The Wedding Dress

Chapter 1

It was a crisp, cold night with a stiff wind off the San Francisco Bay, the night of the Deveraux s ball, a week before Christmas, in December 1928. The elite of the city had been talking about it for months, with great anticipation. Rooms in the imposing Deveraux mansion had been repainted, curtains had been rehung, every chandelier gleamed. The tables in the ballroom had been set with shining silver and crystal. Footmen had been moving furniture for weeks to make room for the six hundred guests.

All the most important members of San Francisco society would be there. Only a handful of people had declined Charles and Louise Deveraux s ball for their daughter. There were fragrant garlands of lilies over every doorway, and hundreds of candles had been lit.

In her mother s dressing room, Eleanor Deveraux could hardly contain herself. She had waited for this night all her life. It was her coming out ball. She was about to be officially presented to society as a debutante. She giggled excitedly as she looked at her mother, Louise, and her mother s maid, Wilson, held the dress, waiting for Eleanor to step into it.

It was a touching night for Wilson too. She had grown up as a simple girl on a farm in Ireland, and had come to America to seek her fortune, a bit of adventure, and hopefully, find a husband. She had relatives in Boston, went to work for Louise s family there, and had come to San Francisco with her when she d married Charles Deveraux, twenty-­six years before. Wilson had dressed Louise for her own debut twenty-­seven years before, and served her ever since. She had held Eleanor the night she was born, and her brother, Arthur, when he had been born seven years earlier. She mourned with the family when he died of pneumonia at the age of five. Eleanor was born two years after his death, and her mother had never been able to conceive again after that. They would have liked to have had another son, but Louise and Charles were deeply in love with

Danielle Steel