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Remembrance knocked smartly on the front door of the house and tried not to glare at the cast-iron knocker while she waited for an answer. There was a small knot of worry at the bottom of her stomach. She wished she didn't have to take this time away from her workshop, and there was also the worry that she might not be able to find what she needed at all.
"May I speak with Mrs. Fleming?" she asked when a girl in a plain dress and clean apron answered the door.
"Of course." The girl moved back in order to allow Remembrance to step into the front hall, then disappeared farther into the house. It was a neat hall with white walls and a carefully swept floor. Some coats, hats, and a bonnet hung in an orderly row on pegs by the door.
After only a moment's wait, Mrs. Fleming appeared, tall and dark haired in a simple but respectable dress. A young girl of maybe five or six trailed along behind her.
"Mrs. Fleming, I hope you remember me. I believe Mrs. Whitlow introduced us previously. I am Miss Quincy."
"Of course. I am acquainted with your work, Miss Quincy, and am pleased to see you again." Mrs. Fleming nodded to Remembrance, then gestured to the child. "This is my daughter, Charity."
"Hello, Miss Fleming." Remembrance said as the little girl ducked out from behind her mother's skirts and gave Remembrance a tiny awkward curtsy.
"Come into the parlor," Mrs. Fleming said. "I'll have Aveline make us tea."
"This is not strictly a social call, but tea would be lovely." Remembrance tugged off her gloves and bonnet as she followed Mrs. Fleming through to the equally orderly parlor.
"So what is it if not a social call?" Mrs. Fleming asked once they'd settled and she had sent her daughter back to the kitchen.
"I have a business proposal to put to you. My supplier has recently proven to be unreliable." To put it extremely mildly. The swindling ass had been chronically unreliable and overcharged on top of that. Remembrance had put up with it for longer than she should have based on the convenience of being able to purchase all her materials from one merchant. That, however, was no longer worth the trouble he caused her. "I am looking for new ways to purchase the cloth and other materials. Mrs. Whitlow has told me you make very fine lace, and I was wondering if you would be willing to supply me with a few skeins as the need arises."
"I'm flattered my name was mentioned," Mrs. Fleming said. "How often do you think you will be in need of a few skeins of lace?"
"It's hard to say. I work on commission, as you know. The ladies who hire me usually make the decision if they would like lace included, although a lace edge is being more fashionable. I would, of course, contact you as soon as the commission came in to give you time to make the lace if you didn't have it on hand."
Mrs. Fleming regarded Remembrance keenly for a moment. "But it wouldn't be regular work."
"Well, I will admit I don't use lace as much as dressmakers or seamstresses do." Remembrance wondered if Mrs. Fleming had other clients. She probably did; she might even have enough craftswomen in need of lace that she could afford to turn occasional work down. If Mrs. Fleming wouldn't provide her with lace, Remembrance frankly didn't know who she would go to. Having to continue to search for a supplier and perhaps even lose clients over it was such an exhausting risk. For the hundredth time, she mentally cursed her ex-supplier.
"But I would be able to pay extra for lace," she said before she could talk herself out of making such an offer. "On account of it being by commission only, and because you will not have as much time to prepare the order as you might like."
A faint smile flickered across Mrs. Fleming's face. "Well, Miss Quincy, I think this arrangement could be quite advantageous for both of us."
"I'm glad you think so." Remembrance smiled as she mentally crossed one supplier off her list. A small extra fee would be worth it to know she would be able to acquire her lace from a reliable source. Besides, now that she was paying extra, she'd be able to make sure the lace Mrs. Fleming made for her was to her individual commissions' exact specifications. Now if only today's other meetings would go as satisfactorily, she could be back to work tomorrow without needing to worry about where her cloth and thread would come from.
"Georgiana, I—"
Both she and Mrs. Fleming turned at the sound of the voice.
There was a man standing in the doorway, holding a fat-cheeked baby in his arms.
Both she and Mrs. Fleming rose at the sight of him.
"I'm sorry. I seem to be intruding," he said.
Mrs. Fleming waved that off. "Nonsense. Benjamin, come in and meet Miss Quincy. Miss Quincy, this is my brother, Mr. Benjamin Lewis."
He was tall like his sister and dark haired like her too, with the same strong features, sharp nose, and keen gaze. He was also without a coat, his hair slightly rumpled where the baby had obviously grabbed several handfuls.
"I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Lewis." Remembrance gave him a small curtsy.
"Likewise, Miss Quincy." He tried to bow around the child in his arms, which ended up being a very silly thing to witness.
Remembrance bit back a smile.
"Ah, tea," Mrs. Fleming said as the maid came in behind Mr. Lewis with the child, Charity, trailing behind her.
There were a few moments of shuffling as Mrs. Fleming took the tray bearing the tea set. The maid took the baby from Mr. Lewis despite his protests and herded both children out of the room.
She returned a few moments later with an extra teacup for Mr. Lewis, who seated himself beside his sister.
"Miss Quincy and I have been discussing me providing her with lace," Mrs. Fleming said as she poured tea for all of them into the fine, if slightly old-fashioned, china cups. "Miss Quincy is a quiltmaker, one of the finest in the city, in fact."
Inexplicably, Mr. Lewis reddened at that. "Ah." He reached for his cup. "Well, the lace you make is very fine." He glanced at Remembrance and then away, taking a sip of his tea.
"Indeed," Remembrance said as Mrs. Fleming looked pleased with all the praise.
"What sort of quilting do you do?" Mr. Lewis asked, glancing at her again.
"All sorts. Although wedding quilts have been popular for a long time and still are," Remembrance said delicately. “What do you do, Mr. Lewis?"
"I'm a silversmith. I often work on commission."
Remembrance's gaze went to the silver teapot on the table, then back to Mr. Lewis. "That sounds fascinating."
He smiled a little at that.
"We do many small jobs but also commissions for larger pieces." He nodded to the tea set she'd been looking at. "Teapots and dinner sets are becoming more common. With more factories opening up and more bankers and merchants making the city their home, there is increasingly more work to be had."
"Yes." Remembrance thought of the daughters and wives of merchants, bankers, and factory owners, all of them eager to have fine needlework items but without the inclination or the skill to do the work themselves.
"Yes, I suppose you would know, us being colleagues of a sort."
She blinked, caught off guard for a moment. She'd never had a man describe her as a colleague before. She’d very rarely met one willing to admit what she did was work at all, in fact, much less the sort of skilled craftsmanship a silversmith must do.
Her own lips curved up into a smile, and Mr. Lewis smiled back.
Mrs. Fleming spoke up then, turning the conversation to lighter things like the weather and a few mutual acquaintances. Mr. Lewis drank his tea and stayed quiet beside his sister, letting her fill up the space for the both of them.
When her teacup was empty, Remembrance rose. "Thank you, Mrs. Fleming, for your hospitality and for agreeing to my proposal."
"You are very welcome. Thank you for bringing me your business." Mrs. Fleming offered her hand, and Remembrance did not hesitate to shake it.
"May I see you out?" Mr. Lewis asked.
Remembrance nodded, already reaching for her bonnet. "If you'd like." Remembrance wondered why he would want to. Perhaps he was simply being polite. She eyed him interestedly as they stepped out into the hall.
"I have a business proposal of my own, I think," Mr. Lewis said. "I would like to seek your professional council."
"About quilting?" Remembrance asked dubiously, trying to imagine what kind of quilting or sewing advice Mr. Lewis could possibly want. It had not escaped her notice he'd said he wanted her council, not his sister.
Mr. Lewis hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "Yes. It's only a small project, but as you are skilled in this and I am not, your guidance would be useful, I think."
"In that case, come by Thursday morning if that time is convenient, and we can discuss your project then," Remembrance said, more than a little intrigued. She removed one of her cards from her purse and handed it over.
"Thank you." He took her card and considered it seriously before turning his gaze back on her. "Thursday morning will work well. Shall we say nine?"
"That would be suitable." He'd more than piqued her interest. She would have liked to have stayed and asked him for specifics about this mystery project of his, but she was very aware that she'd already made an appointment to talk about thread supply with Mrs. Cunningham over the noon meal. She would have to hurry as it was.
"If you will excuse me, Mr. Lewis, I'll see you on Thursday."
He opened the front door for her, then stepped aside, allowing her to sweep by him out onto the street.
~*~
Remembrance would be lying if she said she wasn't so very curious about what exactly Mr. Lewis had to propose to her. Gentlemen or men in general rarely came to her with commissions. Ladies brought commissions, design ideas, cloth they wanted to be incorporated, and specifications for what they wanted done, sometimes right down to the type of thread they wished her to use. While the money for such pieces almost always came out of a gentleman's pockets, they themselves hardly ever darkened her doorstep.
But this project seemed to be Mr. Lewis's and his alone.
It was curious enough that it stayed in her mind over the next few days.
Maybe Mr. Lewis was interested in commissioning a wedding quilt for a fiancée who did not have the means to commission one herself. Perhaps he meant it as a surprise for their new life together. That would fit with the gentle attentiveness he'd demonstrated when they'd met.
But maybe his business was something different altogether.
Of the three girls she employed, she chose Betty to be with her when Mr. Lewis called.
As she did before any client meeting, she made sure the parlor was spotlessly clean. Betty was dressed in a plain but neat dark dress with embroidery she had done herself at the cuffs and collar. It was one of Remembrance's stipulations that all the girls who worked for her dressed well and did their hair up, particularly on the days that clients called. If a girl could not afford a clean, well-made dress, Remembrance had one made for her.
The cost was a business investment after all. Remembrance had learned early on that a woman's professionalism and skill was judged on the cleanliness of her parlor and the neatness of her dress.
The dress she had chosen for herself was dark red with a hint of lace at the collar and a matching wide red belt with a buckle. She had hesitated over the belt when she'd dressed that morning, not sure it would be in poor taste to wear another silversmith's work, but it was the only belt she had that went. She'd pulled her hair back and secured it a twist at the back of her head, making sure her spectacles were straight and the glass clean.
Perhaps she'd spent more time getting ready that morning than was strictly necessary. He'd been kind and had treated her as if they were equals, and she didn't want him to think less of her upon their second meeting.
Her parlor was separated from the room where she and the girls worked by large double doors at one end. That way she could choose whether to have the doors open during meetings with potential clients, allowing them to see the workspace with its wide sunny windows, the quilt frames set up underneath, and the girls in their good dresses bent studiously over their work. Or she could choose to close the doors, giving the parlor a quieter, more intimate feel.
Today she chose to leave the doors open, trusting Mr. Lewis would appreciate the sight of her workspace, even as different as it must have been from his.
He arrived punctually at nine. Elizabeth let him in and showed him to the parlor, where Remembrance was waiting.
He was dressed, unlike last time, in a smart brown coat with a package tucked under one arm. He'd looked softly rumpled then, unassuming with a baby in his arms. Now he looked very much the respectable craftsman and business owner that he was. She found she preferred her first impression of him.
"Mr. Lewis." She smiled at him anyway and gestured to a seat across the table from her. "Please sit. Would you like coffee before we begin?"
"Yes, thank you." He sat in the seat she indicated, and Elizabeth moved silently to sit beside Remembrance.
She poured for the three of them, conscious that her coffeepot was neither as new nor as fine as Mrs. Fleming's tea service had been. She would not allow herself to become nervous, though; there was nothing wrong with her teapot. She sat back and regarded him as he drank his coffee.
"So, Mr. Lewis, how may I be of service?"
"Ah." Mr. Lewis set aside his cup and reached for the package he'd brought, undoing the string and folding the cloth aside to reveal the much finer fabric underneath.
He shook out first one and then another dress, lovely blue, and pink with what could have been taken for a print much like Remembrance's own dress at a distance but was to her trained eye obviously embroidered. It was incredibly skilled work; she knew from experience how difficult it was to embroider like this, every flowering identical and evenly spaced. It would have taken someone—or more likely, a group of women—a long time to embroider the entire dress.
"My mother made these." Mr. Lewis's fingers moved carefully against the cloth, his hand smoothing it as he went. "I was hoping they could be made into a quilt."
Ah. "A remembrance quilt." Not as common as wedding quilts but still common enough if one was sentimental in that way. "It's not uncommon for gentlemen to have them made in order to remember a wife, sister, or mother."
He looked up at her, surprised for a moment, then strangely pleased, his mouth curving into a smile. He had a small dimple in one cheek that creased in when he smiled. It made him look younger, his face softer.
"What sort of design were you thinking of?" she asked, pulling her gaze away from it.
He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and smoothed it out on the tabletop, beside the coffee service. There was writing across the back and a quite detailed drawing of a teapot from a number of different angles, but Remembrance didn't think that was what she was supposed to be looking at.
Instead, Mr. Lewis pointed to the sketches along the edges of the paper. "Something like this, maybe."
Remembrance leaned as far forward as she could, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose as she studied the design, taking in the twisting vines with acanthus leaves, bunches of grapes, and large detailed flowers. It was lush, naturalistic, and nostalgic in that it reminded her strongly of the designs she had grown up learning to sew rather than the softer, more romantically floral designs that were popular now.
"This would make a lovely whole-cloth quilt." She reached forward to delicately trace across one of the stylized leaves. "You will want it to be elegant, not garish or childish, and in appliqué, it will be harder. Especially given your limited color choices. Still not impossible." She considered the design for a moment, the quilt taking shape in her mind. "Make the body a white linen with most of the design traced out in stitching, but the blue and pink cloth used for the flower, perhaps, allowing them to bloom in color at certain intervals across the white. If you have or would be willing to purchase some green cloth, we could do some of the leaves as well. Perhaps the leaves closest to the flower’s base. It would be unusual but striking."
She looked up to find him smiling again.
"That sounds lovely," he said. "I—" He broke off and looked away, his smile slipping. "It would mean a great deal to me to have a quilt like that."
He must miss his mother; she must have meant a great deal to him. She thought of her own mother, who came every Friday morning to sit and talk with her about her siblings and their families or listen to Remembrance talk about her latest commissions and the stories behind them over breakfast. She could not imagine life without her mother's strong, determined presence. For a moment, she had to fight the urge to reach out and comfort him in some way.
She did not, however. Instead, she said, "I would be happy to take on your commission."
He hesitated, his gaze flicking to the coffee service and then back to her. "Would you accept in payment in kind?"
She absolutely did not accept that, nor did she accept credit. Her clients paid her in full with real currency or they did not receive her services.
But she wouldn't lie to herself—she liked him, and the project looked fascinating to design, so she would break her rule this once.
She looked down at the beautiful drawing of the teapot and thought of the tea service Mrs. Fleming had used, one that had no doubt come from his shop. She could use a new service to have out when clients came.
"Very well, Mr. Lewis."
"Thank you. You will have to come by my shop and we can discuss your commission for me." He was beaming now, his eyes crinkling at the corners as if they were co-conspirators with some private joke. Colleagues again, she found herself smiling back, leaning toward him just a little, even though there was a table in the way.
"Then I will make an appointment to come by your shop."
"I look forward to it." He stood, obviously preparing to leave.
Remembrance did as well. "I will keep the dresses and these drawings if you don't mind," she said. "I will draw up a more detailed design for the overall quilt, which you will have the opportunity to approve, of course, before I begin work."
Mr. Lewis nodded and then paused, his gaze catching on her workroom, visible through the open doors, her worktables neatly organized. Lily and Samantha were bent over a quilt frame, currently occupied by her latest commission. He seemed quite arrested by the sight.
Remembrance gestured toward the room. "Would you like to see my workshop, Mr. Lewis?"
"Yes, please."
She led the way in, and he followed. Elizabeth stayed behind to refold the dresses and tidy up from the coffee.
Remembrance had a few smaller projects folded on the worktable, a set of embroidered handkerchiefs she was making for a soon-to-be bride, but Mr. Lewis's gaze was caught by the large quilt that Lily and Samantha were working on.
They both moved closer so they could see the pattern of a willow tree stitched in the center. Several complex borders of flowers and leaves encircled it, spreading out to the edges of the quilt. It was made of one solid piece of white linen, the pattern stitched, pale and delicate, in undyed thread. She watched his eyes widen and his lips part with obvious appreciation and something very close to wonder.
"This is a wedding quilt for the eldest daughter of a shipping company owner." Remembrance said, unable to hide her pride. "She chose a willow tree, the motif of her fiancé's family, I believe."
"It's beautiful." Mr. Lewis's hand moved as if he wanted to reach out and touch the pristine cloth, but he stopped himself halfway.
"Most of the wedding quilts I do are solid white like this one, but sometimes a bride will come with a yard of floral printed cloth from England or France she'd like me to incorporate." She did reach forward, passing her hand just above a patch of floral border she'd sewn herself. She didn't directly touch the fabric, though—white quilts needed to be touched as rarely as possible.
"Will that be similar to what you do with my quilt?" Mr. Lewis asked.
"Possibly. The technique of appliqué will be the same, but I will piece it together a little differently, I think."
His gaze went back to the quilt, tracing over the needlework. "My mother used to make quilts like this. She was a seamstress, so she did not do a great deal of quilting or embroidery, but sometimes she would."
"Is the design you showed me one of hers?"
Mr. Lewis's expression became strangely closed and distant. "No." He didn't elaborate, and he looked so grave that she didn't want to pursue it.
When he did finally look back at her, he seemed to have shaken off some of the melancholy. "May I ask you something? I know this is an imposition, but I would so very much appreciate it if you could accommodate me. Would I be able to stop by your workshop from time to time once you've started working on the quilt? Just to see how it progresses."
She blinked. "Of course."
He'd looked as if he'd been expecting her to say no or be somehow affronted by the request. All of her clients stopped by regularly to check on her progress. If anything, she had ladies who hovered too much, steely-eyed mothers of the soon-to-be brides who wished to watch over her shoulder as she sewed every stitch, criticizing her every move although none of them would dream of lifting a hand to actually do the work themselves. She'd had to put her foot down on more than one occasion with such clients, but she couldn't imagine Mr. Lewis having the time or inclination to be that involved.
Truthfully, she would like to show her work to him again, watch his eyes light up over something she had made for him.
"You may stop by when you wish. Although if I am busy with another client, you may have to come back later."
"Of course." His gaze went to the quilt once more before he pulled it away with obvious effort. "Thank you so much, Miss Quincy."
"My pleasure." It was going to be a fascinating piece. It felt good to be making it for someone she liked, whose company she had found pleasant.
They went back to the parlor, and Mr. Lewis collected his hat.
"I hope to see you soon, Miss Quincy." He looked down at her, his gaze soft yet intensely focused as always. "Please call on me soon, and we will discuss what sort of service you would like me to make."
"I hope to see you soon as well, Mr. Lewis," Remembrance said and meant it.