A Heart Most Worthy (3 page)

3

Madame Fortier was going to need another seamstress. More than a seamstress, perhaps. She was going to need an artist. She knew it as sure as she knew the latest modes from Paris.

Taking up the sample book the postman had just delivered, she walked from the floor of her oriental-carpeted, chandeliered shop back behind a glass case filled with gloves, tasseled bags, handkerchiefs, and belts. Placing the sample book on top of it, she opened the front cover. Pen and watercolor-print illustrations bordered with squares of fabric filled the pages.

She flipped through the book quickly, giving the designs a cursory look. And she approved. Of most of them. After she was done, she had proof to bolster her suspicions. She would have to hire another girl.

Julietta was a genius with all kinds of embroidery, though Madame frequently wished the girl would alter her attitude. Annamaria, though she rarely spoke, smocked like no one Madame had ever seen. The girl’s interior work, the back side of her designs, was impeccable. But the styles for spring were going to be more ornate. And beadwork was just as tedious as embroidery or smocking. It required someone with a steady hand and abundant patience. And more than that, it required someone who knew what happened when beads were joined to fabric. Someone who could anticipate how their weight would pull and stretch the material. It was true handiwork. A lady’s work. And where was Madame going to find a lady who was willing to work?

For what Madame Fortier could afford to pay her?

She frowned before she could remember not to. Madame Fortier never frowned. Rarely frowned. Why was it so difficult, after all those long years, for her to remember the role she had laid out for herself to play? She went back through the book. Stopped for a moment to consider an illustration. Simple and sleek. But such dark colors. Black. Navy blue. Only one or two of the styles she’d examined were offered in green.

Dark green.

It wasn’t easy to remember the gowns women had bought before the war. But how could anyone in 1918 think of wearing Copenhagen blue or Nell rose? Lavender or terra cotta? What she wouldn’t do to be able to order a bolt of silk crepe in a reseda or a Russian green! But how could anyone think of looking cheerful when a war was being fought? When thousands of boys were dying in Europe’s trenches?

Madame crossed herself, some habits being nearly impossible to break.

She sighed as she turned another page. When would it all end? When could she stop making black gowns and selling veils to match? When could she stop converting fanciful patterns meant for shimmering beads into sober lines intended for black jet? And when – oh when! – would she be able to order charmeuse again? Or chiffon? Her fingers itched to touch a whimsical voile.

It’s not that she missed those fabrics exactly.

She missed their innocence. Their charm.

Julietta brought her own kind of exuberance to the shop, but she was a restless, impatient sort of girl. Which was too bad. Julietta had style and taste to go with it. She needed a girl like Julietta; Madame Fortier could not be Madame Fortier forever. It was too exhausting. The strain showed in places she didn’t know to look. It showed in the depths of her brown eyes and the slant of her shoulders. It showed in her walk and in the measured way that she talked.

None of her clients noticed it. Why would they? They only saw what they wanted to see. Madame Fortier, recognizing this, had long ago given up her fear of being discovered for who she really was. It had been absurdly easy for her to cease being Cosimo the Tailor’s daughter and become the celebrated Boston
modiste
. Indeed, the city was filled with modistes, all of them Madames who had never set foot on France’s fabled shores. It didn’t matter. As long as Madame Fortier did nothing to break the illusion she had created, her clients were simply grateful to figure themselves on her small and exclusive list.

Madame Fortier was a gown maker. That’s what the sign on her shop said.
Madame Fortier, Gown Maker
. She didn’t make dresses and she never had.

Making a notation in the margin of the sample book, she fingered the square of navy silk that accompanied the illustration. It would look so much better in an organdy. In bright pink. But Madame knew Mrs. Rutherford, with her charitable work on behalf of the war, would want it just the way it was presented. Even more perhaps if the waist were raised just a tiny bit and the hem lengthened by an inch. Not everyone looked their best in the new short styles. Length had its virtues.

She sighed as she shut the book, wishing for something she didn’t have the words to define. For something . . . different. Something
else
. Something other than what was. But she could not afford to investigate her feelings more deeply. She had chosen, you see, to leave her old life – her Italian life – far behind and now there was no going back. Not even when, quite often, she desperately wished to.

It had taken some time for Luciana to work up the nerve to leave the building. The hardest part had been getting dressed. She’d shed the rags of her peasant’s disguise but had yet to put on the clothes of her old life.

They lay there – the beribboned satin pumps, the silk stockings, the beaded satin gown – across the bed that she and the contessa shared. The satin wasn’t right at all for that July morning. It was too heavy and the color much too bright, but it was the only thing she had to wear. The shoes were utterly ridiculous, if you will excuse my saying so. And they were still marked by ashes. Luciana took up the hem of her discarded skirt and rubbed at the stains, but only succeeded in widening the smudges.

If she went out, she might be recognized.

If she stayed, they would most certainly starve to death.

She had to go. She had no other choice. She would just have to do it.

Luciana picked up a comb and pulled it through her hair. It delayed her getting dressed by a few minutes. Gathering her long dark locks, twisting them into a bun and then fastening the bun with pins took a few minutes more.

And then she could delay no longer. She took up the stockings, unrolled them and pulled them up over her knees, and then she fastened them to her corset. She pulled on her drawers and a chemise; a petticoat. And finally, closing her eyes so that she could not be goaded into remembering the last night that she had worn it, she took the gown from the bed.

She would not remember.

She refused to remember.

She stepped into it, pulling it up over her hips. She had to open her eyes in order to fasten it in front, but after sliding her feet into the shoes, she did not look down at the gown at all. But still, fear made her heart drop to the bottom of her stomach.

Even if her father’s murderer didn’t recognize her, others would surely know her. Know of her. Enough to decide that she did not belong in the North End, not in a gown like the one she was wearing. And if he did find her, what would he do to her then? She needed a disguise. Though she couldn’t do anything about the shoes, perhaps she could cover the gown.

With her scarf, maybe?

She grabbed it from the pile of clothes on the floor and unfurled it across her shoulders. But no matter which direction she turned it, regardless of which end pointed down and whether it was placed in the back or the front, it did no good at all. The confection of beads that was sprinkled across the long, flowing collar of the gown still caught the morning’s light, winking at her as if they meant no harm at all.

She could think of nothing else to use save the blanket.

It was a ratty, holey old blanket of indeterminate color that had been left in the rooms by the previous tenant. The fact that it had been left, and what’s more, not stolen, might have told Luciana all she needed to know about its provenance and condition. But refugees are grateful for whatever they can come by and just then, during the stifling nights of July, it hid the stains on the mattress and succeeded somewhat in helping to level the lumps at night.

She decided to try it, draping the blanket across her shoulders and drawing it to a close beneath her chin. It made her look . . . well, I hate to say how it made her look. Even fearful young women on the run from sinister persons would like to think, I’m sure, that they have at least something to do with modern fashion. That something, hidden underneath the clumsy folds and holes of a moth-eaten blanket, could signal the beauty hidden within. She knew it couldn’t look at all stylish, but she told herself it didn’t matter. Just a few short months before she’d been known as one of the most fashionable women in Roma. But that was when she’d wanted to be noticed – when she’d craved all the attention society had to offer.

Once she ventured out – with the blanket – into the light of day, she made it from North Bennet Street to Cross Street without suffering any untoward glances. Indeed, without incurring a second glance at all. At that intersection of Boston proper and old-world Italy, once she crossed the street and the air shed the scents of sewage and rotting garbage, she dropped the blanket into a gutter, gathered her old airs around her and, lifting her chin, started off down North Street. But then she stopped. And very nearly caused a man walking behind her to trip. But there was no help for it; she had hit upon a snag.

She had to find a job, that was certain. There was only one thing she knew how to do, it was true. But where, in that vast and crowded city, was she to find such a place of employment? She only knew where it wasn’t: It couldn’t be within the district of tenements and slums she now called home.

But where, in fact, might it be?

She needed to find the most fashionable and stylish place in the city. And for a girl who spoke no English, this was a daunting task indeed. But by and by, after having hit upon the means of following the most fashionable people down North Street and then down Washington Street, she happened upon just such a place. Happened in fact upon
the
place.

Temple Place.

Now, Temple Place was the one location to which two kinds of women in Boston aspired: those who made gowns and those who wore them. It was that type of legendary, mythical, magical place that whispered the words that every woman wanted to hear:
You have arrived.

As so she had.

Luciana glanced down, took a moment to straighten the sash at her waist, and then opened the door of the first dress shop she came to.

And was ushered right out just twenty seconds later.

She went into the next dress shop and lasted only a bit longer. Went on to the next one and lasted only slightly less. Her gown, it seemed, was acceptable. It was only when the modistes’ gazes had fallen to her shoes that they lost some degree of respect. And when they swept up to her face, well, by then there was no warmth, no welcome left at all. They had spoken just one word she was able to understand before they showed her the door. And they spoke it with disgust.

Italian.

Sì. She was Italian. From the house and lineage of the conti di Roma. Italian born and bred. Was it her fault she couldn’t speak English? She spoke Hungarian, German, and Italian.

Proper
Italian.

From a distance, she looked like any other of the hundreds of young women who entered such establishments every day. In the right season. Of course, July was not the right season and the women who wore gowns such as Madame Fortier’s were out at Newport or in the Berkshires. And the girls who hoped one day to wear such fashions were either hard at work in the city’s sweatshops or gazing off into the distance over the pages of their novels.

There was just one shop left on her side of the street. Did she hesitate, just an instant, before taking hold of the door? Did her resolve waver for even a moment? If it did, I would have no way of knowing.

It was with much surprise that Madame Fortier saw Luciana walk into her shop. She looked like a client. But no stranger had ever entered Madame’s shop. Her business was conducted by appointment only; her shop was immune to the hustle and bustle that was endemic to Temple Place. And besides, all of her clients were away on holiday at the shore or in the mountains.

She fixed her shopkeeper’s smile onto her face before she realized that the girl was not of the class of her normal clients. No. The girl was something else, something different altogether. It is said sometimes that soul speaks to soul and need cries out to need. As Madame approached the stranger, the desperation in the girl’s eyes kindled an unexpected response. It had something to do with the way the girl held herself. And something to do with the quality of the beading on her gown.

Instead of turning her out, Madame Fortier took a step closer. “Where did you get this?” The words came out in Italian, northern Italian, though Madame Fortier had not intended for them to.

“I – ” Just what was she to admit to? How truthful did she have to be? “It is mine.”

“Sì. Granted. But the beading? It is extraordinary.”

“I did it myself.” She had. Because in all of Roma there had been none to rival her artistry, her skill at the craft.