The Fitting Room Confession

The bell chimed just after the second hour of the afternoon, and Moira MacKenzie looked up from the ledger to find exactly the pairing she had been expecting for the better part of a week. Lady Catherine Drummond stood in the entrance wearing an expression of studied composure that would have convinced anyone who did not know her as well as Moira did, and half a pace behind her — close enough to suggest intimacy, far enough to deny it — Lord Ashworth removed his hat with the deliberate care of a man conscious of being observed.

Moira closed the ledger. She had dressed Lady Drummond for eleven years, through two pregnancies, one miscarriage, a period of mourning for her mother-in-law that had required six gowns in graduated shades of grey, and a social season so bruising that the woman had wept through three consecutive fittings. She knew the set of Catherine Drummond's shoulders when something was wrong, the particular way her gloved fingers worked at the clasp of her reticule when she was holding herself together by force of habit rather than genuine composure. The shoulders were wrong today. The fingers were at the clasp.

Lord Ashworth was a different study. Moira had taken his measurements once, four years ago, for a set of waistcoats he had never collected. He was tall, fair-haired, with the kind of face that aged well in portraits and poorly in daylight — the jaw softening, the eyes carrying a permanent calculation that charm could disguise but not eliminate. He was said to be pursuing Lady Drummond. Half of Edinburgh believed this. Moira did not, because Moira knew things about Lord Ashworth that half of Edinburgh did not — specifically, that his debts to a certain merchant house in Leith exceeded his annual income by a factor of three, and that the merchant house in question was owned by a man with known Jacobite sympathies who had thus far avoided prosecution by the simple expedient of being owed money by the right people.

Ashworth was not here for Catherine Drummond. He was here because Catherine Drummond's husband, Lord Andrew Drummond, was in the Low Countries on business that the family described as mercantile and that Moira suspected was rather more political than any bill of lading could account for. Whatever Ashworth wanted, it connected to Andrew, not to Catherine. The riding coat was scenery.

Moira greeted them with the calibrated warmth she reserved for clients whose situations required delicacy — enough cordiality to set them at ease, enough formality to remind them that the Emporium's discretion was a service, not a gift. She led them past the showroom displays, past Fiona straightening ribbons at the accessories counter with the poorly concealed curiosity of a girl who had not yet learned that obvious interest was the enemy of useful observation, and into the private fitting room at the rear of the ground floor.

The fitting room was Moira's instrument. She had designed it with the understanding that women undressed in more ways than one when surrounded by the right combination of privacy, comfort, and implied confidence. The curtains were heavy damask that swallowed sound. The mirrors were positioned to flatter. A small table held a decanter of Madeira and two glasses — always two, never three, because the fitting room worked best as a space for intimacy, and three was a crowd. The lighting came from beeswax candles whose warm glow softened features and loosened tongues in equal measure.

Ashworth declined the Madeira. Lady Drummond did not. She drank the first glass faster than etiquette permitted and held the second in both hands, her gloves removed and folded on the chair beside her, and Moira noted the tremor in her fingers — not the delicate trembling of nerves but the unsteady grip of a woman who had not slept properly in some days.

The pretence of the riding coat lasted precisely as long as it took Moira to produce a bolt of suitable broadcloth and lay it across the measuring table. Ashworth looked at the fabric without seeing it. Lady Drummond looked at Ashworth with an expression that Moira recognised from long experience — the particular blend of desperation and resentment that appeared on a woman's face when she had been placed in a position of dependence upon a man she neither liked nor trusted.

Ashworth produced the letter from the interior pocket of his coat. It was small, folded twice, the paper travel-worn and bearing a seal that Moira identified at a glance — Andrew Drummond's personal cipher, the one he used for family correspondence rather than the formal Drummond crest reserved for official business. He handed it to Catherine without ceremony, and Catherine broke the seal with fingers that shook badly enough to tear the wax rather than lift it cleanly.

Moira did not leave the room. Neither Ashworth nor Lady Drummond asked her to. This was, she understood, part of the arrangement — her presence served as both witness and guarantee. Whatever the letter contained, Moira's knowledge of it would bind all three of them in a triangle of mutual discretion. Ashworth could not later deny delivering it. Catherine could not later deny receiving it. And Moira, who forgot nothing, would hold both facts in the same mental archive where she stored the measurements and preferences and whispered indiscretions of Edinburgh's entire ruling class.

Catherine read the letter in silence. It did not take long — a single page, the writing cramped, the ink smudged in places as though composed in haste or poor light. When she finished, she lowered it to her lap and stared at the broadcloth on the measuring table with eyes that had gone flat and distant, the look of someone receiving news whose full implications had not yet finished arriving.

Andrew was not coming home. That much Moira deduced from Catherine's stillness — the particular quality of shock that accompanied not a death but an abandonment, the realisation that a departure described as temporary had become something else. The details would emerge later, in fragments, through the channels of gossip and commerce that fed the Emporium's intelligence. For now, what mattered was the shape of the situation: a husband abroad indefinitely, a wife left to manage an estate and a reputation without support, and a creditor standing in the fitting room wearing the expression of a man who had just delivered a message he expected to be paid for.

Catherine wept. The tears came without sound — a discipline learned, Moira suspected, in a household where displays of emotion were treated as failures of breeding. They tracked down her cheeks and fell onto the Venetian lace at her collar, darkening the delicate thread, and Moira produced a handkerchief from the drawer she kept stocked for precisely these occasions. Catherine took it without looking up.

Ashworth watched the weeping with the patience of a man waiting for a transaction to conclude. When Catherine had composed herself sufficiently to speak, he outlined what he required — not in so many words, because men like Ashworth never stated their terms plainly when implication would serve. Lord Drummond owed obligations that would need honouring in his absence. Certain introductions would be helpful. Certain doors that the Drummond name could open would be appreciated. The riding coat, should it ever materialise, could be added to an account that Lord Drummond would presumably settle upon his eventual return.

Catherine agreed to everything with the compliance of a woman who understood that her options had been reduced to the ones being presented to her. Ashworth collected his hat, offered a bow whose formality mocked the intimacy of what had just transpired, and departed through the showroom with the self-satisfied tread of a man who had accomplished exactly what he came to accomplish.

Moira remained with Catherine for another quarter of an hour. She poured a second glass of Madeira. She discussed the autumn fabrics that would be arriving from the Continent. She mentioned, with the lightness of someone making idle conversation, that Lady Aberfoyle would be visiting later in the day and that the two women might find each other's company beneficial — both navigating difficult circumstances, both in need of allies rather than admirers. Catherine looked at her with the startled recognition of someone who had just been offered help in a language she had not expected to hear.

When Lady Drummond left the Emporium, her composure had been restored to a standard that would survive the walk to her carriage and the scrutiny of whatever servants awaited her at home. The letter remained in her reticule. The broadcloth remained unmeasured on the table. The riding coat would never be made.

In the workroom behind the velvet curtain, Agnes Fraser summoned Martha to assist with the additional measurements that would be required — a fiction, since the measurements in question had been taken months ago. The summons served a different purpose: it emptied the workroom of its most senior observer at the precise moment when discretion mattered most, leaving the junior seamstresses to their pressing and stitching and the new apprentice to her silk threads, none of them aware of what had unfolded thirty feet away behind damask curtains and candlelight.

Moira returned to her ledger. She did not write down what she had learned. She never wrote down what she learned. The archive was internal, comprehensive, and organised with a precision that would have impressed the keepers of any library in Edinburgh. Lord Drummond abroad indefinitely. Lady Drummond vulnerable. Lord Ashworth leveraging the absence for access. The connections between these facts and a dozen other facts — the Jacobite merchant in Leith, the political alignments shifting beneath the surface of polite society, the soirée that Lady Aberfoyle was preparing to attend tomorrow evening — arranged themselves in Moira's mind like threads on a loom, each one meaningless in isolation, each one essential to the pattern that was forming.

The bell chimed again. The afternoon's next appointment had arrived. Moira closed the ledger, smoothed her gown, and stepped through to the showroom wearing the expression of a woman whose only concern in the world was the cut of a sleeve and the drape of a hem.