Page 59 of The Gentlewoman Companion (The Gentlewoman #4)

With each stab of Meg’s needle into the linen, her irritation magnified.

The past year was wasted time and money.

A typical apprenticeship lasted seven years, but Margaret, through Lord Halverton, had negotiated a two-year contract to be extended upon necessity.

A year of that time had passed, swallowed in menial tasks better suited to boys in their first years of apprenticeship.

It was insufferable. He was insufferable, and she would tell him so—not that he was odious but that his not teaching her was untenable.

Didn’t he care about ignoring the terms of their agreement?

She was at Sloan’s Tailoring to learn mantua making.

She shook the gown from her lap and examined the shoulder, finding it still puckered—a perfect reminder of the reason she required Mr. Sloan’s expertise. With a sigh, she cut the threads and began again.

Mr. Sloan was a member of The Fraternity of St. Anne of the Tailors, a guild that chafed against a female tailor just as much as Mr. Sloan did.

And the irony of naming a female saint in their “fraternity” was not lost on Meg.

Hypocrites at whose mercy she suffered. Most probably, they conspired to thwart her by wasting time throughout the whole of her apprenticeship.

A student wasn’t paid during training, and the terms of the apprenticeship prevented her from selling work.

Without an income, she relied on her half-brother for everything—an untenable situation.

Thus, she had begun pinning notes to her work: “Dear Mrs. Smith, what a beautiful stomacher you wore when I saw you in the shop yesterday. Is the embroidery of your own hand? Please, call on me for tea Sunday.”

If one of Mr. Sloan’s customers visited her, she always found a chance to mention the lower prices she offered. She trusted they valued the bargain enough not to let the information spread to her master. If Mr. Sloan noticed a decrease in customers, he did not mention it.

The church bell chimed a quarter to seven. Meg had been tinkering with the sleeve for an hour. She arranged the mantua neatly on the table, stretched her neck, and went to the kitchen.

Grace was absent, but a bowl of porridge drizzled with cream and a hot pot of tea waited. Margaret shoveled a spoonful of breakfast into her mouth and scalded her tongue on the tea.

“I’m off,” she shouted toward the stairs.

Wrapped in a sensible cape, she left her house and unlocked the door to Sloan’s Tailoring.

Inside, she exchanged her cape for an apron and knelt before one of the four hearths to remove the previous day’s ashes.

She cleaned each grate before fetching coal and starting the fires.

Plunging her hands into a bucket of water, she gasped at the cold then scrubbed away any trace of black from her fingers.

She memorized the lay of each unfinished project before pinning them together and hooking them to the wall.

With the workspace cleared, she wiped the bench, swept the floor, and sorted through the debris for usable scraps, pins, and thread.

Finally, she sprinkled water on the floor to reduce dust and returned the incomplete work exactly as she’d found it.

At the snick of the door opening, she turned. “Good morning, Arnold,” she said. “I saved you the task of organizing these bolts of fabric. I’ll stock the worktable.”

Arnold, a boy of fifteen in his second year of apprenticeship, grunted and began stacking fabrics by type. He did not like her any more than Mr. Sloan did, and she wondered if his habitual tardiness was his way of punishing her for stepping into a man’s domain.

Margaret placed scissors, tape measures, chalk, and other necessaries in convenient intervals along the workbench.

By eight o’clock, five experienced apprentices sat on top of the table, projects draped over their folded legs.

Margaret moved to her corner—a place apart from apprentices and the women who stitched and embroidered nearby—and took up a basket of shirts that required hemming.

At their first meeting, Mr. Sloan had insisted on the impossibility of a lady joining the men as they sat “tailor-style,” or cross-legged, atop a long, wide bench, an unseemly and impractical position for a woman in skirts.

She argued that she could do just as well in a chair, but Mr. Sloan had not acknowledged the rebuttal.

As if conjured from her thoughts, he entered the workshop.

His eyes immediately found her. His brows tensed, his habitually grinning mouth falling.

His attention shifted to the seven other apprentices, who straightened and opened like blossoms instantly dry after a drenching rain.

All smiles and conviviality, Mr. Sloan greeted each by name, praising their work and offering council.

Meg prepared for a confrontation, refocusing on the tension of her thread.

At the slush of his shoes swiveling toward her, she clenched her jaw, trying to suppress the inevitable heat that flowed down her arms and concentrated in her fingertips.

To prevent the necessity of undoing her work, she paused the needle, almost breathless as he approached, his gait loose and confident.

He towered over her, his thick, dark lashes framing too beautiful ice-blue eyes.

She stood, not wanting to have to gaze up at him like a subservient.

He crossed his arms casually over an impeccably cut frock coat and leaned smiling against the wall.

If his jaw were not so aptly defined, if he were not so stubbornly happy, if his voice did not rumble from his chest in a way that made her toes curl, if everything he was and did were not quite so flawless, she might endure his presence with some tranquility.

More than the simple perfection of him, the carefree way he did everything irked her.

Did he have to work for anything? She stared back at him with all the loathing she could muster.

“Miss Cooper. Please brush down the two coats on the clothes horse and package them for delivery,” he told her.

Her fists tightened. A year was too long a time to waste in menial tasks. “Then, I will help with Mrs. Barnes’s order. I heard her ask for a more comfortable sleeve, and I have a few ideas that?—”

“Another time.” He smiled, turned on his heel, and sauntered toward his office.

“You have taught me nothing.” She swallowed, but was proud of her firm, calm voice.

In a collective swoosh of shifting fabric, the apprentices faced her, needles hovering. Mr. Sloan pivoted and stepped toward her.

Heart pounding, she continued, “Your shop is far cleaner and more orderly than when I began. I turn a hem faster than your most adept worker. Only a year of my contract remains, and I am ready to learn.”

He looked at her.

A beat.

Something altered in Master Sloan’s face, like slackened thread drawn taut.

His eyes narrowed slightly, and he drew his lips between his teeth.

The weight of his gaze was almost palpable.

She felt him see her, not as a bothersome fixture but as a person.

Meg straightened and resisted the urge to hide behind a chair.

“You are right,” he said, expression returning to normal as a guileless grin showed off his dimples. “We shall discuss this later.”

“When is later?” She would not have him pushing her off.

“Seven. After close.”

With an entire day of mindless work ahead of her, Meg began planning the words she would use when she later spoke to Master Sloan.

The wise Dowager Countess of Halverton once told her to behave like a gentlewoman and expect to be treated as one.

Meg’s own mother was a lady but not an example of respectability.

She must lean on the dowager’s example and be polite, firm, and accept nothing less than her due.

***

Strips of fabric, tangled threads, and fluff covered the empty workshop—Meg’s work for the following day. She stood in the middle of the vacant tailor’s shop, waiting for Mr. Sloan to emerge from his office. It was a quarter past seven.

I am a gentlewoman. I expect to be treated as one. She twirled the mantra in her mind, willing it to wrap around her and make it true.

“Miss Cooper,” he called, invisible behind the closed door. “You may enter.” Mr. Sloan reclined behind a small desk where he did the accounts. She left the door ajar.

“Thank you for all your assistance this past year, Miss Cooper,” he said. “You are the most diligent first-year apprentice I’ve ever had. Well, most young boys are not so fastidious as you, a grown woman.” He half-smiled, then cleared his throat. “That is to say, I’ll be sorry to lose your help.”

“Lose my help, sir?” What was he suggesting?

However delightful the idea of never entering Mr. Sloan’s vicinity again, she needed the apprenticeship to validate her work.

More to the point, she required training.

Even now, a seam she’d adjusted on her gown pinched the skin at the back of her arm.

Mr. Sloan’s mastery of the mantua approached those of a French dressmaker, a skill vital to her future.

“You seem unhappy with our arrangement. I assumed you would move on.”

“I came for your instruction, not to sweep your shop and turn hems. I’ll not leave until I get it.”

“Your tasks are the same as every first-year apprentice.”

She lifted her chin. “You must teach me the secrets of mantua making. It is the reason I am here, as you are aware.”

He rested his chin on tented fingers.

Margaret narrowed her eyes. “Are you afraid of me, Master Sloan?”

He huffed, almost a laugh. “Miss Cooper. Advancing you is unfair to the other students, and I am afraid it is impossible to teach you the intricacies of the mantua in only a year. Even two would not suffice”

There were plenty of mantua makers in London, but in Gloucestershire, Mr. Sloan was unique. “Why don’t you teach your other apprentices mantua making? Is it the secret to your thriving business and you fear competition will ruin you?”

“Your shop is brimming with fabrics. Practice with what you have. Go ahead and open a shop.”

“So I can fail?”

“If mantua making doesn’t work, open a mercer shop. You’ve stockpiled plenty of silk.” He smiled as if expecting she would find humor in his joke.

She was almost tempted to invoke her half-brother’s name. “Only I can terminate the contract, and I do not choose to do so. I am asking that you show me mantua making. Please.”

He leaned over his desk. “Why is this so important? From what I can tell, your guardian does not shirk his duty. Why not indulge in idleness?”

Hot fury sparked and flamed. The slothful depended on others to provide and she would not wait around for someone to pour money in her hands. It struck painfully that her subsistence depended on Lord Halverton. The roots of her hair prickled hot.

Breathe. Swallow your words. Breathe. Be a gentlewoman.

“I mean no insult, Miss Cooper.”

“If the entirety of the Halverton fortune were mine, I would learn mantua making. I will master the craft, if it takes ten years, if it takes a lifetime.”

She was halfway out the door when he said, “I will consider it.” Again, his stupid smile, but behind it was that same look he’d given her earlier in the day—alert and curious. Was there also a hint of understanding?