Danaides, a gentleman’s tailor shop, stood at the corner of Kessel and Merril near the weaver’s district. It was a tall, stately building, three stories tall and decorated with gilded plaster in elegant flourishes. The shop front had a window decorated in red drapes that showed off the centerpiece—a mannequin dressed in a dove gray suit, a pearl pink waistcoat, and a golden tie—in the latest fashion. The name “Danaides” was painted on the window in straight, no-nonsense lines.
Inside, the first floor was more of a showroom—filled with mannequins wearing sample suits and displays of gentlemen’s hats, gloves, canes, and shoes. The second floor was the fitting room where patrons of Danaides came to be measured and the third floor was the workrooms where the tailors made their living.
Zan sat on a padded chair near the window on the second floor. She looked out over the street as Del stood in front of a mirror without his coat—only in a cream colored shirt, brown vest and trousers. His arms were spread out as a bespectacled tailor with pins in his mouth took his measurements. Sabina, dressed in an unrelieved dark mauve dress with a matching hat filled with dyed feathers, hovered over him, frowning at two pieces of fabric in her hands.
Zan’s mind was elsewhere. She had had little sleep the previous night. Three, perhaps four hours at most. There was an antsy feeling at the back of her mind as well as a frustrated one. The previous day had been terribly unproductive, in her thinking. She had had no time to work in the laboratory, she had gotten no straightforward answers from any of the places that she had visited, and to top it off, something very strange was happening at the Temple. So that morning, she had gotten out of bed in an attempt to work off her agitated mood in the laboratory.
By the breakfast hour, Isadora had found her hunched over a workbench in the basement vigorously rubbing a bit of yellow silk along a rod of aluminum. She had collected assorted bits of material and arranged them in a rough order on her bench. There was fabric such as cotton and leather and wool, solid non-metals like paper and wood and a lump of resin, and metals such as copper and tin and nickel. Her current test consisted of rubbing one material against another until it produced a spark such as the oft cited silk and amber. The idea had come from her conversation with Henry Tarlton about what he called the triboelectric effect—the charge that objects obtained after sustained friction with another object. The results from the test, which she meticulously plotted in her own lab book, would determine which two objects would create the greatest spark. And from those results, she hoped she would be able to deduce what sort of materials her uncle had planned to use for the machine that he had sketched in his notes.
After breakfast, she had suddenly realized that she had promised to accompany Del and Sabina on their shopping trip, so she hastily scribbled out a shopping list—primarily of materials that she could not scrounge up in the laboratory—of things she wished to test as well. And as her friends had arrived and exclaimed over her deplorable lack of fashion—she had been wearing a black dress again—she had given the list to Simkins to oversee.
“Dark gray,” said Sabina in a sudden decisive voice that brought Zan out of her reverie. “Dark gray would be the perfect color. It will go quite nicely with an emerald green waistcoat with brass buttons.”
“Dark gray!” Del tried to turn his head, but the tailor moved his chin back into position as he took measurements for the collar. He looked at Sabina in the mirror. “What about brown? What’s wrong with brown?”
“Brown is a plain, drab color. It’s for businessmen and dull men who have nothing to do except to go to work and come back home to their little wives. Entirely too sober for you. Dark gray will cut a more dashing figure.”
“Are you saying I’m not sober?”
“Sometimes you don’t act like it.”
“Ha! Well, I like the brown, dear Sabina, and I am paying for this suit, mind you. Brown with a silver waistcoat.”
“Dark gray with an emerald green waistcoat.”
“I am not some clown! I am not wearing emerald green. I’d be the laughingstock of society!”
“No you won’t. Most men wouldn’t care less. Besides, emerald green will match your eyes.”
“Damn my eyes! I’m taking the brown and silver and that’s it. What do you say, Zan?”
Del, Sabina, and the tailor turned towards her. Zan simply shrugged at the three pairs of inquiring eyes. “How should I know? You told me I had a deplorable sense of fashion. But Sabina does have a point. Emerald green will match your eyes.”
“Zan!” Del whined.
“You worry too much,” said Sabina to Del. Then to the tailor, she said, “Make the suit dark gray.” She gave the scraps of fabric back to the tailor who nodded his head and remarked that he would come right back with samples of green cloth for her perusal.
Del sighed and dropped his arms. He turned to glare at the two women. “The next time I come to Danaides, I’m coming by myself. Both of you have absolutely no sense of what kind of colors a man should wear.”
“That is your opinion,” Sabina sniffed. “No woman would take a second look at you if you didn’t have any help.”
“Help? Ha! Well, look at Zan. All in black! Quite cheerless.” Del shook his head. “Why didn’t you wear a bit of color, anyway?”
Zan frowned. “Uncle Elliot passed away not so long ago. And I believe the customary mourning period is about a month.”
“A month is too long,” Sabina replied. “I think our mourning customs are dreadfully tiresome. I mean, look at the Queen. It’s been five years since her husband has died and they say she’s still moping about in her palace draped in black veils and laces. Her morbid behavior has unfortunately started this horrible trend. Just think, Zan, your uncle wouldn’t have wanted you to be so morbid. He would have wanted you to go about your life, working on your experiments, visiting friends, and entertaining suitors.”
“I’m talking to you, aren’t I? And what about you husband?” asked Zan.
A small smile curved Del’s mouth as Sabina made an exasperated noise. “That old coot? He was already halfway to the grave when she married him. She was just sorry he didn’t die sooner.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say,” said Zan. Del just shrugged his shoulders and Sabina just shook her head. “Didn’t you love him? There are women who’ve been widows longer than you have and they’re still mourning.”
“No. But my relationship with my dead husband is neither here or there.” Sabina gave her a close-lipped smile. “Anyways, you’ve been in a very strange mood lately. We’re not sure if this melancholy over your entire demeanor is entirely caused by your uncle’s passing. Is it because you haven’t been doing any of your experiments? Have you missed a lecture at the Academy that you have wanted to attend? Or does this Mr. Caradon we met the other day had to do with anything?”
