“I most certainly can.”
“Then shout, but I will not listen to you. I will not be ordered. I will not be stifled. For twelve years I was stifled. If this is how you mean for us to go on, then our agreement is cancelled.”
“Agreement?” Whatever else he’d expected, it wasn’t this. He blinked and told himself he couldn’t have heard correctly. “Cancelled?”
“That is what I said.”
“You can’t be—You think you can do this without me?”
“I shall not do it with you, that much is certain.” She folded her arms and stuck her nose in the air. “I release you from your promise to help me.”
His heart was beating far too fast.
“Good,” he said. “That’s a relief.”
“A greater relief to me,” she said. “Go away. I hate you. You are impossible.”
“Good-bye,” he said. “And good riddance.”
He turned his back and started for the door.
Something struck his hat and knocked it off. He did not turn around.
He left the hat and stomped out.
Though Marchmont had made Zoe so furious that she could hardly see straight, she’d been aware of Jarvis slinking out of the back room and into the shop when the shouting commenced.
Remaining conscious of her surroundings had become second nature. She had learned early in her time in the pasha’s palace to watch from the corner of her eye the comings and goings of wives, concubines, servants, slaves, and eunuchs.
After glancing at the design book she’d thrown at Marchmont, then at his hat lying by the door, Zoe turned to the maid, who had a death grip on the handle of her umbrella.
Jarvis crept closer. “I’m sorry, miss. I know he said I was to go away, but they told me when they made me your lady’s maid that I was in charge of you and was not to let you out of my sight and if anything happened to you it would be my fault.”
An image arose in Zoe’s mind of the terrified maid beating a murderous Marchmont off with an umbrella.
Though her heart still pounded and outrage lingered—along with a painful awareness of having thoroughly destroyed her future—the image helped her recover her composure, if not her equilibrium.
“Summon the dressmaker,” she said. “As long as I am here, I shall buy clothes.”
Jarvis hurried to the door through which the shopgirls and seamstresses had escaped. Evidently the maid moved too quickly, because when she opened the door, the dressmaker stumbled into the room, and her helpers after her.
They had been piled up against the door, eavesdropping, obviously. Not that they needed to. People three streets away must have heard the row.
Now the women tumbled out, tripping on their hems and one another’s feet. Caps got knocked askew and smocks came undone. One girl fell backward over a footstool, and another cracked her head against one of the overhead drawers that had been left open when they’d fled. An occasional “Ow!” and “Get off my foot!” punctuated their arrival, along with some expressions in French that Zoe didn’t understand.
Madame quickly straightened her magnificent lace cap, gathered her dignity, and approached.
“I need clothes,” Zoe said.
Madame examined Zoe’s dirty, torn carriage dress with a pained expression and nodded. Zoe wasn’t sure whether the woman was pained because her dress was torn and dirty or because it was a year out of date. She suspected the latter.
“I need everything,” Zoe said.
“Oui,mademoiselle.” The dressmaker glanced at Marchmont’s hat on the floor near the shop door.
Jarvis edged closer to Zoe and whispered, “Miss, I think she’s wondering who’s going to pay.”
“I am well able to pay my own way,” said Zoe. “I don’t belong to him. He does not pay for me.”
