A Thousand and One English Nights (Book Three of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Forty Seven: Dreaming Up Dresses

Ellini spent the morning shopping in the West End. Her latest way of defying Robin was to insist on making her own clothes. And his latest, half-amused compromise had been to agree that she could make the day-clothes herself, but the evening-wear would come from professionals.

"How are you supposed to terrify your enemies with shoddy stitching?" he'd said. "Didn't I tell you the revenge game requires style?"

She liked sewing. It was too complicated to allow her mind to wander, and it gave her the feeling of pulling herself together again – exactly the feeling she'd had when she had been reassembling the clay doll.

Besides, how could you feel gloomy – how could you think about Wylies and elementals and Oxford – when you were surrounded by muslins, silks and satins in gorgeous, glimmering swathes? The linen-drapers of London hung their fabrics from ceiling to floor like multi-coloured waterfalls.

She had even made a shirt for Robin, and watched him run his eyes over it thoughtfully, as if he was seeking out every flaw in order to refrain from commenting on them. She supposed it was a power play, but it was a nice, restrained one by the standards of Robin Crake.

And when she had seen him wearing the flawed shirt under his expensive, tailored waistcoat, she hadn't known what to think.

At any rate, she had spent the morning doing two of her favourite things: melting into the London crowds, and staring in at the linen-drapers' windows, dreaming up dresses.

But she had forgotten one of the fundamental truths about crowds. They had eyes and minds of their own. She realized this too late at the linen-draper's, when the clerk had finished folding and wrapping her purchases, and she attempted to pay him. 

He cheerfully ignored the coins she placed on the counter, and went on measuring out ribbon. When she slid the coins towards him, he pushed them back and started to whistle. And when she finally, in a strained but polite voice, said, "Well, keep the change," he rounded on her and declared, "You don't pay for anything in here."

He was suddenly so focused, after all the whistling and ribbon-measuring, that Ellini almost staggered backwards. He was looking at her intently, his black eyes several shades darker than his moustache, but there didn't seem to be any malice to him, so she stifled the urge to run.

"Why so kind?" she asked. 

He turned to the staircase behind the counter, at the top of which was a little, curtained door that presumably led to the stock-room. 

"Bianca?" he called out. "Would you come down here, please? My daughter," he added, turning back to Ellini. And that seemed to be all the explanation she was getting.

But no more explanations were needed when Bianca appeared at the top of the staircase, with white-blonde hair and gloved hands and a familiar, flinching smile. She was a big girl, with hair that rolled in generous swathes down her back, like her father's lengths of fabric.

Ellini's mouth dropped open. "Bianca? Oh god – and is that-?" She stopped, because another, white-blonde figure had emerged from behind the curtain, this one falteringly because she couldn't see. "–is that Carrie?"

There was nodding and tears and, for a moment, Ellini wasn't sure what was happening. Panic and pleasure seized her at the same time. She wasn't sure whether she was hugging the girls or running for the door. She was happy – happy? – to see them but, oh god, they smelled of Oxford and memory and consequences, and she hadn't been prepared...

She found herself in the girls' arms anyway, as they chattered away at her, and the linen-draper beamed.

"Carrie's staying with us while she studies at the music school on Gateshead Road," said Bianca.