“We endeavor to please,” Miss Carr said, pleased for Mrs. Feldon-Jacobs’s sake. It surely would be worthwhile having remained. These ladies were possessed of fabulous wealth. The necklace about the neck of the youngest countess was composed of real diamonds, each stone the size of Miss Carr’s thumb tip. Such jewels had to be worth the value of a steamship. Those other couturiers would regret having refused, and Mrs. Feldon-Jacobs would have reason to be smug.
Her eagerness must have showed upon her face, because the eldest countess smiled. She had a most interesting face. It spoke to Miss Carr of high breeding and quality. The cheekbones were particularly beautiful, not too protruberant, yet with a piquant shadow beneath. Her nose was high-bridged, narrow as a hawk’s beak, and she had large, deep brown eyes that seemed to be a blend of black and red, and black-brown hair swept up into sleek folds around her head. She wore black velvet sewn with jet beads and fringe that swayed gently as she moved. The second lady was very much like her, the lineaments of her dark-complected face spare as a sculpture, with large dark eyes. Her dress, also of velvet, was blood red, trimmed in jet and garnets. The third lady, clad in heavy blue velvet, was equally striking, lovely in a more English manner, with masses of blonde hair, fair skin, and large, luminously blue eyes. At least their beauty would be more pleasant if these ladies had the bloom of health upon them. They were all so very pale. Perhaps in Rumania ladies of quality were not permitted or encouraged to take the air very often. It was on the tip of Miss Carr’s tongue to ask, but good manners took over. It was not a question she would ever ask of an Englishwoman. She must not allow her training to desert her even though these were only foreigners.
Pages, yawning openly due to the late hour, assisted the countesses in removing their coats and hats, and vanished with the garments to the cloakroom. Miss Carr took the lead, escorting her visitors into the salon. She heard a murmur of approval from behind her as she stepped aside to allow them to enter the chamber ahead of her. The room, the most superior of the five that Mrs. Feldon-Jacobs maintained, had walls covered in Regency-striped oyster silk with dark wood trim and doors. A vase of lilies stood on one occasional table, and a vase of ostrich feathers adorned the other. She was pleased to see that the porter had raised a good fire in the marble-lined grate, and begged the visitors to make themselves at home. The second-eldest countess took the most comfortable chair, a luxuriously padded, chestnut-coloured upholstered leather armchair with mahogany legs that sat at one side of the fireplace, and was chased from thence by a glance from her senior. Strangely, the eldest did not sit down in it herself, but left it for their fair-haired junior, who sank into it with the grace of a queen.
“How may our establishment assist you?” Miss Carr asked, standing before them a trifle nervously. In light of the byplay she had just witnessed, she did not quite know which one to address.
“We do not wish anything that has been worn before by anyone else,” the eldest said, settling herself at one end of the bottle-green velvet couch at the other side of the hearth. “We are here for haute couture, nothing less. This house has produced handsome wares in the past. That is what we wish.”
“Made-to-measure, then,” Miss Carr said, inwardly jubilant. Bespoke gowns were worth to the establishment ten to twenty times the value of off-the-rack garments. She tried not to look excited as she opened her tiny notebook and raised her gold pencil. “Do you perhaps have a concept of what particular needs in your wardrobe you wish to fill?”
The youngest, enthroned in the great leather chair, waved her hand dismissively. “We have not had new wardrobes in ages, not ages! The whole ensemble, if you please. Evening dresses, walking dresses, night dresses! We wish to see it all.”
Less explosively, the others agreed. “Yes, show us your current line, if it is not too much trouble.”
“Not at all,” Miss Carr said. “We are pleased to do anything that will suit your convenience.”
The eldest countess smiled her enigmatic smile. “I am most delighted to hear you say that.”
Miss Carr bowed herself out to go to the robing room where the mannequins were waiting to hear what garments they should don.
The girls sitting on couches and benches in their altogethers in the cloth-draped chamber looked up at her as she entered. They had been drinking tea and coffee to stay awake. A few of them had taken naps, but many of them were worn and a little pallid, looking older than their ages, which were from sixteen to twenty years. They had all expressed themselves willing to work late for the bonus wages Mrs. Feldon-Jacobs offered for this night. It was hardly a respectable time for young ladies to be out, but the owner constantly impressed upon her staff that the customer was always right, and three ladies who wished to be fitted for entire ensembles was not an opportunity to be missed.
“The whole line,” she said. Excitement brought roses back into the girls’ cheeks as they hurried to help one another dress. “The first walkthrough should begin in ten minutes,” Miss Carr announced, pitching her voice slightly to carry over the hubbub. “Make your change in time for the second walkthrough and wait for my signal. Repeat your promenade in the same order until I inform you to stay or go back to your first costume.” The girls didn’t look up at her, busy as they were with corsets and petticoats, but she knew they heard her.
She returned to the salon, clasped her hands together nervously and beamed at her guests.
“We shall be ready to present our line to you shortly. In the meantime, may I offer you refreshment?”
“Thank you,” said the second-oldest, raising her hooded eyes to Miss Carr. The glance was piercing and disquieting. Miss Carr suppressed a shudder. “But not just now.”
“Of course,” Miss Carr said, feeling her heart flutter. “I…
Countesses, how shall I address you to distinguish among you? Are you perhaps sisters?” she asked, though she couldn’t see how the third woman might have been related to the first two. “Or are your husbands brothers? Cousins?”
“We are all the wives of the great Count Dracula,” said the second woman, with great pride.
“Our ways are not your ways, I know,” the eldest countess said. She smiled, showing her teeth. All three had red, lush lips framing perfectly white teeth.
“I hope you will not think that I am questioning your ways!” Miss Carr exclaimed, shocked.
“No. Of course you are not,” the eldest Countess Dracula said, with a smile.
“Indeed, it is a fascinating concept of those of us in England,” Miss Carr went on, “that a man should have three wives, rather like a Turkish sultan.” The ladies, to her great surprise at women of such elegance, all spat on the white silk carpet.
“The Turks,” said the eldest, disdainfully. “The Turks are barbarians.”
“I apologize,” she said hastily. “I did not mean to offend.”
“It is not you,” said the second-eldest countess. “It is the Turks who offend by their existence.”
Miss Carr was relieved having just experienced an inner vision of the countesses sweeping out of the salon and into the night, outraged; and herself, standing on the very same stoop the next morning, unemployed, having wasted resources of the House of Feldon, then driven away the customers. She supposed that her grandmother might have made a similar gesture regarding the French, so perhaps the ladies’ reaction was not so outrageously exotic as it at first seemed. What an odd thing it must be to be a co-wife, she thought, like those people who lived in the American states. What were they called, Mormons? Miss Carr had thought that the religion was new, but it might have originated in the Balkans, for all the proponent was a man called Joseph Smith. Perhaps there was a Rumanian equivalent of the name.