Truth and Measure
Table Of Contents
Other Books by Roslyn Sinclair
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
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Other Books by Roslyn Sinclair
Other Books by Roslyn Sinclair
The X Ingredient
The Lily and the Crown
Dedication
Dedication
The Carlisle series is dedicated to the readers who have given me so much support and joy over the years. You all mean more to me than you’ll ever know.
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Lee Winter and all of the Ylva staff who helped make this book into what it eventually became. And most of all to my wonderful wife, who held my hand through it all and often showed me the way. I couldn’t have done it without her.
For above all things love means sweetness, and truth, and measure; yea, loyalty to the loved one, and to your word.
—Anonymous, The Lay of Graelent, 13th century CE
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
“I’ve never cared for yellow,” Vivian Carlisle said absently, looking over the editorial spread. “It’s so garish. Even in pastels.”
Most people would assume her comment was a casual observation. Jules Moretti, not most people, knew it was the calm before the storm and decided this would be a great time to stare intently at the notes on her tablet.
Who was today’s unlucky target? It couldn’t be her. Vivian didn’t make a habit of discussing aesthetic preferences with personal assistants. It must be somebody a lot higher up the ladder than Jules but still below Vivian. Like Simon, the creative director. Or Angie, head of copywriting. Or God.
But when Jules looked up, unable to take the long silence, she was skewered by Vivian’s eyes looking directly at her from across the desk. Simon and Angie had left the room, and the heavens remained resolutely silent.
And when Vivian Carlisle said a thing to you and then looked at you, you had about two seconds to figure out whether or not she wanted you to say something back. Jules’s two seconds were halfway up.
She thought fast. She didn’t wear a lot of yellow and she wasn’t wearing any today, and there were models wearing yellow in the spread, so Vivian wasn’t critiquing Jules personally. At least not yet.
Think. Think. Think.
“They’ve done studies,” Jules heard herself saying. “People think yellow’s supposed to make you feel cheerful, but it doesn’t. It can actually make people anxious.” Something more seemed called for. “Uh, pink makes them calmer, actually.”
Did that qualify as thinking? Maybe it was more like shoving her head underwater and shaking it around rapidly. Vivian had no patience for fools. That remark probably qualified as foolish.
Vivian raised an eyebrow.
Jules suppressed the urge to inform her that sometimes prison cells were painted pink to keep the prisoners happy. It might be taken the wrong way.
Instead of calling her foolish, Vivian looked back down at the spread on her desk.
Jules braced herself.
“Mallory,” Vivian said.
Jules already had her message app pulled up, and she fired off a summons. This wouldn’t be pleasant. Mallory had worked at Du Jour for two years now as a photography director. She’d come up with cool, innovative spreads that had put her first on Simon’s radar, then Vivian’s. Her last project had lacked that flair, though—Vivian had called it “vapid.” This was strike two, and Vivian would make sure Mallory felt the whiff of the baseball as it barely missed her face.
Mallory seemed to sense this as she hurried in, glancing around at the sleek, midcentury furniture and the huge windows that offered amazing views of Manhattan. Mallory fit right in with it, as tall and slim as a skyscraper, clad head to toe in the latest designer fashions.
She was elegant and gorgeous, and she tried so hard. She wanted it so much. Too much. Radiating that kind of attitude in front of Vivian Carlisle was like throwing chum to a shark.
“You wanted me?” she asked breathlessly with that mixture of adoration and terror that Vivian seemed to inspire in everyone.
“Hmm.” Vivian didn’t look up from the spread on her desk. Her eyes traveled over the A3 paper with its photos, captions, and copy. “There’s a lot of yellow in this spread, Mallory.”
She went pale. “Er. Well, yes.”
Have to do better than that.
Vivian continued as if she hadn’t heard. “Studies have shown that yellow is a color that causes anxiety. Isn’t that right, Julia?”
Jules’s stomach dropped. She’d never liked Mallory much, but she hadn’t meant to trip her up. “Uh,” she said feebly, “that’s what I…I mean, somewhere, I read…”
“I’ve never read that,” Mallory snapped.
That made Vivian look up at last, in time to see Mallory toss her chestnut hair back over her shoulder.
“My job is to care about style, not pop psychology.” Mallory finally deigned to glance at Jules. “Are you researching a paper for school or something?”
The hell? Mallory had been at Du Jour for less time than Jules! “I graduated three years ago from—”
“Okay.” Mallory turned back to Vivian. “The truth is, I’m trying to provoke a reaction in readers. I, um, want to make them anxious.”
Bullshit. Jules pressed her lips together to silence a scoff.
“You do?” Vivian asked neutrally.
Mallory should have known better than to take this as encouragement. Vivian didn’t do encouragement. “Well, sure. Fashion’s about pushing the boundaries, right?”
“I assume that question is rhetorical.”
Mallory gulped. “And you know anxiety can be a part of that, right? So…that’s what I was doing. It was on purpose. Kind of edgy.”
“Edgy.” Vivian picked up the spread proof and held it at arm’s length. She was probably trying to get the whole picture, but it looked more as if she were holding out a piece of particularly smelly garbage. “Let’s see this copy. ‘Romantic Winter: Get cozy in style with the latest trends to help you look your best as you snuggle in front of a fireplace.’”
Jules repressed a snort.
Mallory squirmed as Vivian glanced at her again.
“Edgy,” Vivian repeated.
“Um, I guess I can see how it’d look—”
“This is pathetic.”
Mallory snapped her mouth shut.
“It’s one thing to make a bad choice. I would think you’d know not to associate the color yellow with snow, but I would obviously be wrong.”
“I—”
“But that isn’t your problem, Mallory. Your problem is that you don’t listen, that you refuse to admit your mistakes, and that you’re convinced of your own genius for reasons that completely escape me.”
Oof. This was painful. Next up: Vivian would put Mallory on notice.
Mallory threw her shoulders back. “When Simon hired me—”
“When Simon hired you, he made a mistake. But unlike you, he’ll own up to it.”
Mallory went even paler.
“Pack up your desk and be gone by lunch,” Vivian said.
Yikes. So much for strike three—Mallory was already off the team. Jules looked at the wall and kept her best poker face. Didn’t see that coming.
Nobody argued with that tone of voice. Mallory swallowed thickly, turned, and walked out of the office.
Jules slowly released a breath. She didn’t like Mallory, but that hadn’t been any fun to watch.
“Julia,” Vivian said.
Jules pressed her lips together and looked back at her boss.
Vivian Carlisle was a striking woman. With her famous platinum blonde hair, shattered pixie haircut, eyes that bordered on electric blue, and bone structure that belonged in a makeup ad, she grabbed unwary mortals’ attention right away. Her Greek nose would have earned her a place of honor in ancient statuary. She was rail thin and pretty tall—a few inches taller than Jules, who was five foot six. She still wore four-inch heels every day as if she wanted to take up all the space she could. Vivian wasn’t Hollywood gorgeous, but models and celebrities paled in her shadow.
Arresting. That’s what she was.
“Tell Simon to replace Mallory,” Vivian said.
Jules clutched her tablet to her chest and nodded.
“And remind him of the budget when advertising the salary,” Vivian added, sounding annoyed about it.
She nodded harder and turned to go.
“Did I dismiss you?”
As a kid, Jules had played a game called Freeze, where you put your body in awkward poses until the designated person called, “Freeze!” then held still in whatever position you were in for as long as you could, and the first to fall over lost.
It was like she was playing it all over again, as she stopped in place, half-turned away from Vivian with one foot in the air. “No?” she ventured.
“No. This needs fixing as soon as possible, and I need you to take notes.” She placed her hands to either side of the spread and looked it over with a frown.
Jules pivoted and came to stand across the desk from Vivian, tablet and stylus at the ready. Hands steady, girl. Keep it cool.
For long moments, Vivian remained silent as she looked over the spread. Jules couldn’t help thinking of an orchestra conductor examining the musicians before raising the baton.
“We need a complete do-over,” Vivian said eventually. “Simon convinced me to greenlight it, but if this is the best we can do, then Romantic Winter is the wrong concept.”
“You want a do-over?” Jules squeaked. “As in…”
“As in a new concept. New sketches. New photo shoot. And we have to do it fast.”
“Won’t that be expensive?”
She didn’t even dignify that with a response, just picked up the large sheet of paper and ripped it in two, right down the middle.
“Mallory was on to something with ‘edgy,’” she continued. “That’s a meaningless concept, but we’ll define it. I’m thinking…” She trailed off and stuck her tongue in her cheek as she looked into the distance.
“We’ll combine ‘edgy’ with intimate,” she finally said.
Those don’t seem to go together. She couldn’t help picturing two people cuddling while holding knives. Why did Vivian want something like that?
As if Jules had spoken aloud, Vivian said, “I want the spread to hold two ideas that seem contradictory but work in harmony. Not compromise”—she said that like it was the dirtiest word she’d ever heard—“but completion.”
“I can message the creative team to brainstorm and—”
“Nothing as clichéd as a snowfall or a ski lodge,” Vivian mused as if Jules hadn’t spoken. “Definitely not a cozy cabin. We need a contrast. Something startling, something unexpected.”
Jules tried to think of somewhere cold that wouldn’t be a total cliché. “Maybe something like a snowy field under a gray sky?”
Vivian held up her hand. “I said unexpected. Although a snowy field’s an improvement on the cabin.”
Not much of one, she didn’t add, but she didn’t have to.
“Right,” Jules mumbled, face burning hotter than ever as she took notes. Unexpected. Contrast. Intimate/Edgy.
“Not romance,” Vivian continued. “Loneliness. Winter’s not just a time or place but a state of mind. Everybody’s locked up at home, trying to keep warm. We’re not going to depress readers,” she added just as Jules was starting to feel really depressed. “We’re going to surprise them. The spread’s going to be about connection instead of isolation. We can show the harshness of winter while also showing that it doesn’t defeat us. Stylishly, of course.”
Jules’s mind began running like a hamster on a wheel. Where would you shoot something like this? A lonely city block? Behind an abandoned warehouse? You could easily find those locations in New York, and the cost didn’t have to be…
“A desert,” Vivian said.
Jules’s hand paused over her notes.
“What do people think of when they think of deserts?” Vivian continued. “It’s the opposite of a snuggling before a hearth. It’s primal. No water, no sustenance. You against the elements.”
“And we think of heat, but it’s really cold at night,” Jules said eagerly. “So that’s the unexpected part. I camped in the Sonoran once, and—”
“We’ll shoot it at sunrise. Have the models start out in layers. That lets us feature sweaters and jackets. They’ll huddle together for warmth—fighting that sense of loneliness that winter can bring. We should also see their breath in the air. Then, as the photo spread goes on, they lose the layers and you see the outfits underneath. Their body language becomes more open as they adapt to the environment, to the contradiction.”
Jules scribbled frantically. Good grief. Mallory had probably worked on her concept for weeks, and Vivian had pulled this one out of thin air in moments? It was enough to make you dizzy. “Adapt. Contradiction. Okay.”
“The Mojave will do.” Vivian frowned. “It’s a shame there’s no time to go international. Snow in the Sahara is incredibly striking.”
“It snows in the Sahara?”
“Every once in a while. They had a snowfall a few years ago. That was in January, though.” Vivian’s frown deepened as if in disapproval of the irregular schedule.
Jules couldn’t help imagining Vivian standing atop a Saharan dune, ordering the skies to dump a bunch of snow onto the sand in October. And the skies obeying her.
“We’ll dial up the cool tones in editing,” Vivian said. “Take this to Simon and tell him to get it right this time. I don’t want to have to deal with this again.”
Now she had been dismissed. Feeling as if she’d just staggered out of a whirlwind, she nodded and turned to go.
“University of Pennsylvania, wasn’t it?”
Jules played Freeze again. Then she slowly pivoted back to face Vivian.
“You did a double major in communication and English,” Vivian added. “Or something like that.”
It was the effort of a lifetime for Jules to keep the shock off her face. Vivian remembered where Jules had gone to college? Vivian remembered what she’d majored in?
“English and communication at Penn, yeah,” she said, trying to keep it cool. “I’m from around there. Outside of Philly.”
Vivian frowned.
“Philadelphia,” Jules mumbled.
“Simon,” Vivian repeated.
And with that, Jules fled the office. It felt like the luckiest escape of her life.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
When Jules arrived at his glass-walled office, Simon looked up and sighed. “What did she do?”
“Fired Mallory.”
“Ah.” He removed his reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
She didn’t blame him for getting a headache. She’d served as his assistant before Vivian poached her, and there wasn’t a harder working creative director in the business than Simon Carvalho. Many times, he and Jules had burned the midnight oil as he tried to make creativity and capitalism play nice together: reaching out to advertisers, wrangling hot-tempered artistes who didn’t want to sully their hands with business concerns. It was exhausting.
Vivian’s frequent power plays didn’t make it any easier. Jules had spent many hours at Simon’s side wondering why Vivian couldn’t just relent a bit. Working with Vivian directly hadn’t enlightened her as she’d hoped.
“I thought Mallory would get one more shot,” she said. “She’s done good work in the past.”
“Welcome to fashion, where the past will only be relevant in twenty years. Maybe we’ll see Mallory then. In the meantime, don’t question Vivian’s decisions. At least not to her face.”
Like I don’t know that. “She says to remember the salary budget in the next job ad.”
Simon sighed. “I wonder if Mark’s finally getting to her.”
She had to agree. Mark Tavio, chairman of the Koening publishing group, was nobody’s favorite human. Top executives weren’t usually known for being warm and fuzzy types, but Mr. Tavio was a special kind of sour. Sometimes it seemed he had it in for Vivian personally. If Vivian hadn’t rescued Du Jour from folding five years ago, Jules had a hunch he’d have tried to get rid of her.
True, Vivian wasn’t the easiest personality in the world. Jules still smelled misogyny in the room. Hard to avoid when a man resented a woman who was better at her job than he was at his. Among Mr. Tavio’s petty tactics: summoning Vivian to his office for updates that only wasted her time, constantly implying that she was on thin ice, and neglecting to include her in company-wide decisions. Somehow, though, she always managed to influence those decisions, whether she was invited to the meetings or not.
Simon rolled his shoulders with a grunt. His pink dress shirt looked crisp, and the navy blazer draped over the back of his chair complemented it perfectly. He had what most people would call above-average looks—tall, broad-shouldered, hazel-eyed. But when you spent every day surrounded by models and actors, above average turned into meh.
Jules often felt it herself. She was cute, not dazzling. This job could be a real blow to the old self-esteem, if you let it.
“You okay?” she asked.
“About Mallory? Eh. Easy come, easy go. I’ll have a hundred applicants for her position.” He gave Jules a hopeful look. “Would you like to go through a hundred job applications for me?”
“Sure thing,” she said. “I’ll just swap places with you, and you can do my job all day.”
“At my current salary?”
“Totally.”
“Not enough. We both deserve to make a million bucks a year. Just wait for it. The day will come.” Simon tapped his mouth with one long finger. “Speaking of a million bucks, you look like that today.”
Sweet! Jules had hoped someone would notice the RIXO floral print skirt. She couldn’t resist swaying her hips so the silk crepe swirled around her calves. “Fifty percent off.”
“Don’t be gauche. I do like that line.”
So did she. The RIXO fall collection had been exactly to her tastes: free-flowing and exuberant. Her days might be strictly regimented, but her clothes didn’t have to be.
“Was there anything else from our glorious empress?” Simon asked.
Shoot. Jules had hoped not to mention this part. “She said we have to get it right this time.”
“‘We’ meaning moi. My fault—I sold Mallory’s idea too hard. That’ll be fun to recover from. Do I have new marching orders?”
“You know you do.” She handed him her tablet with the notes.
He skimmed over them. “So much for keeping to the budget. Of course she wants to re-do the whole spread.”
“Fast, too.”
“Naturally.” He read the notes again, looking more attentive. “But…”
“But you like it better than Mallory’s thing, don’t you?” she asked.
“Oh, shut up.” He returned the tablet. “Send this to me ASAP. I’ll make it happen.”
“You always do.” Jules smiled and turned to go.
Simon cleared his throat. “Before you scoot, has Vivian mentioned anything—is there any more news about…”
She waited.
He huffed out an impatient-sounding breath. “You know, her divorce.”
“I doubt I’ve heard anything you haven’t.” Simon was Vivian’s second-in-command. If she trusted anyone implicitly, it was him. Surely, he wouldn’t be less well-informed than Jules. “He dropped the bomb on her, he’s out, and I’ve already scheduled a meeting with her lawyer.”
“I can’t decide which is worse: Vivian’s strategy of having three husbands or mine of not having any.” He looked morose. “This industry is hell on relationships.”
“Oh, great.” Jules rolled her eyes while she opened the door. “Now he tells me.”
Simon’s wry chuckle followed her.
* * *
That night, as Jules flopped onto her sofa with her phone, she found her mother had more to say about Vivian’s divorce than Simon had. Specifically, she had a lot to say about how it should serve as a warning to Jules: “Remember what happened with Aaron. Make sure you don’t end up like your boss.”
That wasn’t fair. Aaron had dumped Jules last year after being unreasonable and insisting she work an eight-hour day and be off every weekend, which, come on!
She had tried to laugh around the cold pit that opened up in her stomach. “Mom! I’m nothing like Vivian. I have a life outside of work.”
“Really?” her mom said tartly. “Then maybe sometime you’ll talk to us about something other than your job.”
Ouch.
When she disconnected, Jules looked down at her phone’s screen until it went dark. Then she sighed, got off the sofa, and headed for the kitchen to get water.
She loved her Lower East Side apartment. Jules was luckier than lucky—her maternal grandparents had purchased the one-bedroom when they were young and when the area was less than savory. It had stayed in the family, and now Jules had six hundred square feet all to herself on the condition that she paid her parents for the utilities and half the property taxes.
Her parents had upgraded the place about ten years ago. The worn carpet had been pulled up and the original hardwood floors refinished. Nothing fancy, but it was perfect for a generation of renters who’d been here before Jules had moved in.
Since Aaron had left and taken his dirty laundry and band posters with him, Jules had been able to redecorate. She’d watched YouTube tutorials on painting and spent hours priming and taping and cursing. Now she had an accent wall covered by squares and triangles in alternating colors of aqua, salmon, and yellow. It looked pretty cool. Vivian never had to know about the yellow part.
An assistant’s salary didn’t stretch far, especially when she had to prioritize clothes, so most of Jules’s furniture was family hand-me-downs. Nevertheless, she’d splurged on a contemporary coffee table and a Moroccan-style rug. She’d made her own curtains. She was satisfied with the place for now.
Jules sat at the kitchen table and looked moodily at her water glass. In spite of herself, her thoughts wandered back to her conversation with her mom. Okay, maybe Jules wasn’t a relationship expert. She still had to be better than Vivian, who had nobody to blame but herself.
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