The Crimson Thread by Suzanne Weyn

“This is good,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon, but I came out just now to check, just the same.”
                “She got fired,” Seamus explained.
                Bridget opened her mouth to tell him the story, but he cut her off. “It’s fate,” he said. “And it only proves that you were meant to get this position for which I have put you forward. Seamus, go water the horses for me. I am going inside to introduce Bridget to the head seamstress.”
                She began to climb the steps, but Paddy put his hand on her shoulder to stop her. “We go in the servants’ entrance,” he said, steering her down several steps to a plain doorway slightly below street level.
                He whisked her through a kitchen bustling with busy servants and up a narrow flight of stairs into the front hallway. He paused only long enough to whisk a piece of lace off an end table and draped it around her shoulders by way of improving her plain, sweat-stained blouse.
                “Da, no!” she objected. “They’ll recognize it.”
                “Nonsense! Do you think they know every piece of lace in this grand house?” he replied, adjusting the material evenly on her shoulders/ “Button up your collar there.”
                He led her down the elegant hall with its sparkling crystal chandeliers overhead and thick, plush Asian rugs beneath until they came to a set of carved wooden doors whose brass handles had been polished to a rich gleam. Paddy banged on the door with his rough fist, and Bridget cringed a little. Surely this sort of thunderous noise was not fitting in such a fine and silent home.
                “Enter,” came a low-pitched voice.
                The woman who sat behind the ornate desk in the study was possibly the thinnest woman she had ever seen who wasn’t falling over faint from starvation. On the contrary, this woman seemed quite alert, with probing eyes below a wide forehead under a high nest of upswept gray hair.
                “Allow me to introduce my daughter, the greatest seamstress New York will ever see, Bertie Miller!” Paddy announced in a booming voice as though she were the star attraction at some theatrical entertainment.
                Bridget’s head snapped around to stare at her father in surprise.
                Bertie Miller!
                The greatest seamstress New York will ever see?!
                “What sort of name is Bertie?” the woman asked, eyeing Bridget critically. “Is it…Welsh?”
                “French by the way of Wales,” Paddy said. “It’s short for Bertrille.”
                Amusement played in the woman’s eyes. Unlike the man who had interviewed her father, Bridget had the distinct impression that this woman was not fooled for a moment. No doubt she knew an Irish brogue when she heard one. “Have you brought any samples of your work?” she asked.
                “No,” Bridget replied.
                “All our things were lost at sea when the ship we were sailing was nearly shipwrecked in a storm,” Paddy jumped in to explain.
                Bridget couldn’t believe she was hearing this latest fabrication, it was so wildly untrue. The entire trip had been days of dull, sometimes nauseating rocking under a monotonously overcast sky without a drop of rain.
                Paddy stepped forward, stretching out his arms proudly. “Fortunately, this very shirt I’m wearing survived the tempest. It was made by her hand.”
                Survived the tempest ! Bridget tried not to let her face reveal her shock at this bold-faced lie. Her mother had made the shirt he wore! It was hard to accept the fact that her father could be such an outrageous liar. But maybe that was too harsh. He was an avid storyteller, and