The Horsemaster's Daughter (74 page)

“I
cannot believe I agreed to this insane bargain. I should know better than to put my trust in a man who rides a racehorse named Sultan to the legislature.” At the crossroads of M Street and Virginia Avenue, Abigail regarded the dressmaker’s shop with skepticism. The tradesman’s shingle was a black silhouette in the shape of a spool of thread and the moniker Madame Broussard, Modes Modernes pour la Femme.

The shop window reflected Jamie Calhoun’s grin. “In the first place, his name isn’t really Sultan, it’s Oscar, but I wanted to impress everyone. In the second place, he’s a
retired
racehorse. Oscar was a champion in his day, but now he’s my pet. He spends his days eating molasses oats and standing stud to an array of mares that would make a real sultan envious.”

She pulled her mouth into a prune of disapproval, sniffed and looked away.

“Ah,” said Jamie with a burst of exasperation, “there you go again, pretending displeasure. It ill becomes you.”

“How do you know I’m pretending?”

He grinned even wider. “I read your letter to Butler. I was drunk at the time, but I’ll never forget that you admitted to a sensual nature.”

She clenched her fists at her sides to keep from touching her burning cheeks. “That doesn’t mean I’m not offended by references to the mating habits of horses.”

“Of course you’re not offended. You are a woman of science. You’d never take offense at a natural process. That would be like taking offense at planetary motion.” He put a proprietary hand at her waist. “Come along, then. Madame Broussard is waiting.”

Abigail balked, pulling back.

“Now what’s the matter?” he asked with a touch of annoyance.

“I’m trying to figure out what on earth I’m doing. I consider myself an independent woman, yet I find myself preoccupied with pleasing my father and trying to appeal to a man who doesn’t even know I’m alive.”

“You wouldn’t be Abigail if you didn’t constantly question yourself.” He regarded her with uncanny understanding. “Think of it this way, what is the worst that can happen if you fail?”

“Humiliation, social ostracism, outright scorn—”

“Has the fear of failure ever stopped you from conducting a scientific experiment? Of course not. Look, you agreed to this. Next time Butler sees you, his eyes will fall out of his head.”

“I’m making a terrible mistake,” she insisted. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” But that was a lie, of course. She did know. She wanted Boyd Butler; she’d been smitten with him ever since they had been paired up in dancing class as gawky adolescents. The trouble was, she had stayed gawky while Boyd Butler had grown into a god.

And like a shill buying medicine from a snake-oil salesman, she had agreed to Jamie Calhoun’s program of self-improvement. One of the first lessons, he insisted, was to acknowledge that, like it or not, fashion mattered.

She glanced guiltily up and down the length of the busy street, lined with shops, cafés, reading rooms and taverns. “If anyone sees us going together to a dressmaker’s, they’ll assume we’re having an affair.”

“Which will only make you all the more fascinating in everyone’s eyes.” With insolent familiarity, he steered her toward the brass-trimmed door. Each time he touched her, inadvertently or not, a reaction sparked. She quickly squelched it by reminding herself he was an opportunistic, manipulative womanizer.

He escorted her into the studio of the famous modiste. Abigail had no idea how he’d managed to get an appointment. Helena had said that Madame Broussard had a lengthy waiting list of clients. Not that Abigail would have added her name to that list, but nearly every other lady in town was on it.

Rather than a shop, the Salon Broussard resembled a beautiful drawing room decorated with subdued elegance, with gilt furnishings, fringed drapes, new electrical lighting and stately old oil portraits of European aristocrats lining the walls. There was not a single garment or bolt of fabric in sight.

A maid welcomed them in French and Abigail was startled to hear Jamie Calhoun reply in kind. Despite his great height and almost overpowering masculinity, he didn’t look out of place against the backdrop of pink wallpaper and lace curtains. He was a man who knew how to be comfortable in any surroundings, Abigail realized with a twinge of envy.

Madame Broussard arrived a few moments later, entering through an archway from a chamber behind the salon. She glided into the room as smoothly as a train on a track. Everything about her was elegant, and she appeared to be of an elegant age—perhaps fifty. She had the clean, simple grace of a classic sculpture—smooth skin with the milky quality of alabaster, dark hair pulled sleekly back from her face, a perfectly unadorned black gown that managed with its simplicity to remind Abigail of a modern painting in an art gallery.

With one glance at Jamie Calhoun, Madame Broussard came to animated life. She swept forward, bursting with rapid French phrases and smiles, and embraced Mr. Calhoun, kissing him on both cheeks, talking the whole time. Abigail watched the way the older woman touched him, holding his hands perhaps a beat too long. Going up on tiptoe, she leaned forward to kiss his mouth, and held herself there another beat while she shut her eyes and inhaled. Abigail caught herself inhaling, too, and was startled by a sudden pulse of heat like the one she had felt when she’d come across him in the White House garden. Perhaps this was why Jamie Calhoun didn’t need an appointment.

Catching herself, she cleared her throat. Mr. Calhoun and the dressmaker broke apart. He introduced them, addressing Madame in French and Abigail in English, shifting back and forth between languages with effortless fluency.

Madame launched into a long recitation, all the while circling Abigail, looking her up and down with a keen, assessing eye.

“How do you do, Madame Broussard?” Abigail said, feeling nervous.

“Enchantée.”
The woman reached out and pinched Abigail’s upper arm.
Pinched
it as though she were a cow at the stockyards. She pinched a few other places as well until Abigail was certain she would die of mortification. Madame declared her current fashion to be
“exécrable,”
and Abigail deduced from her expression that this was not a good thing. Yet from the way Madame studied her, nodding occasionally, Abigail suspected the dressmaker had discovered some sort of hidden possibility that would need excavation.

Jamie Calhoun observed this initial inspection with a bemused, academic curiosity. The maid brought him a glass of ale.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Abigail asked.

“What could be better than watching your transformation?”

“How do you know I’m going to be transformed at all?”

He translated this for Madame and the two of them laughed. The dressmaker put on a grave face and said something long and sincere.

Jamie nodded in agreement. “I expect a complete metamorphosis, like a tadpole into a toad.”

Abigail glared at him. “How charming. You really do have a gift for flattery.”

“Dear, you don’t need flattery. You need Madame.”

“You are a United States representative. You should be spending your time legislating, not meddling in my life.”

“I legislated yesterday. You heard me address the House.”

I did.
She pursed her lips to keep from admitting how much she’d admired his surprising oratory.

“There’s nothing much on my agenda for the next few days,” he said. “I intend to devote them entirely to you.”

The way he looked at her as he spoke made her feel as though she’d been caressed. She had no time to ponder the sensation; Madame steered her into a rose-and-gilt room adjacent to the reception salon. The chamber was paneled with mirrors on every wall, floor to ceiling, many of them angled so Abigail couldn’t avoid viewing herself from all sides, making it depressingly apparent that she was unattractive not just from the front but from every angle.

The modiste clapped her hands and called out orders in sharp French. Three assistants bustled forward, seemingly out of the woodwork, and they all started talking at once. Abigail had only a smattering of French and could scarcely follow the conversation, so she ceased trying to listen. They didn’t seem to want to include her in the conversation, anyway. The Frenchwomen talked among themselves, surgeons engaged in a life-or-death operation.

Mr. Calhoun stood in the doorway, drinking his ale. One of the women unfolded a silk modesty screen.

“I really do think you should leave,” Abigail called out.

“My colleagues in the House are playing golf or fishing today. Truly, I think I chose the better diversion.” His disembodied voice came from the other side of the screen. “I hope your customary seamstress will not feel abandoned by your defection to Madame Broussard.”

“Actually, I have no customary seamstress,” she admitted.

“I know.”

“How did you know that?”

“A wild guess.” She heard the hiss and crackle of a struck match. A moment later, a curl of bluish cigar smoke rose above the screen.

Gazing into one of the many mirrors, she studied her workmanlike black-and-white shirtwaist and bit her lip. He was right, the rude scoundrel. She looked like a Puritan. Not that there was anything wrong with Puritans, but the son of the vice president would probably appreciate more style. Not long ago, Helena had tried to get her to wear a fashionable gown, but the result had been a multilayered disaster in pink-and-white taffeta that made Abigail look like a dark fairy from a child’s nightmare. Since then, she had refused to give a thought to her mode of dress.

Through the privacy screen, Calhoun and Madame traded commentary in French like a burst of gunfire exchange in battle. The invading army of Frenchwomen descended on her, their busy hands loosening buttons, unfastening hooks and unlacing laces before she even knew what was happening. Madame kept poking, pinching, pointing. When they had Abigail stripped down to her petticoats, the dressmakers stepped back to consult one another.

Abigail found it all so sudden and surreal that she forgot to be embarrassed. Then, out came the bolts of fabric, and she was intrigued. These were not the candy-colored tulles and taffetas that made her look so ridiculous and pallid, but a peau de soie the color of a sunlit lake, an indigo satin shimmering with ebony and midnight iridescence, a raw silk in the shades of the dawn sky. Colors found in nature, not contrived in some laboratory.

Although no one asked her opinion, Abigail thought the fabrics were lovely. The cloth was held up over the screen for Calhoun’s inspection, and he considered each with the gravity of a federal judge.

At a drafting table, the women swept aside a catalog of conventional gowns. Instead, they consulted a large collection of original drawings. Abigail gathered that they were the work of Madame herself. The dresses were unlike any she had ever seen. In contrast to the current mode of wasp waists, exaggerated bustles and pigeon-breasts, the modiste’s designs depicted long, clean-lined sheaths that draped rather than bound and looked classical in the manner of ancient Greece. They would be considered radical, even scandalous, by Georgetown standards, except that in their own way, they were actually more modest than current styles.

As with the fabrics, no one consulted her. Apparently, after seeing the shirtwaist, they put absolutely no trust in her taste or judgment. One of the assistants took three of the sketches to Mr. Calhoun for another consultation.

“I honestly don’t know why you’re spending so much time with me,” Abigail said, exasperated.

“Isn’t it the duty of a congressman to see to the needs of his constituents?”

“I’m not your constituent. In the first place, I don’t live in your congressional district.”

“True. But I serve all our country’s citizens.”

“In the second place, I don’t have the right to vote. No woman does.”

“Also true, more’s the pity.”

She sniffed. “I suppose you favor women’s suffrage.”

“Universal suffrage,” he said without missing a beat.

“I don’t believe you. Why would a privileged white male landowner favor voting rights for women and people of color?”

“Well, call me ignorant, but last time I checked, the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution specified voting rights for all persons born or naturalized in the United States, not the people who happen to be white, male, wealthy, propertied and literate.”

She imagined her father’s blustering reaction to this. But the fact was, she liked Mr. Calhoun’s iconoclasm. She also liked the fact that he had actually read the Constitution.

“A suggestion,” she said.

“Yes?”

“When you’re in a big congressional debate, don’t mention your views about universal suffrage. They’ll eat you alive.” Though she couldn’t see his face, she added, “Now, don’t bristle and get self-righteous with me.”

“How do you know I’m bristling?”

She wasn’t certain. For no reason she could fathom, she had an affinity with this man, could read his moods in the very air. “I just know. For the record, I happen to agree with you.”

“What about your father? Does he favor universal suffrage?”

She laughed at his naïveté. “How long do you suppose he’d keep his seat if he admitted that? Look, Mr. Calhoun, disagreeing with my father is like stepping into a pile of manure. You can never do it without looking stupid and making a mess. And you’d have no one to blame but yourself.”

“Your advice is so…picturesque.”

“In Congress, you must temper your views in order to advance your issues. You may fancy yourself a sophisticate when it comes to ladies’ fashions, Mr. Calhoun,” she added before he could interrupt. “But if you’re half as smart as you think you are, you’ll listen to me when it comes to politics.”

“I defer to the senator’s daughter,” he agreed.

The women swarmed over her again, chattering and plucking aggressively at her chemise.

“Mr. Calhoun,” she called, “I would like to know what is going on.”

“Relax. They’re saying that you’ve been all but swallowed whole by your petticoats.” He paused, and a puff of cigar smoke wafted upward. “An idea not without its appeal.”