Tess said. “How’s Joce?”
“Not so good. We just found out that she has to stay in bed for the rest of her pregnancy or risk losing the twins. But I got her started on doing the family genealogy, and she’s liking that.”
“Tell her that my heart is with her and I’ll call her tomorrow. Anything I can do for her?” Tess asked.
“Come home as soon as you can. She misses you. About Sara, if I tell her I have to fumigate her apartment, she’ll be out in seconds. Leave it all to me.”
“Thank you very much,” Tess said and hung up. When Rams got out of the shower, she was sitting on the little sofa in the hotel room, reading a magazine. “So what do they wear in Venice?”
“Exactly what you have on.” She was completely naked. “Except they add a mask.”
“And where do they put it?”
Ramsey laughed as he walked toward her, his towel dropping to the floor.
2
EDILEAN, VIRGINIA
IT WAS LATE at night, and Sara was sewing some adjustments on the bodice of a gown she and Greg had bought on a trip to New York. It had been “one of those,” meaning a dress that Sara’d had to bite her tongue about.
“No woman in Virginia is going to wear this,” Sara had said. It had cutouts on the hips.
“Marilyn Steward,” Greg mumbled as he tossed aside four other dresses.
“Her left thigh is wider than the waist of this dress.” She was holding it up and looking at it. “Maybe Carol Wills. She’s young enough and thin enough that she—”
Greg snatched the dress from her hands. “Why do you have to give me trouble on every dress I want to buy? Leave the designing to me, will you? I’ll buy the dress in a size twelve, put an eight label in it, and Mrs. Wealthy Steward will love it.”
“Right.” As always, Sara backed down. As she put the dress on the to-buy rack, she thought, And I’ll have to completely remake it to fit her. Which is what she was doing now. She had a closet full of dresses, slacks, jackets and even underwear that needed to be remade to fit their exacting customers.
But in spite of what she thought of his methods, Sara had to admit that under Greg’s expertise, the shop was making money. As he’d predicted, they had customers coming in from Richmond, and even a few women from D.C. had shown up. Their selection was extensive, and their free alterations were a hit. They had women buying a size six dress and asking if Sara could please “let out the seams a tiny bit.” In other words, make it two sizes larger. Every time, Greg said, “Of course she can.” His trick was that he kept the larger sizes in the back. After Sara took the big dress apart and shortened sleeves and hems and drew in the shoulders, Greg would—with a flourish and great charm—present the customer with a dress with a size six label in the back.
The only problem with this scheme—besides the deception, which Sara hated—was that she was the only seamstress.
“Just until we get established,” Greg said. “Then we’ll buy that house in the country you’ve always wanted. We’ll have a dozen kids and you won’t even own a sewing machine.”
It was a wonderful dream, one that Sara clung to with all her might, especially now when Greg had left town so abruptly and mysteriously, and Sara was stuck with about twenty-five pieces of clothing to rebuild. At least the wedding was all arranged, she thought, thanks to Greg’s splendid planning abilities. In fact, she’d had nothing to do but choose her dress—and that was an heirloom. Greg said, “Leave everything to me. I know exactly what you like.” Sara’d had so much work to do for the shop that all she could say was, “Thank you.”
But the truth was, the possibility of his absence during next week’s Scottish Fair was a bit of a relief. That she’d wanted to go and he didn’t had been one of their few serious arguments. He’d told her she was welcome to stay in Edilean for it, but he was going to New York and he had tickets for a Broadway play that he knew Sara wanted to see. When she’d said it was almost as though he’d arranged the trip to keep her from going to the yearly event, he got angry.
“Of course I did!” Greg yelled. “I want to be with you all the time, but how can I go to some rural hoedown in this town? All your friends and relatives hate me. And you know why? Because I’ve taken their precious little workhorse away from them!”
“I’m not—” Sara began, but she’d said it all before. Sometimes she felt torn between the man she loved and the town she adored. Which was, of course, absurd. But it was true that in her hometown of Edilean, people didn’t like the man she was going to marry. Out of town, people loved him. Their customers asked his advice, laughed at his jokes, and soaked up his compliments like rum on sponge cake. But in Edilean…
So Sara had agreed to go to New York with Greg and miss the fair for the first time in her twenty-six years. She wouldn’t be sewing the Scottish costumes for her many cousins, wouldn’t help her mother bake bannocks and tattie scones. She wouldn’t help run Luke’s booth full of herbal wreaths, and she wouldn’t have a day of laughter at seeing the knees of all the men in town when they wore their kilts. She wouldn’t get to—
She broke off her thoughts because to her astonishment, part of the bedroom floor seemed to be lifting upward. She put the dress she was working on down on the bed and rubbed her weary eyes. She was in Tess’s apartment, on the opposite side of Edilean Manor from her own apartment, so maybe it was normal for the floor to start to lift. Or maybe she needed a whole lot of sleep.
Silently, Sara got off the bed and stood on bare feet by Tess’s dresser. It was dim in the room, with only the light from the floor lamp she’d put by the foot of the bed so she could see to work.
As she stared at the floor, she realized there was a trapdoor under the little rug. She’d not seen it before, but then, until today when her cousin Luke had run her out of her own apartment with his nasty termite spray, she’d never been in Tess’s bedroom.
As the door in the floor rose a couple more inches, Sara’s first instinct was to get out of the apartment, and grab her cell phone off the kitchen counter as she ran. She’d call the police, then go over to Luke’s.
But the bedroom door was facing the front of the trapdoor. Whoever was sneaking into her room would see her—and be able to reach her—before she could get out. She decided to risk it and try to escape. In one quick gesture, she switched off the light and made a leap across the trapdoor, meaning to hit the floor on the other side running.
But to her utter disbelief, a man tossed the lid back just as Sara leaped, and she would have fallen if he hadn’t shot up through the floor and caught her. Instinctively, she fought as they went down together. She tried to use her nails on the back of his neck and to bring her knee up between his legs, but he blocked her. She would have pulled his hair, but it was cut so short she couldn’t get hold of it.