by Becky Banks
“Oh. Sure.” He sounded a little confused. “Well, how much do you need? A couple hundred?” Then I heard my mother in the background.
“Is that your son on the phone? Is he asking for money again? You tell that boy—”
I could hear my father cover the mouthpiece a bit. “No, it’s your daughter.”
“Cole?” The other line picked up, and I was talking to my mom. “Why do you need money, Nicole Ransome? Are you hurt? Do you have a place to stay?” Then she said to my father, “Honey, boot up your computer and find your daughter a place to stay. Cole, where are you?”
“Mother, stop, I’m fine. I just need money for some dresses.”
A big, fat, giant pause. I could almost see them swapping glances on the other side of the Atlantic. Their ever-casual jeans-loving daughter wanted dresses.
“Let me explain,” I said, then did. In detail, so they’d understand the full ramifications if I went in any of the clothes I’d brought with me.
“How much do you need?” my mom asked.
“Well . . . the exchange rate isn’t in my favor and nice things here are really spendy, so with shoes, jewelry, and two dresses, I need at least a thousand dollars.”
I held my breath.
“Honey. No. How much do you need, n-e-e-d.”
“Mother, really, I can’t do with less. It won’t go very far. The MacLaochs have offered to pay,” I said, as if there had been more than one MacLaoch who had offered to pay. “But I think—”
“Nicole Ransome Baker,” my mother admonished, “you are going as your family’s representative, and you will not humiliate us. You will get the best damn dress you can find—and hell, buy three! I can’t believe my Cole is going to a ball!”
“Gala,” I corrected.
“Oooh, Cole! This is wonderful, I wish I could be there!” my mother squealed, obviously forgetting herself.
“We will transfer a thousand, Cole—” my father tried to say.
“If you really think that a thousand will be enough, with this exchange rate and the quality of the dress she will need, I’m divorcing you,” my mother interrupted with a threat she had lobbed often at him in their thirty-year marriage.
I heard him sigh. “Well, I know when I’ve been out numbered. Cole, my dear, I love you, have fun, and whatever price your mother comes up with will be fine. Even if we don’t actually have the money, I’m sure your mother will find it.” He signed off.
“Well, so how much do you need?” my mother asked.
I ended the call a bit later, after much time spent talking my mother down—she was ready to re-mortgage the house and farm for me.
With money transferred, I set out to peruse the selections at the two shops I’d received invitations from. The invites were standard-looking, preprinted invitations—the only personal touch was my name across the top. I envisioned that everyone on the fund-raiser gala list had received one.
Downtown Glentree started a block away from Will and Carol’s, continued down the hill for five more, and extended back up the hill behind the B&B for another five. I made my way, avoiding puddles, to the first shop. Its front window was well lit, and the two older women I could see through it were in what I was fast learning was the standard professional wear for Scottish women in the service industry: wool skirt, cardigan, and no-nonsense pumps. Though the one woman had a bit more flair: she was wearing a blouse.
As I walked in, they were heatedly discussing something that had just happened and seemed to involve two mannequins that were naked. Both women held garments in their hands.
“Hi there,” I called when they didn’t acknowledge me.
They both jumped in surprise. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” the one in the blouse said, gripping her chest.
She turned from me and spat at her associate, “Purple, Lily. Really, don’t even think of putting the brown one up.” She turned back to me. “I’m so sorry about that! Welcome, are ye seeking a special dress for a special occasion, dear?”
“Yes, I am, I received your invitation this morning and thought I would come by to see what you have.”
At this, her eyes got big and she swallowed hard. “Not for the gala on Monday, I hope,” she said with false cheerfulness and shot her cohort, who’d glanced our way, a knowing look.
“It is. Is there a problem with that?” I asked, feeling a little put out that these women, who had invited me, were less than welcoming.
“Oh, well . . . ” the first woman said, and looked behind me.
Following her gaze, I realized what I had missed when I first walked in. The shop was smallish, the racks were spare, and all the mannequins were nude. The only two dresses left had shoulder pads and excessive amounts of sequins and lace.
“Oh,” I said, “is this all you have?”
“Ah, yes. I’m so sorry—you are just a few moments too late. A lady just came in and bought—”
“Bought,” the other woman spat. “Used store credit, is more like it!”
“Yes. Right, credit—hush, Mabel. A large purchase. Well, actually, all of our most fashionable dresses in”—she paused, looking around—“every size.”
Store credit? I thought. It must have been thousands of dollars worth of dresses if the empty space is any indication of how many were taken.
From their reaction, it seemed that the women, too, felt that they had been robbed. They said they could order me a dress on express shipment. With another shop still to see, I let them know I’d think about it.
It was starting to drizzle as I rounded the corner and worked my way across the street and through the middle of the town square to the next shop. A farmers market was going on, and people were milling about on the cobblestones, chatting and haggling good-naturedly over produce and baked goods. It was quaint and felt so good that I wished I could walk this way every day of my life. I imagined walking to this square to buy groceries, then back to some stone house overlooking Glentree Bay, where I’d settle in after a day’s work.
Work. It seemed that I had not thought about work since I started researching my ancestry. Yet my lack of finances made it obvious that I would need to be thinking of it soon. I always knew that my career would have to do with the natural world, working with my hands and teaching people about it, but now I wanted to add researching my family history to my plan, too. And then a solution, one I hadn’t considered until now, came to mind: the Castle Laoch wilderness. The area that the MacLaoch chieftain said he would set aside for research. I mentally went through the wilderness again, and then what a day of cataloging plants in that natural area would be like—the cool breeze off the harbor, the team of research students carefully setting up plots, identifying and counting the various species.
I was deep in my daydream as I exited the square and crossed the street. As I stepped up onto the opposite sidewalk, I stopped, jarred back into reality. Directly ahead of me was the dark car of the Ice Empress of Doom, parked at the curb with its trunk open, which was full of shopping bags. As I stood there, I watched as Eryka emerged from a store with more bags loaded up on each arm; she shoved them into the trunk like they were stolen goods. She noticed me just as she slammed the trunk shut and gave me a grin that made my blood freeze. She slid into the backseat, and motored away.
Everything fell into place. I didn’t need to go into the store to see that it would be devoid of any clothes that I’d like to wear to the gala. I didn’t need to witness the clerks arguing to know that they had lost over half of their inventory. And I didn’t need to go in there to know that she’d put it all on Clan MacLaoch credit.
Right then, as if on queue, the sky unloaded and, without an umbrella, I started the walk back to the B&B.
CHAPTER 21
Mood getting fouler by the moment, I splashed through puddles back up the hill. The shop was on a side street I had not walked before, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if the blinds hadn’t ratcheted open just as I walked by, startling me.
Its windows wer
e brightly lit and filled with bolts of fabric. Reds, silken golds, creamy greens, all like gems in the gloom of my day. I stopped and stared. Just as I reached for the door, it opened. A large women grabbed me by the arm and yanked me into the shop.
“What are you doing out there with no umbrella? Come, you dry off in here. I see you like bright fabric—look from inside and stay dry.”
She spoke in an accent that I tried to place. The large woman was shorter than me. She had a beautiful, youthful face but was probably closer to middle age, and had a matronly way about her. She wore a dark-green suit and an apron whose pockets overflowed with bobbins, pins, thread, and needles. She was like a walking sewing machine. I realized when she returned from the back of the shop with a towel that she had the same pure, stark features, and blond hair—with strikingly contrasting brows and lashes—as Eryka. Only this woman looked happy.
“Thank you.” I took the towel from her and proceeded to dry off.
“You need dress, eh?”
“How’d you know I needed a dress?” I said, impressed.
“Well. You stop. You look. I make dresses—beautiful dresses.” She pointed to the sign that was nearly buried in the bolts of colorful fabrics, threads, and embellishments that crammed the shop. The sign said: Dressmaker.
“I, ah, missed that. Your fabrics are beautiful, but unfortunately I need a dress very quickly, and while I’d love to have one in every fabric in here, I’m afraid it’s not possible.”
She snorted. “You need it for tonight? Because that is the only timeline I cannot meet, and even then I could create something.” She looked me up and down as though I were a prized animal she was about to bid on at auction. “I can do tonight—what you need?”
“Tonight?” I said, shocked. “You’re kidding, right?”
“You challenge me?”
“No, I . . . It’s just . . . No, I don’t need a dress for tonight. I need two, one for Monday night and the other for Friday. I just thought, the way my day has been going, that would be impossible.”
A smile broke across her features, as if I’d just handed her a present. “Gute! I am Wanda. I will be your dressmaker.” I would learn that good was the word in Wanda’s English vocabulary that was most heavily accented.
We shook hands, but I was not convinced. “Yes, well, I need a gala-worthy dress,” I said, eyeing her.
Her brows drew together, and she observed me shrewdly. “Gala? You go to the opening gala for the Gathering on Monday for the MacLaochs?”
“Yes, ma’am. So I need something very nice,” I said, giving her an equal stare in return.
“You challenge me. I understand.” She nodded her head once, turned and picked up a large binder, and plopped the massive thing in my hands. “I accept your challenge. But you look like you have been, how you Americans, say? Ah, yes. Put through ringer. Look,” she said, jabbing at the binder.
In it were photos of dresses, loads of dresses. Everything from evening gowns worthy of a Hollywood red carpet to simple summer frocks.
She must have seen my favorable expression because she grabbed back the book. “Gute! We begin!” She put the book down and came back at me and yanked off my jacket. “We get look at you,” she said and started pulling and tucking at my clothes, sizing me up for real. “Now, who is competition?”
“Competition? I’ve, I’m . . . ” I stuttered. We weren’t good, after all—she thought I was starring in some sort of beauty pageant.
She stopped prodding and looked at me. “Yes. You are beautiful, and well sized, for sure.” She pulled out a pad of paper and started taking notes. “Hourglass, for sure.” She yanked a tape measure from her apron, walked to the front of the store, pulled the blinds, and locked the door. “Take sweater off—I must know exact measurements.” She stood waiting. I obliged and she said, taking the measuring tape to me, “Now, back to it. Who is our competition?”
“You mean the other dresses that will be there? Jeez, I really don’t know. This is the first time I’m going, so I have no clue who will be there, much less what kind of dresses they’ll have on.”
This was unsatisfactory to Wanda and as she jotted down numbers on her pad, she tried again, “No. Let me see how to explain. Who are you looking better than? I know this, I know what direction to go with style. Your body, color skin, eyes? I put wet rag on you, you beautiful. I make you dress that will take you from beautiful to goddess. Now, what goddess are you? When you walk into that room, what people think? I want to fuck her?”
I blinked at Wanda, not really sure I’d really heard her say that. But she just plowed on.
“I want to dance with her? I want to get to know her because she is full of money? I make you dress that evoke feeling, not just look pretty. Pretty you can buy in store down the street.”
I snorted. “Not anymore I can’t. They’ve all been bought out.”
“Explain.” She stopped taking measurements to devote all her scrutiny to my predicament.
“Well, just this morning, a woman whom I’ve . . . encountered,” I said, feeling that encountered was severely understating what my meet-ups with Eryka had been, “here in Glentree, for some reason bought all the clothes that I could have possibly worn from both dress stores.” It sounded crazy, saying it out loud. I let that one sit.
Wanda eyed me, thinking. “No one has money like that I know. Who is she? What her name? What she look like?”
“Oh, she doesn’t have the money; she put it on store credit—”
“Eryka Aase. I know her. She is from Iceland, like me.” She shook her head at this as if disgusted.
Wanda continued, “She came here and demand I make her a dress. She think because we are of the same nation she can demand me to make her dress for free.” I thought for a moment there that she was going to spit on the floor. “I tell her get out. Don’t come back, and don’t tell people she is from Iceland—she is shame to its people.”
“Whoa. When was this?” I asked.
“Months ago. But, I do not care.” She studied me again. “Why she hate you? She hate me because I deny her my famous dress. You. You American and you be here how long?”
“In Glentree? I saw her the second night I was here, and she’s hated me ever since. Or if not hate, she’s definitely having a joyous time trying to make me unhappy.” Again I felt this understated what Eryka was trying to do to me.
“Why?”
I shrugged, knowing I didn’t have an answer for her.
“No! This will not do! Think!”
Crap, I thought.
“Did you pay for your ticket to the fund-raiser?”
“No. I don’t—”
“Who is your date?”
I rolled my eyes, because I could answer that. “Rowan MacLaoch.”
“The MacLaoch chieftain?”
“That’s the one.” I sighed.
What she said next I could never have anticipated. “The MacLaoch chieftain has never taken a date. Not in all the years I have been here, and I was here many years before he left for Royal Air Force. Even when his uncle lived, God rest his soul.” She crossed herself.
“Never?” I asked, completely shocked. “Ever?”
“Never. And if there is one thing Eryka wants most, is the MacLaoch name.” She scoffed, “You are the competition! I am surprised Eryka has not driven you from town. Gute, very gute!” she said gleefully, and clapped. “The chieftain’s date! We will make Eryka eat her hat for want to be you!”
Oh god, I thought. Wanda was going to get me killed.
“Now,” she said, jotting one more thing on her pad before she tucked it into her apron, “what is your name?”
“Cole. Nicole Baker.” I said.
Wanda stuck out her hand. “Well, Cole”—and we shook—“it is gute to meet you.”
“Likewise. I just hope I stay alive long enough to wear one of your dresses,” I said, trying humor.
“Oh! Don’t worry about Eryka—she’s harmless.” She waved me off and st
ood back analyzing me again. “Monday . . . not enough time do bonings. We do slip dress. Yes, slip. We will line it, too, cut it on bias, yes. Yes. Very gute. Hug your curves and move like water over your body. Water, yes. We do,” she said, looked around, and made a beeline for a wall of silks. The color she pulled was at first glance white, but when I looked at a yard of it, it was as if snow and moss had gotten together and had babies. I was drawn to it, and then touching it—it felt like oil against my skin, silken and slippery.
“Oh my. What is this made of?” I asked.
Wanda patted my hand. “No need to know that dear, but know that when I am done with it, it will move like water over your gold skin. Rowan MacLaoch will want to watch it fall to the floor to see if it will puddle at your feet.”
Oh my, I thought, and shivered.
“And Eryka will eat her hat! Gute!”
CHAPTER 22
I left a few moments later after giving all my measurements, even shoe size—Wanda ushered me out so she could get to work right away. I felt great heading back to the B&B—not only had I secured a dress but Eryka had actually helped me get a dress that had the potential to be better than one I could have bought ready-made. For the second time, Eryka had inadvertently helped me out.
Suddenly, I realized I was squinting. The sun was finally out! It was lighting rainbows on the clearing horizon, the rain moving off into the mountains.
The sun did miraculous things to the isle, reflecting off the water on the sidewalks, the plants, the streets, the roofs—everything sparkled. I carried my camera with me for such occasions and, in an instant, I was putting it to good use.
I spent the better part of the afternoon capturing the sun and the shimmering, late-spring greenery. When late afternoon came, I grabbed a sandwich lunch from the local grocer and headed to the twenty-six-mile long trail I had read about in the book of walks. The trail began at Castle Laoch, and while I had hiked that part just the other day, when I first met Rowan, I was planning to head the other way today.