Another Scandal in Bohemia (3 page)

“Maestro?” The operatic term confused me. Surely Irene could not be contemplating a return to the stage?

“The rue de la Paix?” Godfrey echoed with lawyerly precision. His handsome face puckered as he mentally envisioned the addresses to be found on that highly fashionable street that began at the place de l’Opera and swept like a red carpet of luxury to the old royal promenade of the Tuileries via the rue Castiglione.

“I am to see Charles Frederick Worth himself,” Irene explained. “I have a personal fitting with the king of couture. I am truly Parisienne. I have joined the aristocracy of artifice. I shall be dressed by Worth at last!”

Godfrey and I exchanged a polite but puzzled glance of mutual mystification. Irene, clasping the stiff parchment to her bosom like a debutante’s first bouquet, noticed nothing.

Over dinner, Godfrey and I were educated on the subject of Charles Frederick Worth far more than we wished to be.

“Have you not several things already from the House of Worth?” Godfrey asked quite innocently, and unleashed what became a cataract of retort.

“Nothing from the mind of Worth himself.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“Who is he?” Irene cried. “What a question! Only the architect of the world’s finest gowns, a monarch of material, a king of cut, a prince of profile—for it was he who invented the princesse line—the man for whom the word
couturier
was coined in the masculine gender, a master who dresses queens and empresses from the tundra of Russia to the castles of Austria as well as queens of society from St. James to Newport.”

Godfrey’s dinner fork dissected an odd arrangement of asparagus and chestnuts created by our cook, the maid Sophie’s Aunt Nathalie. “I suppose that such concoctions of the maestro himself are exceptionally... expensive.”

Irene looked insulted. “Cost is no consideration. Genius does not come cheap.” She reconsidered. “Or it should not, in a perfect world.”

“In a perfect world,” he pursued wryly, “to how many works of Worth genius should an incognito opera singer aspire?”

“I had not considered. His evening gowns are sublime, but then so are his visiting ensembles. I do not wish to appear... tightfisted. And then, as long as one is ordering, one might as well lay in a season’s worth of gowns.”

“As long as one is paying, what will so many Worths be worth?” he asked.

“More than enough,” she admitted, laughing, “but this is the opportunity of a lifetime. Worth at this stage in his career does not accept just anyone as a client, and seldom sees them in person. Besides, we have plenty of money left from the sale of the Zone of Diamonds.”

“No doubt,” I put in, “Sarah Bernhardt put in a good word for you with this man-milliner.”

“I hope not! When she was still with the Comedie Français years ago, Sarah insulted Worth by ordering five of his gowns for a play, then using only one and filling in with dresses by other designers he considered lesser. Worth was livid, as Sarah told me. He is a tyrant in the fitting room who tolerates no rivals. No, I have won this coup on my own, by a careful campaign of dropping a word in the right ears.”

Godfrey shook his head, smiling. “It is your money, Irene; you may spend it as you wish. I can’t help thinking that an idle mind is the couturier’s workshop, though. I have seen your boredom rise at the quiet life in France after our latest adventure. You must do what you will to occupy yourself. Nell and I will have to take your word that it is ‘Worth’ it.”

“Do not include me in your approval,” I told Godfrey. “I am not convinced that it is proper for a man to involve himself in the intimacies of women’s dress.”

Irene folded her napkin and tossed it to the tablecloth. “Your ‘respectable’ reservations are thirty years behind the time, Nell. That issue was decided in Mr. Worth’s favor when he first began dressing the Empress Eugenie in the sixties. Now she is in exile, empires have toppled, but Worth still reigns supreme. Besides, he is an Englishman born and reared, so how can he even dream of being improper? Such old-fogeyism is old hat.”

“No,” said Godfrey, installing peace, “it is new hat. I imagine we will see a good deal of those as well.”

“And gloves and parasols, boots and slippers, jewelry,” Irene enumerated happily. “Worth dresses the whole woman.”

“Until she has a hole in her pocket,” I mumbled to my own mutilated asparagus.

“Wait to judge, Nell, until you see number seven, rue de la Paix,” Irene said.

“I? I never intend to see such a place!”

“But you must.”

“Why?”

“Godfrey has no interest in the rituals of commissioning gowns, and I can hardly be expected to make up my mind on such vital matters alone. Worth gowns cost a king’s ransom, after all.”

Irene’s husband and I stared at each other in the face of this sudden confession from a woman who recently had faced down a murderous heavy-game hunter and hooded cobras.

“Please, Nell,” she pleaded very prettily indeed. “You can’t allow me to go unchaperoned into such a den of mousseline and man-milliners. Godfrey is right; boredom is fatal to me. I must make my forays into something new, even if it is only as frivolous as fashion. I require a witness, a supporter, a recording angel. You cannot deny me, dearest Nell.”

As usual, she was quite correct. I could no more resist an appeal to my governess instincts than Irene could resist the siren calls of imagined luxury and calculated risk.

Godfrey had done with dinner and laid down his fork. He regarded Irene with an indefinable glint in his silver- gray eyes. “As for your assertion that it is impossible for an Englishman to be improper, I will be forced to put your theory to the test.”

“I will take a great deal of convincing,” she suggested.

“I do hope so,” he responded in a baritone purr.

I, of course, could make no more head or tail of this last exchange than I could discern front from back on a Liberty silk gown.

Pleading headache, I excused myself immediately after dinner to withdraw to my room with my peculiar new gowns. Neither Irene nor Godfrey seemed discernibly bereft by my absence.

Chapter Two

E
NTER
M
ADAME
X

Even the
weather cooperated with Irene’s desire to make a grand entrance the day our carriage first drew up before No. 7, rue de la Paix. Silken swaths of dove gray cloud shrouded the Parisian skies. Some sober sprite had draped the same dull veil over the stone streets and building façades, turning them into a dreary blank canvas awaiting a splash of pigment.

Despite a ground floor of display windows flaunting fine fabrics and costly accessories and the word “Worth” blazoned in strong gilt letters above the double door, Maison Worth was the usual five-story edifice that lines the rue de la Paix. Such buildings are pierced by narrow, long windows stretching from floor to ceiling behind fences of wrought iron, and crowned with a rickrack of gables and a grim, charred forest of chimney pots.

When our driver helped Irene alight before the central archway, her crimson and gold Liberty silk gown flamed like an illustration from a Medieval book on a dirty page.

Heads all along the thoroughfare turned to see Irene in the high-waisted gown, her dark hair drawn into simple wings that covered her ears and gathered into a loose chignon low on the back of her head beneath a small red velvet bonnet.

I, of course, would never dream of wearing a Liberty silk on the street for all to gawk at.

“Such unconventional dress may annoy Mr. Worth,” I warned Irene in a whisper as we were ushered through the portal by a white-gloved page boy.

“Quite true,” she surprised me by admitting, “but it is better to beard a fashion lion wearing exquisite unorthodoxy rather than inferior conventionality.”

“Since I am the picture of such inferior conventionality,” I protested, “I will wait outside.”

“Nonsense. Exquisiteness requires contrast to set it off; your ordinariness is absolute perfection.”

By then we—she—had glided into a richly upholstered salon in which fashionable ladies sat and strolled like figures from
La Mode lllustrée
come to life.

Even Irene paused at such intimidating perfection reflected in gilt-framed minors. One of the strolling women approached us, her gown a marzipan triumph fashioned of gathered tulle frosted with glittering beads and lace.

“Mesdames
require a
vendeuse?
she inquired.

Irene flushed, as I had not seen her do since Bohemia. “I have an appointment with Monsieur Worth,” she said, “for half past three. I am Madame Norton. My companion is Miss Huxleigh.”

“You are early, Madame Norton, and Monsieur Worth is a bit behind. One of his migraines. Please observe the mannequins. If a particular gown strikes your fancy, it can be made for you in a manner to suit. Meanwhile, you and Miss Huxleigh may stroll or sit, as it pleases you.”

The woman wafted off in her sparkling cloud while Irene’s inquisitive expression silently consulted me.

“Please let us sit,” I suggested. “I need to absorb the surroundings.”

She did not argue, perching quickly on a huge tufted ottoman, her reticule centered on her lap, as mine invariably was when I was nervous. In fact, as my reticule was always placed when I sat, just as my feet stayed as tightly paired as empty shoes.

We sat there, silent and side by side, for several minutes while unknown women—elegant, exquisitely attired women—swirled around us in a grande promenade, twitching their trains and plucking at the airy sleeves that thrust above their shoulders like butterfly wings.

At last Irene leaned toward me to employ a genteel whisper in English. “I see now. Some of these women are mannequins employed by the house to model dresses; some are
vendeuses
—shop assistants who sell the gowns. The others are clients like ourselves.”

“Speak for yourself! I am no client. And you are the only woman present dressed in the aesthetic style. No doubt Monsieur Worth abhors such unorthodoxy. And what kind of Englishman would allow himself to be bowed to as ‘Monsieur this’ and ‘Monsieur that’ at any rate? It smacks of Frenchification.”

“Monsieur Worth has lived in France for some decades, Nell. His wife, Marie, is French. His sons are named Gaston and Jean Philippe.”

“Oh, dear. He has been thoroughly corrupted, then,” I began, only to stop short as our greeting angel rustled toward us again.

“Monsieur Worth will receive you in the salon above,” she announced with pleasure. “If you will come this way.”

We followed in her meringue-like wake, a froth of lace and tulle that reminded me all too well that the prized black silk “surprise” dress I wore made me a crow among birds- of-paradise, despite its embroidered old-rose reveres and the overs
kir
t coyly caught up at the hem on one side to reveal more old rose and embroidery.

On the other hand, I did not attract the untoward attention that Irene did. Every eye in that room glittered like furtive jewels behind downcast lashes, watching Irene’s flagrant Liberty gown retreat up the carpeted stairs to the lair of the master of Maison Worth.

The private rooms upstairs were as grandly furnished, if less populated, than the imposing salon. Our guide led us to a chaise longue on which a gentleman reclined, a compress clinging damply to his temples.

At the sight of Irene, he leaped up, flinging the compress aside, where it landed wetly on the wine-colored brocade upholstery. His sofa partner, a large spaniel, lowered its black muzzle to the castoff.

Monsieur Worth stared at Irene (I do not think he even noticed me, at least not until much later in our encounter) and Irene stared right back with her brand of distilled American forthrightness. And well she might.

This so-called Englishman-born was a man of ordinary stature attired in a velvet beret of excessive dimension. He also wore a “poet’s” shirt, which is to say a sloppy one; a soft tie of spotted silk; a reasonably respectable buttoned vest and some silly shapeless brocade jacket banded in black velvet. No wonder the man’s head pained him.

Beyond his manner of dress, he was unprepossessing. In an uncharitable mood, I should have called him uncomely. Certainly, compared to Godfrey, he left much to be desired. I could have pitied him for his lack of attractions had he not chosen to surmount an insufficient chin with a great, bristling, overhanging eave of rusty mustache, much resembling a walrus’s.

Irene was not the slightest taken aback by this bizarre appearance. The man eyed her up and down most intently, then lifted a pudgy hand, let the forefinger droop down and twirled it.

‘Turn,” he ordered in English.

Irene lifted one eyebrow, at which she was most adept, then spun away from the man-milliner in a sweep of red-and-gold silk that echoed the highlights in her hair.

“Ah!” Monsieur Worth clapped his palms together in an irritatingly French fashion, although he had spoken thus far in English. “Marie must see."

This last phrase, in French, was directed to our guide. She rustled away while Monsieur Worth cast himself to the sofa, nearly sitting on the damp compress.