“No, thank you,” Celine replied, fixing her dress. She pushed herself off the table, landing on the floor with a hop. “I’ve seen enough of your panache to last me a lifetime. If you will excuse me, I have to finish sewing the dress.”
She tossed another glance around the hall to see if anyone else had already finished. To her relief, even Franz was still struggling with the pleats on his assemblage of tulle. Shaking off her stiffness, Celine returned to her mannequin and began fixing the ruffled collar around its neck. It would then attach to the bodice through two clasps she had hidden in the back of the dress. She picked up the gown and draped it over the mannequin—it fell down its frame in elegant ripples, enveloping the vague curves like it would the frame of a woman.
Celine drew a step back, and assessed the design. To her astonishment, Bastien had done a great job with covering theblood drops, as well as adding more red patterns as strategically as he could to make them seem intentional, rather than an improvised plan B. He really was his mother’s son. All that was left for Celine now was to sew the pearls and the rubies on it, which would take the better part of the day. Even longer with the dull pain throbbing up her hand from the wound.
She sighed. Better get it over with; Monsieur Baudelaire might overlook Bastien dyeing the fabric, but he wouldn’t accept him sewing the design for her.
The rest of the afternoon passed laboriously. It wasn’t until dusk turned to dark, and the entire hallway was glowing with warm, bright lights that Monsieur Baudelaire started making his rounds, nose wrinkled with an air of inspection. Celine’s spine stiffened when he paused by their station, raising a brow at her dress. Candid laughter rumbled suddenly from his chest.
“When you have limited resources, you need to think outside the box,” he said aloud, addressing the entire room. “I admire an imaginative brain. Incredible work, Mademoiselle LeBeau, bravo.”
And just like that, he strolled away.
Equally stunned, Celine and Bastien glanced at each other. There was athank youat the ready on the tip of her tongue, but he beat her to it.
“You’re welcome, Celine.” His eyes fell to the bandage around her finger. Blood had seeped through the layers due to the strain she had put on it while sewing. Bastien’s lips parted, but she beat him to it.
“I’m fine, Bas. Really. Let’s forget about my mortifying freak out and finish this challenge.” Unhooking the dress from the mannequin, she handed it to him. “Go try it on.”
Bastien stared at it. He lifted a brow. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” He hinted at the scraps on the table behind her, then stooped towards her conspiratorially. “The buttons.”
“What?” Glancing over her shoulder, Celine saw six white buttons lying on the table. She tossed her head back with a groan. “I thought they were extra pearls.”
She wanted to cry.
“Come on,” Celine said, taking a deep breath. “I’ll help you into it.”
Bastien shrugged and walked behind the folding screen. She followed suit, trying her best to avert her eyes anywhere she could. She had never touched anyone before the way she’d had to touch Bastien these past few weeks. Every time she smoothed out the fabric along his abdomen, she could feel the faint ridges of muscles underneath. And when Bastien was up on the rotating platform and she had to grab his hips to turn him around, she could feel the soft curve of his waist, feel his hip bone jut out beneath the dress, and she would pull her hands away at record speed lest he noticed where her fingers had lingered.
Bastien was about to unbutton his shirt, when Monsieur Baudelaire’s announcement caused all activity around the cubicles to stop.
“That will be all for today,” he said, tapping his cane on the polished tiles. “You can proceed with the final touches tomorrow. Though I must divulge—I like what I’m seeing so far.”
Celine was only too glad to stick her needle into the mannequin and forgo dressing Bastien until tomorrow. The day had been draining—quite literally—and all she wanted to do was go home and sleep the rest of it off until Francine came nagging at her ear the next morning to wake up. She started packing up her bag.
“I’ll drive you home,” Bastien offered, pushing himself off her working desk. “I don’t want you passing out in the middle of the street and being mistaken for a drunk.”
Celine was preparing a heavily ornamented remark when cold sweat broke across her temples and she started rummaging through her work space like a maniac.
“Of course,” Bastien continued babbling, “that would mean you’d have to sit in my car and—Celine, are you even listening?”
“I can’t find it!” she exclaimed, tossing a half-stitched corset over her shoulder. Bastien barely dodged it as it was about to smack him in the head. “It’s not here! It’s not here!”
“Jesus!” Bastien exclaimed as another half-stitched piece went flying over his head. “What are you looking for?”
“My sketchbook!” She thrust everything she had on the table out onto the floor. Extra strips of fabric and a few pencils fell down with a soft clatter. Celine’s shoulders slumped in frustration. “I have everything in there. Measurements, ideas, old designs, new designs, I can’t—I can’t have possibly lost it!”
“Okay, but you are losing it right now,” Bastien retorted. “Just calm down and I will help you look for it.”
“Are you not listening? I can’t find it anywhere!”
“Yelling at me won’t make it magically reappear,” Bastien went on in a calm tone. “Tell me when you last saw it.”
Celine sifted through her earlier actions. “I ripped off the page with your look on it to pin it on the board, then stuffed the notebook underneath some fabric on the table. And then nothing, I began working on the design.”
“And when you ran out?”
“I…”
