Chapter 30
Peter caught a glimpse of Margaret moving through the distant throng.
With her back to him, clad in a nondescript black cape, her decisive gait gave her away.
He moved off the road and rested his back against the wall of the inn, the celebratory peal of church bells suddenly too loud in his ears.
She pressed forward, away from him. Their paths had crossed too many times over the past weeks, and he lacked the fortitude for another encounter.
“Peter.” Lucius came from behind, slapping him on the back. “Let’s get on.”
Charlotte arrived, panting. “You could have waited for me. Peter wasn’t moving.”
Strengthened by his friends, Peter fell into step beside them.
“Michaelmas is such a delight.” Charlotte opened her arms as if to embrace the fall air. “And the roads will present no obstacle for anyone coming from Gloucestershire. The guild masters will be here, Lucius. You can try again to conciliate the weavers.”
Lucius took up the thread, but Peter felt half present, the rest of him endlessly trying to make sense of Margaret.
The possibility of friendship pulled at him each time he saw her walking through town, at church, through his window.
Though their correspondence was at an end, he could not scrub her from his mind any more than madder red could be removed once set.
He could not stop the pride that swelled within him at the sight of her shop, both tidy and grand as it bustled with patrons.
A gentlewoman dressmaker. How natural, how correct.
Margaret Cooper stood exactly where she belonged.
As he incorporated his own plans to create chintz, he began to understand all she overcame to realize her dream. Hard work and an eye single to her goal were necessary to fulfill so lofty an ambition. Had he judged her too harshly?
Still, there could be no friendship without trust.
“Peter, did you hear me?”
He turned to Lucius. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re half in the clouds. Is it your father or Miss Cooper?”
“I’m simply tired.”
Lucius narrowed his eyes, and Peter looked away.
“Mr. Sloan.” Mrs. Smith appeared at his elbow. “I wonder, how can I get a few yards of your chintz?”
Confused, Peter said, “You’d have to ask a smuggler.”
“Like Miss Cooper is wearing. She says you made it.”
Charlotte scanned the crowd and her face darkened. “Peter, Miss Cooper is wearing your work.”
“Where?” Peter asked.
Mrs. Smith waved her hand vaguely. “Over there, but Mr. Sloan,” she sidled closer, “I am prepared to pay.”
Peter craned his neck to try to catch a glimpse of Margaret. “I fear I have nothing to sell.”
“When you do, come to me first.” Mrs. Smith squeezed Peter’s forearm as if exacting a promise.
“You sly fellow.” Lucius shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. “You gave her chintz, which I know you would not have done unless it was perfect. I want to see it.”
Charlotte tugged Peter’s sleeve. “There she is.” She took him by the back of the arm and pushed him toward Margaret.
Margaret bent over a row of ribbons spilling from the edge of a booth. The cape she’d worn earlier hung behind her shoulders, and Peter stopped so abruptly that Charlotte stumbled against his arm.
Margaret. Her hair, unpowdered and uncovered, was piled à la mouton and caught the light in garnet and gold curls.
He stepped forward, drawn not by the way she stood with her chin lifted as though the festival owed her its attention, but by the pleat at her hip that mirrored the V of her stomacher and the pleats at her shoulders.
He recognized the fall of the skirt, its fullness giving extra breadth as he’d specified in his notes.
Let the fabric do the work. The gleaming cotton skimmed her body with the elegance he’d imagined when he sat alone in his office and drawn a gown for the woman he loved.
She had taken the pattern, had entered into his office when he was not there.
His step faltered. Had he left it open, unconsciously wishing her to find it?
She had stolen his drawings, cut his fabric to the measurements he prescribed, stitched the seams in his sequence, and worn his most private work into the street, without knowing, or perhaps knowing exactly, what it had cost him to create.
The gown fit her as nothing else could. Every line answered her body the way he’d intended, and the rightness of it was almost unbearable.
Late evenings at his desk, he’d pictured Margaret in the gown he’d designed for her, the cloth settling into the curves he’d studied without ever permitting himself to acknowledge what he was doing.
And here she stood, his silent confession made visible, worn by the woman who spent months dismantling his life.
Admiration and anger moved through him in the same breath, so entangled he could not separate one from the other. She was magnificent. She was a thief. She was wearing his heart on her body and did not appear burdened by it.
He stepped forward. “Miss Cooper, might I speak with you?” He made no attempt to check his icy tone.
Her eyes widened. “Of course.”
As he turned, Charlotte squeezed his arm and said, “I’ll take care of this.” He had no time to consider what she meant as she hurried away.
Peter gestured for Margaret to follow and stepped behind a row of booths. “You can’t stop, can you?”
“Stop? What are you saying?”
“Wearing my gift, luring customers with it. And you stole my pattern.”
“Peter, I—”
“Here I was contemplating a renewal of our friendship, thinking perhaps I should give you a chance, and I find more betrayal.”
“I did this for you. To show everyone your talent. I thought perhaps their praise would give you the courage to become the dyer you long to be.”
“Hah. You would like that. Capture the rest of my clients.” He shook his head. “I suppose you can’t help who you are.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, her features settling into stillness.
The pained look on her face nearly broke him.
She pivoted and marched away, and with each retreating step, emptiness encroached upon him.
He had gone too far, spoken too soon. She was right, of course—the plans he and Mr. Hobbins had been concocting over the last few weeks brought exuberance to his life when nearly all else brought distress.
But seeing her in that dress reminded him of all he had lost in potential courtship, a wound he had not expected to resurface so suddenly.
Throughout the remainder of the day, he scanned the crowd for Margaret but did not find her. The fiddle played flat and dull. The dance held no satisfaction. He scarcely understood words spoken to him. Peter departed before the feast began.
His steps echoed in vacant High Street. He paused in front of Sloan Tailoring, catching voices from The Golden Thimble.
“This is a dress shop.” Margaret’s voice, clear and hard. “You have no jurisdiction over me.”
“There is a suit of clothes in your window display, and I have enough evidence that you’ve violated your indenture. I will inform the magistrate.”
“Lord Halverton, my guardian, is the magistrate.”
“Then I will take the matter to the assizes.”
Peter’s breath caught. The guild wanted to shut down her shop. His hands curled into fists. Was this how Charlotte had intended to “take care of this”?
He could not make out Margaret’s words, but her voice came low and placatory.
“Absolutely not,” the man said. “This is an affront to the institutions that order and stabilize our country and have done so for generations.”
Peter’s chest tightened. Margaret had wronged him, but she did not deserve to be uprooted. His rage quickened. She’d toiled night and day to see her shop materialize, and the guild would not take it from her.
Margaret’s shop door stood open. Peter stepped under the doorframe, recognizing the guild master’s outrageous wig. Margaret’s pale face blanched when she caught sight of him, then her attention flicked to Master Dickson.
She stepped closer to the guild master. “Consider well before you act. Lord Halverton will not take your interference lightly.”
The white queue of the master’s wig lengthened down his back as he raised his head. “I will see your doors close by the end of the week.” He pivoted and nearly ran into Peter.
“Master Dickson.” Peter bowed.
“Your troubles will end here, my boy.” He shoved his hat further on his head and made to leave.
“If you please, I wish to speak with you.” Peter gestured for Master Dickson to follow him into his empty shop. Almost, he called for his father, who had been well acquainted with the guild master.
Master Dickson rested his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Had I known what this unnatural apprenticeship would become, I would never have allowed it. That woman has desecrated the foundations of our holy order; may Saint Anne ever be with us. I don’t care who her guardian is.”
“Ironic that the patron saint of tailors is female.”
Master Dickson grumbled.
Peter looked at his hands, stained red and blue. What did he hope to accomplish? Could he save Margaret? “It may be best to leave her be. She is a dressmaker, not a tailor.”
“She is a dressmaker trained in a tailor’s shop with a journeyman working under her. It is an outrage. I voiced my opinion against allowing her to train with you, but the vote went against me. Not to mention her criminal behavior of taking clients before her indenture concluded.”
Peter rubbed his chin. If she were forced from The Golden Thimble, she must move elsewhere and would be far from her beloved Samuel.
Far from Peter. The thought startled him.
What did he care if she left? But he did.
No matter that she had betrayed him, he respected her and wished her well. Wished her near.
“Master Dickson, let her be. Her indenture is already terminated prematurely. By herself she is no threat to tailoring, and it is not wrong if a journeyman wishes to join forces with her.”