. “The wrapper?”
Peter pulled linen from his bag, and together they folded Mrs. Gainsworth’s fabric and secured it inside.
Footsteps pattered upstairs. He locked eyes with Miss Cooper, who nodded at his unspoken wish. In a whirl, they gathered their things and rushed toward the door, arms laden, the clip of Mrs. Gainsworth’s approach ever louder.
“Your ledger,” Meg said.
He had left it on the table. They froze and stared at one another, each assessing whether they could manage another item. Miss Cooper eyed the door, then scampered to the side table. She squatted and retrieved the ledger without disturbing the mountain of linens balanced in her arms.
“Quickly.”
Peter smiled at her, and she laughed. A sound so foreign he paused.
“Miss Cooper?” Mrs. Gainsworth’s voice sounded from the hall.
“This way.” Peter tilted his head toward a door connecting to the library. They slipped through and bounded down the stairs to the kitchen and outside.
“Well done, Miss Cooper. Your maneuvering exceeded your commission.”
“I have my uses.”
Truthfully, she possessed natural talent and could apparently handle Mrs. Gainsworth better than he. Still, he hesitated to promise her more instruction than the guild would find appropriate.
Inside their conveyance, Miss Cooper said, “She is singular, to be sure. Quite demanding, but I admire her imagination.” She handed him a card. “The gown she wishes to create. How long do you expect it to take?”
Peter’s stomach sank a little. “Three months with all this frippery.”
“We must hire village women to help; else it will not be completed in time.”
We? When had they become accomplices in this project?
Three patrons had queued outside Peter’s office when he and Miss Cooper returned to the shop.
He gave them each a comfit and invited them in one at a time.
Already frayed from the visit to Mrs. Gainsworth, he dropped into his chair and listened to customer after customer complain about delayed orders.
By the time he’d reconciled with the last of them, his cheeks ached with sympathetic smiles and a pinching headache threatened.
Having offered discounts to his disgruntled clients, he would barely break even.
But Mrs. Gainsworth would be his salvation, so long as they met her demands before Saint Valentine’s Day.
He opened his almanac and counted five weeks and two days until the festival. Could it be done?
In the workroom, Miss Cooper had already set an army of needlewomen to trace the embroidery pattern supplied by Mrs. Gainsworth. But the light already grew dim and candles were dear. He called the apprentices to meet in his office and invited the needlewomen to take their work home.
As he addressed his apprentices on the subject of Mrs. Gainsworth’s livery, his eye caught Miss Cooper’s significant look. When the company rose to depart, she marched toward him. Too spent to argue, he avoided her and lunged for the door connecting the workroom to his living quarters.
“Mr. Sloan.”
Peter turned a grudging eye to her.
“When will we begin work on the sacque?” she asked. “I can stay late, if necessary.”
“The fabric must be embroidered before construction can begin.”
“Yes, of course.” She pinked. Her ignorance seemed to embarrass her. “Then we will begin cutting.”
“The fit must be remeasured first.”
“We will drape, pin, and cut. Together.”
His habit was to agree, so it was with some effort he kept his face neutral. “Goodnight, Miss Cooper.”
The door closed on a trying day. Peter leaned against the wall with a heavy sigh, pulled loose the knot of his cravat, and followed the sound of his father’s snoring, which grated like a rusty hinge.
In the parlor, his father reclined in his favorite chair, head back, mouth gaping, his sewing project strewn over his legs. Thank heavens for the racket. With his pallor, one might think him departed from this life.
There was no trace of Mrs. Call, but the money left for her—increased by five shillings per week to keep her coming—was gone.
Alone in the kitchen, Peter ate a slice of minced meat pie by the crackling fire, his father’s wheezing a counterpoint.
His hands grew restless. Exhaustion singed the corners of his eyes and the ache in his head expanded.
Sleep remedied all ills, but that night Peter had something better to do.
“Father, let’s get you to bed.”
“Where is Deborah?” he rasped.
“Waiting in your room.” The lie worked when his father was half asleep. It used to trouble Peter until he rationalized she might haunt his father’s dreams. In the early hours before full wakefulness came, his father often spoke to her.
“The poor dear has been ill. Help me to her.”
Peter supported his father up the stairs, the older man’s weight heavy upon him.
“And who are you, young man? Come to tempt away my Deborah?” He laughed, then turned solemn. “I’ve had a long day without her.”
Peter helped his father out of socks and breeches, pulled a woolen cap over his head, and assisted him into bed. One of his mother’s old shifts had been stuffed into the shape of a woman and arranged on the far side.
“Careful, now,” Peter whispered. “Don’t wake her.”
His father lay gingerly beside the effigy and closed his eyes. Peter waited until slow breathing filled the room, then removed his “mother” from the bed, not wishing a repeat of the morning when his father had seen the artifice in the light of day.
He descended the stairs and closed the house for the night, folding his father’s blanket, straightening cushions, sweeping the kitchen, banking the fires.
With the house in order, he retreated down the hall toward the workshop, fatigue slipping from his limbs as he unlatched the door.
Candlelight illuminated a sea of suspended dust motes.
He waded through until arriving at the worktable scattered with half-sewn projects, shelves piled with work not yet begun.
The table tugged at him as he passed, begged him to finish a waistcoat that shimmered in the candle’s glow.
It would finish soon enough. His feet carried him past the concerns of the day, across the measuring room, and through a heavy door to his refuge.
The acrid scent of alum flooded his nose, followed by sheep dung and sour vinegar with undertones of damp. He covered his nose with a handkerchief and lit the many lanterns that filled the room.
Ever careful that his pastime did not appear on his person, Peter tied an apron and slipped his hands into close-fitting, oiled leather gloves. He pulled several yards of cotton from a tub, wringing and rinsing the cloth several times.
Red. Brilliant as cherry, deep as ruby. Turkey red.
Peter pulled the handkerchief from his pocket and compared the color.
He sunk onto a bench and plunged the cotton into soapy water and rinsed.
Vibrant. He ran soap over the fabric and scrubbed until his arms ached, water sloshing his breeches and into his shoes, his excitement causing a momentary lapse in the usual care he took of his clothing.
Again, he rinsed. The color held. It would dry as bright as red sealing wax.
From a shelf, he pulled a leather journal flaking with age. It fell open to a page exhibiting two red thumbprints, one adult sized, the other that of a youth.
The other dyers must never know, his grandfather had said, enacting a private vengeance on the guild to which he’d belonged but that had never supported his endless experimenting. Peter pitied them. A fortune lay in Turkey red, a color no one else in England could reproduce.
They had sealed the promise by dipping their thumbs in crimson dye. The ink had blossomed from Peter’s thumb onto the thick page, and twelve-year-old Peter had folded the secret into his heart. He practiced the technique from time to time to ensure he remembered the tedious process.
On the bench lay a length of white fabric, prepared to absorb and hold dye.
Peter dipped a carved wooden block into madder red and pressed it into a portion of the cotton.
Red blossomed from the block, blurring the edges of his design.
He wiped the block clean, this time painting it in hopes of containing the color, then took a breath and stamped the cloth. Not so bad, but the color seeped.
He wished to use the Turkey red in the creation of intricate floral prints like Indian chintz, to honor his grandfather as much as to realize the dream.
He tossed the block aside and returned to the journal, searching for something that might hint at the process.
Finding nothing, he experimented for a time with different methods he’d conceived of applying color to printed designs.
When each attempt failed, he shrugged and tossed the fabric into a vat.
As he worked, the tension in his shoulders released.
The calm assurance that everything had a way of solving itself reasserted.
It did not matter if chintz lay forever beyond his skill. The striving settled him.
A week later, a hand squeezed Peter’s shoulder. For a moment he saw cherry red, bright with sun.
“Mr. Sloan? Mr. Sloan?” It was Miss Cooper.
He came fully awake, sat up, and scrubbed his face. He’d fallen asleep at his desk midday. No more working on chintz through the night.
“You roused me from a very satisfying slumber.” He gave a sheepish smile.