The heavier, blunter needle finally landed on a raised piece within the mechanism. I pushed, depressing the tiny movable button. The lock clicked and disengaged. “Take hold of the handle,” I whispered, afraid that if I spoke too loudly, the needle would lose its precarious hold on the button.
Gracie reached over my arm and grabbed the brass pull-tab handle.
From somewhere behind us, the steady clomping of footsteps sounded.
Gracie shivered as another cold breeze blew by us. “What is that?” she said, peering around her. “The air’s not on.”
I shrugged, playing it off. “Old houses. You know.”
“Right. Like the creaking pipes. This place is totally haunted.”
How right she was.
The footsteps behind us grew closer. I felt my grip on the two needles slipping. “Open the door, Gracie,” I urged.
“Hello?” Will’s voice cut through the atmospheric silence of the attic and then, suddenly, he was behind us. “What’s going on?” he asked, just as his daughter swung open the armoire door and we both squealed. “This the piece you want moved downstairs?”
I nodded as a little gust of air blew through the dank room, catching the left door of the armoire and swinging it closed. I grabbed it, opening it again and holding it firm. “Nice try,” I murmured under my breath so only Meemaw would be able to hear me. The fabric I remembered being in the cupboard was no longer there, and for the life of me, I couldn’t imagine why my great-grandmother, Loretta Mae Harlow Cassidy, wouldn’t want me to see the three stunning and painstakingly detailed gowns that hung on the wooden rod before me.
“Wow.” Gracie stared at them, awestruck, like she’d discovered Cinderella’s gowns.
“Yeah.” I stared. They were beautiful, each one different from the next, unique, ornate, and made from the finest fabrics and trims.
“Kind of old-fashioned, aren’t they?” Will said.
Both Gracie and I peered up at him, frowning. Just like a man not to appreciate the beauty of a period gown. “Yes,” I said, “but that’s the point.” A few months ago I’d learned from Mrs. Zinnia James that my own grandmother had been a Margaret in her day, but she wouldn’t have needed three dresses. Who else could they belong to? I knew my mother hadn’t been in the pageant, but had my great-grandmother, or her mother, Cressida? “They’re replicas from the 1800s,” I said. “They’re supposed to be old-fashioned.”
Gracie stood back, her lips pulled to the side. I’d learned over the last few months that this was her deep-in-thought expression. She raised her hand like she was in class. “Why did your great-grandmother lock up the cupboard?” she asked. “Ooo, ooo, ooo! Do you think they could be stolen?”
I frowned, considering. Stolen from whom? And by whom? And why would Meemaw keep these gowns on the down low, hiding them, even from me? Unless they were valuable… I inspected them more closely. They looked like they’d been made around the same time, and the quality—both of the fabrics and the workmanship—was excellent. From the perfect spacing and straight lines, I was sure the backstitching had been done by machine, but I felt sure that on an original 1800s dress, it would have been done by hand. “No, I don’t think they’re originals.”
Gracie carefully took the pale green silk gown from the satin-covered hanger and held it up to herself.
Will gave a low whistle. “You’d make a stunning debutante, Daughter.”
Gracie blushed. “Why thank you, Father.” She fanned out the folds of the skirt and twirled around like a fairy princess.
Will folded his arms across his chest. “Um, listen, Gracie. I know you said you didn’t want to be part of the pageant, but are you sure?”
She stopped, gazing up at her father. “You can’t just say you want to be a Margaret, Dad. It’s, like, invitation only. Holly was invited ages ago. You have to, like, train.”
Will looked at me for confirmation. “Oh?”
“I heard Mrs. James say the girls have been practicing since last September,” I said with an apologetic shrug.
Gracie hung the dress over her arm, looking a little disappointed. I cleared my throat. “I’ve got an in with a society member,” I said. “I could ask…”
They both turned to look at me. Gracie’s eyes opened wide, a grin playing on her lips. “Really? You’d do that? Like, ask one of those society ladies?”
I nodded. Mrs. James had been part of the Margaret Society since her debut—the same pageant Nana had participated in. Being a central figure in the society must mean you could influence who was chosen as the year’s Margarets.
Mrs. James had told me that the minute her granddaughter Libby was born, she’d contracted Trudy and Fern Lafayette to make the dress. It was planned sixteen years in advance, but she’d since had a big falling-out with the sisters when the Margaret Society elected her president. The Lafayette sisters had been in charge of the pageant and ball for years and years, and they had not liked having control of the festivities wrested from their hands.
The last nail in the coffin was when Mrs. James hired me, instead of the Lafayette sisters, to make her granddaughter’s dress. Now Trudy and Fern Lafayette were in a full-on feud with Zinnia James.
“You don’t think it’s too late?” Will asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said, although more than a smidgen of doubt had seized me. My business arrangement with Mrs. James didn’t mean she owed me anything—more like I owed her something—but I could ask.
Gracie’s face lit up and I knew I would promise Mrs. James just about anything if she’d let her be a Margaret.
As she held the dress back up, an imperfection in the fabric of the bodice caught my eye. I leaned closer, the pad of my finger brushing against it.
“Maybe I could wear this?” she asked, but she saw my expression and frowned in response. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a tear here,” I said, pointing at the inch-and-a-half-long gash in the fabric. “Like someone grabbed hold and ripped it apart, all the way through to the boning.” I leaned closer, noticing something else. “And look, the edges are frayed. This wasn’t a clean tear.”
Will bent down next to me to get a better look, his fresh soapy scent overpowered by the mothball smell wafting from the armoire. “No?”
I took the dress from Gracie, noticing another tear at the armhole. I brought it closer to get a better look and fingered the ripped fabric for a moment, then flipped the bodice down to see the underside.
A little jolt went through me, and a sudden flash of emotions. Anger. Betrayal. Lies. “No,” I said. “This dress has history.” But what it was, I had no idea.
Chapter 3
“Hello?” A singsong voice drifted up the stairs, through my bedroom, and into the attic. “Anyone home?”
“Up here,” I called, pushing my curiosity aside for now.
A door slammed downstairs and I heard the muffled conversation of two female voices.
“Harlow Cassidy, where are you? I brought Libby in for her fitting.”
Speak of the devil. Mrs. Zinnia James. “Coming!” A knot of guilt formed in my gut, like I was keeping a secret. She’d left me a message, asking why I hadn’t shown for our meeting at the golf club, but I’d been a chicken and hadn’t called back yet. I didn’t want to fess up that I’d overheard the ugly argument between her and the golf pro. Another ping of anxiety flitted through me. And now I had to ask her if she could pull some strings so Gracie could be a Margaret. A sudden vision of me on my knees, hands clasped, begging her, flashed through my mind.
I’d do whatever it took to make it happen. Despite not knowing each other very long, Gracie had a special place in my heart. It might take a year for most girls to train to be a debutante, but Gracie would be a quick study. I just knew it.
I left Will and Gracie in the attic and hurried to the landing, throwing down a quick greeting. Mrs. James stood at the base of the staircase, her silvery hair shimmering like a halo.
“So sorry I wasn’t
able to meet you earlier,” I said, the lie heavy on my tongue. I hurried on. “I’m not quite ready to fit Libby again, but I’ll show you the gown.” I skipped down the stairs, meeting them at the bottom. The dresses flitted back into my mind. Considering that she’d been the one to tell me that my grandmother, Coleta Cassidy, had been a Margaret, she’d appreciate the discovery and maybe she’d know something about them. “I was going through some of Meemaw’s things in the attic. You’ll never guess what I found,” I said brightly.
“In Loretta Mae’s attic?” She held a perfectly French-manicured finger to her lips, thinking. “Knowing your great-grandmother and her penchant for fine fabrics and collecting, I’d say you found her collection of antique lace.”
Libby looked like she’d rather be anywhere but here. She meandered over to the rack of ready-to-wear clothing at the far end of the room and perused the garments leftover from my stint at Maximilian Designs in New York, along with my own experimental pieces, and the few samples I’d managed to make over the long, hot summer.
It was true. Meemaw did love fine fabrics, along with her abundant collection of buttons and trims, but I hadn’t rediscovered the lace yet. “No, no fabrics yet, but I’m sure you’re right. There are probably stacks and stacks of them buried in there somewhere. No,” I said, rubbing my hands together excitedly as I led her back into the main room of Buttons & Bows. It had been Meemaw’s living room and still contained her old olive green and gold paisley damask sofa and love seat, her freestanding oval mirror, and a few other pieces from my childhood, but the rest I’d brought in. Together, it worked perfectly, creating a comfortable and warm blend of the past and the present. “There’s an old armoire up there. Inside it, we found three period dresses. I think they might be Margaret dresses.”
Her brow furrowed. “Three? Well, doesn’t that just take the cake? Being in the pageant was the last thing Coleta wanted to do. I wouldn’t have thought she’d have kept her dress all these years.”
My thought exactly. Waltzes at a debutante ball weren’t my grandmother’s style. She loved her farm and her goats. Right now, she was fully entrenched in a new venture: making body butter with goat milk. “Why did she do the pageant?” I asked.
“Dalton, of course,” Mrs. James said without even a nanosecond of hesitation.
I sank down onto the red velvet settee and stared. “My grandfather?”
“No other reason. His family goes back nearly as far as the Kincaids in Hood County, you know. He was to be a beau, whether he wanted to be one or not.”
“A beau?” Not having been part of the festival when I was a teenager meant I was ignorant about the finer details.
“That’s what the escorts are called,” she explained.
“So if Nana hadn’t participated in the pageant and been a Margaret, Granddaddy would have been someone else’s beau?”
Mrs. James glanced at Libby, who was holding up a white and navy yacht dress reminiscent of Debbie Reynolds in Singing in the Rain. A faint smile played on her lips. She saw us looking, the tiniest dimple in her cheek quickly vanished, and she whirled around, hanging it back up on the rack. Her shoulders curled in on themselves. It looked to me like Libby Allen wished she could be invisible and I suddenly knew what her deepest desire was. Not for the first time, I thanked Butch Cassidy for wishing upon that Argentinean fountain and bestowing his descendants with charms. As I continued to work on Libby’s Margaret dress, I’d stitch confidence into the seams and trim it with hopes for poise. By the time Elizabeth Allen, aka Libby, came out to Hood County society, she’d succeed in any situation with aplomb.
“Not just someone else’s,” Mrs. James said quietly after she turned back to me. “Mine.”
“Ohhh,” I said. “So she decided to be in the pageant to woo my grandfather?”
Mrs. James nodded. “Exactly. Coleta is nobody’s fool.”
I suddenly understood why Meemaw had tried to keep me out of the armoire. She knew I’d ask questions and root out the complicated love story of my own grandparents. And yet all that mattered to me was that Nana had ended up with Dalton Massie, my granddaddy, and Mrs. James had married Senator Jebediah James, a distant relation of Etta Place, the woman the Sundance Kid had loved. I found it ironic that our family stories intersected, but it all seemed to have worked out.
The sound of footsteps descending from upstairs interrupted us. We turned just as Will and Gracie rounded the corner into the main room of Buttons & Bows. “Mrs. James,” Will said, taking her offered hand.
“Always a pleasure to see you, Mr. Flores.” She nodded at Gracie. “Miss Flores,” she said to Gracie. “Do you know my granddaughter, Libby? You look to be about the same age.”
Gracie met Libby’s eyes. “Sure.” She lifted her hand in a casual greeting. “Hey.”
Libby kept her chin angled down, but flipped her hand up in a half wave. “Hey,” she said, her voice so soft I could hardly hear it. I had a feeling even the mere idea of being a Margaret was taking a huge toll on the shy girl.
“I love that one, but it doesn’t fit me,” Gracie said to Libby, pointing to a vintage-inspired swing dress. Stretch poplin, a gathered halter bodice with a back tie, side zipper, and a full circle skirt made it fun and flirty. The design had come to me one night and I’d been compelled to make it. It hadn’t been for me, but I hadn’t been willing to sell it.
Libby held it up, fanning the full skirt out. Her voice came out a little soft and breathy. “It’s pretty.”
“It’s totally you. Try it on!” Gracie pushed her toward the privacy screen in the workroom.
A splash of pink colored Libby’s cheeks. “Really? You think so?”
“Oh yeah. Wait a sec—you can wear it to the parade! Go ahead. See if it fits.”
Libby reappeared a minute later. An image of her shot like a bullet into my mind. In the vision her hair was pulled back, a big pink flower tucked behind her ear to match the retro pink rose fabric. My skin flushed with goose bumps as she spun around, the skirt scalloping out around her as she twirled. No wonder I hadn’t been able to sell it; it belonged to her. Of course I didn’t know how that was possible since I hadn’t known Libby when I’d made the dress.
“Looks like I’m buying that dress for my granddaughter,” Mrs. James said with a smile.
I nodded, pleased but preoccupied. Was my charm evolving, or was I just discovering a new facet to it? Either way, I didn’t understand how I could make the perfect garment for someone I didn’t know. But this dress, made before I’d ever met Libby, couldn’t be for anyone else.
Wearing the dress perked up Libby, and I could see a newfound confidence already flowing through her. She listened with wide-eyed admiration as Gracie chattered on about being a dressmaker’s apprentice.
Will, seizing the opportunity to get back to work, sidled by, grabbed his drill, and climbed up the ladder.
“What in tarnation is that?” Mrs. James asked, her gaze following him up the ladder until she was peering at the contraption against the ceiling.
“It’s a dress pulley,” I said. “My own invention—”
“More of a collaboration,” Will interjected, looking down at me. “Your idea, my execution.”
“I’m the brains. He’s the brawn,” I said with a laugh.
He scowled down at me, but a glimmer of playfulness shone in his eyes. “I’m gonna let that go for now, Cassidy, but we’re gonna talk about it later.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, giving him a salute. Turning back to Mrs. James, I continued. “We devised it so that I can work on gowns and not worry about the fabric dragging on the ground. Isn’t it great?”
She gazed up at it, a befuddled expression on her face. “How does it work?”
“The gown goes there,” I said, pointing to the wood-framed shape in the center with the lightweight dress form. “When I’m not working on it, I can activate the pulley and the whole thing will be secure at the ceiling.”
She nodded, her lips curved up in an
impressed smile. “Quite ingenious, Harlow.”
I agreed, but my pride swelled at her praise. I didn’t know her well, but I’d already gathered that Mrs. James didn’t dole out many compliments.
“Libby,” I called. “Come see your Margaret dress.”
She and Gracie both appeared at the French doors that separated the workroom, formerly Meemaw’s dining room, from the main room of Buttons & Bows. “Is it ready?” Gracie asked. From the twinkle in her eyes, anyone would have thought it was her gown about to be revealed. Libby, on the other hand, stood a foot behind Gracie, her eyes never quite meeting mine.
“No, not ready. But close.” I winked at Libby, and beckoned her into the workroom. “Look,” I said, pointing to the dress in the corner. It hung, inside out, on Meemaw’s old dress form, the skirt of the gown pluming at the hem. “I’ll be ready to do another fitting day after tomorrow. Can you come back?”
Libby nodded as Mrs. James said, “Her mother can bring her.”
“Perfect,” I said, carefully unpinning the shoulder seams of the 1820s-style dress and folding back the lining to give them a glimpse of the bodice. Margaret Moffette Lea had been born in 1819, so the dress was an earlier style from what the original Margaret would have worn, but I thought I could get away with it. There were no Margaret police, as far as I knew.
I’d basted the sections together before I’d stitched them, but now the crisscross long basting threads weren’t necessary. “Let me cut these so you can get a better look,” I said, searching the room for my sewing bag. Then I remembered. “Darn. I left it at the country club—”
The buzz of the drill sounded and Will called down from the ladder, “Gonna be loud for a quick minute.”
I found another pair of scissors, my favorite red-handled Ginghers that Gracie had been using lately, and started snipping the basting stitches while Will drilled a handful of screws into the pulley’s frame. I pulled the dress off the form and carefully turned it right side out so Libby could get a good look at the design. The short sleeves were gathered with strips of vertical ruffles and a twisted and layered trim at the squared neckline. The bodice would have a heavy patterned appliqué, and the straight skirt, when it was finished, would have two rows of small ruffles. It was from the early 1820s rather than the later decades when hoops and corsets really took hold in the fashion world. When I’d met Libby the first time, I knew a simpler pattern would make her feel more comfortable. She’d be one of the most beautiful belles at the ball—of that, I was certain.
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