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Somehow that morning she’d found herself agreeing to work in the service of Her Majesty’s government. Yes, the two thousand pounds and a desperate brother with a broken nose could make even an indifferent Scotswoman into a patriot, and the idea of finally getting one over on Wark had been almost too tempting to resist. Still, she would be working with him, and that unsettled her.

Rip.

“Lavinia,” said Siobhan from across the room, where she was chalking out a pattern on the tall cutting table, “you’re murdering that piece of fabric.”

“The pieces are wrong,” she muttered.

“What?” asked Siobhan, putting her scissors down.

“The pieces are wrong,” Lavinia said louder.

The head seamstress pulled her spectacles out of her apron pocket and squinted through them. “You’ve matched them inside out, haven’t you?”

She sighed and threw the cloth and seam ripper down on her worktable. “I was distracted.”

Just like the last two times I mis-sewed this dress. Siobhan was right. She was murdering the fabric.

Siobhan laughed. “Out with it then.”

“Out with what?” she asked, pulling her box of glass-tipped pins toward her.

“Whatever it is that’s bothering you,” said Siobhan.

Lavinia slid her eyes over to the far corner, where Siobhan’s cousin, Bronagh, was helping Kelsie, her junior seamstress, string beads onto thread ahead of the tedious job of covering a sea-foam silk bodice with flashing silver that would catch the candelabras of a ballroom.

“We should hire another seamstress as well as Bronagh, shouldn’t we?” she asked.

Siobhan shrugged. “We could hire in temporary work, although it would be good to have someone around for the Caledonian Hunt Ball next May too. If you can stand the cost.”

Before she could stop it, her mind was spiraling, speculating about what she could buy with an additional two thousand pounds if she didn’t have to spend it on getting Caleb out of another tight spot. The workroom could use a new cutting table, all of the salons could do with new furnishings, and her bedroom desperately needed new drapes to keep the drafts out. That wasn’t even touching on the inventory she’d like to have. And perhaps an advertisement or two in several of the local papers would help make the boon they’d seen from the prince’s visit a constant.

An army of seamstresses. New sewing machines for everyone. A deposit and most of the cost of buying this building. That would mean no more Wark.

Wark. He was at the center of this all. If he hadn’t been her landlord, Andrew never would’ve walked back into her life, stirring up old memories. There had been a tiny flash of hope among all the shock and disbelief when he’d walked through the door, rugged and reminding her of the one mistake that had set the course for the rest of her life. It almost made her blush that she still had enough naïveté to wonder whether he’d come to find her. To forgive her. But then, the moment they’d been alone, he’d dropped the affable facade and she’d realized that nothing had changed. He still hated her, even if he needed her help.

She picked her needle up again, but Siobhan stopped her by clearing her throat. She looked down at her hands and realized that she hadn’t yet fixed her mistake.

“Why don’t you go visit Mrs. Pawar? Clear your head.”

She sighed and put her work down, conceding that Siobhan was right. She needed calm and peace and a good gossip with a good friend.

Lavinia grabbed a gray-and-black tartan wrap off the hook by the back door and pulled it tightly around her as she retraced the path to Anika’s shop she’d dragged Andrew along just the day before. Once again, Hari answered the door, except this time half his face was shiny and sticky-looking.

“What have you been up to?” she asked with a little smile.

Hari shot her the mischievous look that, on the face of a seven-year-old boy, could only mean trouble and raced down the hall, his limbs going every which way.

“Aai, Mrs. Parkem is here!” she heard the little boy shout as she finished pulling off her boots. She stepped into the kitchen just as Hari went careening by his mother. Anika stuck out her arm, expertly scooped him up, and popped him on her hip.

“Hari, what have you done to yourself? Did you get into the jilabi?” Anika clucked as she snatched up a napkin from the kitchen table and began scrubbing at his face to remove the gooey remnants of the sweet treat.

“Noooo.” Hari thrashed this way and that in his mother’s arms, doing his best to avoid her determined cleaning. A little tug pulled at Lavinia’s heart. She loved her life, full as it was with the satisfaction of her work and a few closely held friends, but she couldn’t help thinking that she might’ve had this too, if only her path had been a little different.

“If you don’t want your face washed, don’t steal the jilabi, especially after I told you not to,” his mother scolded.

With an impressive, spine-breaking twist, Hari freed himself, dropped to his feet, and raced out of the room, laughing triumphantly all the way.

Anika shot Lavinia an amused look. “I would have tried to do the same when Caleb was a child, but it won’t be much longer until he’s too big for me to wash his face for him.”