“You have all day tomorrow.” Pierre was nodding enthusiastically. “If you can sew it in a day, it’ll be ready for Saturday.”
“But…” Laura thought about it. Her brain seemed to be working very slowly.
She drank the rest of her wine as she thought about it.
It was true. They had the equipment to make silk. Very fine silk indeed. But…but… “No. wait. But we won’t have time to paint it.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Millie shrugged. “I love the colour of the chiffon, just use any white or cream silk for the underskirt.”
“It wouldn’t be the same,” Laura said. They were so sweet, but she knew what could have been and this would be a sad shadow of it.
“It would be worth it,” Joanie said. “Just to spitela vache, Nicole.”
“In fact, I think we should tweet about how she ruined your dress.” Pierre turned to Millie. “Let’s see what reputation she’ll have after that.”
But Laura wasn’t listening anymore. An idea had lit up in her mind. She could hear Millie saying something about not sinking to Nicole’s level or something. It was the least of her worries.
In her head, the idea was like a small flame that had just caught and started to burn. “Rovena? Do you remember when I asked you if we could make that shawl?”
The woman was intelligent, and an answering gleam lit up her eyes too. “On the jacquard loom. Yes, yes.”
“If you have the right colours—” Laura started.
“If you have the pattern in a picture.” Rovena said at the same time.
“What?” Millie asked. “What are you two…” She didn’t finished her question because both Rovena and Laura left the table.
Laura hurried into her workroom, she didn’t even glance at the damaged dress. On her desk, she shuffled through the piles of papers until she found the paintings. Twenty-two sheets. Her paintings of the leaves and flowers she’d used for the dress.
She ran back and switched on the computer. Rovena was at the other end of the weaving plant searching through their stock. “We have jasmine-white which is close to the pearl colour you had,” she called out.
Laura fed the individual sheets into the scanner. “Do you have” — She read out the hex codes as the computer program interpreted her images.
“Can someone please explain to us what’s going on?” Joanie asked from somewhere.
“I think I understand.” Pierre was standing behind Laura watching the screen. “Instead of painting, they’re going to try and weave the pattern into the silk.”
“Can you do that?” Millie asked
“Yes.” Laura could feel a silly, wide smile split her face. “As long as we can thread the loom in time, the actual weaving takes a few hours.”
Rovena joined them, a list in her hand which she gave to Laura. “We don’t have all the colours, but some are close enough. Mauve, lavender, primrose, apricot, three different greens.”
“So, you think you can do it?” Millie asked, hope shining in her eyes.
“Of course.” Laura was busy running the pattern through the computer to generate the code for the loom.
“Now, is the time for champagne.” Pierre reached for the ice bucket.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Adam was waiting for her.Or at least she assumed he’d been waiting for her. Why else would he pace up and down the entrance hall like a caged tiger?
As soon as she walked in with Millie and Joanie, he stopped. “Laura,” he said as if he’d been waiting so long, he hardly believed she was actually here.
She hated that. And she hated the look on his face. She especially hated the way the look on his face made her want to brush the hair from his brow and stroke his cheek. And more than anything in the world, she hated how her heart wanted to forgive him. On the strength of one look. And the sound of her name from his mouth. She really, really, really, hated that.
And what was more, he had the audacity, the bloody nerve, the bare cheek to walk towards her as if she belonged to him.
