Mannequins swirled into the room like a bouquet of flowers. Each turned this way and that before promenading slowly around the room clockwise, then counterclockwise. In all, each spent nearly ten minutes displaying the dress she was wearing. The girls may have come from the poorer classes, but each one was attractive, perfectly groomed, and bore herself with the carriage of a queen, full tribute to Mrs. Feldon-Jacobs’s rigorous training.
“You must tell me, Countesses, if there is any dress that appeals to you that you would wish to try on yourselves. We would be more than happy to assist you during the second showing.”
The visitors chatted excitedly among themselves in their own tongue, leaving Miss Carr to watch the mannequins. One young woman was particularly good. Miss Carr recalled that her name was Claire Stimson, and that she was new to the House of Feldon. The dress she wore was Miss Carr’s favorite of the season’s line. The cream-silk evening dress daringly displayed a good deal of long, slender neck and the upper curve of the bosom before falling into becoming puffs of satin around the bust and shoulders, fitting tightly at the waist, and bustled with Alençon lace at the rear of the smooth skirts. Though the décolletage was much lower than a modest lady might find comfortable to wear, Miss Stimson still managed to assert dignity. Miss Carr watched her with approval. The three countesses sat up and showed great interest in Miss Stimson’s ensemble, eyeing the model hungrily.
“Ah!” one of them exclaimed, in English. “Yes, this is precisely what we have come for.”
They seemed particularly taken by the demeanor of the mannequin herself. Miss Carr thought that she would recommend the girl for promotion when the new line was brought out in the spring. The lovely gown concealed beneath it, Miss Carr happened to know, an entirely new kind of corset that Mrs. Feldon-Jacobs had designed for not only bestowing the wasp-waist so vital to the year’s fashions, but subtly lifting the bosom. The undergarment was not yet complete, and had to be pinned together. It was surely very uncomfortable, yet Miss Stimson carried herself with aplomb.
“Ye-es,” said the eldest, slowly, avidly, staring as Miss Stimson turned and pirouetted. “Exactly, exactly so.” The mannequin looked to her employer. Miss Carr nodded, indicating she was to remain in the room. How could Miss Carr possibly send her away, with all three Countesses Dracula staring at the model gown with such interest that their mouths were slightly open. Miss Carr was faintly troubled by their very red lips. Such vivid paint was not the fashion for respectable women in England, but foreign customs were different.
And yet women talked the same the world over. The middle sister-wife had been keeping careful track of the various fashions that had been displayed.
“I want the evening dress in crimson. I believe it was the sixth dress,” she said. Miss Carr went down her list to verify that it was so. “I shall also have the walking costume in midnight blue with white fur, the ninth selection. I shall look very elegant in it, should I not? The morning costume, number two in black and cream striped silk, is very handsome. I think highly of the fourth gown, the tea dress, although the dusty pink will not suit me. Does it come in other shades?”
“Of course, Countess. I have squares of the colors available for you to examine,” Miss Carr said, adding up the value of each costume in her notepad and coming up with a most attractive sum, and the other two had not chosen yet!
Disconcertingly, the countesses appeared to divine her thoughts.
“You must not think we are extravagant, my dear Miss Carr,” said the eldest, raising an eyebrow dark as a raven’s feather on her pale forehead. “It is only our due from our lord and master. For the trouble he has caused us, he owes us much, to the very last coin in his treasury! Plucking us up from our native soil, and making us endure this arduous and dull journey into a foreign land… you must forgive me,” she said, charmingly apologetic. “I mean no disrespect to your homeland, and you have been the most welcoming of hostesses.”
“Not at all,” Miss Carr murmured, embarrassed to overhear such private arguments between husband and wives. “It is difficult to travel such distances, although the summer is the best time in which to do it. How was your journey to England?”
“Abominable,” said the middle one. “On the terrible little boat upon which we embarked from our beloved Rumania we sailed through a horrendous storm. All of our trunks were washed overboard. We barely came ashore with the vitals for existence still in our grasp.”
“Your lives?” Miss Carr asked, gasping with excitement. There was an indefinable pause before the eldest broke the silence that had fallen.
“So to speak. And Magda retained our jewel box,” she said, with an approving nod to the second-eldest wife. “She is always one to hold on to opportunity. Luckily our bankers had already received our letter of credit. If our lord had only followed our advice we might have saved the vessel—but he never does listen.”
“We smelled the storm, but he enjoys such things,” said Countess Magda. “Never mind that we have lost our whole wardrobes and everything we held dear.”
He wrecked the ship on purpose? Miss Carr wanted to ask, but didn’t dare.
“But, he will pay,” said the eldest avidly, licking her red, red lips. “He will pay dearly. This is only the beginning of the price.”
“Oh,” Miss Carr said, uncomfortably, wishing to change the subject away from such personal issues. “Well. Did you land at Southampton?”
“No,” said the youngest, sulkily. “Whitby.”
“My goodness,” said Miss Carr, with great excitement, “then you must have heard of the shipwreck there! It was in all the newspapers. A ship called the Demeter ran aground, steered by a dead man’s hand.”
Miss Carr thought the event sounded like a romantic and strange play that sent a frisson up her back when she’d heard. It was not gossip, but news, so it was a fair subject to broach, by Mrs. Feldon-Jacobs’s rules. But it failed to intrigue her guests.
“How very… interesting,” said the eldest countess, after another pause. “No. We had not heard of such a shipwreck.”
The last mannequin curtsied lightly as she did her final turn, and slipped from the room.
“Well, Countesses,” Miss Carr said, nervously. This was the moment when they would either make an order or find an excuse to leave. “Have we shown you anything that would suit you?”
“Oh, yes,” the eldest countess said, with a lift of her dark brows. “We have seen many things that we wish to have. As you may guess, price is no object.”
“Then, if you permit,” Miss Carr said, “allow us to take measurements at this time, so that when you give your order, we may start at once tomorrow upon your choices.”
The senior countess looked at the other two. “Yes, this would be acceptable to us.”
With the assistance of three of the seamstresses, Miss Carr helped the countesses out of their gowns. Their velvet dresses, oddly heavy for the climate and the season, had a musty air about them, as though they had been hanging in a closet or folded into a chest for a very long time. Their undergarments were also curious, being extremely old-fashioned, albeit of the best fabrics and lace. One of the seamstresses prepared to wrap a tape measure around the bosom of the Countess Magda, when she jumped back in surprise.
“Oh!” she cried. Miss Carr hurried over to see what was the matter.
Spinning down along its own thread from a web just under the lady’s décolletage was a large black spider, very much alive. Miss Carr looked at the countess in puzzlement. The creature was so large she could not possibly have missed knowing it was there. Perhaps she had no fear of them. Perhaps she liked them. Perhaps having a spider about one’s person was a foreign custom, like the English tradition of letting a money spider walk across one’s palm.