Page 2 of A Single Thread of Moonlight

“There’s no time for moping over love letters.” Annie bustled in. “Madame wants that embroidery for Lady Flintlock’s gown finished today.”

Annie was not exactly how one might picture a guardian angel. She was short and seemed permanently angry, with grizzled grey hair and a frighteningly hard stare. She was not warm, she had never expressed one word of affection towards me, and yet, when I was eleven years old, she had saved my life.

I had arrived in London alone, a pretty, spoiled child, with no idea of the real world. Fortunately for me, Annie took me in – temporarily, she said – and when she found out that I could stitch like a dream she got me a job at Madame Solange’s, the ‘dressmakers’ where she worked.

I had an instinct for colour, an interest in the latest fashions, and clever fingers. After Annie showed her some of my embroidery, Madame Solange took me on as an assistant dressmaker, and when my new employer asked for my name, I gave her my mother’s maiden name instead of my own. So, Iris Scott-Holland became Iris Grey, and I shed my old name and my old life gladly, like a winter coat on the first sunny day of the year.

Seven years later, Madame Solange’s designs were in great demand. The dresses that I created were beginning to change hands for a lot of money – not that I saw much of that. My job was to be grateful for the opportunity. And I was, really.

Every day I sewed in the small workroom, surrounded by bolts of fabric in all the colours of the rainbow. It was work that I enjoyed, and it was the perfect work for someone who wished to remain a shadow – no one wanted to think about the fingers that stitched their dress, and that was exactly how I liked it.

“I’ve almost finished,” I told Annie, folding the letter briskly into quarters, and sliding it under a length of rich red silk. “It will be done in time for her fitting tomorrow.”

“Is that Lady Flintlock again?” Claire, the shop’s model, drifted in. “I can’t stand showing the clothes for her – she’s a nasty old thing. Last time she came, she said that lovely blue dress would probably look well enough on someone built less like a work horse.” Claire’s eyes widened in distress. “A work horse.”

Claire was seventeen and sweet, with enormous doe-like brown eyes and masses of dark, curling hair. She hadn’t been at the shop for long, and she was still trying to be my friend. I was as discouraging as possible.

Fugitives didn’t have friends.

Which is why, instead of commiserating with Claire over Lady Flintlock, I schooled my voice to be cold when I replied, “Lady Flintlock is one of our biggest customers, Claire.” And a mean old bat, I added to myself.

Claire flushed and mumbled an apology.

I turned back to the piece of embroidery that I had laid across my desk. It was for a morning gown of pale lemon silk, and I was embroidering hundreds of tiny yellow butterflies across it. It was a bit fussy for my taste, but Lady Flintlock had never met a flower, a feather, or a ruffle that she didn’t like. Butter upon bacon, was her philosophy.

At her last viewing she had demanded the addition of hundreds of crystal beads. Madame Solange had praised her keen eye for fashion, added several guineas to the price, and then told me to get to work.

Claire moved closer, her fingers hovering above the embroidery, not quite touching the fine material.

“So beautiful,” she murmured. “I couldn’t understand at first – why Madame kept you hidden away in the back room, with your looks. It’s because you can do this. How did you learn?”

“My mother taught me,” I replied, my eyes on the stitches.

That, at least, was a small truth in a sea of lies.

Mother had taught me to sew as soon as I was old enough to hold a needle. She was an artist when it came to embroidery, and I had spent my whole life trying to capture some of the magic she had in her fingers. In another world – one where women’s work was taken seriously – my mother’s art would have hung in galleries. I thought with a pang of the beautiful wall hangings that had adorned my bedroom. Images from fairy tales brought to life: Rapunzel with her golden hair tumbling from the tower window; Red Riding Hood followed by a shadowy wolf – a shiver of silver fur and gleaming amber eyes.

I wondered what had happened to them after I ran away. Helena had probably burned them.

I gave myself a shake, forcing my focus back to the piece of silk in front of me. Thankfully, Claire had taken the hint and gathered her things, heading home for the night.

“She’s right, you know,” Annie said from the corner of the room where she too was getting ready to leave. “It is a waste, you being stuck back here. Think of the fuss you and Claire would cause together, her so dark and you so fair. People would buy anything you put in front of them. We’d sell hundreds of gowns.”

“And who would make them?” I asked tartly.

Annie only made a huffing sound and pulled on her coat. She knew I was right, and that was a good thing. If it hadn’t been for my usefulness back here, I have no doubt Madame would have wanted me parading about out front, and that was a risk I could not take.

If things had turned out differently, perhaps I’d be a smartly turned-out customer, looking for a wardrobe to suit my social calendar – the daughter of a wealthy marquess probably had need of a great number of gowns. But I had left that life behind on the night I ran away from home and caught the night coach to London.

I had spent my first night in the city huddled in the doorway of Madame Solange’s shop – drawn by the words painted in neat golden letters: DRESSMAKERS OF QUALITY, THE FINEST STITCHING IN ALL OF LONDON. I sat there for hours in the dark, increasingly afraid of the noises around me. The country had noises too, but they were different: the sharp bark of a fox, the insistent tap of a tree branch against the windowpane. Here, there was a constant, cresting wave of voices, and crashes, and horses, and footsteps. By the time the sun rose I was half-dead with fright.

That was when the door opened, and I fell flat at Annie’s feet.

For almost seven years after that, I had hidden away in London, saving what little money I could to hire investigators. I had hired three so far to look into Helena’s background, her life before marrying my father, her first husband (Samuel Weston, a mere baron) and his death – anything that could help me uncover a truth that I was certain of in my heart: that she’d played a part in my father’s death. All three had come up empty-handed.

I tried not to think about home too much, or the large inheritance that was owed to me, but this latest letter was clear: in just a few weeks’ time I would be declared dead, and the woman who had killed my father would have won.

I rubbed my temples. It was late now, the lights low as I set my final stitches in place. The moon shone through the window; it was time to go home.