“Better yet,” he interrupted. “I will just seduce you into lifting your skirts for me.” Pushing open the door to the atelier, he blew her a kiss and walked through.
“Wretch,” Celine called after him.
“Arei, arei, midoonam,” he replied in another language.
“What does that mean?”
Bastien peered over his shoulder. “Learn Farsi.”
Celine was tired of keeping up with him. She was also running out of time; everyone else had already started on their tasks, while she’d been waiting for Bastien to arrive. Today’s challenge was to create a custom design with everything they could get from the fabric room in only one trip. Monsieur Baudelaire had been extremely particular with his rules for today. The only parts he wanted to see on their desks were the scraps. Everything else needed to be stitched onto the design. And to make it more interesting, he had decided that the fabric room would be off limits when his timer went off. That meant that their final sketches would have to contain every detail they wanted on the design.
Doable, but it required concentration. Something Celine was lacking greatly with Bastien being a whirlwind of distractions.
The second they reached their station, she plucked the list of supplies she needed from the desk.
“White satin, white tulle, white ribbons, a box of pearls and another of ruby jewels. Nothing else. I won’t have time to sketch and get the supplies, so you have to do it for me. And you better get enough of everything, otherwise—”
“You’ll send me out naked?” Bastien suggested, snatching the list off her dainty fingers. “That might just win us the competition in the third round.”
“Or get us imprisoned for indecent exposure,” Celine grumped.
“What’s with you and this irrational fear of imprisonment?”
“Just go get my supplies. And if you cross paths with any of the other contestants, do act friendly. Franz and Elise are enough of a nuisance, we don’t need a third.”
He pressed two fingers to his temple in salute, “Yes ma’am,” and strolled down the corridor, whistling a tune.
Celine returned to her desk. Flipping over a page on her sketchbook, she picked up a pencil and set to work.
As always, her first lines were the base shape, including the neckline, the bodice, and the silhouette. Given Bastien’s broad shoulders, she decided the bodice would be in the shape of a jacket, while the neckline came down to a V—
Celine ripped off the page and resisted the urge to crumble it up and throw it over her shoulder, recalling Monsieur Baudelaire’s warning to keep her sketchbook closer than her heart. Granted this was only a page, one that she disliked, but it was still hers.
She started anew.
Celine changed the jacket for a cloak made up of two strips that would flank his sides like wings.Better.As for the neckline, she decided on a ruff collar, something a character fromCommedia dell’Artewould wear. For the bodice and thesilhouette, she sketched a simple skin-tight sheath. She planned to pleat the skirt section by section to create the illusion of water ripples. Finally, she would fit the bodice with a scatter of pearls—compact along the neckline, then dispersing as they went downwards. The rubies would be her showstopper. Looking like drops of blood, they would make her design all-consuming. Starting from the hemline, Celine planned to sew them at random splotches so they could form the illusion that the hem had been dragged through a river of blood.
Quickly uncapping a red marker, she began filling in every little jewel along the hemline, adding detail where needed, and accentuating the folds in the dress with a bit of pencil shading.
Holding the design in front of her, Celine tilted her head to the side to regard it from a different point of view. It was elegant, not too detailed, but the ruff collar gave it the perfect whimsical touch for it to look like a faerie’s gown. She liked it, but fashion wasn’t about liking. She needed to feel that rush of adrenaline that would send her heart on a marathon of emotions. Otherwise the sketch was pure rubbish.
She sat down again to sketch.
Monsieur Baudelaire had said that designing for Bastien would be difficult, considering normal gowns would not fit his physique. But Celine found it refreshing. She did not have to factor in his lack of feminine curves to design flapper dresses, which was her take for the competition. Flowy, shapeless gowns that did not restrict. And with Bastien’s lean muscle form, she could practically put him in anything.
Celine made a few copies, trying her hand at different skirt shapes, and once she landed on the one she liked best, she pinned it on the board with the rest of her designs.
“Now that he’s gone, care to explain why I had to role-play as Coco Chanel in front of your mother?”
Celine lifted her head from the notebook. Coco had manifested like a fox from the long grass, her coppery hair shinning under the white lights of the hall.
“I am so sorry about yesterday,” Celine said, dropping her pencil over her sketch and taking Coco’s hands in her own. “You see, I have entered the competition rather secretly.”
“I gathered as much.”
“Yesterday I was afraid you would say something, so I grabbed for the first thing that came to mind. Please understand that my mother would have never let me continue if she knew.”
Coco looked puzzled. “Why?”
