The wind coming off the river was particularly sharp today, and by the time she reached the high street Sophie’s face was numb and her fingers were chilled stiff even through her gloves. It was only another quarter mile to the instrument shop—but as soon as she arrived there she’d be put back to work. Probably tuning the new Rubini violins.
It wasn’t that the job was onerous, really, it was just... Today, for the first time in a long while, since well before Mr. Verrinder, Sophie had felt like she existed as something more than her responsibilities to her family. No siblings to oversee, no mother to assist, no father to either make proud or disappoint.
It had been just her. Just Sophie.
She wasn’t quite ready to let go of herself quite yet.
Impulsively, she ducked into the nearest storefront. Over the door the silhouette of a bewigged brass courtier proclaimed the owner asGiles & Co., Mercer and Draper, Est. 1794.
It was a palace of a place. Arched upper windows let the light flow through onto a cacophony of fabric on shelves and tables: chintz and bright-printed calico, cotton and linen and lace. Gleaming silks and satins and brocades poured from rods high on the walls, and one corner was a riot of jewel-toned ribbons, edging, and trim. Gilt thread and silver buttons gleamed beneath the glass of the counter at the far end of the room.
After the grays and browns of the town outside so much color and pattern seared the eye. Sophie chafed her hands to warm them, then made her way to the corner with the ribbons. The fabric required for new dresses was costly beyond her means at the moment, but she had enough for a little something to liven up a collar or a cuff.
As a mother and daughter finished paying for their goods and chattered out the door, Sophie reached out to brush her fingers along one bright ribbon: a flight of pink and gold lovebirds woven against a cream background. Something in the flow of it reminded her of musical staves—
“There’s a story goes with that one,” said a voice very near.
Sophie flinched and whirled, startled.
The man who’d spoken laughed, and grasped her elbow to stop her spinning. He had light gold hair and a neat beard running to gray, and his eyes were bright as pennies. Sophie started to tug her arm away—but he held on, though his smile stayed kind, and showed off an appealing set of laugh lines. “Steady, miss, there’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m the proprietor here—Mr. Giles himself, at your service—and I only wanted to let you in on the secret.”
He shook her elbow a little, then let his hand drop.
“Pleased to meet you,” Sophie said, because that’s what one said. The elbow he’d grabbed throbbed slightly, and she wondered if she’d find a bruise there later.
“Here.” Mr. Giles plucked the ribbon out of the rack and stretched it between his hands like a tightrope for a ropedancer to walk. “My father created this pattern on the day he first saw my mother. She was the daughter of a comte, back in France under the Bourbons. He was a mere silk weaver, only good for making the ribbons she wore around her throat. Nowhere near good enough to marry.”
He spun the ribbon into a circle and tied it off with a flourish, patterned birds fluttering and writhing as the knot pulled tight beneath his fingers.
“My mother wore this ribbon to a garden party, and caught the eye of a duc, who asked for her hand. Her father—my grandfather—was delighted, but my mother refused the match. So my grandfather locked her in her room until she chose to be reasonable.” He put one hand through the circle and twisted, so the ribbon banded around his wrist like a manacle.
Sophie shivered.
The mercer’s smile flashed a few more teeth. “The Revolution began the next day. My grandfather fought to hold out against the peasants who stormed his estate, but by sunset he had been dragged away to the Bastille. As he was marched to the guillotine, my father ventured into the smoking ruins of his estate and freed my mother, still trapped in her boudoir. They took her jewels and found a ship and crossed the Channel, to England. They wed as soon as they got the license, and were happily in love for the rest of their lives.” He freed his wrist and held out the ribbon, balanced like a coronet on the palm of his hand.
Sophie hesitated, chewing on her lip. She was used to shop folk being insistent about their wares: it was part and parcel of the trade. And the ribbon was very lovely. But she had the unshakable thought that by taking the ribbon, she would be accepting far more than just a trinket.
These were the kind of warning thoughts she was trying to pay better attention to.
“Come, come,” Mr. Giles said. He grasped her at the wrist and turned her hand over, setting the ribbon in the middle of her palm, where it tickled her fingers into closing around it.
His other hand held longer than she liked, wrapped around her wrist.
Behind him, the door swung open. Mr. Giles dropped her hand and turned toward the door, a little too quick.
A woman walked in, and Sophie forgot about everything else.
This woman wasbreathtaking.
Auburn hair that gleamed gold where the light caught strands slipping free of their pins. Hazel eyes that sparkled with more gold in their rich depths. A perfect pink bud of a mouth, high cheekbones, roses blooming red against the cream of her complexion. A cheap dress of worn gray wool, soft as moonlight—but beneath it a figure that had Sophie’s hands curling with the need to shape it, her musician’s fingers playing over every curve and contour.
She shook herself. Useless. Sophie’d been with a few pretty girls, but never one so pretty as this. She might as well have tried to pluck the moon from the sky.
This woman was how she’d imagined every cruel heartbreaker in every old ballad she’d ever heard. If you were lucky, you pined away for love of her. If you weren’t lucky, you won her, lost her, and were damned.
Here was Sophie, craving damnation.
“Miss Crewe,” said the mercer.
