Chapter 8

When Lady Appleby came in she came over to me and enveloped me in a big hug.

“Those dresses were absolutely ideal. It’s been a couple of years since I got my picture in the magazines and here I am with two inside a few weeks.”

I thanked her and introduced May, the dressmaker and part of any future projects.

Jules left us to it and we sat in some easy chairs. I asked the Lady what she was after this time and she told me that she had been sent tickets to the Broadway opening of ‘Tommy’ towards the end of the month. This only gave us a week to make and deliver a dress.

She intended to wear the turquoise dress we had supplied for the party on arrival but needed something for the show and after party. Her mind was a whirlpool of dresses and I slowed her up by asking, “Do you want to be elegant and fit in, or do you want to stand out and get photographed?”

That slowed her down and she thought a bit. “Of course I want to be photographed, I don’t want to be considered such a has-been that no-one wants a picture of me.”

“OK” I said as I opened my sketch-book and grabbed a handful of coloured pencils. “What do you think the other women will be wearing?”

She laughed “All in totally impossible dresses that need to be glued to the body or else hardly there at all. They are so predictable.”

“Tommy is set in the sixties and is a show about a mod who really is some kind of god. Did you have any involvement in the era?”

“Oh, yes” she smiled “I was in high school and mummy and daddy would often be in London and I spent many a weekend here. It was a lovely time.”

Her aura was turning a pleasant blue and I got flashes of her in various outfits.

“Did you have a favourite dress or even a favourite designer?” I asked. Bingo! A picture of her in a Mary Quant mini-skirt suit instantly appeared in her mind.

“Mary Quant,” she said, and started to describe the outfit I had seen.

I started sketching while May looked over my shoulder. I said “I don’t think that your status would allow you to appear in a mini these days, so how about we go with something similar but with a longer line and a more tailored jacket.”

I heard May take a quick breath as I was drawing. "Oh, wow!” she whispered, “the one you describe was red, wasn’t it?”

Lady A agreed and I said, “What about we do you something in a light blue with a similar design but a longer skirt and without the bolero jacket style.” I had the light blue pencil and quickly filled in the colour.

I added a few embellishments to the design and as I finished I could feel Mays’ hand on my shoulder. I showed the picture to her ladyship and she beamed.

“That would take a couple of years off my age, show me to be hip but elegant at the same time. I love it,” she said as her eyes took in the whole design.

I asked May if there would be any difficulty making it and she said it was straight forward with just the fabric choice needed. Lady A looked at us and said "At that time I always adored boucle.”

So there we were ten to fifteen minutes and I had earned some money. I told May to double check with Lady Appleby about trim so they could co-ordinate with her jewellery, tore off the page and gave it to her, saying, “It’s your baby now,” and went off to find Jules.

I found him in his office and he gave me the extra money made out to me on the cheque. I told him that I would open a bank account and give him the details so that any money I earn from him could be paid into it.

He thanked me for my input and I told him that May was running with it now but I still wanted her with me when we visited the Baroness tomorrow as she wouldn’t have the material required for a couple of days.

He said that he would send May in a car and the driver would pick me up at my home and drop me off on the way back. That’s my day sorted.

When I left I found a branch of my bank and used the cheque to open a new account under the name of Asquith Designs. They said they would send the paperwork to my home.

I then went into the city where I found the building where the fashion magazine was situated. Going in I asked for a form to take out a subscription and then asked where I should go to order photos. After filling out the form and paying my money I went to the counter where they took orders for pictures.

They found me the two with Lady Appleby and I ordered them in eight by ten and gave them the address they could send them to. I knew that if things carried on like this, I would need a record of my designs.

I then went and had lunch before going to the Chelsea to see Judith and, maybe, get my term results. When I got to her office her aura changed to a very dark blue when she saw me.

“Oh, Oh,” I thought.

“Come in, Amity, and close the door behind you. There are things we need to talk about.” I went and sat in front of her desk, worried that I may have overstepped some mark or another.

However, she smiled and said “I will firstly tell you that you have passed all of the courses for this term, the results will be posted tomorrow but I have seen the list.”

I thanked her for that information and waited for the ‘but’. She then pointed to the picture of her horses that I had drawn for her which had been framed and hung on her office wall.

“I look at that picture every day and smile,” she said, “However, there are some things about it that throw up questions that have been in the back of my mind for some weeks now. You have put details of markings on my horses that are exactly right and there is no way I could have described them to you to the inch. I must conclude, although it seems crazy, that you can read minds. Am I right?”

Busted!!!! I nodded my head. “Only pictures, I cannot actually see things that are not projected to the front of your thinking. I can also read auras and yours started as dark blue, meaning angry, to a lighter blue which means that you have the answers you need.”

She stood up and came around to me and bent to hug me. “You poor girl,” she said quietly, “Fancy going through life seeing all the colours all the time.”

I told her it sometimes helped and related the railway station incident.

“Seeing that you have this ability I can expect you to ace my design courses while you are here. With that in mind I will just need you to take the written exams and submit proof of outside work as well as organising a fashion show for me at the end of each term.”

I told her about the work that I was doing with Jules and she said that if I could produce pictures of my designs that have appeared in magazines she would be happy to give me a pass.

I asked her about getting copyright to my name and she wrote down the ones I gave her, Amity Creations and Asquith Designs, crossing my fingers that Jules had not submitted the second himself.

She told me that there were people in the school who handled such things as it came up regularly and that they will send me the paperwork when it has gone through.

“The head of the Art Department was in here the other day and asked who did the picture. When I told him it was my brightest student he insisted that you add the Arts to your studies and I can see you graduating with a double. Can you fit that in? Here are his course times for you to look at over the break.”

On the train home I had to sit and arrange my thoughts. I was now an employee of the Jules House of Fashion for special projects and with a regular wage. I also was certain that I would pass Design and just needed to work on my other courses to graduate.

On top of that I was expected to take on an Arts course. Thinking about that I started to think about subjects that I could draw and realised that, if I put my mind to it, I could come up with lots of pictures. One thing that the Arts course would give me would be experience in methods other than coloured pencil sketching.

I looked at the paperwork she had given me and saw that the Arts course also included model making. It would be fun to have one of mine walk into class and wave at the lecturer!

The next day I waited at home and when the driver tooted I went out to the car. I asked the driver, “If you can just wait a moment, I want to show May something and I am sure she needs to freshen up before we carry on.”

I led May into the house and I could see that she was anxious. “Right” I said “Toilet first and then we have a quick talk before we go back out.”

I think that I may have scared her a bit as she did need the toilet stop and when she came out of the powder room I said, “Yesterday you could see what I was seeing because the outfit she was describing was red but she had not told us that. Can you read minds?”

“A bit” she stammered “but not things you don’t want me to see and it is a bit blurred.”

“May, I am sure that there is magic in your family and we can discuss it in the car. Firstly, though, I am going to hug you and, when I do, you may find that your second sight is much clearer. I’ll answer your questions another time but we do need to make this work.”

She nodded and I hugged her to pass her some of the better powers of mind reading. When we parted her eyes were wide. “You gave me something but I don’t know how you did it!”

I said that we can talk it through but we needed to get to the car and get going. The Baroness would not be happy if we were late.

In the car we spoke about what the Baroness may like and we discussed the Lady Appleby and the light blue boucle suit. We agreed that it must have a silk blouse that would go with it and decided it must be white.

There also had to be a hint of red somewhere in the trim. After all, it was a show that was fundamentally part of British history.

I asked her surname was and it was just Smith, so I delved deeper into her family history and found out that her grandmother had been an illegitimate child of a maidservant and a chap called Crawley who was a famous author.

“Not just an author,” I said, “But one of the most notorious warlocks of the age. He actually lived in Redhill for a few years as a young boy but came into notoriety calling himself ‘666, the great Satan’. His name was Aleister and bedded many women by the use of what he called ‘sexual magic’. It was actually a simple spell and he used it often. That’s where your powers came from and it passes through the female line.”

“Will I have other powers I haven’t discovered?” she asked and I told her that she didn’t as far as I could tell, other than the one where she sees auras.

“You can tell that?” she whispered “I never told anyone as it is way too weird and I never wanted to be laughed at.”

I told her that it was a good one to have and to practise with it to see what peoples’ intentions were. I described the station incident as an example.

I am sure that the driver wondered what we were chatting about but it was a car with a partition between us and him so he couldn’t hear us if we kept our voices low. When we arrived at the stately home in Wiltshire he pulled up at the door just on our allotted time and we got out to be greeted by a maid who took us to see the Baroness in a sunroom.

She was, as to be expected, quite the elegant and well-bred lady but also a lot younger than I had expected. She ordered the maid to bring tea and then we sat to get down to business.

She needed several dresses. The first being for a ball in honour of a visiting royal from Europe and pretty easy to take her vision of a standard ball-gown and turn it into a drawing.

May helped me by adding comments about trim as I sketched. When we showed the result the Baroness approved it straight away.

Then there were dresses for an opening night at the opera, another for a royal garden party ‘because we always get invited to those’ and a couple to have as stand-by for other occasions that were still in the planning stage. She then said that she would need us to come up with some others for the second part of the season, as long as the first part was successful.

We worked through her ideas with the two of us visualising her desires. She looked at the final drawings and told us that we were brilliant and to just contact her about any fitting session. May asked if she could take measurements as we had none on file so I sat and noted the sizes as May called them out.

She gave us a light lunch and then called the maid to find our driver as we were leaving. May had the drawings, now with her notes added, and the measurements so the ball was back in her court again.

Back in the car she said, “That was fun, I wonder how many times we will be asked to do that?”

On the way back to my house we looked at each drawing and did some slight alterations to make the dress fit or hang better. I asked her if she went from Redhill on a train she could get home all right and she said it was easy so I asked her to stay for tea.

At my house we dismissed the driver who was happy to get an early finish to the day hire. We went in and I got us some drinks and showed her my sewing room. She loved the models and commented on the life-like dresses on the female ones. I told her that the men were all done a while ago and my skills had improved since then.

I started preparing tea for four so that when my mother and Suzette got home we could sit and eat. May asked me about my own magic and I told her that my family was quite strong.

She would find that out for herself when the others got home. Feeling a little naughty, I put four candles on the dining room table and lit them by magic for her and she had a laugh at that.

When my mother walked in she stopped short. “Well, just who have we here and why are the two of you so happy?”

I introduced May as a seamstress from the House of Jules and that she was my assistant for special projects for him.

We showed her the drawings from today and she exclaimed, “The two of you had lunch with a Baroness?”

May laughed and said we had spent time yesterday with Lady Appleby. I told my mother that I would explain the fine detail later but what we needed to do now was to find out what powers May had.

My mother put all the candles out with a sweep of her hand and said to May, “Use your mind, light one.”

She looked oddly at us and then sat with her eyes shut and concentrated. Suddenly one candle spluttered into life. She had a look of such wonder on her face when she opened her eyes and saw the flame.

My mother said, “Go ahead, light the others but keep your eyes open this time.” May stared at the others in turn and, one by one, they lit.

She did a fist pump and said, “Yes,yes,yes!”

We sat chatting for a while and then May turned to Suzette. “You get on so well with your sister, I am sure that, like all families, you would have had some falling out.”

Suzette laughed. “Not any more, not since she spooked me with her dragon.”
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“Dragon? Where do you house a dragon in Surrey? I am sure that you can’t just go and ask a farmer for a field for your dragon.”

I realised that she thought it was a joke so I asked her to put the candles out again and moved so that I could hold my palm in a way that no-one would get caught in the blast.

I manifested my dragon but very small.

“Light the candles”.

There was a blast of fire and I made him disappear again. All that was left to show his time in our world was four candles alight. However they were now just a half of their original height as he had blasted the tops off them all.

She looked at the candles and my hand which was now empty and said in a small voice, “Can I come and live with you, please, can I?”

My mother said that she would love her to pop in as much as she could but we did not have a spare room because, “Amity has stolen the spare room as a workshop.”

“Look, let’s forget getting you on a train, I can drive you home while Suzette washes up.”

We freshened up and I went to get the Audi started. Leaving the house, after giving my mother and Suzette long hugs, she said, “Before today I thought I was alone in the world and wondered if I was just crazy. I now know there others who may be crazier than I am and I feel so much more complete. Thank you for today, it has been a revelation.”

We went towards the city and a bit to the east. She lived in the suburbs in Kent and when we got to her place she got out and, for some reason, so did I. I stood by the car and she came around and wrapped her arms around me in a big hug, “Thank you so much,” and kissed me on the lips, firmly. I wondered why I did it but I put my arms around her and kissed her back.

“Come inside” she whispered “and I will show you a good time, you poor thing.” Almost in a stupor, I let her lead me to the house, only pausing to hit the lock button on the keys.

In her flat she shed the satchel with the pictures and then we shed our clothes, kissing while we did so. In her bed we melded like a pair of matching rings and I had a couple of totally intense orgasms from her tongue probes so had to reciprocate. She could do things with her tongue on my breasts that I had only dreamed about and I was a quick learner.

Around midnight we were lying, side by side and holding hands when she said, “I think you may have cast a spell on me like my great grandfather,” and I told her that love and lust are spells of their own and no person can control them.

She asked “Was tonight love or lust?”

I said that only time will tell but I was feeling very good right now and hoped that it is love as I wanted more.

“So do I” she said, so we had another session but at a much slower pace this time.

She had work in the morning so I left around one. On the drive home I wondered if I was a lesbian, a bi or just side tracked along my quest for Mister Right. At home I was very quiet when I went in and was still asleep when the others went to work next morning.

When I woke up I found that I was very sticky in odd places but smiled as I showered it off. After breakfast I went into Redhill to the shop to see where we stood with that. There were so many ends to this candle I hoped that I would not be burning any fingers this year.

Marianne Gregory © 2022