I rather thought it would take more than a new gown and a dinner party to distract my mind, but I caught a warning glance from Jamie and shut my mouth hard to keep the words inside.
In the event, given the shortness of time and a lack of suitable fabric, Jocasta decided to have one of her gowns remade for me.
“How does it look, Phaedre?” Jocasta frowned in my direction, as though she could summon vision by pure will. “Will it do?”
“Do fine,” the maid answered around a mouthful of pins. She thrust in three in quick succession, squinted at me, pinched up a fold of fabric at the waistline and stabbed in two more.
“Be just fine,” she elaborated, mouth now clear. “She shorter than you, Miss Jo, and a bit thinner in the waist. Some bigger in the bosom, though,” Phadre added in an undertone, grinning at me.
“Yes, I know that.” Jocasta spoke tartly, having caught the whisper. “Slash the bodice; we can fill it with Valenciennes lace over a field of green silk—take a scrap from that old dressing gown of my husband’s; it will be the right color to complement this.” She touched the sleeve, with its brilliant green striping. “Band the slash with the green silk, too; it will show off her bosom.” The long pale fingers indicated the line of alteration, drifting across the tops of my breasts almost absentmindedly. The touch was cool, impersonal and barely felt, but I narrowly prevented myself jerking back.
“You have a most remarkable memory for color,” I said, surprised and slightly unnerved.
“Oh, I remember this dress very well,” she said. She touched the full sleeve lightly. “A gentleman once told me I reminded him of Persephone in it; springtime incarnate, he said.” A faint smile of memory lit her face, then was erased as she lifted her head toward me.
“What color is your hair, my dear? I hadna thought to ask. You sound a bit blond, somehow, but I’ve no notion whether that may be actually the case. Pray, do not tell me ye’re black-haired and sallow!” She smiled, but the joke sounded somehow like a command.
“It’s more or less brown,” I said, touching my hair self-consciously. “Faded a bit, though; it’s gone light in streaks.”
She frowned at this, seeming to consider whether brown was quite suitable. Unable to settle the question for herself, she turned to the maid.
“How does she look, Phaedre?”
The woman took a step back and squinted at me. I realized that she must—as the other house servants were—be in the habit of giving careful descriptions to her mistress. The dark eyes passed swiftly over me, pausing on my face for a long moment of assessment. She took two pins from her mouth before replying.
“Just fine, Miss Jo,” Phaedre said. She nodded once, slowly. “Just fine,” she said again. “She got white skin, white as skim milk; looks real fine with that bright green.”
“Mm. But the underskirt is ivory; if she is too fair, will she not look washed out?”
I disliked being discussed as though I were an objet d’art—and a possibly defective one, at that—but swallowed my objections.
Phaedre was shaking her head, definitely.
“Oh, no, ma’am,” she said. “She ain’t washed out. She got them bones as makes shadows. And brown eyes, but don’t be thinkin’ they’s mud-color. You recall that book you got, the one with the pictures of all them strange animals?”
“If you mean Accounts of an Exploration of the Indian Subcontinent,” Jocasta said, “yes, I recall it. Ulysses read it to me only last month. You mean that Mrs. Fraser reminds you of one of the illustrations?” She laughed, amused.
“Mm-hm.” Phaedre hadn’t taken her eyes off me. “She look like that big cat,” she said softly, staring at me. “Like that there tiger, a-lookin’ out from the leaves.”
An expression of startlement showed briefly on Jocasta’s face.
“Indeed,” she said, and laughed. But she didn’t touch me again.
* * *
I stood in the lower hall, smoothing the green-striped silk over my bosom. Phaedre’s reputation as a sempstress was well founded; the dress fit like a glove, and the bold bands of emerald satin glowed against the paler shades of ivory and leaf.
Proud of her own thick hair, Jocasta did not wear wigs, so there was fortunately no suggestion that I adopt one. Phaedre had tried to powder my hair with rice flour instead, an attempt I had firmly resisted. Inadequately concealing her opinion of my lack of fashionable instinct, she had settled for snaring the mass of curls in a white silk ribbon and pinning them high to the back of my head.
I wasn’t sure quite why I had resisted the array of baubles with which she had tried to further bedizen me; perhaps it was mere dislike of fussiness. Or perhaps it was a more subtle objection to being made an object, to be adorned and displayed to Jocasta’s purpose. At any rate, I had refused. I wore no ornament save my wedding ring, a small pair of pearl earbobs, and a green velvet ribbon round the stalk of my neck.
Ulysses came down the stairs above me, impeccable in his livery. I moved, and he turned his head, catching the flicker of my skirts.
His eyes widened in a look of frank appreciation as he saw me, and I looked down, smiling a bit, as one does when being admired. Then I heard him gasp and jerked my head up to see his eyes still wide, but now with fear; his hand so tight on the banister that the knuckles shone.
“Your pardon, madame,” he said, sounding strangled, and rushed down the stairs and past me, head down, leaving the door to the cookhouse breezeway swinging in his wake.
“What on earth…?” I said aloud, and then I remembered where—and when—we were.
Alone for so long, in a house with a blind mistress and no master, he had grown careless. He had momentarily forgotten that most basic and essential protection—the only true protection a slave had: the blank, bland face that hid all thoughts.
No wonder he had been terrorized when he realized what he had done. If it had been any woman other than myself to have intercepted that unguarded look…my hands grew cold and sweaty, and I swallowed, the remembered scent of blood and turpentine sharp in my throat.
But it had been me, I reminded myself, and no one else had seen. The butler might be afraid, but he was safe. I would behave as though nothing had happened—nothing had—and things would be…well, things would be what they were. The sound of footsteps on the gallery above interrupted my thoughts. I glanced upward, and gasped, all other thoughts driven at once from my mind.
A Highlander in full regalia is an impressive sight—any Highlander, no matter how old, ill-favored, or crabbed in appearance. A tall, straight-bodied, and by no means ill-favored Highlander in the prime of his life is breathtaking.
He hadn’t worn the kilt since Culloden, but his body had not forgotten the way of it.
“Oh!” I said.
He saw me then, and white teeth flashed as he made me a leg, silver shoe-buckles gleaming. He straightened and turned on his heel to set his plaid swinging, then came down slowly, eyes fixed on my face.
For a moment, I saw him as he had looked the morning I married him. The sett of his tartan was nearly the same now as then; black check on a crimson ground, plaid caught at his shoulder with a silver brooch, dipping to the calf of a neat, stockinged leg.