How to Be a Wallflower Read online

  “Have you lost your lease?” Cleo asked. Her father had left her a number of plumbing establishments, and although her man of business dealt with many of the day-to-day activities, she had necessarily learned a great deal about leases.

  “I wish it was so simple,” Martha said, sighing. “A few months ago, I decided to look for an investor, Miss Lewis. The theaters aren’t steady with payments, you see. They open for a season, travel about the country or Europe. Then they come back and need a bishop and four gowns for the lead actress within a fortnight.” She waved her hand toward the dress forms.

  “I can see that would pose a problem,” Cleo said sympathetically.

  “Quimby’s prides ourselves in making up a gown within a week. If an actress leaves a company, I’ll have a new wardrobe made up for her understudy in no time. Sometimes my seamstresses just sit about, with nothing to do. But the lack of steady money tests the soul.”

  “That does sound challenging.”

  “My solicitor found us an investor to give us a fixed amount every other month. I was so happy.” She stopped and wiped her eyes.

  “Does your investor wish you to leave the West End?”

  “Not just the West End, nor yet London, but England itself,” Martha said, wringing her hands. “He plans to move us, lock, stock, and barrel, to New York City. Which is in the Americas, you know, in the colonies.”

  “Not colonies,” Cleo said absently. “They won that war some twenty-five years ago.”

  “I know, I know, I just forgot,” Martha said. “Oh, do stop crying, Peg. If you don’t want to come with us, you needn’t.”

  “Then what would I do?” the young girl cried, lifting her head from the older seamstress’s shoulder. “I’ve a son at home. And if I go over the sea, my babe will turn into an American, and my da will never speak to me again!” She threw her apron over her head and resumed sobbing loudly.

  “Why on earth would your investor move you to New York?” Cleo asked.

  “He’s American,” Martha explained. “He’s buying up everything. He bought a bunch of them early Shakespeare books so he can put them on display. He’s taking actors too. I heard that he’s paid Reginald Bottleneck to go over there.”

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Gussie put in. “That’ll be a relief for the parish as has to support Reggie’s ill-begotten babes.”

  Condoms! Julia commented in Cleo’s head. I told that boy about French letters years ago and he never listened.

  “Bottleneck is the lead at the Drury Lane,” Martha said, shaking her head. “What are they to do without him? He’s been playing Robin Hood to full houses. What’s more, half the cast of The Honeymoon, including the lead, Louisa Siddows, say they’re going over there. That gray gown—” She pointed a trembling finger. “That gown is for Louisa’s next role! Now I’ll be out the cost.”

  “No, you won’t,” Gussie said, patting her on the back. “If you’re going to New York, and Louisa is going to New York, she can wear it there.”

  “The Drury Lane commissioned it for a play they are putting on,” Martha pointed out. “Who knows what role the American theater will put her in? She’ll likely be in frills and ribbons, playing a girl of seventeen. That silk cost a fortune.”

  “I’ll pay for it,” Cleo intervened. “If you can remake it to my measure, of course.”

  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 Mart
ha’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.

  “Please shake hands with me.” Cleo rose, holding out her hand, and Martha stood as well.

  “You can call me Martha,” the lady said.

  Cleo smiled at her and turned the seamstress’s hand over. “Sewing calluses?”

  “Indeed,” Martha whispered. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear.”

  The boots were pounding their way up the stairs now. This was no gentleman mounting the steps; he walked with purpose, his heels sharply striking the wood.

  Fortunately, Cleo was accustomed to the men who worked for Lewis Commodes. Moreover, her mother’s penchant for leaving home and accompanying traveling theater companies around the country had necessitated that Cleo often found herself chatting to theater managers and, for that matter, solicitors when she had to pay off an unhappy lover—or his wife.

  She linked her hands together and waited.

  Gussie wound an arm around Martha’s waist. “Don’t you worry, my dear. My mistress may look young but she’s an old soul.”

  Cleo had to smile at that. She felt old. Part of it was grief for her mother’s death. But part was . . . exhaustion, perhaps. Or, equally likely, the result of her mother’s predilection for racketing around the country in a theatrical wagon.

  The American didn’t just enter the chamber: he burst into it. It wasn’t a matter of speed. He simply had the sort of character that dominated a room.

  Partly because he was big. Big and rough. She’d never given America much thought, but she could imagine this man making his way through untamed forests in the snow.

  Yet here he was in London, his dark hair looking as if it’d been in a high wind. It hardly needed to be said that his hair wasn’t brushed forward in the currently fashionable style; unruly curls tumbled over his head like one of those Italian statues they had in the British Museum.

  His features were harsh, his jaw remarkably strong, and his nose too. He certainly wasn’t a gentleman, unless this was what all American gentlemen looked like. It was rather fascinating, like seeing a disheveled lion padding its way down Oxford Street.

  And his chin—

  She was staring at the fellow, which was fantastically rude and quite unlike her. “Good afternoon,” Cleo said, walking toward him.

  His gaze brushed over her and landed on Martha.

  “Mrs. Quimby,” he said, striding toward the costumier and ignoring Cleo entirely, “I am told by your solicitor that you declined to sign the contract earlier this morning.”

  Cleo blinked.

  That didn’t happen to her.

  She wasn’t vain, but she was a wealthy young woman whose mother had painstakingly taught her how to catch a man’s attention. Julia, after all, had considered a day wasted in which she didn’t attract male notice. Obviously, clothing could make a woman into a wallflower.

  Or invisible, however you wanted to put it.

  The puffy gray turban wasn’t that unattractive.

  Her mother begged to differ, but Cleo wasn’t in the mood to entertain impertinent comments from deceased relatives.

  Slowly she wheeled about to watch as the American started talking to Martha about his offer. A spark of amusement curled her lips. He thought she was not worth a greeting, did he? Yet given that handshake agreement with Martha, he stood in her emporium.

  With that, her smile turned into a grin. Lately, life hadn’t seemed very interesting. Life with her mother had been full of adventure, exhausting adventure.

  But besting this man, with his lack of manners and dismissive behavior?

  It would be a pure pleasure.

  Chapter Three

  “Mrs. Quimby,” the American was saying, with a distinct note of impatience.

  His voice had a roughness that caught Cleo’s attention. She was used to accents that could be put on and off at will. Actors were chameleons. For example, Gussie, who harked from the East End, could speak in refined tones, thanks to her time on the stage. Her own mother, Julia, was raised in the heights of society, even though she had chosen to forsake it. Yet she often dropped her elegant accent in order to make an actor feel more comfortable. Or, in other words, seducible.

  “Only yesterday your solicitor informed me that you had agreed to my offer,” the American continued.

  Cleo thought about sitting down and watching the encounter like a scene in a play. But she might need to intervene at any moment. She stayed where she was, edging to the side so she could see the financier’s face. His chin was absurdly strong, suggesting an obstinate temperament.

  She loathed stubborn men: they were so often underqualified and overpresumptuous.

  “I did agree,” Martha replied. “Before I changed my mind.”

  “She did!” Gussie confirmed.

  “I broke off negotiations with Winch’s Costume Emporium when I was told you had agreed to my offer,” he barked. “You can’t just change your mind. This is a matter of business, Mrs. Quimby. We had an agreement.”

  “No, we didn’t,” Martha retorted, folding her hands at her waist. “You may have had several conversations with my solicitor, but I signed no papers.”

  “Martha didn’t sign a paper,” Gussie cried. “You can’t carry out your Machiavellian machinations, you villainous scoundrel!”

  Cleo found herself smiling again. Gussie’s voice had abruptly taken on the intonation of a proper young lady because she was quoting from one of her favorite plays, Love’s Dominion.

  In contrast, the American’s voice seemed intrinsically part of him. He would never change its intonation to play the part of a king or seduce someone of lower rank. It was all of a piece: the scruff on his chin, the broad shoulders, the gravelly voice, the . . . the rest of him.

  “Why didn’t you sign the contract?” he demanded. “If you’re angling for more money, I have to tell you that your current debts reduced the value of my offer considerably. I can assure you that once I expand this enterprise, you will become a very wealthy woman.”

  “I don’t want more money,” Martha said. “I’ve made other plans. I found another investor.”

  “No one will give you the support that I offered,” the American stated. “Did you read the section where—”

  “I didn’t have time to read your offer,” Martha said, cutting him off.

  His eyes went from frustrated to forbidding. “Am I to understand that you refused my offer without even reading it? Am I to be given no chance to bid against whoever stepped in?”

  “Yes, I did. I am,” Martha told the American, displaying a near manly gift for obstinacy.

  Cleo didn’t feel a bit of guilt at the idea of thwarting this brash man. The American rebellion had happened before she was born, but she knew the facts of it. They were a wild and undisciplined people who wouldn’t agree to pay taxes, even for tea. They’d rather drink coffee, simply to avoid taxes.

  Which said about everything that needed to be said, given that coffee was a vile drink that tasted like fusty beans.

  No wonder the American had been tricked by a solicitor who hid information for personal gain. Trying to abscond with unsuspecting people and take them to New York City, wherever that was.

  Geography was not Cleo’s strong suit. Governesses had pe
riodically joined her parents’ household, but they invariably left within the week, not caring for their mistress’s fascination with the stage—particularly her extramarital relationships with handsome actors. Her kindly, retiring father had given his wife her freedom, and spent his time in his offices.

  Not your business, darling, her mother observed.

  Pushing away that unhelpful comment, Cleo waited to see what happened next between Martha and the American. It felt as if it had been months, perhaps a year, since something so interesting came her way. Lately, the world had been flat and gray, but now her blood was fizzing with something close to excitement.

  “I am refusing your offer,” Martha said firmly.

  “Why?”

  “Because she had no idea that you intended to move her business interests to New York City,” Cleo put in, moving to stand next to Martha, across from Gussie.

  He glanced at her, his brows drawing together. Anger was flickering in his eyes, but he seemed to have himself under control. Cleo’s lips started to curl into a smile, but she stopped herself. No matter how enjoyable she found his offended look, it would only enrage him if she laughed.

  In her experience, men were incapable of accepting that they might—sometimes—be a figure of fun.

  “Are you Mrs. Quimby’s daughter?” he demanded.

  “No.”

  “Then what the devil have you to say about it?” His impatient gaze slid away, and he turned back to Martha.

  “You concealed the truth about the move,” Cleo pointed out. “Your preliminary offer was laughably insufficient, considering that you expect Mrs. Quimby to leave her family and friends, not to mention eschewing the steady income resulting from her connections with the best theater companies in the kingdom.”

  Cleo gave herself a silent huzzah for using “eschew,” a word of the day from two weeks ago. Slowly but surely, she was enlarging her vocabulary.

  He didn’t just glance at her this time; he turned his entire body and looked her up and down. Cleo didn’t like the glint in his eye, mostly because she couldn’t interpret it. Men often responded to her with either a lascivious or a condescending attitude, but he didn’t seem to display either.