Page 6 of The Bride Wore White

A few months later...

Prudence woke up at dawn with a knife in her hand and the fragments of a nightmare clouding her vision.

It took her a frantic, disorienting moment to realize that the wispy fog she was trying to peer through was actually a voluminous lace veil. There was something wrong with the netting. It was stained a reddish-brown color, as if it had been splashed with tea.

No, not tea. Blood.

The shock of horror paralyzed her for a couple of heartbeats. Her breath caught in her chest. Her throat was so tight she could not even give voice to a scream.

In the next instant she sat up with the violent force induced by raw panic. That was when she discovered that she was not alone on the bed. There was a man dressed in a tuxedo stretched out beside her. The front of his elegantly tailored white shirt was saturated with the reddish-brown evidence of multiple stab wounds.

The rising tide of terror threatened to drown her when sherecognized the dead man—Gilbert Dover, the heir to the Dover fortune.

She was trapped in a nightmare. That was the only rational explanation for what was happening. She had to wake up. She managed to roll to the side of the bed, away from the dead man, and fell off the edge. She landed on her hands and knees with a jarring thud. The painful jolt forced her to face reality. She was not ensnared in a terrible dream. This was real.

When she tried to get to her feet, she got tangled up in the heavy satin skirts of a long, billowing gown—a once-white wedding gown that, like the veil, was stained with blood.

With a fierce effort of will she managed to scramble upright. She could feel fabric under her feet. When she looked down she saw that she was not wearing shoes. She stood on a rug.

She yanked off the wedding veil and flung it aside. Hoisting the folds of the gown, she nearly collapsed in relief when she realized she was still wearing the garter belt, stockings, panties, and slip she’d had on beneath the black business suit she had worn to work. There was no blood on any of her underthings. No signs of violence.

Memories came back in a rush.She is deep in the stacks of the library of the Adelina Beach College Department of Parapsychology. She is tracking downAn Investigation of Dreamsfor Professor Tinsley. She turns to go down an aisle lined with towering bookshelves. She senses movement behind her. An arm snakes around her throat, dragging her back against a man’s chest. A wet cloth covers her nose and mouth. She recognizes the sweet, medicinal smell of chloroform, tries to struggle, reaches up for the crystal pendant, and then... nothing.

It had all happened so fast. She had not had the time she needed to focus her psychic energy and fight off her attacker.

She looked around the room, trying to orient herself. The gray predawn light revealed a luxuriously appointed suite. Heavycurtains were tied back with gold tassels. Through the windows she could make out lavish gardens.

It occurred to her that she was viewing the scene from a perspective that indicated the suite was several floors above the ground.

Whisking up a fistful of the satin skirts, she hurried across the room and stopped at one side of a window. Four, maybe five floors below were a sweep of lawn and a grand porte cochere. Several impressive limousines were parked in the long, curving drive. Liveried chauffeurs lounged against the fenders of the big cars, smoking and chatting. Bellhops came and went, escorting weary socialites who were returning from nightclubs and, no doubt in some cases, the wrong beds.

The scene answered one question. She was in a hotel that catered to the wealthy upper classes—people like Gilbert Dover.

She was about to turn away from the window when she noticed the small scrum of news photographers gathered near the lobby entrance. She knew they were there to catch the arrival of a Hollywood celebrity or a rising politician emerging from a limo with a woman who was not his wife on his arm. The press thrived on such scandals.

The grisly murder scene in which she was standing combined all the elements required to ensure that the photographers and reporters would get front-page pictures and screaming headlines that would hit every paper on the West Coast.

It did not take the keen intuition of a former-psychic-dream-reader-turned-librarian to conclude that she had to escape the hotel without being seen.

She loosened the gold tassels that secured the curtains. Feeling her way across the darkened room, she found the bathroom and toggled the light switch. The glow of the ceiling fixture illuminated the tiled space and spilled through the doorway. She tried not to look at the bed as she searched the suite for her business suit or arobe—anything she could wear in place of the ghastly wedding gown.

She found the crumpled black skirt, the snug-fitting tailored black jacket, and the prim white blouse in the towel hamper. Her sensible mid-heel lace-up black oxfords were on the floor.

She was relieved to discover that it was not difficult to remove the wedding gown. It had been made for a taller woman, one with more impressive cleavage. Whoever had dressed her had been in a hurry. Only a few of the long row of delicate satin buttons on the back had been fastened.

When she yanked at the fabric on the back of the gown, the little buttons popped off. The horrid dress fell away and crumpled on the floor. She looked down at the inside of the bodice. A few loose threads indicated that the label had been cut out.

She stepped out of the gown and tugged on the tight skirt of her business suit. Her fingers shivered as she fumbled with the zipper. She had to take a deep breath and concentrate to get the blouse buttoned. She pulled on the jacket but did not attempt to fasten it. Tying the laces of the oxfords required concentration.

She caught sight of herself in the mirror when she turned to leave the bathroom. Her hair, which had been pulled back into a severe bun the last time she had seen her reflection, now hung around her shoulders. Her eyes were stark with fear. She told herself to stay calm. She was making progress. She was out of the damned wedding gown and properly dressed once again, more or less.

No, she was not properly dressed. Something was wrong.

She stared at her image for a couple of beats longer before she realized what was missing—the gold-framed spectacles she had purchased to complete the look she had created to land her new job as a research librarian.

She did not need to wear glasses—her eyesight was fine—but the spectacles were an important accessory. Like the bun and theplain watch on her wrist, they enhanced what she considered her Professional Woman image. Her best friend, Maggie Lodge, called the ensemble her Stern Governess costume, but that was beside the point. For the most part, the look achieved the goal of convincing the faculty and visiting academics who came into the library that she was serious about her work and was most definitely not interested in having a sexual fling in the Rare Books & Manuscripts vault.

The glasses had no doubt been lost when she had been chloroformed. Luckily she had a spare pair at home. Right now she had to concentrate on escaping the murder scene and vanishing before room service or a maid or—horror of horrors—a policeman opened the door of the suite.

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