What Lucinda Learned by Beth Bryan Read Free Book Online

rather surprised when the carriage drew up before an unmarked house in a fashionable part of Town. An impassive manservant ushered them into a spacious first-floor reception room.
    Lucinda looked round at the tasteful furnishings and the huge bowls of roses and pink lilies.
    “Ah, Madame Cleeson!” A little lady with beautifully dressed white hair and a gown of dove grey arrived and grasped Ethelreda’s hand. “So many years, I cannot believe it!”
    “Nor I,” declared Mrs. Cleeson with a laugh, “but those years have dealt kindly with you, Celie. And see, I have brought you my niece, Lucinda Neville, Jasper’s daughter, you know. She is to make her come-out this year, and naturally you are to make her dresses. But now we are to go to the Hoxboroughs’ ball tonight, and,” she concluded dramatically, “she has not a thing to wear.”
    “ La !” Madame Celie threw up her hands, then came to stand before Lucinda. “ Leve-toi, s’il vous plait , ma petite .” As Lucinda rose, Madame Celie circled her, nodding. “ Bon , bon . You have the jolie forme , ma belle, but very slight, so I think we shall find something. It will need peut-etre a stitch here and there but we shall contrive, we shall contrive.”
    Lucinda was whisked off into a smaller room which seemed largely furnished with huge mirrors and small gilt chairs. She stood in her shift while Madame Celie and a succession of assistants popped an endless variety of gowns over her head. To her, they all seemed fairylike, but Madame Celie was less easy to please. “ Oh, non! Pas qua! Too many frills. Bring the other, the pale blue.” Then, as that one was eased over Lucinda’s curls, “ Non! Not that one either—the colour is too insipid for such hair.”
    Lucinda’s legs ached and she longed to sit down. But beyond asking her to raise her arms or turn about, no one paid any attention to her.
    She was beginning to feel quite tired and rather irritated when Madame Celie at last said, “So, Madame Cleeson, you will take the blanche et or for tonight. A few tucks here and there and it will fit a la merveille . The other two we shall also adjust. I shall send them to you later this afternoon. Now do you and la petite take some tea and we shall then look at fabrics for the other ensembles.”
    Thankfully Lucinda resumed her own clothes and they returned to the first room where they drank pale China tea from exquisite paper-thin cups.
    Madame Celie bustled in again, this time with pattern books and swatches of materials. For a while, Lucinda’s attention was caught, but there were so many pictures, so many fabric samples and Madame talked so quickly and flipped the pages so rapidly, suggesting these sleeves here and that neckline there, adding lace here, a row of ruffles there, that at length she simply sat back and nibbled on a sweetmeat, leaving everything to her cousin and the modiste. On the rare occasions when they appealed to her, Lucinda merely nodded.
    “Gracious, look at the time!” Mrs. Cleeson cried, suddenly coming back to reality. “We must go immediately, so you may have time to rest. Celie, I depend upon you for that white and gold gown for tonight. Now, Lucinda, let us go at once. Come along now.”
    It was all anyone seemed to say in London, Lucinda thought as she climbed back into the carriage: come along, come along, come along! And all she had done today was look at dresses. But she had never realized that shopping could be so exhausting. She was actually looking forward to the rest Ethelreda had decreed.
    But later that evening, Lucinda had to admit that it had all been worth it. She turned slowly in front of the huge pier-glass.
    Was it really her: the slender, perfectly gowned figure she saw reflected there? She studied the dress again—her first London model. It clung tightly to her bosom, then fell into a divided skirt of thin white silk over a pale gold underdress.
    Tiny gold stars with diamonds in their centres sparkled in her