“What’s that?”
“You’re my fairy godmother.”
THIRTY-ONE
SOLINE
While it is fair to expect compensation for our craft, financial gain must never be considered when weighing whether or not to accept a particular client. Trust La Mère to provide in other ways and remember that our first and last consideration must always be The Work.
—Esmée Roussel, the Dress Witch
Rory’s words stay with me as I close the door. I fear I’m a poor excuse for a fairy godmother, but hearing her say the words has warmed me in a way I haven’t been warm in a very long time. And yet I find myself strangely melancholy. The house feels empty suddenly, and so do I.
I go to the kitchen and open a bottle of wine to keep me company, then take the plate of uneaten madeleines to my study. It’s where I spend most of my evenings these days, sitting with my memories and getting tipsy enough to sleep without dreaming.
The madeleines are flavored with lemon. I pick one up and take a bite, letting it melt on my tongue. Suddenly I’m smiling. The tangy sweetness reminds me of Maddy, which is why I purchase them from time to time. They were his favorites and, in a roundabout way, the reason we became friends.
It seems like yesterday sometimes, at others, like a lifetime ago. I had only been in Boston a few weeks and was still looking for work. My accent remained very thick, and the dress shops didn’t want a foreigner reminding their patrons of the war. With my money running low, I couldn’t afford to be choosy, and so I began going from shop to shop, offering to do whatever might be needed.
One day, I walked into a little patisserie named Bisous Sucrés. Finally, I thought, my accent will be an asset. But it was late and I was so tired, and the smells of coffee and chocolate reminded me so much of home that when the woman behind the counter asked what I wanted, my eyes filled with tears and I couldn’t get a word out.
She took pity on me, bless her, leading me to the back of the shop, then bringing me a plate of the most beautiful pastries I’d ever seen. I made a terrible pig of myself, though she pretended not to notice, and over several cups of coffee, I told her my story—or at least the parts I cared to share.
She was ten years my senior, but we had a lot in common. She had come over from Chartres with her parents at the start of World War I and learned her trade from her mother. She’d lost a brother at Normandy and a husband to drowning, and was struggling to raise a daughter on her own. She understood hardship and loss and the need for a woman to be able to make her own way. She couldn’t afford to hire me, but she knew someone who might be looking for a girl who knew how to use a needle, a tailor who had recently lost both his assistants and was in rather a bad way.
She wrote his name and address on the back of an envelope and told me to go see him in the morning, to mention her name and not take no for an answer. Before I left, she gave me a pastry box tied with twine and told me to bring it with me—to sweeten him up.
And so, a little after nine the next morning, pastry box in hand, I knocked on the door of a smart brick row house on the corner of Newbury Street with the word MADISON’S stenciled in clean gold letters across the front window.
4 August 1944—Boston
He answers after a second knock, a tall man in his fifties, wearing a rumpled robe of charcoal-gray silk and a pair of badly creased trousers. His hair is wavy and toffee-colored, threaded with fine strands of silver, and he wears a thin mustache that I suspect is tinted with brow pencil or wax, because it’s several shades darker than his hair.
“No,” he mumbles at me before I can speak.
I blink at him, not understanding. “Pardon?”
“Whatever you’re selling. I don’t want any.”
“Are you Myles Madison?”
“Who’s asking?”
He’s so gruff, so completely dismissive, that I nearly turn and walk away, but I remember my instructions. Don’t take no for an answer. “Claire Bruneau told me to come see you. She said you might need someone to sew for you.”
He runs a hand through his hair, scowling. “Claire?”
“From Bisous Sucrés. She told me to bring you these.”
His eyes are pale gray, heavy lidded with long golden lashes. They light on the box briefly, then shift back to me. “Madeleines?” he inquires warily.
“I don’t know. She only told me to bring them—to sweeten you up.”
He grunts but takes the box from my hands and turns away: an invitation to enter, I assume. I take it, finding myself in a dimly lit parlor furnished with deep leather chairs and dark, heavy tables. It feels the way I’ve always imagined a gentlemen’s club would feel. Thick brocade draperies. Brass lamps with dark-green shades. A sumptuous Turkish carpet in shades of claret and sage. Everything burnished and tasteful.