Oh, Madame Lucile, can we not peek at them when they are here?” Annie, one of Lucy’s best seamstresses, asked.
“You may look up and curtsy, but no one but Edith and I will be in the Rose Room while we do this fitting. This is a special day, and I want no missteps. We will fit the gown to her, so even Hebe won’t be needed this time,” she told her assembled staff and shooed them all back to work.
Lucile had hired four other “living mannequins,” every one of them nearly six feet tall with perfect curves. They all had fair hair and classic features. She had them sitting so they would not tower over their royal guests, but she wanted her “goddesses” to be able to see them so close—and here!
When the new century dawned in 1900, word was that old Queen Victoria was ailing. But the Maison Lucile was not. Lucile had seldom felt more professionally energized—or personally desperate.
Energized because her new client Mary, Duchess of York, was actually stopping by for a fitting of a stunning blue satin, heavily embroidered gown Lucile had created for her after a visit to St. James Palace to show her the sketch of it. Previously, designs for the duchess had been carefully packed and sent off in a carriage, but this gown was special to Her Grace, and so to Lucile. The entire staff was thrilled because her husband, Duke George, was going to accompany her. At Victoria’s passing, he would become Prince of Wales when his father, “Bertie,” was crowned King Edward VII. And then someday, hopefully far distant, George would become King and their Queen would be in Lucile’s frocks. Let the other fashion salons like Norman Hartnell’s over in Bruton Street, which had been so snide, chew on that!
The only cloud that hovered over her excitement was that she hadn’t seen Cosmo in over a fortnight, since he was in Scotland. His mother was also ill, that pillar of Victorianism whom he had vowed to protect and honor at his father’s deathbed. Lucile pictured her as looking like Queen Victoria, still mourning her long-departed husband and the grand old days. Cosmo had sent Lucile a letter now and then, but she was shocked how much she missed him, and, worse, she feared that his ardor for her was cooling. And hers, more and more, was not, and that terrified her too.
“And do not be peeking out the window at them,” she threw back over her shoulder as it was obvious the royal carriage, one pulled by four horses instead of a pair, clattered up just outside the door. Yes, they were precisely on time. Lucile had been told that the duke was always prompt if not early. Obviously, he was a stickler for propriety, so everything had to go quickly and properly.
With Edith behind her and the others standing back, Lucile greeted them at the door with a curtsy and pleasantries. The duke was bearded and smoking a cigarette, no less, but no good to fuss about the smoke near all the fabrics as she had with other men. Women smoked now too, but she had no compunction about scolding them.
The royal couple often lived in their country home called Sandringham in Norfolk and, despite her excitement, Lucile found herself wondering if it was anything like Cosmo’s Maryculter in the Scottish countryside.
“This way, please, Your Graces,” she said and indicated the carpeted hall toward the private fitting room at the rear she had dubbed the Rose Room.
“A beehive of activity,” the duke said with a quick glance around. “Just the way I like to see our children at worthwhile tasks. Lead the way, then,” he added, she assumed to give her permission to walk ahead of them.
Oh, just wait until she wrote Cosmo all this. It had worried her so that Elinor had said his mother would never accept a divorced woman as a daughter-in-law, but if royalty approved of her, wouldn’t that count for something?
Things went well, though she could tell the duke did not like being penned in this small, frilly, pink room. He sat only briefly in the armed chair she’d brought from home, then stood or paced. Everyone knew he was an outdoorsman, a sportsman, but weren’t they all, from the squires to the noble males of England, including Cosmo—even Clayton, who had turned out to be a wretched husband for intellectual, emotional Elinor.
The dark-haired duchess was not as stunning as her mother-in-law, Princess Alexandra, but she was pretty. She held herself stiffly erect, head up, shoulders back as she was fitted. It was rumored she did not get on with her mother-in-law and—oh dear . . .
Lucile’s elbow knocked into the box of straight pins Edith held for her and they spewed all over the flowered carpet, even to the duke’s feet.
“Oh, sorry,” Lucile cried. “Edith and I will get them.”
“Not to worry,” the duke said. “Keep working there, as we are going to see the Queen. Here, let me help.” To Lucile’s surprise and embarrassment, he knelt next to the small dais on which his wife stood and helped Edith pick up pins.
Lucile didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The future Prince of Wales and King of England was kneeling at her feet. Wait until she wrote that to Cosmo!
“But I can tell you care for me, my darling Elinor,” Seymour pleaded. He shocked her by kneeling next to her chair at their private luncheon table and taking both her trembling hands in his. “Can you not be mine in body as well as in soul, as you have said?”
They had met several other times for luncheon at this Amphitryon restaurant in London, which had private dining rooms intended for discreet liaisons. She loved this man madly—Clayton liked him too—but she had not been able to take the final step, the plunge to surrender her body to him as she had her heart. For some insane reason, she was still faithful to a husband who now detested her, who said he was sick of her histrionics and temper tantrums.
Seymour Wynne Finch was all she had idealized and desired, as if he had stepped full blown as a hero from her heart and head. He was what she considered to be “the best type of Englishman,” well born and well educated, widely traveled. He had served his nation and was still a major in the Royal Horse Guards. He was a member of the Prince of Wales’s so-called Marlborough House set. And, nearly fifteen years ago, he had enjoyed an affaire de coeur with her onetime inspiration Lillie Langtry. Yet, he had been eating strawberries from her hand and kissing and licking her fingers with each bite today. She was nearly insane with desire, however much it must be the man’s first move. And yet she meant to—she must—put him off again.
“I told you, dearest,” she said, her voice trembling, “I know it’s de rigueur among our friends, but I am just not ready to become your lover, however much I love you. It’s not you—it’s—it’s me.”
He laid his head on her knees as if he were a little boy. She could feel the heat of him, fancied she could hear his heart beating. She shifted her hips slightly as he embraced her thigh and derriere with one arm.
Elinor knew full well that if she was discreet about the affair, Clayton would not give a damn. He’d gotten on well with Seymour when he’d visited them at Sheering Hall or their flat here in London. But however tempted she was to give in to her passions and his, it just was not her way. Yet in this moment she nearly swooned. This was truly romantic love, even without the blending of bodies.
He raised his handsome head and looked up at her. “I’m not worthy of your ideals, am I?” he asked. “It’s your moral code only to love those who fit your elevated sensibilities.”
“No, it isn’t that. You are my ideal man, and that makes this even more difficult.”
“I am so tempted to ravish you, my darling. But you know I would never presume that far.”
“And I am so tempted that there is only one thing to do, and that is not to give in. We—I must stop meeting you like this. I fear I’m fragile and will break—break my promises and rules.”
He suddenly looked so angry that she feared him for a moment. “Since you’ve decided, then so have I,” he said, clipping out his words with almost military precision. “I shall leave you now because it is so difficult to be near you and behave. And you would detest me forever if I acted the cad on my deepest desires not only to please but to possess you.”
She sucked in a sob as he stood and stiffly stepped back two paces.
“I won’t forget you or what we could have had,” he told her in a measured tone. “I wish you well in your marriage and your future.”
As he turned away, she almost screamed his name and ran after him. Her vivid imagination pictured her on the settee, even the floor, clinging to him, crying out his name as he pulled her skirts up. Her passion was so vivid when he quietly closed the door that she nearly imagined he had taken her.
She hated herself yet admired herself at the same time. She sat alone for a good hour, listening to the silence of the room and smashing strawberries she had been feeding him by hand.
“You’ve seemed so unhappy lately,” Lucile told Elinor as they left the theater together and waited in line for a hansom cabriolet.
“You should talk. You hardly smiled, let alone laughed at Ellen Terry’s jokes. You’re missing Cosmo, aren’t you?”
“Terribly. Once he’d been through the funeral for his mother, I thought he’d be back, but I only received a short note. Now that she’s gone, maybe the divorced woman is not such a diversion. Maybe I was his rebellion—but I thought he cared.”
They climbed up into the hansom and gave the driver Elinor’s address.
“And you?” Lucile asked. “Things with Clayton are . . .”
“Dreadful. At first I thought he would be proud of my writing, at least the money I earned. But he’s out of sorts that I’m the so-called first society woman to write under my own name, as if it were a shameful thing. Well, it’s his last name, so can’t he be proud of that? But listen then. Why don’t you do what I did to push Clayton to propose, as risky as that was? I recall it was partly your and Mother’s idea.”
Lucile gave a little laugh. “Run off to Monte Carlo, you mean, and hope he’ll follow?”
Elinor turned to her on the seat. “Is it not worth a try? After you’re gone, I could let on to him in a note that you are looking forward to events there, the dinners, the balls and theatricals—new people. Take Mother with you. Heaven knows, she’s sad enough seeing what’s become of me.”
“Nonsense. She’s proud of you.”
“She had such a happy first marriage and she wanted that for us. I’m beyond the pale for that, but you and Cosmo—who knows?”
“I’d hate to leave the shop right now, but I do have several workers I can trust to be in charge. He might worry about that, too, that I’m off having a good time instead of minding his investment. I’ll do it, if you’ll play your part too.”
“Playacting—that’s my forte lately, on the page and off.”
They shook gloved hands on that.