What is a whispering dress? Venture inside the bridal boutique of my heroine, Fran Delaney, and you’ll find out. Fran finds vintage wedding dresses, gets to know their histories, then matches them to modern-day brides, helping them to transform their lives. In that sense, her dresses ‘whisper’ their secrets and wisdoms to whoever wears them next. I was inspired to write The Second Chance Boutique while working for the Victoria & Albert Museum, researching their extraordinary collection of historic wedding dresses. It wasn’t just the dresses that fascinated me, but the personal stories behind them. From demure to ultimate glamour, from the courtesan’s sack-back gown to the ever-changing Victorian silhouette, the thirties to the sixties to the nineties, these dresses were as varied in character as the women who wore them – and it struck me that the spirit of these women seemed very much present, embodied in the fabric and stitches. The idea of these dresses stayed with me until, not long after my own wedding, I decided I simply had to write a romance based around them. So here are some of the ones that inspired me: The Scandalous One This dramatic Norman Hartnell gown was worn by…