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Gussie chuckled. “Not when they see something they really want.”

“Pooh,” Cleo replied. “I don’t care what men really want or don’t want. I shall spend time with my grandfather as Mother wished. After I’ve learned French, I will travel to the Continent. Enough fussing with the turban, Gussie. I have to be back here by four in the afternoon to meet with the hotel manager as he’s considering a renovation with our commodes.”

Gussie pulled the turban a bit lower on Cleo’s ears.

“Didn’t Mother pin an emerald brooch in front as well as the feathers?”

Gussie nodded, with the air of someone biting her tongue.

I hate to think of my lovely daughter in London—with curls that resemble a bushy hedge in autumn, Julia observed in the depths of Cleo’s mind.

“Perhaps we can fit in a visit to a milliner,” Cleo said.

“Martha also makes headdresses,” Gussie said, eyeing her critically. “You look more like an old maid than a wallflower. May I point out that one follows the other, like night and day?”

Cleo shrugged.

“Lip color?”

She shook her head.

“It’s not natural,” Gussie said mournfully. “What if we was to meet that piercing-eyed gentleman right here on a London street? What then?”

“He’ll walk straight by me,” Cleo told her. And smiled.

Frightened off by that turban, her mother put in, having the last word, as usual.

Chapter Two

An hour later, Cleo’s carriage drew up before a large building with a striped awning. A sign hung from the second story: Quimby’s Emporium: Purveyors to Drury Lane Theatre & More.

The carriage was toasty warm, but a fretful spring breeze tossed scraps of paper along the sidewalk.

“Your muff,” Gussie said briskly, handing over a velvet puff, trimmed with swansdown, in a somber dark blue that matched Cleo’s pelisse.

Once on the sidewalk, Cleo saw that the store’s bay windows held a dressmaking form clad in a gown sewn all over with golden spangles. Given its starched ruff, it might have been fashioned for a queen, albeit one on the stage, not in Westminster.

“Mother would have leapt at the chance to wear that gown,” she said, feeling a pang. Sometimes it seemed impossible that such a vivid, passionate person could simply disappear after a short illness.

“Quimby’s costumes entire casts,” Gussie said, following Cleo’s head groom, Chumley, up the short flight of steps to the front door. “That includes queens, maids, and old maids—excuse me—wallflowers.”

Chumley pushed open the door and waited until Cleo walked past him. The front door opened directly into a large chamber with two curtained enclosures to one side, and a gracious seating area encircling a low platform on the other.

“Martha is usually here to greet people,” Gussie said, taking off her pelisse and hanging it on a peg on the wall before she bustled over to help Cleo. “Chumley, you guard the mistress’s belongings. No saying who might walk in, and this muff came from Paris.”

Cleo smiled at the groom. The whole household was used to being bossed around by Gussie. “Thank you, Chumley,” she said, handing over her gloves.

“Mind them gloves,” Gussie ordered. “That swansdown trim is murder to clean. No getting that pelisse wrinkled either!”

“Yes, Miss Daffodil,” Chumley said obediently. He backed against the wall, holding the pelisse, muff, and gloves as if they were made of fine crystal.

“Martha will be upstairs,” Gussie said, “though I’ll have a word with her about leaving her establishment without a soul to guard the door.” She headed straight toward a broad flight of stairs in the rear of the chamber.

The stairs led to another large chamber, this one containing two clusters of women, many of whom appeared to be weeping. Cleo paused in the entrance, but Gussie rushed forward, heading for a stout woman in the middle, presumably her friend Martha.

Cleo stayed where she was, looking around with curiosity. The ceiling was very high, and the walls were lined with shelves holding bolts and rolls of fabric. Lace and ribbons spilled from half-open drawers. One corner held a tall vase full of curling multicolored feathers, so long that they looked like exotic ferns.

Dress forms clad in half-constructed garments were scattered about. Unlike the dress forms she was used to, these had round, cotton-stuffed heads, presumably so an entire ensemble could be designed at once. A pope’s miter, thick with jewels and golden embroidery, graced one head; the form was clad in a sweeping white silk gown draped with bands of gold embroidery.