Page 1 of Fletcher

Chapter One

“Are you headed to a party, Miss?” the cab driver asked, glancing at Lark Ambrose via the rearview mirror.

“Central Park, please.” She’d already told him that, she recalled, emerging from the daze. “I’m sorry. I’m just going for a walk in the park.”

“In that get-up?” The cabbie gave her a big grin. “Love how you gals dress for spring.”

She glanced down at her get-up, a hand-embroidered gown she no longer had a reason to wear. She knew every stitch, as she’d been working on it daily for the last seven months. The cascade of light pink and gold flowers and pale green leaves on the blush, tulle overlay exactly matched those embroidered in the time of Jane Austen. The underdress, made of champagne silk marocain, fit her petite body like a second skin, thanks to the long lacing of the corset back. She’d even stitched on one by one the two thousand, seven hundred and fourteen tiny golden pearl beads around the modest neckline, sleeve cuffs and hems.

As an expert seamstress, Lark had made costumes for some of the biggest productions on Broadway. Why shouldn’t she make her own dream wedding dress?

Too bad I’m not getting married.

She took a deep breath and tried to think of something other than the disaster she had just left behind at the church. The lingering odor of industrial citrus told her sensitive nose that the interior of the cab had been recently cleaned. Her driver, a middle-aged man with kind eyes, wore a nice, understated cologne, and sipped hazelnut coffee from a shatter-proof tumbler. Even the morning air, which usually stank acridly of the exhaust fume/old urine/rusting steel girder perfume of the city, smelled fresh.

All in all, the perfect day for the wedding she’d never have.

He’s gone. Janice Grant, her former future mother-in-law, had burst into the dressing room at the church, crying so hard she’d barely gotten out the words. He called me to say that he and Kate are eloping. Oh, my dear girl, I’m so sorry.

At first Lark had been confused. He and Kate couldn’t mean Lawrence Grant, her fiancé, and Kate Corbin, his secretary and her only friend. The two people closest to her in the world worked together, but they wouldn’t have run off to get married. Not with two hundred guests waiting in the sanctuary, all of whom were Lawrence’s friends and extended family. Not on Lark’s wedding day.

The jinx couldn’t do this to her.

After several frantic, unanswered phone calls to her vanished groom, Lark began checking other things. Her honeymoon plane tickets had been cancelled and refunded to Mr. Lawrence Grant, the airline agent told her. According to the bank he’d also emptied and closed their new joint checking account, taking every penny Lark had saved for their new life together. His landlord claimed he’d even sublet his Manhattan apartment, which they had planned to share when she moved in after the honeymoon, to a nice young couple from Jersey.

In twenty-four hours Lawrence Grant had rendered Lark homeless and penniless before leaving her at the altar to run away with another woman.

Still clinging to a shred of hope that it was all some sort of horrible practical joke, Lark had called Kate’s parents in Georgia. They had told her that their daughter had phoned the night before to say she was eloping with the man she loved. She simply hadn’t mentioned to them that the man had promised to marry Lark on the same day.

“Ah, Miss?” When she looked up the cabbie gave her another smile. “Central Park.”

Lark looked out the window at the oasis of green beside them. She had only occasionally walked through part of the eight hundred and forty-three acres of lawns, trees and gardens. After a long day of sewing, cast fittings or trips to the garment district to source specialty fabrics and trims, she usually went home to collapse. Since she’d taken off two weeks from work for the now-cancelled honeymoon, and she had nowhere to live at the moment, she had nothing to do but walk.

“Thanks.” Since Lark had maxed out her credit card making deposits for the wedding, she handed over the fare in cash along with a generous tip. “Have a great day.”

People glanced at her from the moment she entered the park, but no one stared. Lark became amused by that. Surely even in New York City it wasn’t every day they saw a freckled, skinny redhead dolled up like a pageant queen. Or maybe she was simply forgettable, even in a wedding gown. She silently blessed her decision not to add a train to her skirt, because the tulle and silk would have snagged on every twig, root and dead leaf she walked over. She was also glad she’d opted for pale pink flats; navigating the park’s terrain in heels would have been a nightmare.

Your wedding day is the nightmare, thanks to the jinx. Just like the rest of your life.

Since early childhood the bad luck Lark thought of as the jinx had shadowed her, snatching away everyone who had loved and cared for her. When she was three years old a truck driver’s brakes had failed, causing a pileup on the highway that had killed her parents on their way to pick her up from daycare. Bacterial pneumonia had stolen the widowed grandmother who had been raising her during elementary school. Lark’s godmother had then taken her in, but a custody battle during her subsequent bad divorce had rendered her emotionally and financially incapable of looking after her as well as her own four children. Lark’s last resort had been to live with her father’s brother, a busy Broadway director.

I never planned to have a family, Matthew Ambrose had told her as he unpacked her little suitcase in the guest room of his Manhattan apartment. But it’s me or foster care. So, let’s make it work, huh, kid?

Making it work meant eating nothing but takeout, largely looking after herself, and spending her nights and weekends at the theater, but at least the jinx had left Uncle Matt alone. While he was working, Lark had found a quiet corner backstage where she could do her homework, which was usually in the costume fitting room. There she watched the show seamstress and dressers work, and when she grew bored she began to help them, and got a crash course in tailoring and repairing clothes. One of her uncle’s neighbors, an Italian grandmother, also befriended her and taught her how to cook. By the time she graduated high school she was making meals for herself and Uncle Matt as well as her own clothes.

I’ll send you to design school if you want, her uncle had told her. But the fashion industry is really tough. You don’t need a degree to work on Broadway, sweetheart.

Lark had opted to go to vocational school to train as a seamstress, and two years later had landed her first job as a wardrobe assistant. From there she had piled on experience, going from show to show and sometimes filling in for other seamstresses out sick. She’d thought about dating, although with her shyness and worry over the jinx, that had been difficult for her. A friend she’d made at school, Kate, finally fixed her up on a blind date with her newly-divorced boss, a corporate tax lawyer.

At their first meeting Lawrence Grant had seemed the typical New York City professional: a dark-haired, blue-eyed smooth talker in a well-tailored gray suit. Lark had long ago accepted that, with her very short, slight build, stick-straight red hair and head-to-toe freckles she’d always look like a fifth grader playing dress-up. He seemed more suitable for someone like her beautiful, brunette friend Kate, she’d thought, unaware of just how right she was.

Lawrence had been charming, sophisticated and everything Lark wasn’t. What had impressed her was how painfully honest he was about his failed marriage.

“I’m always busy with my work,” he admitted over coffee at the little bistro where they’d met. “My ex wanted a husband who stays home every night and on weekends, which I couldn’t do all the time. It’s really my fault she left me for another guy.”

Pity for him prompted Lark to accept a second date to see a movie together, and after that a dinner date. Rather quickly she realized they weren’t a perfect match; Lawrence had no interest in her job, Broadway, or much of anything else outside his work. Once he learned she’d gone to vocational school instead of college he talked down to her, as if she might not understand what he meant. Lark wondered if she bored him, and dreaded her bad luck enough to be worried for him as well. Yet he kept asking her out, and didn’t seem to mind taking things slowly.

That unhurried pace allowed her to gradually gain a sense of security. If she didn’t rush things, maybe the jinx wouldn’t take Lawrence away from her.