AS SHE ALWAYS DID ON ANY REALLY IMPORTANT day, Penelope Hayes wore red. It was the deep shade of American Beauty roses, and the sleeves of her matching bolero were elaborately embroidered in the same crimson. She had ordered the dress from Paris for the fall season, and was now especially glad that she had. She painted a violent streak of color across the fabric department in Lord & Taylor as she followed Elizabeth through the great piled bolts of sumptuous white muslins and silks and laces. Elizabeth was wearing a very pale blue, so she might have almost blended in with all those bridal hues, except that her dress was made out of ordinary cotton eyelet.

“There’s really nothing.” Elizabeth sighed, turning back to Penelope and wrinkling her small nose. “If only we had time to go to Paris.”

“We’ll find something perfect.” Penelope watched Elizabeth’s narrow back bend to examine some Alençon lace, and practiced her coldest stare while no one was looking. It was remarkable to her that this slight, finicky girl had all along been harboring a secret passion—for someone who lived in a stable, no less. Penelope still found it astonishing, and really sort of fascinating, that Elizabeth Holland, who never spoke out of turn, had desires, too. Under other circumstances she would have liked to have her old friend tell her the whole, sordid story. But it was too late for that. “You’ve just got nerves, that’s all,” she went on, mustering a bit more counterfeit kindness. “That’s why nothing looks good enough to you right now.”

“You’re probably right,” Elizabeth replied absently. She stood and ran her fingers along a bone-colored mousseline de soie. “This is going to be the most hideous wedding party ever.”

“Hush, it’s all going to be divine, even better than you could imagine. But Liz, how are you managing without your maid, during a week as mad as this one?” Penelope moved close to Elizabeth and drew her fingers across the unbelievable intricacies of the fabric.

“Did I tell you about that?” Elizabeth paused, and for a moment Penelope worried that in her eagerness to seem nice she had shown her hand too soon. But her friend’s thoughts were evidently too scattered for her to pick up on such subtleties. “It might have been a disaster, but Mrs. Schoonmaker has lent me two of hers for the week. And really, that girl I had, Lina, was totally unsuitable. I should have fired her long ago.”

Penelope edged closer, letting her shoulder graze Elizabeth’s. Lina really had proved to be a canny girl, commanding such impressive sums for her information. Of course, if it had come to it, Penelope would have parted with twice as much in exchange for that outrageous secret. She had gotten the five hundred out of her father easily, by claiming that she wanted to donate it to an organization that was building an orphanage in the Sixth Ward. And then, just to put Lina back in her place a little bit, she had set her up in a little hotel on a street that was known for its brothels. “This is very pretty,” she said.

“Yes. You’re right. Mr. Carroll!” Elizabeth called out to the dressmaker, who had been scurrying around the fourth-floor fabrics department, pulling various things he thought would be of interest to the Holland-Schoonmaker wedding party. The entire prospect had thrown him into a tizzy, and Penelope had been wondering whether he or Elizabeth had the worse case of nerves. He scuttled over now.

“Yes, m’lady?” he asked, holding firmly to the measuring tape around his throat and leaning forward eagerly.

“What do you think about this one?” she asked, running her hand over a matte white silk. “Perhaps with that ivory point de gaze you showed me earlier?”

“I think it would be bee-yoo-ti-ful,” he replied with a flourish of his small hands.

“Can you pull this then, while I continue to look?”

“Yes, m’lady.” Mr. Carroll collected the bolt and went off, and Elizabeth turned down the next row. Outside, a cloud moved out of the way of the sun, and a beam of light fell through the high, arched windows and across the almost factory-like room, with its row upon row of cloth and simple wooden floorboards.

Penelope cleared her throat. “Liz,” she said, “can I ask you something?”

Elizabeth looked up and gave her a gentle smile. “Of course.”

“Are you…nervous?”

“About what part?”

Penelope made a show of looking around them and averting her eyes. “You know…the wedding night part.”

Elizabeth covered her face with a delicate hand, but Penelope could see perfectly well that she wasn’t blushing. She almost liked her more, now that she knew Elizabeth was not so hideously, boringly perfect. “Not really,” she said.

“Don’t you think it might hurt?” Penelope gave Elizabeth a girlish nudge.

“No,” Elizabeth replied with a shrug. Then she quickly added: “I don’t know why, I just, that’s not the part that I’m afraid of. It’s strange, I suppose—”

“Not that strange.” Penelope met Elizabeth’s eyes, and put away the sweet persona she had worn that afternoon. “Not strange at all, really.”

She watched the blood rise in her rival’s cheeks. Her pupils grew large and black, and for a long moment the girls did nothing but face each other, their pretty lashes flickering over watchful eyes.

“It’s just that I wasn’t thinking about that part,” Elizabeth replied defensively.

“No. Why would you have to?” Penelope asked, her voice dropping to a cold whisper. “When you’re already doing that part with a member of the staff.”

Elizabeth’s lower lip dropped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered. A cloud moved in front of the sun again, now, and the whole room took on a dark hush.

Penelope rolled her eyes. “If you want to waste an hour on false denials, that’s fine with me. But I know for a fact that you have been spending nights with one William Keller, coachman.” Penelope couldn’t hold back a little smile. It was fun, this putting Elizabeth in her place. “And I have proof.”

“What kind of proof?” Elizabeth asked in the same slow, stunned voice.

“A letter. From him to you. Sweetly enough, he left it on the night he skipped town.” Penelope gave a careless flourish of her hand. “It’s an entreaty for you to follow, which you obviously didn’t heed.”

“Will left me a letter?” Elizabeth’s smooth forehead creased poignantly as she thought this through.

“Oh, yes. Forgive me. Will.”

Elizabeth was virtually shaking with this news, and her eyes were damp. She folded her lips together so that they disappeared, and clasped her hands. “Penny, you can’t tell anybody about this.”

“Oh, really?” She gave Elizabeth a little fake pouting look. “Why can’t I again?”

“You’re still angry about Henry…” Elizabeth said slowly.

“Oh, that doesn’t even begin to describe it. But yes, Liz, my dear friend, I am still angry. Henry was mine. We were gorgeous together. And then some perversity of fate mucked it up. I don’t know how that happened. But now I know how I can undo it. I am going to ruin you, Liz.” Penelope gave Elizabeth a small, malicious smile. “But really, darling. You did all the work. I’m just going to let your nasty little pigeon out of the coop.”

Elizabeth’s gaze fell once again to the slightly scuffed wood floor, and she continued to work her hands together. The natural light in the room caught her pale hair, giving her a look of angelic distress that did nothing to soften Penelope’s stance. She tucked her lower lip under her pearly teeth and met Penelope’s eyes. “Penny…” she whispered. “Nobody likes a mess.”

“I do.”

“Yes, I know.” Elizabeth spoke in quiet, pointed words.

“That’s why you’re you…and I’m me. But if you set about to ruin me, nobody is going to end up liking you any more than they do now.”

“Nobody has to know that I was the one—”

“And when you charge in and try to marry the former fiancé of the fallen favorite? Oh, Penny. Don’t be stupid.” Elizabeth took a forceful step forward, and for a moment Penelope glimpsed the hot-blooded creature that lived inside that perfect lady’s cool skin. “Penny?” she went on. Her voice was still confident, though the thing she wanted and the extent of her desire were plain across her face. “Can I see the letter?”

Penelope threw back her head and exhaled impatiently. She reached inside her jacket, drew out the letter, and waved it at Elizabeth long enough for her to recognize her own stationery. “You can have it for keeps if you do what I say.”

Then she turned sharply to show Elizabeth her red-sheathed back. She listened as Elizabeth took a timorous step in her direction. “What do you want me to do?”

“Meet me at my house on Wednesday morning—at ten o’clock—and I will try to think of a way for you not to marry Henry without the total ruin of your reputation.”

“But I—”

“Liz,” Penelope broke in, still facing away from her. She ran a hand over several bolts of gold-and silver-embroidered silks, and then looked over her slim shoulder at her friend, whose eyes were large and petrified in muted fear and fury.

“You really don’t have much of a choice.”

A light sheen of sweat had broken out on Penelope’s forehead, and her stomach had a sour turn to it. It was time to go. She drew her crimson skirt away from her feet and began marching for the elevator. She didn’t bother looking back. She knew that Elizabeth would be waiting for her on Wednesday morning, wearing that same desperate face.

As she reached the end of the ivory and ecru row, she set her hand on a worktable and called back, “Oh, and Liz?” She turned and met Elizabeth’s doe eyes with what she fully intended to be an intimidating stare. “Choose your own damn dress.”