Read Chapter 27: The Critic's Choice

The calico gown hung on its stand like a promise, and Elise was still pinning the waist seam when the front bell chimed. She did not look up. She had learned, in the last two days, to guard her attention the way she guarded the last of the midnight silk—close to her chest, with both hands.

Colette Vernet's voice carried through the atelier's main floor, bright and trenchant as a fresh blade. "Miss Moreau! I hear you've been busy while the menfolk argued above stairs."

Elise set down her pins. Straightened. By the time Colette swept into the workroom, she stood composed in front of the gown, as if standing sentinel over a sleeping child.

"Mademoiselle Vernet." Elise inclined her head. "You find us in the middle of work."

"Good. That's exactly what I want to find you in." Colette's fox-fur collar glistened, though the spring air was mild. Her eyes went to the calico gown, then past it, to the three mannequins bearing half-finished pieces, to the cutting table with its scatter of pattern paper and chalk. "They say you've reinvented the house of Vasseur in a week. They say Madame Auclair cancelled her long-standing arrangement with Duret's shop because of you."

"They say many things." Elise reached for a muslin scrap and began, methodically, to fold it. "Most of them are embroidery on a plain cloth."

Colette laughed, a genuine sound. "I like you more every time I meet you." She moved toward the nearest mannequin, and Elise felt her muscles tense. The gown there was only a shell—no trim, no finishing—but the line was hers, all hers, and no one outside the house had seen it yet.

"Is this the autumn collection?" Colette traced the draped shoulder seam with one gloved finger.

"Part of it. It's not finished."

"I want to write a feature on you." Colette turned, facing Elise fully. "The new woman of couture. From the worktable to the top of the house in a matter of months. The city will eat it up."

Elise felt the offer land in her chest like a dropped weight. Exposure. The one currency she did not have to pay for. And, if Colette offered it, possibly more—a mention that would bring clients, or at least curiosity, before the opening.

"On what terms?" Elise asked.

Colette's smile widened. "I want a look at the collection. The real one. Not this"—she gestured at the calico—"but the pieces you'll show. A private preview. I'll write the story honestly, and it will be a good one, because I believe it will be true."

Behind her, the door to the fitting room creaked. Yvette emerged, arms full of a bolt of midnight silk that had just arrived from Lyon—the good bolt, the expensive one, approved after Julien's grudging concession. The girl froze when she saw Colette, clutching the fabric like a shield.

"That's the one, isn't it?" Colette's eyes glittered. "The silk. I've heard rumors—even the old houses can't get their hands on that hue anymore."

"Yvette, take it to the storeroom," Elise said quietly. "Please."

Colette's gaze followed Yvette as she slipped past them. There was something predatory in the way she watched the girl's retreating back. Elise had seen that look before, at the Auclair fitting—the way certain women appraised a good pair of hands, a quick eye, a careful finger with a needle.

"Mademoiselle Vernet," Elise said. "The collection previews in less than a week. What I show you now would be a skeleton. I'd rather you write about what you've seen of the house at work—the fittings, the clients, the tempo—than present you with unfinished bones."

"Bones tell a story, too." Colette's voice was casual, almost idle. "But I understand caution. The wrong eye at the wrong moment can kill a season." She paused, and her tone shifted, light as dust. "That girl who just left. Quick hands. Where did you find her?"

Elise's stomach tightened. "She came to us through a recommendation. Nothing more."

"No training at Chambre Syndicale?"

"She has apprenticed with us. She has grown."

Colette nodded slowly. "I'm starting a women's magazine, you know. Fifteen thousand copies to start, distributed through the better cafés, the galleries, the hotels. I'll need a head seamstress for the editorial workroom—someone who can turn a sketch into a gown in forty-eight hours. That girl could do it, with the right guidance."

The words hung in the air like smoke from a struck match.

"No." Elise said it before she could think. The single syllable landed flat and final in the small room.

Colette's eyebrow lifted. "No—you won't consider it, or no, she isn't available?"

"Both." Elise stepped forward, placing herself between Colette and the door Yvette had taken. "She belongs to this house. We are rebuilding, and every pair of hands is spoken for. I won't offer her up for sale, not even for a feature in your magazine."

The silence stretched three heartbeats. Elise could feel the pulse in her throat, thrumming with the risk she had just taken. Colette's column could make the house. It could also bury it, with a sentence about how the new Vasseur was already falling apart, how the staff were leaving, how the talent was fleeing to better prospects.

But the alternative—trading one of her people for press—was a debt she could not spend.

Colette tilted her head, studying Elise the way one studies a painting whose value one is trying to determine. "You mean that," she said at last.

"Every word."

"And if I offered to pay you for the feature—a modest fee, call it a commission for exclusive access? Would your answer be different?"

The cash would be significant—could bridge part of what the creditors were owed by Friday. Elise thought of Julien's face the evening before, when he'd said, "They'll accept partial payment, if we can show real orders." She thought of the debt that sat on the house like a stone in its chest.

She did not hesitate.

"My answer is the same. The house is not for sale in pieces."

Colette laughed again, soft and appreciative. She gathered her fox fur around her shoulders and walked past Elise toward the front of the atelier. At the doorway she paused, one hand on the frame.

"I came here," she said, "to find out whether you had the instincts of a designer or the salary of a shop girl. You have more nerve than both." She turned her head, meeting Elise's eye. "I'll write my feature. Not because you showed me your collection. Because you refused to show me your hand."

The bell chimed as she left. Elise stood in the sudden quiet of the workroom, hands trembling faintly at her sides. Behind her, the door to the fitting room cracked open again.

Yvette's face appeared, pale and wide-eyed. "Mademoiselle? Did I—was it about me?"

"You're safe," Elise said. "Everyone is safe. Back to work."

Yvette nodded and disappeared, but Elise stayed where she was, the image of Colette's knowing smile burning in her memory. The feature would come—unearned, unasked for, and with it the attention of every eye in Paris. That was good.

But Colette had seen Yvette. And Colette wanted reliable stories to fill her new magazine. Elise forced herself to breathe.

When she returned to the calico gown, her fingers were steady again. She picked up her shears and began to cut the final seam. She didn't notice the letter until the blade snicked through it.

A slip of paper, tucked low on the cutting table beneath the pattern weights. Not there a half hour ago. She unfolded it. One line, in a neat, unfamiliar hand:

*Some tongues wag for free. The right one will cost you a name.*

No signature. Gold letterhead at the top, embossed with the monogram of the Grand Hôtel, where Duret kept his Paris suite.

Elise folded it again, slowly. Then she looked at the clock. Julien was upstairs, reconciling the books. She had a letter to write to Helene—but now, perhaps, also a word to have with the doorman who let strangers into the workroom.