"To network properly in high society," Eloise continued, "I need my family's reputation behind me. So I hope you'll cooperate and let me borrow the title of Grand Duchess."
Ian's eyes twitched.
"So you intend to use your position as Duchess," he said, low and sharp, leaning back in his chair with his expression gone to ice, "in order to go and meet someone new."
"Well," Eloise said, "if that's how you want to put it, then I suppose that's exactly what it is."
He exhaled a long, heavy breath of disappointment and frustration and turned his face away to hide whatever was going on behind it.
"At our wedding," he said, "we made a vow. That you would not bring shame to this family. Don't do anything unnecessary that would give people more to gossip about."
Given that she was already tangled up to the neck in scandal, Eloise found the timing remarkable.
"Whatever else is true," Ian went on sternly, "you are still, for now, part of the Grand Duke's family. Don't forget your place."
She turned a razor-sharp look on him.
"Of course I know that," she said coldly.
She was genuinely insulted that he would question her integrity, of all the things he might have questioned. It was precisely because she knew it so well that she had agreed to cooperate with his idea of a fake married life in the first place, and she said so.
Then she caught the implication underneath the words, and asked pointedly:
"Oh. Is this a warning to be careful about who I meet?"
Because that was the shape of it, once she looked properly. Duke was his title, but brother to the emperor was his position, and a man with a claim to the throne is never simply a man at a party. The imperial faction watched him. Pressure came at him from that direction constantly. If his wife went around meeting people carelessly — and above all if she met the wrong people, the opposing faction's people — it would put Ian in a politically difficult position that no amount of swordsmanship could get him out of.
Eloise understood the problem perfectly well. She still felt wronged.
Why did he have to say it to her wearing that unpleasant expression, as though she were about to conduct an affair in the middle of a ballroom? And while she was at it, whose fault was his current loss of face, largely, in the first place?
"I'll be careful," she said. "I won't bring any harm to the family."
Ian drank his tea and masked whatever complicated thing was on his face.
At least until we're divorced, Eloise added, silently and firmly, and settled her resolve around it.
The estate glowed under the afternoon sun, magnificent and serene, and the first weekend session of the training course ended on a rather awkward note.
Ian clutched his chest and coughed violently — choking on his tea, or possibly on his wife's blunt remarks, which had been arriving at intervals all afternoon. He set the cup down with a sharp clink, and his expression still carried the same irritation and sarcasm it had picked up half an hour ago, with no sign of reconciliation anywhere in it.
Back in her room, Eloise flopped face-first onto the soft bed and let out a sigh of relief. At least he had gone along with what she wanted. That was worth something.
She lay there fidgeting irritably. He had kept asking pointless questions despite the explicit ban on pointless questions, and she spent a solid ten minutes wondering whether he had listened to a single word she said, which was utterly baffling to consider.
She sat up and sighed over her own misfortune. Reforming a person's character really was a task harder than moving heaven itself.
And yet.
On the second day, when the session ended, Ian had politely offered her his arm to escort her back to the main house. He had done it without being told. She remembered the exact moment his elbow came out, and the exact face he had made while doing it.
She smiled at the vanity mirror. Her efforts had not been entirely wasted. It was not a complete failure, and that counted as a good sign, and she would take it.
A week later, a maid came in to announce that Madame Z had arrived.
Eloise was surprised. Earlier than expected — and it had already been a full week since she walked into that run-down little shop in the alley. Time went past at a frightening speed in this world.
Bibi led the way with real excitement, telling her lady to go straight to the main fitting room since Madame Z had everything ready and waiting.
Eloise was pleased by such thoroughness. She laid a hand on the door and admitted that the woman was rather more impressive than she had expected, and felt quietly proud of her own sharp eye for people.
"Oh, my lady, today I finally get to see you try that dress on in person," Bibi said, practically vibrating.
Eloise broke into a nervous sweat and looked at her. Why was the maid more excited about this than the person who would actually be wearing the clothes?
The door opened onto a room flooded with light. Madame Z stood ready beside racks of elegant gowns, and bowed in greeting with a demeanour far more professional and confident than the flustered woman who had bowed in the alley a week ago.
"Welcome to your fitting, Your Grace."
Eloise stepped in, still in a simple dressing gown, with a satisfied smile on her lips, ready to admire the works of art she had invested in.
"All right," she said, with energy. "Shall we begin?"
Two mannequins stood in the light.
One wore an elegant dress of deep emerald green. The other wore red — a stunning, seductive shade of it. Both were breathtaking.
Madame Z introduced the dark green one first, explaining that she had altered it exactly to Eloise's measurements, as originally requested, and not a stitch beyond.
Then she gestured toward the red, and hesitated.
"I took the liberty," she admitted, "of changing a few details while I was altering it. I'm not certain my lady will approve of the liberty." She hurried on. "It's adorned with sapphires and emeralds — to match your eye colour. And I made the skirt fuller. To flatter the figure."
Eloise stared at the red dress without saying anything at all.
Madame Z and Bibi both held their breath.
Then her eyes lit up.
"It's perfect," she said, and praised it lavishly, top to hem, seam by seam. "This matches my taste exactly."
"It is the masterpiece of my career," Madame Z declared proudly.
Eloise turned and took the shop owner's hand in both of hers. "I love this. The originality of it — I love it."
Madame Z was moved more deeply than she showed, because every scrap of her heart and effort had gone into that dress, and this was the first time anyone had said so out loud.
Then she smiled, mysteriously.
"That isn't everything. There's still one more surprise."
She opened her palm. In it lay a round gem, shimmering through every colour like a rainbow caught in glass.
"What is it?"
Madame Z fastened the gem onto the dress, and instantly a magical glow spread out across the fabric, running through the weave, and the whole gown seemed to burst quietly into light, every stone on it sparkling brilliantly.
Eloise gasped.
"That," said Madame Z, "is the true highlight of my masterpiece."
Eloise looked at the little accessory and remembered that in the novel, tailors often used magic to decorate clothing — a line she had once skimmed past in a single sentence — and marvelled privately at how thoroughly authentic this fantasy world had turned out to be.
Then Madame Z's gaze turned sharp and serious.
"Well then."
She said it as though preparing to issue the opening command of some important ritual, and she urged her lady to try it on at once, unable to wait one moment longer to see her masterpiece finally worn by the person it had been built around.
Eloise stepped out in the red dress.
Nobody in the room said anything. Her beauty in it was regal and alluring enough that the silence went on a good deal longer than was polite.
She studied herself in the tall mirror and nodded approvingly. With elegance of this order, the dress was more than fit for a royal ball.