Chapter 4: Cut to Fit

The dressmaker was a tiny woman with pins in her mouth and a yellow tape over her shoulder.

She walked around me twice in my slip and said nothing.

Then she measured everything.

Bust, waist, hips, thigh, arm, the long line from my neck to my heel.

She wrote each number in a little book without a single sigh.

"Nobody's going to ask me to hold my breath?" I said.

"For what?"

"For the corset."

"Her Majesty says no corset."

I stared at her.

"Her Majesty says the gowns are cut to the body you have," the dressmaker said around the pins.

"Not the body someone wishes you had."

"The Queen Mother said that."

"In those words. Hold still."

The Queen Mother had not looked at me once on Choosing Night.

She had sat on the dais in black, with silver braids and a cane, her face carved from stone.

Why would she send a dressmaker?

By noon I had a sky-blue day gown pinned on me.

It had a deep square neck, and a skirt that moved over my hips.

It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever worn.

I looked in the long mirror and for a second I couldn't speak.

"There," the dressmaker said. "That's a gown that knows who it's for."

I walked out into the corridor with my head high.

Three ladies in pale silk were coming the other way.

The tall blonde with the braid was in the middle.

She stopped in front of me and looked me up and down, slowly.

"Miss Valera," she said. "I am Lady Rosalind Dacre. We were not introduced in the hall."

"I remember you from the hall."

"I'm the first name on the list."

"Congratulations."

"Do they actually make gowns in that size?" she said, in a sweet voice meant to carry.

"How clever of the palace. I'd have thought you'd need a tent."

One of the ladies gasped, and another giggled behind her fan.

My face went hot.

Then I remembered my mother, who had once thrown a rolling pin through a landlord's window.