Page 25 of Lady Like

Harry meets Emily at the Piccadilly entrance to Hyde Park, and they walk together to the tailor’s shop in Leicester Square.

The proprietress—a mean Scottish woman called Lucy McGowan—is the only dressmaker to ever successfully cut a silhouette that makes Harry’s broad frame look shapely and fashionable.

Most gowns make her look like a ham hock swaddled in satin.

It was Mrs.McGowan who supplied Harry with the red dress she wore to the Majorbanks’s ball, as well as the one she wears to Emily’s appointment in hopes Mrs. McGowan will recall fondly their previous collaborations, to say nothing of the shillings Harry had already melted at her shop, and offer a cut price.

But instead, when they enter the shop, the modiste gives Harry a critical up and down, then remarks on what poor care Harry has been taking of the seams. Harry begins to argue with the fervor of the guilty, but Mrs. McGowan ignores her, and instead takes Emily by the arm and leads her behind a screen to be fitted.

“Is white entirely unacceptable?” Emily calls to Harry as McGowan’s shadow flits about her, out of Harry’s sight but presumably pinning the muslin over Emily’s underthings.

Harry, who is busy testing the number of feathers she can add to her wig before it slides off her head, calls, “Yes.”

“Perhaps a cream might—”

“White is no longer being discussed, Miss Sergeant,” Harry replies. “It has been packed up and shipped across the Channel to France with every other banal fashion trend to which London is so slavishly devoted.”

Emily glares at her over the top of the screen. Harry sticks another feather in her hair.

There’s a rustle of pattern paper behind the screen. The toe of a discarded shoe pokes out beneath it. “Then what color would you have me in?” Emily calls.

Harry picks another feather from the vase. “What say you to a yellow?”

“I’m amenable to yellow,” she says. “Like a champagne rose?”

“I thought,” Harry says, “more a champagne dandelion.”

Emily’s forehead creases. “Dandelion?”

“Naturally.” Harry selects a bolt of vibrant saffron from the wall and holds it up for Emily’s examination.

“I can’t wear color that bright. I’ll be so…noticeable.”

“Isn’t that the idea?”

“It’s far too bold! Besides, who wants to be compared to a dandelion? You’ll have Rochester thinking me invasive and common.”

“Hateful.”

“Are you here to defend the honor of the common dandelion?”

“Someone should! Dandelions are tenacious! Impossible to kill—and they overtake everything they touch.”

Emily loops her arms over the top of the screen, which must require her to stand on her toes. “They’re certainly stubborn.”

“An understatement,” Harry says. “Dandelions are bright little rascals who love nothing more than disrupting a tidy lawn. They are abhorred by cantankerous gardeners and loved by friendly bees, as we should all aspire to be. Dandelions,” Harry says, pointing one of the ostrich feathers in Emily’s direction, “are outstanding foliage.”

“Now then.” Mrs. McGowan steps out from behind the screen. “Up on the block before the mirror now, please, Miss Sergeant, and mind the pins.”

Emily follows her, adjusting the muslin self-consciously as she takes the instructed spot.

Harry stands beside Mrs. McGowan, both of them looking Emily up and down and considering the dress, held in place only by a handful of straight pins.

The material is so thin that Harry can see the lacings of Emily’s stays beneath it.

She feels the back of her neck grow hot, and would like to look away, but finds that if she doesn’t look at Emily’s stays, she then has to look at something else, like Emily’s elegant neck or the dip of her clavicle, to say nothing of the expanse of milky skin beneath said clavicle.

Is there any aspect of this woman that is not modeled from a Repository fashion plate?

And, more important, why does the sight do so much for Harry?

She had never thought her tastes skewed so conventional, but Emily is just so…

beautiful. She can think of no other word for it, though it feels too simple.

“I think it needs less around the shoulders,” Harry says, and her voice comes out hoarser than anticipated.

“The shoulders?” Emily meets Harry’s eyes in the mirror. “No words for the neckline?”

“What sort of words were you expecting?”

“I assumed I could have come out bare breasted and you’d deem it too high.”

“Low necklines are common,” Mrs. McGowan says, and Harry nods. “The shoulders are the great underappreciated feature of a woman.”

“And this bit, right here, where the neck becomes the shoulder.” Harry traces the spot on Emily with the feather.

Emily wrinkles her nose and Harry is relieved that needling Emily provides adequate distraction from admiring her.

“That is the exact expanse of a woman’s bare flesh that inspires men to conquer cities in her name. ”

“I don’t need cities,” Emily replies.

“Just a small dukedom?” Harry winks. Emily scowls.

McGowan folds the muslin sleeve up until it barely covers Emily’s pale shoulder. “Maybe a little lower here as well, though, as a contingency,” Harry says, dusting Emily’s breasts with the feather, and when Emily scowls, chucks her under the chin with it.

“You’ll pay for those if you break them,” Mrs. McGowan warns, and Harry quickly replaces the feather in its vase. The modiste pinches Emily’s slender arm, and Emily flinches. “Stop clutching the material. It won’t fall off you.”

Emily takes a deep breath, then relaxes her hands from fists around the skirt. “Will there be so little when it’s finished? You can see the shape of my legs.”

“They’re good legs,” Harry says, then adds to Mrs. McGowan, who is still fussing with the sleeves, “Could you put something frillier on the bust to plump it up?”

“What’s the matter with my…” Emily trails off before the word bosom, her cheeks pinking. She has such a lovely blush, Harry thinks, almost like it has been painted onto her cheeks.

“Men like a bit more dairy than you’ve got.”

“Well we can’t all be so…” Her eyes stray to the neckline of Harry’s gown.

Harry feels the corners of her mouth turn up. “Go on.”

Emily’s eyes snap back to Harry’s face. “Nothing.”

“You were going to tell me I have fine breasts, weren’t you?”

“That is irrelevant!” Emily snaps, now blushing to her ears.

Mrs. McGowan places a final pin in Emily’s sleeve, then considers her unfrilled bust. “What will the color be?”

Harry looks to Emily, eyebrows raised. Emily rolls her eyes, then mutters, “Yellow.”

Harry grins. “The color of a tenacious dandelion.”

Mrs. McGowan looks thoroughly unamused by them both. “Very well. Take the muslin off carefully,” she instructs Emily. “Do not disrupt the pins. Now you.” And here she points to Harry and barks, “Take that off as well.”

“What?” Harry looks down at her own dress. “Why?”

“I must fix that hem before you rip it out. Go on!” Mrs. McGowan chases Harry behind a second screen on the opposite side of the room and unbuttons her before hefting the heavy dress over her shoulder and tromping off to repair the hem.

Almost as soon as the modiste has gone, Harry hears Emily call timidly, “Madame? Might I have your assistance?”

“McGowan’s gone to the back,” Harry answers. “What do you need?”

“Nothing,” Emily says quickly. A pause. The sound of something ripping, then Emily curses not quite under her breath.

“Everything all right?” Harry asks.

“She put me in stays that suited the pattern better and now I can’t get them unlaced.” Harry hears Emily take a heavy breath, then she asks, “Would you help me get them loose, please?”

“Ah, yes. Give me…” Harry casts around her corner for something to cover herself with—she’s dressed in her thin chemise, but having so recently stared at Emily’s fine neck and fine clavicle and fine everything, it feels unbearably indecent to unlace Emily’s undergarments wearing so little.

Seeing nothing but the bolts of cloth from which the tenacious yellow was selected, Harry swaddles herself in a length, wrapping it around her waist and then breasts before clamping down her arms to hold it in place.

Then she trips across the room, stockinged feet collecting scraps of material.

The long tail of the unfurling fabric drags behind her like a wedding train.

She hears the thump as the bolt falls off the shelf.

“What are you wearing?” Emily asks as Harry ducks behind her screen, which seems rather judgmental for someone standing in only a thin slip under the tight stays imprisoning her from her breasts to her waist.

“Only my finest,” Harry replies. “Now let’s have a look at these laces that have you captive.”

Emily holds out her arms, even as Harry clamps her own to her side to hold her bundled fabric in place.

She bends over for a better look, keenly aware that she is doing little more than staring at Emily’s breasts.

Well not breasts, but the stays covering them, which are extremely breast adjacent.

Harry grows so hot she almost drops the fabric from around her, lest the sweat coating her back should soak through.

While Harry has admired many different breasts on many different women, something about Emily’s—about Emily—about her scowl and her gall and her dogged determination to grab her own future by the throat—makes Harry want to lean forward and press her lips to the shadowed dip between them.

“Any luck?” Emily asks, and Harry snaps from her reverie. God! Has it been so long since she was with someone other than Mariah that she is this stupefied by a beautiful woman asking her to unlace her stays—and not even in prelude to fornication?

Harry hooks a finger into the laces and tugs experimentally. Emily’s body rocks, though Harry didn’t pull hard, and she grabs a nearby shelf to steady herself. “My.” Harry fiddles with the bow, which is somehow thrice knotted. “You’ve really mucked this up.”