Chapter 31: The Gray Dress Again

The room at the end of the upstairs hall had the same iron bed and the same cedar bureau.

The envelopes were gone from the bottom drawer.

In their place I had put my own sketchbook, and Bea's drawings of a man on a horse.

I stood in the doorway on Friday evening in the gray dress and listened to the old house settle.

The window was open, and the October wind came through it, smelling of cut hay.

Conal came up the stairs in his socks, carrying a lamp, and stopped three steps from the top.

He saw the dress.

He saw all of it, the narrow gray silk with its bare arms and the neckline he had touched in a showroom full of buyers.

"I didn't make this one for the runway," I said. "I made it for tonight."

"Leandra."

"You said something to me in that dress. I want you to say it again, and then I want you to do it. All of it."

He put the lamp down on the floor.

"I'm going to ruin that dress," he said.

"Then do it."

"Come here."

That was not a question, and I crossed the room.

He took my mouth hard, and the doorframe met my back.

His hands went up the length of my arms.

He kissed my jaw and my throat, and he said it, low and rough against my ear.

He told me what he wanted to do to me in that dress.

He said it slowly, with every word, and he did not leave out one thing.

My knees nearly went.

"Is that all of it?" I asked, when I could speak.

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