The shop wall wasa rainbow of coloured ribbons and trims, reel after reel of velvet, satin, lace, and sparkling silver-and-gold lamé. Despite it being her eighth season in London, this was Madelaine’s first visit to Harding & Howell’s.
It was the third shop they had visited that morning, and she’d already seen more than enough fabric and gowns and hats and fans and shoes and scarves and gloves and handkerchiefs to last for another eight years. But her aunt, her overly abundant conscience pricked, had made Madelaine’s wardrobe her latest cause, and so shopping they had gone.
The woman was currently entranced by the beauty of some gauzy films and veils—though when Madelaine might ever need a veil, she couldn’t think. Clinging to pragmatism to shore up her wilting interest, Madelaine walked closer to the ribbons—here at least was an economical way to freshen up an old dress or bonnet. She could buy some ribbons. Everyone could always make use of a ribbon.
A pink-orange coral-coloured reel caught her eye. The satin ribbon gleamed with inviting softness, and indeed, it was close enough to touch. Her hand was gloved, but she stroked it anyway. It had always been her favourite colour.Always?Well, since Alfred had returned from his first distant trip and given her a necklace of coral beads.
How she’d loved it! But he should have kept it for himself. Didn’t they say coral protected sailors? Prevented ill-health? But a white dress, trimmed in this ribbon… That would look well with her necklace. But it was at home in Sussex, safely wrapped in tissue in her dressing table. Besides. Did coral sayangelic?She wrinkled her nose, her snort of laughter causing the approaching shop clerk to veer away to a different customer.
She didn’t need ribbons anyway. Not with Lord Cotereigh’s impending largesse. She didn’t need to purchase a single thing. He’d left her after that ridiculous, unbelievable visit with a list, written in his own firm hand, that featured four morning dresses, two walking dresses, three dinner dresses, two evening gowns, a riding dress—though she did not ride—a carriage dress, spencers, pelisses, wraps, shawls, and a hooded evening cloak. He’d also written Other necessities: shoes, bonnets etc., and so she supposed she was to be outfitted from head to foot. She’d almost been tempted to ask if she was still permitted to choose her own underthings, but she hadn’t quite dared to risk the stare of those black eyes. He was unnerving enough even without being provoked.
He’d asked her—orderedher—to send her measurements to his three chosen dressmakers. She’d said,“Of course,”chin high and voice cool, as though this sort of thing happened to her every day. But she had no measurements, all her dresses being made or altered by hand and guesswork. So, two days ago, she and her aunt had gone to the least intimidating of the modistes in person, and Madelaine had subjected herself to measuring rodand tape, standing in her underclothes under the curious stares of shopgirls better dressed than herself and thoroughly hating Lord Cotereigh with her every humiliated breath.
“Oh yes, that coral ribbon is just the thing!” said her aunt, coming up behind her. “So pretty with your colouring. I’ll buy five yards.” She held up a hand, attracting a clerk’s attention. “I can’t think why Lord Cotereigh didn’t suggest it himself, but he seems to have it in his head that you’re to be all in blues and whites and little bits of gold.”
“Mm. Like the Virgin Mary.”
Her aunt gave that extremely dry pronouncement an admonishing look. But then the clerk came over and the ribbon was ordered, her aunt also explaining she’d placed an order for three pairs of gloves and the same of stockings. The bundles were wrapped up in paper, and Madelaine tucked them under her arm, refusing her aunt’s devout wish to carry them herself. And then finally, finally, they were out on the street.
It was hardly any less crowded there.
“I overheard in the shop just now,” said her aunt, taking Madelaine’s free arm, “that just up the street here there is a cloth warehouse where Lady Lloyd’s wedding clothes are being displayed, and that they’re the finest London has ever seen. Do let’s go and see them—we might as well, there are reams and reams of muslin yet to buy.”
Madelaine’s heart sank, but her aunt was enjoying herself too much for her to do anything other than smile and brightly agree. It was hot and crowded on the pavement, and her aunt was puffing by the time they reached the warehouse, her plump face glowing.
The sight of the wedding clothes must be popular—there was a queue. They joined it, Madelaine’s heart sinking further, down to somewhere full of sharp rocks and shadows. They shuffledforward, and there, finally, was the dress, its arms spread out, hanging from a pole like a sacrifice.
Her aunt gasped, and yes, itwasbeautiful, with rose-gold lamé over golden tissue, and all edged in delicate froths of pink-and-gold lace. Her own wedding dress had been blue. Deep ocean blue. And wasn’t that ironic, now Alfred lay in deep, unknown ocean depths? But there would be no light down there. No colour at all…
Her wedding dress now had no colour at all… She’d worn it until it was faded, lifeless… But not at first. Not until three years after the letter had come. Then one day she’d opened her closet, and there had been a peep of blue in the shadows at the back. The blue of the sky just before the moon rose, the blue of walking hand in hand over wild marsh as twilight fell, the sea a constant sound, so familiar it was her own heartbeat, Alfred’s voice another…
She’d worn the dress and felt very strange. Fragile and exultant and torn to shreds all at once. She’d worn it again a few days later, and she’d imagined Alfred seeing her in it. She’d imagined him at the end of the road to the parsonage as she’d so often seen him, coming to see her, walking along the hard-packed flint shingle, grinning, or kicking a stray stone… But he wouldn’t ever be there again. Never, never would he be there again.
That second time, wearing the dress, she’d cried until she was sick; she’d cried like she had the day the letter came.
But…the next week, she wore the dress again. She wore it to church and let her father’s sermon wash over her. She’d looked up at the distant beams and the hazy, glass-filtered light. She’d imagined she was at the bottom of the ocean, looking up, and the words and the light and the grace of God were the currents that washed and cleansed her…
It hadn’t helped. Nothing did. That was what she learnt, as year after year passed and she kept wearing the dress, the blue fabric fading with every wash. Time kept on passing and things kept on fading, and new memories and concerns built up like a shingle wall between your old life and your new but…nothing helped.
Alfred stayed dead.
The rose-gold wedding dress duly admired, her aunt bustled off to look at muslins. Madelaine trailed after her, giving desultory strokes to stacked rolls of velvets and poplins, silks and serges, twills and wools.
“I’d forgotten how much fun this could be,” her aunt said as they left the warehouse, her orders duly given. They headed back along the street to where they’d agreed to meet the coachman, half an hour late already, but her aunt couldn’t walk any faster. The coachman, in her aunt’s employ since her marriage, was long used to waiting.
“I do hope you haven’t stretched yourself, Aunt. There hardly seems any need, not when Lord Cotereigh is being so…generous.” How uncomfortable, being indebted to a man she reviled.
“Nonsense. Not at all. I’ve had little sums tucked away here and there for a long time, just waiting to be needed. It gives me great joy to spend it on you.”
“But isanyof this needed? The list of things he wants us to order! It all seems so absurd. I begin to think Lord Cotereigh likes to spend money just for the sake of it. What a waste on a meregame. Think how much good the sum could do if spent on those who really needed it.”
“I doubt he sees it as any sum at all. Men of his rank lose ten times the amount in one sitting at the gaming tables.”
Madelaine only pursed her lips. She couldn’t imagine Lord Cotereigh ever standing up at the end of the night and being the loser.
“When my dear Charles was alive,” said her aunt, speaking of her late husband, “I used to be out in fashionable society much more than I ever am now, so Idoknow what men of his rank can be. We were young…life wasfun. And unwise and giddy—and I was the giddiest of them all. Me, a country parson’s daughter, suddenly wedded to an earl? Oh, I was giddy and unwise, all right. London didn’t know what to make of me, and I didn’t know what to make of it. What dear Charles ever saw in me…”
Madelaine squeezed her aunt’s arm against her side. “Your beauty, dearest aunt—both inside and out. And it was the inner that won him—your dear, dear goodness of heart. My uncle was the most sensible of all men to see it, and revere it, as it so deserved to be revered.”
