12 

Miss Cummings, there’s a lump in the bottom of my bag.” Twelve-year-old Virginia fingered the knot between her thumb and forefinger. “Right here in the corner.”

Sarah reached for her scissors. “You probably need to trim the seam. Turn the bag inside out.”

Virginia complied, and Sarah saw how wide the seam had become at the bottom of the bag, creating a glut of fabric at the fold. She handed the scissors to the girl and explained to the whole group the importance of keeping the seam an even narrow width. A minute later Virginia had trimmed her seam and turned her bag again, this time in satisfaction.

“Can I really use this for a purse?” the girl asked.

“Of course,” Sarah answered.

Around the table, other girls had lifted their eyes for the answer. Before each one was a small bag with the top turned and stitched down to create a casing. The project had consumed the sewing class for the last two weeks. The bags ranged from heavy satin to corduroy to tweed, and Sarah was confident they would all be serviceable. She had been careful not to allow any girl to get too far into the project without acceptable stitching that would hold up under use.

“We’re going to use a thin cord for the drawstring,” Sarah explained and began to distribute lengths of ivory braided cord likely left over from dining room drapes or reupholstering a parlor settee. Sarah did not much care where it had come from, only that it was thin enough and neutral enough in color to be paired with the variety of fabrics the girls had chosen for their bags.

“Won’t it fray?” Melissa asked.

“We’ll tie a knot on each end and stitch down the end in a ball,” Sarah answered. “You can practice your tiniest catch stitches.”

“It looks so plain,” Mary Margaret observed.

“You can add a row of lace around the top of the bag if you like,” Sarah said. “We have several laces to choose from.” She demonstrated how to feed the cording through the casing at the top of the bag and pull it through so that both ends hung out the same small opening. When the ends were pulled tight, the bag drew closed.

Most of the girls were eagerly positioning their strings. Jane’s hands had slowed down to doing almost nothing.

Something was wrong with Jane, Sarah thought. The week before she could not wait to work on her bag, and today she had hardly touched her project. Jane’s dark head bent over her bag, which lay flat on the table, but her fingers did little more than stroke the gray tweed. Sarah turned her attention to the other end of the table. If Jane was unhappy about something, let Simon Tewell deal with it. Sarah had bigger problems to sort out. In her mind, she had two carefully crafted and deliberately understated versions of the note she would send to Bradley Townsend the following afternoon, but she still could not make up her mind which one would be the most persuasive and leave the greatest opening for him to invite her out again.

The girls chattered among themselves as they wrestled with their drawstrings and unwound unnecessary lengths of lace, but Sarah did not interfere. She was grateful for the time to think. She was surprised, a few minutes later though, to hear the patter of a small child’s feet.

“Henry, slow down,” a mother’s voice admonished.

Sarah looked up to see Charlotte Shepard standing just inside the door. She nudged herself into politeness and stood to cross the room. “Hello, Charlotte.”

“Hello, Sarah.” Henry worked loose from Charlotte’s grasp, and her eyes tracked his progress as he ventured into the room. “I stopped in to pick up Stella from Lucy’s office and take her home with me. Lucy plans to stay late. She told me about your classes, so I thought Henry and I would drop in and say hello.”

Sarah gestured around. “This is it. We haven’t done anything complicated yet, but the girls seem to like it.”

“Henry, no, don’t touch that,” Charlotte called to her son, whose hand was raised over his head and poised over the latch to the cupboard that held the fabrics and thread. He turned his attention instead to running his fingers along the length of one wall and humming to himself, his blue eyes bright as ever.

“I’ve lost track of how old Henry is.” Sarah made the mild inquiry out of politeness. She never paid much attention to children, but she was surprised to see Henry looking more like a little boy than a toddler.

“He’ll be four in September,” Charlotte answered with a mother’s pride.

It seemed a lifetime ago that Charlotte Farrow, a kitchen maid herself, had hidden the existence of her son from the entire Banning household. Sarah had been in the courtyard that August afternoon when the woman caring for Henry had deposited him abruptly. For a time, Charlotte had let everyone think he was an orphan left for Lucy Banning Edwards to find. Sarah had fed and bathed him herself. It had seemed to her that being a nanny was better than working in the kitchen. When the truth had finally come out, Charlotte had survived the scandal by moving out of the mansion and marrying a man eager to adopt the baby.

“Marriage seems to suit you.” Sarah grasped for something to be polite about. Serena would know what to say. “How is Archie? Still working for Mr. Glessner?”

“Yes, and he loves it,” Charlotte answered.

Archie Shepard had escaped—sort of. He had successfully exchanged being a footman and coachman for the Bannings for being a clerk in the office of their neighbor’s farm machinery company. What Archie saw in Charlotte, Sarah never understood. But he had married her without judgment of her past, embraced her son, and taken them both away from the Bannings.

“If you’re here for Stella, you must still be working for Lucy,” Sarah remarked.

Charlotte nodded. “Just a few hours during the day. We don’t live in. You know how independent Lucy likes to be. And Archie is saving so we can have a bungalow of our own someday.”

A bungalow. Sarah forced her eyes not to roll. Charlotte had settled so easily—a husband happy to be a clerk, a day job as a maid, and the dream of a bungalow. That was not good enough for Sarah. Not when she had Bradley Townsend within reach. Not when she had Serena Cuthbert.

“I have some happy news,” Charlotte said.

“Oh?”

“Archie and I are having a baby!” Charlotte grinned.

Sarah smiled because she knew she was supposed to. “Congratulations.”

“The new little one should come around the middle of February. Archie is so pleased.”

“Tell him I said hello.”

“I will. I suppose Henry and I should get out of your way and go find little Stella. She’ll be looking for something to eat soon.”

Sarah nodded. “It was nice to see you, Charlotte.”

The maid’s life would never be good enough for Sarah—especially now that Serena Cuthbert had arrived.

Simon Tewell opened the door to the classroom and inhaled the mingled scents of textiles. Just as he had hoped, the girls were gone and Sarah was alone at one end of the table.

“Ah, Miss Cummings,” he said. “Finished for the day?”

Sarah nodded. “The girls have each completed a small drawstring purse.”

“I suppose they’ll be showing them off at dinner.” Standing opposite Sarah, Simon tucked a chair under the table.

“Yes, I suppose so.” Sarah folded a length of cotton. “Melissa got this out. I asked her to put it away.”

“If the girls are not listening to you, I’ll have a word with them,” Simon offered.

“No, don’t bother. They’re just excited.”

“They know better than to leave a mess behind. We have clear expectations about that sort of behavior.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Sarah tucked the folded fabric into the cupboard. “If she does it again, I’ll mention it myself.”

Simon nodded. “Yes, that’s better, no doubt. They need to respect your authority.” He was suddenly aware that he was staring at her—did she have any idea how beautiful she was?—and made himself glance around the room. “Have you tried out the sewing machine yet?”

Sarah turned toward the machine in the corner. “Not yet. A couple of the girls have asked about it.”

“You’re welcome to use it anytime,” Simon said, “even for your own projects. Perhaps you’d like to come early some day and experiment.”

“Perhaps.” Sarah picked up her hat from the table and arranged it on her head.

She was trying to leave, Simon realized. He wished he could come up with a reason why she should stay. Why she would want to stay.

“The girls would probably enjoy it if you shared a meal with them sometime,” Simon said. “Come for lunch, or stay for supper. The children eat early. I eat with them myself from time to time.”

Sarah picked up a tapestry bag she had begun carrying to class and her white gloves.

“You set a marvelous example for the girls by wearing the clothes you create,” Simon said. “Surely it’s an inspiration to them.”

“I must catch the streetcar, Mr. Tewell,” Sarah said. “Maybe I’ll see you next Friday.”

She swept out of the room with a new posture Simon had not seen before, an air about her he did not quite recognize.

Sarah got off the streetcar at Michigan and Eighteenth and sauntered toward the Banning mansion. It was still early. She had already freshened Leo’s room, dusted the parlor, and sorted the vegetables for tomorrow night’s dinner party. What was there to make her rush home only to write a note to Brad and put away the nearly finished gown? Now she would have all the time she needed to add the perfect finishing touches while she awaited another reason to wear the dress.

A few minutes later, Sarah entered the kitchen through the back door.

“Oh good, you’re back.” Mrs. Fletcher stirred a pot on the stove. “Mr. Leo is out tonight, but he sent word that tomorrow’s dinner party has become a luncheon party instead.”

“Lunch? Not dinner?”

“Didn’t I just say that? Are your ears stopped up?”

“No, of course not, Mrs. Fletcher.” Sarah fumbled. “It’s just that now we’ve lost half a day getting ready.”

“We’ll be ready. Change your clothes and let’s get to work.”

Sarah flew up the back stairs and burst into her room. The pink silk beckoned from its hook across the room, and Sarah answered the call, stepping around her narrow bed to finger the fabric once again, to let its cool shimmer slide through her hands, to close her eyes and hold her breath and imagine what the inside of the Palmer House ballroom must be like.