people and the sooner, the better. And the sooner they get used to me, the sooner they’ll look at my designs instead of my skin or my shape or my accent.”
“Aren’t you changing your accent? Only you were talking posh in the night-club.”
“It’s one less way to be different. I think I might have to. My da would hate that.” She cocked her head at him. “You wouldn’t change how you talk to make other people more comfortable, would you? Not at any price.”
“Probably not,” Will said. “We won’t find out because I’m not a brilliant young person, so nobody cares. Anyway, how many times have you told me I’m too stubborn for my own good?”
“Almost every time you do anything.”
“Exactly. Talk however you want.”
Maisie screwed up her face. “Maybe when I have my own fashion house I’ll switch back. Or just make Welsh fashionable.” She adopted an accent so cut-glass you could shave with it. “‘Oh, bore da, darling, do give me a cwtch, it’s been positively ages.’”
“Please, no.”
WILL SPENT THE NEXT couple of days preparing, having borrowed some of Maisie’s magazines to read up on fashion houses and designers in the vain hope that he wouldn’t look completely ignorant. He ploughed through half a dozen copies each of Smart Set, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and London Life. Jean Patou and Coco Chanel jostled for page space with Lucile, Travis Banton, and a dozen more, amid reports of high life and film stars. The details slipped out of his brain as quickly as he read them, and he couldn’t summon up any interest in the Louis vs Cuban heel debate no matter how hard he tried. He was, however, pleased to learn that hemlines would continue rising, presumably taking spirits with them.
He did stop dead at a piece on country houses.
Pictured: The Hon. Phoebe Stephens-Prince and fiancé Lord Arthur Secretan with friends at the Viscount Waring’s graceful Hertfordshire home, Etchil.
There were a couple of photographs of the house—it looked old and grand—and of elegantly dressed people standing around in it. Phoebe was in one, holding the arm of a handsome older man who the caption identified as her father, the viscount. He could see the resemblance and it made him uncomfortable all over again.
He knew Kim and Phoebe were aristocracy. He thought he’d got used to it. But there was something about seeing them in print next to pictures of Noel Coward and Mary Pickford and Clara Bow that got right under his skin. He couldn’t reconcile Lord Arthur Secretan smiling blandly out of the pages of London Life with Kim naked and gasping under him.
A suit arrived for him: evening dress, not new but nearly so, with shoes, tall shiny hat, and white gloves. It fit well enough, and made him feel like a circus chimpanzee, dressed in his betters’ clothing. Will tried it on a couple of times to see if he could do the tie properly, and also get used to his appearance. The answer to both was no.
Overall, he was feeling decidedly apprehensive on Saturday morning, so he didn’t want to consider how Maisie must feel. It was a welcome distraction to hear the two-note cry that resolved itself into “Knives to grind! ... Sharp’ning!”
He hailed the knife-grinder as he pushed his cart up the lane, and brought out the Messer. The wizened little man looked at it with a professional eye. “Looks like this saw some service, guv. German, ain’t it?”
“Mine now.”
“It’ll do to cut your nails with, anyhow,” the knife-grinder said, and went off into a wheezy laugh.
Will stood and watched as he worked the treadle that set the grindstone spinning. He’d always loved watching knife-grinders as a boy—the shrill noise, the sparks—and he wasn’t particularly surprised when another man, strolling down May’s Buildings, stopped too.
The knife-grinder withdrew the Messer and turned it assessingly as the grindstone slowed. “That’ll cut anything needs cutting, I dessay. Thruppence, guv.”
Will fished out the coin. The watching man said, “That’s a proper blade.”
“Yes.”
“What’s a bookseller do with a thing like that?”
“Picked it up in Flanders,” Will said briefly.
“Get a lot of use out of it, do you?”
Will turned to look at him as the knife-grinder trundled on his way. “What was that, mate?”
“I said, you like using your knife. Right, Mr. Darling?”
The watcher was a man in unremarkable clothes, maybe in his forties, but could be ten years older or younger, with nothing to suggest an occupation. Bland was the only word for his featureless face, down to