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Martha narrowed her eyes and looked Cleo up and down. “I can do that.” Her eyes welled up. “But I don’t have time. I’ll be in New—New York, and you’ll be here! He wants to us to leave immediately!”

“Let’s all sit down,” Cleo said, leading Martha over to a comfortable grouping of chairs by the window. Four women followed.

“My head seamstresses,” Martha said, blotting her eyes. “Miss Lewis, these are Mrs. Peebles, Mrs. Andrewes, Mrs. Rippon, and Miss Madeline Prewitt. Mrs. Andrewes can sketch any gown after no more than a glance. Miss Prewitt paints the sketches, so the directors can set the scene in their head.”

“My pleasure,” Cleo said, nodding to each. “I’m happy to introduce you to Miss Gussie Daffodil, my dresser.”

“Everyone should go back to work,” Martha said to her seamstresses. “No matter what happens, I promised the bishop’s costume by five o’clock tonight, and there’s all the interior seams left to do and one of the gold bands unfinished. With luck, we can have the bishop done by teatime.”

The seamstresses fanned back onto the floor, taking the clergyman’s robes to pieces and separating into sewing circles before each of two large windows.

“So, the financier offered to back you,” Cleo said, turning to Martha and Gussie, “without informing you that he intended to move your emporium to another country?”

Martha dabbed her eyes. “The contract, the offer, was pages long, so I suppose the news might be hidden inside. We’ve been so busy with the opening of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Covent Garden. All those fairies . . . Gossamer wings for four, and they kept ripping, so we’d have to start over.”

“You didn’t closely read the contract,” Cleo said sympathetically.

“My solicitor, Mr. Worting, didn’t say a word about the Americas until this morning!” Martha cried.

“Deception like that should be illegal,” Gussie put in. “Sue him, Martha! Put him in prison! Both of them!”

“If she already signed the contract, I’m afraid that a judge will insist that Martha does indeed have to move Quimby’s to New York,” Cleo explained.

“Actually, I haven’t signed,” Martha sighed. “I only discovered it when Mr. Worting brought me the papers to be signed this morning. I flatly refused. But how can I not go forward with it? I already had debt, and when I thought I had an investor, I went ahead and bought some lovely French silks, that gray, for one. As well as gowns from the Duchess of Berrow. So now I owe even more.”

“You bought the gowns from an actual duchess?” Cleo asked with interest.

“Directly from the duke’s man of business,” Martha explained. “We buy gowns whenever ladies don’t want them anymore, so we can remake them. I’m known for making an actress from the East End look like a duchess. Now I can’t pay for the silk and gowns, and the rent, and salaries are due at the end of this week. I won’t be able to pay them either.” She began wringing her hands again. “Mr. Worting says I don’t have any choice. He said it’s not his fault, and I should have read the contract.”

Cleo had a shrewd idea that Worting expected a healthy bonus from the American in thanks for delivering one of England’s top costumiers. It was exceedingly rare to find a woman running her own business, and the solicitor might have taken advantage of Martha in any number of ways. Men were always trying to do it to Cleo, thinking she couldn’t read a ledger.

“Mr. Worting said I should expect the investor to come here, demanding I sign that contract,” Martha said, taking a ragged breath. “How can I say no? I’ll end up in the workhouse, and all my girls with me.” She glanced around the room, at the women bending over various parts of the bishop’s costume. Her eyes filled with tears again. “I’ve worked so hard to build the emporium. My granddad started it as a stall, years ago.”

Gussie leaned in and kissed her cheek. “America isn’t so terrible, Martha. I heard that the Spanish dug gold mines and then just left them be. You can pick up a chunk of gold right from the ground. You can get rich!”

“I don’t want to be rich,” Martha said, hiccupping. “I just want to keep Quimby’s right here in London where we belong.”

“I’ll be your investor, Mrs. Quimby,” Cleo said, making up her mind. “Quimby’s is an English costumier, and ought to stay in our country. We can’t let some American stroll into London and steal our heritage.”

Gussie clapped her hands together. “Perfect!” she crowed. “Miss Lewis can help you to no end.”

Martha’s brows knitted together. “Do you mean your father or man of business, Miss Lewis?”

“No, I mean myself,” Cleo responded, unsurprised by Martha’s assumption. Though the seamstress was also a business owner, few women owned their own companies. “How much did the American promise you as a monthly investment, and what were the arrangements for repayment?”

“Paying my current debts and three thousand pounds up front,” Martha said, “with a thousand pounds every other month for two years, with the expectation that—”

Cleo raised her hand. From the floor below she heard a deep, rumbling voice and the sound of boots. Heavy boots. Not gentlemen’s boots.

Martha’s eyes rounded. “It’s him!” she gasped.

Chumley was directing the man up the back stairs.

“Mrs. Quimby,” Cleo said, leaning forward with some urgency. “Trust me.”

“You can!” Gussie squealed.

Martha nodded to Cleo.