Page 53 of Borrowed Time

Just a few days earlier, he’d almost lost her forever.

Someone knocked at the door, and immediately she lifted her head from his shoulder and hurried over to the writing desk on the other side of the room so she could sit in the small chair there and make it look as though she’d never been anywhere else.

Feeling somewhat mystified, Seth went to answer the knock, and opened the door to see one of the hotel’s chambermaids standing outside in the hallway.

“A note for you, sir,” she said. “Billy gave it to me to deliver to you — he’s not allowed upstairs.”

Although the boy had never given his name, Seth assumed that “Billy” was the child who’d taken their original note to Jeremiah Wilcox. He hadn’t been expecting a reply quite so soon, but then again, the Wilcoxprimusdidn’t seem like the kind of man who wasted much time on deliberations.

“Thank you,” he said, fishing a penny out of his pocket so he could give it to the girl. It wasn’t a lot, but he thought a nickel might be too much when he’d paid the same thing to Billy so he could run halfway across town to deliver his message.

The girl bobbed a curtsey, looking absurdly pleased, so Seth decided he’d done all right by her.

“No, thankyou,sir,” she replied, and dipped her head one more time before retreating toward the stairs.

“A note from Jeremiah?” Devynn asked after he’d closed the door.

“I think so,” Seth replied, since the heavy black handwriting on the envelope — addressed to Mr. and Miss Prewitt — looked vaguely familiar.

“It sounds like he wants to get on with all this as much as we do.”

Maybe so. After all, it was probably a little tiring to have to keep running interference between the two of them and the rest of his family. Once they were gone, peace could be restored.

However, after reading the contents of the note, he couldn’t help frowning. If Jeremiah was trying to keep them separate, he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

“What’s the matter?” Devynn asked, rising from her chair. “Does he not want to try another experiment?”

“No, it’s not that,” Seth replied as he walked over to her. “He says that on Wednesdays, Mrs. Barton goes to visit her sister in Williams and doesn’t get back until late, so that will be the perfect time for the two of us to come over and for you to attempt a longer journey into the future.”

Devynn’s brows pulled together. “Well, that’s good, isn’t it? I mean, I’d rather go tomorrow, but Wednesday isn’t that far off.”

“No, that part’s fine.” He handed her the note, figuring she might as well read it for herself. “It’s that he also wants us to come have dinner tomorrow night at his house with the rest of the family.”

She glanced down at the note, her frown deepening. “So…what happened to keeping us as far away from the Wilcoxes as possible?”

“I have no idea.” However, even as he spoke, he remembered how the Wilcox ladies had stopped by their table at the restaurant in the Bank Hotel, and the way they’d murmured amongst themselves as though they had an agenda of their own. “But I can guess. I think some of his sisters-in-law must have told him that it didn’t feel right to have people who are witch-kind visiting their town and not invite them over for dinner, and even leaving that part out, he should really be entertaining Eliza’s relatives, seeing as he’s one of the trustees at the schooland it sounds as though they’d had her over for dinner several times.”

Devynn appeared nonplussed by that explanation, but she didn’t argue, not when the evidence of the invitation was right there in the note Jeremiah had just sent over. Instead, she looked down at herself, forehead puckering once again.

“What if they recognize my dresses?” she asked, and now she sounded worried. “After all, my mother dined with them more than once, and it’s not as if I have dozens of gowns to choose from.”

No, she didn’t. Maybe four or five, it seemed like, if you included that spectacular teal dinner dress she’d worn to the Sundown Theater. However, it was far too fancy for a quiet weeknight dinner at a private home — well, unless that dinner was in New York City or Boston or someplace similarly highfalutin, as his cousin Elmore might say.

“I suppose that could be a problem,” he replied, even as he wished one of them had a talent for illusions, something that would allow them to disguise the details of Devynn’s borrowed wardrobe and make it look like something completely different.

But neither of them had a magical gift remotely like that, which meant they’d have to come up with a more mundane solution to the problem.

“They don’t sell ready-made dresses at Brannen’s, do they?” he asked, and immediately she shook her head.

“Only yardage,” she said. “And there’s no way in the world I could possibly get a seamstress to make me a dress in a day. My mother said Mrs. Adams was pretty fast, but she’s notthatfast.”

No, probably not. Although he’d seen several of his cousins whip up a dress in an afternoon with their sewing machines, that was a lot easier when you were dealing with something as simply cut as the clothing in vogue during the 1920s. A gown as complicated as the one Devynn wore, with its elaborately drapedbustle and self-fabric ruching on the sleeves and bodice, would take quite a while longer.

But even as that discouraging thought passed through his mind, another one occurred to him. “Maybe the seamstress can’t make you a dress in time. On the other hand, maybe she has some ready-made gowns on hand, maybe things people commissioned and couldn’t pay for?”

Devynn’s expression grew thoughtful. “I suppose that’s possible. And there might be a secondhand store where I could find something as well, but I’m not sure how I feel about buying something used when it hasn’t been properly dry-cleaned beforehand.”

He’d vaguely heard of that method of cleaning clothing, but there definitely weren’t any dry cleaners in the Verde Valley, so he had no idea of what might be involved in the process.

---