Page 91 of The Gentlewoman Apprentice

“Peter.” Lucius came from behind, slapping him on the back. “Let’s get on.”

Charlotte arrived, panting. “You could have waited for me. Peter wasn’t moving.”

Strengthened by his friends, Peter fell into step beside them.

“Michaelmas is such a delight.” Charlotte opened her arms as if to embrace the fall air. “And the roads will present no obstacle for anyone coming from Gloucestershire. The guild masters will be here, Lucius. You can try again to conciliate the weavers.”

Lucius took up the thread, but Peter felt half present, the rest of him endlessly trying to make sense of Margaret. The possibility of friendship pulled at him each time he saw her walking through town, at church, through his window. Though their correspondence was at an end, he could not scrub her from his mind any more than madder red could be removed once set. He could not stop the pride that swelled within him at the sight of her shop, both tidy and grand as it bustled with patrons. A gentlewoman dressmaker. How natural, how correct. Margaret Cooper stood exactly where she belonged.

As he incorporated his own plans to create chintz, he began to understand all she overcame to realize her dream. Hard work and an eye single to her goal were necessary to fulfill so lofty an ambition. Had he judged her too harshly?

Still, there could be no friendship without trust.

“Peter, did you hear me?”

He turned to Lucius. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re half in the clouds. Is it your father or Miss Cooper?”

“I’m simply tired.”

Lucius narrowed his eyes, and Peter looked away.

“Mr. Sloan.” Mrs. Smith appeared at his elbow. “I wonder, how can I get a few yards of your chintz?”

Confused, Peter said, “You’d have to ask a smuggler.”

“Like Miss Cooper is wearing. She says you made it.”

Charlotte scanned the crowd and her face darkened. “Peter, Miss Cooper is wearing your work.”

“Where?” Peter asked.

Mrs. Smith waved her hand vaguely. “Over there, but Mr. Sloan,” she sidled closer, “I am prepared to pay.”

Peter craned his neck to try to catch a glimpse of Margaret. “I fear I have nothing to sell.”

“When you do, come to me first.” Mrs. Smith squeezed Peter’s forearm as if exacting a promise.

“You sly fellow.” Lucius shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. “You gave her chintz, which I know you would not have done unless it was perfect. I want to see it.”

Charlotte tugged Peter’s sleeve. “There she is.” She took him by the back of the arm and pushed him toward Margaret.

Margaret bent over a row of ribbons spilling from the edge of a booth. The cape she’d worn earlier hung behind her shoulders, and Peter stopped so abruptly that Charlotte stumbled against his arm.

Margaret. Her hair, unpowdered and uncovered, was piled à la mouton and caught the light in garnet and gold curls. He stepped forward, drawn not by the way she stood with her chin lifted as though the festival owed her its attention, but by the pleat at her hip that mirrored the V of her stomacher and the pleats at her shoulders. He recognized the fall of the skirt, its fullness giving extra breadth as he’d specified in his notes. Let the fabric do the work. The gleaming cotton skimmed her body with the elegance he’d imagined when he sat alone in his office and drawn a gown for the woman he loved.

She had taken the pattern, had entered into his office when he was not there. His step faltered. Had he left it open, unconsciously wishing her to find it? She had stolen his drawings, cut his fabric to the measurements he prescribed, stitched the seams in his sequence, and worn his most private work into the street, without knowing, or perhaps knowing exactly, what it had cost him to create.

The gown fit her as nothing else could. Every line answered her body the way he’d intended, and the rightness of it was almost unbearable. Late evenings at his desk, he’d pictured Margaret in the gown he’d designed for her, the cloth settling into the curves he’d studied without ever permitting himself to acknowledge what he was doing. And here she stood, his silent confession made visible, worn by the woman who spent months dismantling his life.

Admiration and anger moved through him in the same breath, so entangled he could not separate one from the other. She was magnificent. She was a thief. She was wearing his heart on her body and did not appear burdened by it.

He stepped forward. “Miss Cooper, might I speak with you?” He made no attempt to check his icy tone.

Her eyes widened. “Of course.”

As he turned, Charlotte squeezed his arm and said, “I’ll take care of this.” He had no time to consider what she meant as she hurried away.