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As though reading her thoughts, Sylvia broke the silence to ask, “Do you still want to buy my half of the shop?”

No.

The word almost slipped out, but instinct held Izzie back. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate everything her sister had done, but what had happened between them had wounded her deeply. It would take time to heal the trust between them.

When Izzie didn’t answer, Sylvia continued, “Because I have an idea.”

“An idea?” she asked.

Sylvia placed her hands on the desk, as though preparing to deliver a speech she’d rehearsed many times.

“What if I stay on and help you run the business—not just during the war but for as long as we have the shop?” Sylvia asked. “I don’t have your talent for design and sewing, but I’m good at the business side of things. I’ve been thinking about how we could grow and change. What our mother built from nothing was incredible, but it could be so much more. With your eye… Izzie, I don’t see any reason that Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions couldn’t become a Hartnell or a Molyneux.”

Izzie let out a long breath. “That’s ambitious.”

“It is,” said Sylvia, her eyes sparkling. “It might even be mad, but I don’t think it’s completely mad.”

It was, Izzie realized, what she wanted but had never had the courage to dream of. A fashion house that was built on her mother’s legacy, her talent, and Sylvia’s acumen? That would be something to see, wouldn’t it?

“We’ll have to make it through the war first,” she said slowly.

“I agree,” said Sylvia. “Grand ambitions aren’t any good if we can’t make it out of rationing. I propose that we continue to operate as a dressmaker, but I could begin to pursue the type of client who is used to spending her money on Chanel and Schiaparelli and see if she will instead try bespoke British design while Paris is under occupation. Felicity’s—that is, Lady Winman’s—patronage will help.”

“And hopefully you can tempt some of the women who were at the fundraiser today,” said Izzie with a wry smile.

“Precisely,” said Sylvia. “I think that, with the press coverage that we received and the helpful fact that Lady Winman has the ear of the editor of Vogue, we could begin to build a truly bespoke side to the business slowly. No more of Maggie Shelton’s sketchbooks, but one-off designs that are exactly to the specifications of the client.”

She frowned. “How would that work? I’m stationed in Norfolk now, but I could be sent anywhere.”

“I would interview clients and take extensive notes that I could then send you via the post. You’d send back sketches until the client was satisfied. It might take a little longer, but these are women who are used to multiple fittings to perfect a dress. They will wait if it means having a one-of-a-kind Isabelle Shelton design.”

Izzie flushed at the thought of that. “An Isabelle Shelton…”

“It rolls off the tongue nicely, doesn’t it?” Sylvia asked.

It did indeed.

It felt almost too good to be true, but if Izzie knew one thing about her older sister, it was that Sylvia would will a promise into reality rather than let it fail.

Izzie leaned over the desk and stuck out her hand. “Shall we shake on it like in the films?”

Sylvia grasped her hand. “It’s a deal.”

Epilogue

September 1949

Sylvia stood on the corner of Davies and Bourdon Streets in Mayfair, surveying the shop front with her hands planted firmly on her hips.

It had taken Izzie and her months to find the right spot for their new home. She’d been surprised at how amenable her sister had been when she’d brought up the idea of moving from Glengall Road six months ago, but Izzie had simply put down her newly acquired reading glasses and said, “If you say it’s time, it’s time.”

They’d run the business via the post while Izzie served first in Norfolk and then in Dover. When the RAF had begun winding down the use of balloon units and Izzie had retrained as a telephone operator in Scotland, their letters had continued in just the same manner.

Then Izzie had been demobbed in August of 1945, and the sisters had had to learn once again how to work together in person. There had been growing pains, but everything had been helped by the soothing presence of William, whom Sylvia had married in 1944, a year after her divorce from Hugo had become official.

She smiled up at the shop front, remembering the lean times as the Board of Trade cut the value of coupons again and again. She and Miss Reid had despaired then, wondering how any women would be able to buy anything at all, but their customers, old and new, had continued to come to them with curtains, tablecloths, bedsheets—anything that could be made into clothes.

Steadily, through all of it, their bespoke clients had grown in number thanks to the help of Lady Winman and the women who had attended the first War Widows’ Fund fashion show. It was, Sylvia had to admit, more than a little satisfying to note that the charity’s heads were perfectly content to accept Sylvia and Felicity’s fashion show as a staple on its calendar on the understanding that it be kept at an arm’s length from the usual committee.