Alice Parker was running late. She tied her apron, two hasty knots. Tucked her crucifix under her collar and gave herself a quick look in the glass. One month in Park Lane and she’d grown accustomed to wearing a uniform. She’d feared she would hate it, feel pinched at the neck and the wrists. But she slipped into it so easily. This was how a soldier must feel, putting on fatigues. It made her pleasingly anonymous. She didn’t look like herself—she simply looked like a maid.
She adjusted her black armband. Mrs. King had handed it to her on her first day in the house.
“We’re in mourning for the old master,” she’d said evenly.
They didn’t seem mournful. Mr. de Vries was hardly cold in his grave. Yet the new mistress was making plans for a costumed ball, the best of the season, and was in urgent need of a sewing maid. Something about this awed Alice. It seemed like a very wicked thing to do, and that made the job rather more exciting. Was that strange? Her sister thought so. She said as much when she offered Alice the job.
“Don’t be a queer fish about things, all right? I need someone sensible to keep their eyes on the mistress. Someone invisible. Got that?” said Mrs. King.
Half sister was the correct moniker. Suitable, really, since they were only really half-alike. Fourteen years between them, and the only thing they ever shared was their mother. “All right, Dinah,” said Alice.
“It’s Mrs. King to you,” said Mrs. King. “No preferential treatment, understand?”
Alice made herself meek. “Of course not.”
Mrs. King looked doubtful. “You understand what I’m asking? You do get how a big job works?”
“Perfectly,” Alice said. “And I fancy a change.”
Mrs. King raised an eyebrow. “Are you in trouble?”
Trouble, trouble. Alice hated the word. It circled her, snared her, followed her all the time. “Trouble?” she said. “How would I get myself into trouble?”
Her sister studied her without blinking, a force stronger even than Alice’s own.
“Very well. Report to the house on Monday morning. I’ll smooth the way for you. Breathe a word to anyone that you know me and I’ll skin you alive.” Mrs. King put out her hand. It was sheathed in a calfskin glove, ivory colored. It was lovely. “Do we have a deal?”
Mother had small hands, too. It had been Alice’s job to button Mother’s gloves, keep her tidy, properly put together. Mrs. King had abandoned those chores long ago.
Alice congratulated herself for not giving anything away. For of course she was in trouble, about as deep as you could get. Sometimes it made the bile rise right up in her throat. All she’d wanted was to make a decent living. Shop girls looked so crisp and composed. She’d yearned to be one. Father had trained her behind the haberdasher’s bench, and she knew she was skilled with a needle, but she wasn’t about to be sweated out for nothing. She could sketch a garment faster than most girls could brush their hair. Even her plain work was tighter, more delicate, more perfect than any pattern. She swiped all the illustrated papers she could find, inhaled the advertisements. Alice studied the popular fashions as if under a microscope, watching the lines shifting each season: lengthening, narrowing, tilting forward at the bust, sweeping around the hips. Secretly, she longed to design her own. But she needed to be apprenticed. And that required cash.
It wasn’t hard to get a loan. She had her wits about her—she knew all about sharks. There were women in the neighborhood who’d pawned everything they owned and still couldn’t pay off their debts. Alice scorned them. She went to a woman called Miss Spring, who kept a very plain and respectable house on Bell Lane. Miss Spring had a soft voice, and gentle manners, and kept immaculate oilcloths. She listened to Alice’s request, took scrupulous notes, and offered an advance against future wages—calculated at seven-and-six a week, no need for sureties, all agreed on note of hand alone.
Alice spent six months as a machinist before she made it to the workroom bench, and she only made three shillings a week. Even the experienced girls were only making five-and-six. Alice watched her debt rising slowly, like a tide, pooling around her ankles. She visited Miss Spring’s house and found it boarded up. But the men who took the repayments still turned up every fortnight, teeth gleaming. She met them on the lane at the end of the road, where Father couldn’t see them.
“Next week,” she said. “I’ll catch up next week.”
“Of course, miss,” they said, all courtesy. “You take your time.”
It would have been better if they’d got out a lead pipe to beat her, if they’d sent her screaming down the lane. Then she could have gone running for help without feeling any shame. As it was, she had the upside-down feeling of being sucked deeper and deeper into something she couldn’t control, something that presaged disaster—for there was only one way things could go with a bad debt. She told no one.
The collectors gave off a strange smell: powdered chalk mixed with gardenias. The scent stayed in her nostrils late at night. She wasn’t sleeping well. Saying her prayers didn’t soothe her in the least.
Protection was what she needed. And Park Lane was perfect. She couldn’t have hoped for somewhere bigger or more fortified if she tried. She left the department store without even giving notice. She gave the wrong forwarding address to Father. Best to unstitch herself from the neighborhood altogether until she could get her cash in hand.
“What’s the fee?” she’d asked Mrs. King.
Mrs. King told her, and Alice felt her chest expand in disbelief. That was all she needed—it was unimaginably more than she needed. As sewing maid, all she needed to do was keep her hands clean and her mending box tidy and watch Miss de Vries. She was even given a room of her own, a tiny box in the breathless heights of the house. That first night, she went down on her knees and recited her catechism three times under her breath. She felt like a thief claiming sanctuary in a church. Ironic, really.
It wasn’t hard to avoid her sister in public. There was one vast table running down the middle of the servants’ hall, and Alice was always seated at the bottom end, above the lamp-and-errand boy and the scullery maids and the endless parade of kitchen maids. The air smelled permanently of boiled meat and stewing fruit, and the pipes clattered without ceasing. Above Alice sat all the housemaids, and then all the house-parlormaids, and then the men: under-footmen, footmen, Mr. Doggett, the chauffeur, and Mr. de Vries’s valet. That wasn’t even counting the electricians, and the gardeners, the family physician, a nurse, three carpenters, half a dozen groomsmen to muck out Mr. de Vries’s stable of horses, the mechanics, or the French chef who came downstairs twice weekly and fought unceasingly with Cook. It was an army big enough to run a country house, let alone an address on Park Lane. The butler, Mr. Shepherd, sat at the head of the table, lord of all, with Mrs. King on his right hand.
They reconvened in secret, in snatched moments. Brisk conversation, no time for affection. It made Alice feel rather lonely.
“Here,” Mrs. King said, tipping out the contents of a box. “Labels.”
Alice picked them up, doubtful. Microscopic letters had been printed all over them. “Labels for what?”
“Instructions. I want them ironed into these skirts.” She dumped a dozen crisp, machine-made petticoats on the bench. “We’ll have new girls coming soon. And I won’t be drilling them myself. They’ll need the plan printed out.”
Alice stared at her in wonder. “And where will you be?”
Mrs. King was aloof. “Never mind about that. Get ironing.”
She didn’t say goodbye. She didn’t even give a warning that she was going. The news broke that morning as the maids were trickling down the back stairs. Mrs. King had been spotted in the gentlemen’s quarters. Mr. Shepherd was having it out with her in the servants’ hall. William, the head footman, was being detained in Mr. Shepherd’s office for questioning.
William? thought Alice. She supposed Dinah might have held a candle for him. He was handsome, certainly—he had glorious golden eyes. He could keep up a decent conversation. She’d told him about the street on which she’d grown up, the hateful behavior of the neighbors, and he’d listened very hard while she was talking, as if what she was saying was peculiarly interesting.
Cook feasted on the scandal. “Fornicators!” she said. “That’s what they were!”
Alice spotted William sitting in Mr. Shepherd’s armchair, the under-footmen guarding the door, face flushed, eyes defiant. He looked puzzled, wrong-footed entirely. It’s beginning, Alice thought, skin tingling. The petticoats were stashed in her wardrobe, the labels ironed beautifully into the hems.
Things in the household began to fall apart the moment Mrs. King left. The breakfast service ran late, the fresh flowers were abandoned in the front hall, one of the still-room shelves collapsed, the electrolier in the front hall started spitting and blinking, and someone saw a pair of rats entering the cellar. One of the house-parlormaids ran downstairs, out of breath, red in the face. “Didn’t you hear the bell? Madam’s asking for the sewing maid. At once.”
Alice glanced up.
“Me?” she said.
Alice took the electric lift. It was in an iron cage, and the other servants always struggled to close the gate, but she never did. Some people just couldn’t work their way around machines. Alice punched a glass button and the cage jerked violently. She felt its teeth clenching, locking, and then it rose slowly through the house. It hummed as it went, an uneasy sound. The hall expanded and then disappeared beneath her. The air changed, grew sweeter, and Alice glided upward to a different realm altogether, one blanketed in a cream-and-gold hush.
The bedroom floor.
Alice had never felt carpets like this before entering Park Lane. They were so rich, so new. They seemed to suck at her feet. The doors were mirrored and looked as if they’d been glazed with syrup. She adored the bedroom floor. It made her teeth tingle, as if her mouth were filled with sugar. It was heavenly, the home of angels.
She waited at the end of the passage, smoothing her apron, listening to the clocks. Straightened her cap. The household machinery tensed, every clock hand poised, straining, ready.
“Wait for Madam in the passage,” the house-parlormaid had warned her. “Don’t go and knock. She hates that.”
Until now, Miss de Vries had been an entirely remote figure. Nearby, certainly: really only a few feet away if Madam was in the bedroom and Alice was in the dressing room. But she was attended by other servants. Alice observed her, studied her daily movements. She didn’t talk to her at all. The Bond Street seamstresses managed all the fittings for Madam’s ball dress. Alice despised it.
It was black, per instruction, suitable for mourning. But the sleeves were fussy, heavy, and the lace looked almost antique in its design. The seamstresses worked section by section, sending parts up to Park Lane for Alice to finish. Hackwork, really, the kind of thing she could do with her eyes closed. Yet she found herself unpicking their stitches, remaking the lines, softening the gown’s edges. Trying to make it elegant. Sometimes, when she was hanging about for the latest delivery, Alice would make sketches of the gown that she’d design for Madam. Something with a little pep to it, something with a little go. Something to make people stare.
Thunk.
The clocks marked the hour, and soft chimes issued through the house.
At the end of the passage there was a fan window, admitting a bright shaft of sunshine. And in it, threaded into the haze itself, she spied a figure on the approach.
A wisp of a person, a moth-wing flutter of black lace, fair hair. But there was a force around her, pressure in the air.
“Madam,” called Alice, raising her hand.
The figure paused. The light shifted, dissolved, and Miss de Vries turned and looked her way.
The first time Alice saw Madam, she’d been startled. She hadn’t expected Miss de Vries to be so tiny. To be such a small, delicate person. She was—what? Two years older than herself, at most? Twenty-three, and only just that.
Just a girl, really.
Miss de Vries was wearing mourning, black-dyed and ruffled lawn, and the lace came all the way up to her chin. Her flaxen hair was teased and curled so that just one lock fell on her forehead. She had curious features. A thin nose, and slightly protuberant eyes. Like a fairy, or a goblin. She waited for Alice to approach.
And it was the way she waited—patiently, perfectly, preternaturally still—that gave Alice pause. As she stepped closer, Alice felt it. Electricity crackling around those delicate hands, wrists. Miss de Vries’s bones seemed miniature, like a bird’s, but there was something dense, ferocious, about the way she was constructed.
“Alice, isn’t it?” Miss de Vries said. Her voice was low, carefully modulated, controlled.
Alice nodded.
“Good. Come to the dressing room. I’ve something to ask you.”
The bedroom doors were on runners, and they slid back noiselessly.
The light changed when you entered the bedroom. It was an enormous gilded box, cold and lofty and strange. There were pale pink flowers printed on the walls, and the windows were thickly sheathed in muslin, but you could still see the gray-green shadow of Hyde Park across the road. There was a bureau where Miss de Vries kept her letters and her personal papers and—Alice had squinted through the crack in the dressing-room door to make sure of this—her own personal funds. Banknotes and postal orders and petty cash tied up in silk bags.
The bed was very grand indeed. Someone had stitched words into the canopy: “If you do not rise early, you can make progress in nothing.” Alice had always assumed young ladies stayed in bed till noon. But Miss de Vries got up at dawn, before her servants were even awake. “What does she do with her time, rising so early?” Alice had asked Mrs. King.
Mrs. King had considered this, deciding whether it was a relevant question or not. “She reads,” she’d said, at last, voice stiff.
“Oh? What does she read?”
Alice had detected a tiny note of doubt in her sister’s voice. “Improving texts.”
“What sort of topics?”
Mrs. King had frowned. “War. Philosophy. The art of diplomacy. Chronicles of great kings.”
Alice had laughed. “Not really?”
Mrs. King had been quite serious. “What else?”
Miss de Vries opened the door to the dressing room. It was a miniature copy of the bedroom, mirrored and gilded and festooned in silk. But it was much darker, and without windows. It contained only wardrobes and painted screens. Alice was here all the time, carrying bolts of fabric back and forth from the closets.
“Tell me,” said Miss de Vries, and her voice lightened, as if she could talk frankly now that they were alone. She marched to the wardrobe, threw open the doors, rummaged quickly for something—and drew out a stack of papers. “Are these yours?”
Alice flushed. Madam was holding the sketches, the ones Alice had made. She raised an eyebrow when Alice didn’t reply.
“Well?”
Alice reached for them. “Beg pardon, Madam,” she said. “I shouldn’t have left those there.”
Miss de Vries smiled, a cold line. She lifted the sketches into the air, out of reach. “They’re good,” she said shortly, spreading them out on the dressing-room table, expression unreadable. “You’re a remarkable draftsman,” she said. “Or draftswoman, I suppose.”
Alice shook her head. “I wouldn’t say that, Madam.”
Miss de Vries’s eyes narrowed. “Nonsense. I can’t abide false modesty.” She pressed a finger to one of the pages. “This one. What would it take to make it?”
Alice felt a prickle of unease. “Make it?”
“Yes.” Miss de Vries tapped it with her nail. Alice went to the table, examined her own design. A gown with a waist strapped and laced, a fanciful and cloud-like train, shoulders that were mere skeins of thread, slipping off the skin. Something that would ripple when it moved. Something entirely unsuitable for a lady in mourning. Alice reached for the paper, to hide it. “I really shouldn’t have, Madam.”
Miss de Vries placed her fist on the table, holding the page in place. “Shouldn’t have what? Imagined something nice for me to wear?”
Alice shook her head. “They’re just scribbles, Madam. Silly drawings.”
“My dress is ghastly. It won’t do at all—I see that now.” Miss de Vries stepped back. Up close, at this angle, it was perfectly possible for Alice to inspect Madam’s skin, the tiny freckles and wisps of hair on the back of her neck. It made her gentler, more human. “I want something like this. Could you do it?”
“Me?” said Alice, in disbelief.
“They can help you down at Bond Street, I’m sure,” said Miss de Vries. “I suppose it’s simply a matter of stitching it all together.” She nodded at the sketch. “You’ve got your pattern, after all.”
Alice’s mind started ticking, assessing this for problems, for risks. Simply a matter of stitching it together? A dress like that would be a mountain of work, bigger than anything she’d undertaken before. She had the urge to go and seek Mrs. King’s advice.
“I’m not sure there’s time, Madam,” she said.
Miss de Vries looked straight at her. “You’ll be rewarded handsomely for your efforts, of course.”
That settled the matter.