Lenore sat quietly on the small couch in Bewitching Stitches’ suite. She wore a long, deep-green, matte-silk skirt and a wine-colored blouse with bell sleeves. Her curly dark hair was in a loose arrangement on top of her head with tendrils that showed off her slender neck and delicate ears, and would have made her look sweet and vulnerable if she weren’t already looking sullen and angry. On a low, square table in front of her was the model of her Christmas tree sampler. There were two things right about it: the dark green Cashel linen it was made of—the same shade of green as her skirt—and the perfect, balanced placement of the various stitches. Everything else was wrong; most prominently, the dejected way it slumped on its base. But the roughened areas of the linen where stitches had been pulled out didn’t help, and the hasty, almost clumsy way the eight parts had been sewn together was painfully evident. Awful, she thought, how I can make a dozen perfect French knots in a row but can’t piece a pattern?
