Undressed with the Marquess (Lost Lords of London #3) - Caldwell, Christi Page 0,17

intend to let go that recent grievance.

Temperance weighed her response. The woman had started as a seamstress herself . . . She’d built a business of her own. Mayhap she could be reasoned with. “These are the fabrics she selected, Madame Amelie.” Temperance gestured to the eclectic collection of varying shades of pink. “She wants them all incorporated into a ball gown.”

Though what anyone in the Cotswolds would have need of a ball gown for remained to be seen.

Madame Amelie’s features remained unbending. “And?” she asked coolly.

And this wasn’t the fine end of London, where ladies flitted from ball to soiree to grand dinner fete. She’d never say as much. Not when the woman took such pride in being one of the most successful proprietors in the Cotswolds. As such, Temperance weighed her words.

When she at last spoke, Temperance kept her features calm and placid, a skill she’d perfected as a girl seeking to avoid brutal beatings at the hands of her father, Abaddon Swift. “I’ve seen your masterpieces, Madame Amelie; I know that you know—”

“Don’t patronize me, Mrs. Swift.” The other woman cut her off with an impatient tinge in her tone. “I’m not a compliment-seeker, I’m a coin-earner. And you”—she jabbed a finger at Temperance—“earn your coin, and whatever it is you care to design or think you know more of, always remember”—The client is always in the right—“the client is always correct.”

There it was. A slight variation, but the meaning and the message always the same.

“Tell me, Mrs. Swift: Are you a wealthy woman?”

“No,” she said between her teeth, already knowing where this familiar line of questioning went. Nor would she ever be one. She was a worker and would never be anything more.

“Do you have a hidden fortune? A protector, perhaps?”

She paused as a face flashed behind her mind’s eye. Not a protector. A vise cinched about her heart and squeezed at that organ. It was too fresh.

“Mrs. Swift?”

“There’s no protector,” Temperance made herself say. She was the one who saw to her own security . . . and to her brother and Gwynn’s.

Her employer, three inches taller than Temperance’s impressive five feet seven inches, leaned down. “Then I’d suggest you be more focused on earnings and less on what color of pink Mrs. Marmlebury wants this time.”

And that was what marked them as different in their craft. Oh, it wasn’t that Temperance had the luxury of wealth and security . . . She didn’t. She had coin enough to put food in her belly and, come winters, heat the fire some. No, she was not safe. No one truly was. Even so, there was something inside Temperance that couldn’t separate from that inherent need—a creative urging that was like a hungering to be fed. For the sense of control it offered, when there was so little . . . of anything in her life.

The tinny bell at the front of the shop jingled, interrupting her musings, and more—Madame Amelie’s diatribe. “Who would be here at this hour?” Temperance asked.

“A client is a client, regardless of what time they arrive.” The proprietress glanced at the cameo clock affixed to her breast. “See to her.”

And ordinarily Temperance would have wept at being torn away from sewing in order to take a client. But this proved a reprieve from the dress she’d be forced to construct. Hurrying through the curtains, she rushed to greet the villager—

Stumbling to a stop, she caught the edge of a table to keep herself upright.

For it wasn’t a villager.

It wasn’t a patron.

Or even, for that matter, a woman.

It was . . . a ghost. One from her past; a man whose memory haunted her when she least expected it. Only he was here now, before her.

Sweat slicked her skin; it left her flesh clammy and her mouth dry.

I’m seeing things. There is nothing else for it.

She blinked rapidly . . . and yet the sight remained.

He remained.

A buzzing filled her ears, a thousand hornets set loose around her mind, adding to the hum of confusion there.

Over the years, she’d seen him in the unlikeliest places. Ofttimes in her mind. Others, in the shadows of the strangers around her. And yet she’d blink and he’d be gone, and she’d be reminded all over again of the man whom she’d wed in a night of folly.

But in all the ways she’d seen him, she had never seen him like this. In elegant wool and impeccable garments perfectly tailored to his person. And very much .