Chapter 23: The Second Dress

They set the long white box on my porch swing and opened the lid.

The stained gown lay inside, wrapped in tissue.

I had left it in a closet in Sausalito.

Malcolm had sent the housekeeper to fetch it, and now I understood why he had looked so innocent at breakfast.

"Miss Whitman," said the woman from the atelier.

She had her hands clasped, and she looked more nervous than she had on the phone.

"I'd like to tell you what's happened since the gala."

"I'd like to hear it," I said. "Standing up."

"The photograph of you in that dress has been seen by forty million people."

I blinked at her.

"Forty?"

"There's a museum in New York that has asked for it. And a fashion house in Paris, and a magazine that wants it on the cover."

"Every one of them asked me to ask you."

A tall woman in a cream suit stepped forward.

"We are designers," she said. "We have each been asked to copy the stain on a gown of our own."

"We'd rather do it properly. If you will lend us the dress for one season, we'd frame it, and..."

"No," I said.

"Miss Whitman, the offers are in the millions."

"No."

She faltered.

"It's the most famous dress in the world right now," said the woman from the atelier, gently. "It would be a shame to keep it in a closet."

"It's not going in a closet," I said.

I lifted the gown out of its tissue, and held it against the porch rail.

The stain had faded a little in the weeks, from a dark river to a deep soft red.

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