“Laura, you can’t come in.” He followed reaching for her elbow.
A mistake.
Her eyes flashed with livid fire.
Instinctively he stood back and let her march down the length of the room until she reached Du Montford. She unwrapped the sheet in her hand, and a cascade of luminescent fabric fell into his lap.
“When you design something,” she said, her voice pulsating with anger, “you don’t start by cutting into your expensive material. You create a test version called a toile. A dummy garment in plainer, cheaper fabric to give you a chance to test the pattern, the lines and proportion without ruining expensive fabrics.”
She paused to catch her breath, her chest rising and falling fast.
Pierre, scrolling through her phone, walked to stand by Du Montfort. “It’s true, I already googled it.” She showed him something on her phone.
Laura went on, “When I can perfect the fit, and only then, would I dare go near the real fabric. Not just because it’s expensive, but because its irreplaceable. The chiffon” – She leaned down and lifted a section of something sheer and diaphanous – “is made by a small boutique manufacturer in Vienna. They are the only people who make it, and I had to negotiate extra-hard and promise them all kinds of favours to get six meters. The silk needed to be delicate enough to move and sway with the chiffon but have enough strength to hold the gown in place. That is the main reason I locked my studio. Because I couldn’t afford for anything to damage this.”
She stopped talking but she was still breathing hard. And her face radiated fury.
Du Montfort had been silent during her tirade. Now he looked down at the heap of delicate material in his lap. His hand stroked it very gently, almost with his finger-tips. The light from his side lamp fell on the chiffon changing its colour. The pale material, almost white in places, but dark as golden honey where the layers folded.
“What is this colour?” Du Montfort finally asked, his voice unsteady.
“Pale champagne,” she said tersely. “I chose it because it suited Millie’s warm colouring, and…” She paused as if deciding whether or not to say more. “I’ll paint the herbs and flower petals along the hem and overlay the chiffon over the silk. They will sway when she walks down the aisle as if she’s walking among flowers in the breeze. It is supposed to echo her personality, the softness of her voice, and the colours of the island and the flowers she loves so much.”
Adam didn’t really know Millie and had no idea what they were talking about, but Du Montford seemed very affected. He looked at the material for long moments, and Adam could have sworn his eyes were damp.
Finally, he reached to a box of tissues on the table next to him and blew his nose.
“I think it will be a magnificent gown.” He lifted his arms out of the way. “Please remove this before it’s damaged.”
Then he turned to Pierre. “Make sure Laura can work undisturbed. Nicole is not to interfere and not to go up to the third floor.”
“Thank you,” Laura said quietly. She even smiled.
The woman gave away her smiles like she had a million of them.
“But I’m going to move my work room to the Casemate. It was Millie’s original recommendation.”
Despite everything, his worry about his patient, the endless talk about weddings, Adam wanted to cheer for Laura. He’d thought of her as a woman needing protection, but he’d been wrong – and Du Montfort right. Yes she was vulnerable but she as also a wild flame hidden deep inside the polite nice exterior.
Chapter Seventeen
The main outcomeof the confrontation with Du Montfort, aside from not being fired and shipped off the island, was the new workspace at the Casemate. She missed her third floor studio, but what she gave up in natural light she gained in distance from evil Nicole.
She had loved looking out of the windows over La Canette’s landscape, but now she got to walk in the actual landscape for half an hour every morning and afternoon on her way to and from work. A walk that Nicole would never make in her high heels on the rough country lanes.
Laura hadn’t realized how much stress she’d been under until she became free of it. She could almost skip with joy on her walk through the fields. For the first time in her life, going to work didn’t come with the soundtrack of rush hour traffic. Spring was coming and everywhere she looked, trees and bushes stretched their branches heavy with buds. Soon they’d be even heavier with leaves and blossoms.
The Casemate turned out to be a great place to work; the women made her very welcome and treated her like a VIP. They had never worked with an actual designer and were almost in awe of her knowledge. They took every opportunity to ask her opinion about their curtain patterns and upholstery cloth. They’d given her a large empty room at the back, away from the clack of the electric loom and the constant hum of sewing machines, but she only needed to open the door before someone rushed to ask if she needed anything. Replacement needles? A spool of thread? The moon and stars on a plate?
Just now, Tirana, a sixteen-year-old, slightly plump girl, brought her a mug of tea. “Time for lunch?” she asked placing the tea on the table. Then ducking out for a second, she came back with a plate of something that looked like mini fritters.
The girl had become a fan of Laura’s and found every excuse to come and watch her work or sit and have lunch together and chat. She would ask questions about every aspect of dressmaking then post the answers with pictures on Instagram.
“Sit and eat with me,” Laura invited.
“I have to go home,” she said. “I’m sick, but I wanted to bring you this.” She indicated the plate.
“What are they?” Laura asked to make the girl stay a bit longer,
