Elisabeth Fairchild (14 page)

“No, no, Miles.” She had leave to call him Miles! “All of these white things may be salvaged. I am sure of it. This one requires only fresh trimmings on the bodice, which must be cut a trifle lower as has become all the vogue. And here, do you not think a velvet spencer in willow green, to match her eyes, will smarten this quite nicely? Blond lace, no--bands of narrow satin ribbon at neck, cuffs and hem, and matched satin rouleaux several times around the skirt are all that is required to freshen up this hailstone muslin, with perhaps a sash and bonnet trimmings to match.”

She fingered several fabric swatches in greens, gold and a vibrant burnt umber that matched the darker tones in Aurora’s hair. “What do you think?”

Miles squinted at the swatches, held each to Aurora’s cheek, and nodded. “Excellent choices, my pet. I knew your taste would prove infallible.”

His pet, Gracie, whom Aurora was beginning to detest for her very worthiness, pulled a blush piarment from the bed and bit her lip in consternation. “This one may be beyond helping with her complexion, unless perhaps it can be dyed a darker rose shade.”

She pressed it to Aurora’s shoulder.

Miles stood back to examine its effect, his eyebrows shooting up in dismay. “You actually wear this?” For the first time he addressed Aurora directly.

She nodded firmly, prepared to defend herself, despite the fact that she did not really care for the dress. “It is a very fashionable color,” she insisted mulishly.

He squinted at it, his lip curling. “Fashionable on a blond perhaps, but not at all attractive to a young woman with your coloring.”

Aurora had had about enough of these two, deciding her fate without so much as a word to see if she agreed. She had had enough of everyone deciding her future so summarily. With a long, drawn-out, frustrated
Oooh!
she whirled out from under the pink dress and flung it and herself across the room.

Gracie’s despised, lilting voice assailed her before she could make the door. “Whatever is the matter, Miss Ramsay? Are you feeling ill?”

Her concern was so sickeningly sweet, so provokingly genuine, that Aurora whipped around to face them all, her lips tight with displeasure, her breast heaving in agitation. The day, and all of its disappointments pressed in on her. “I am feeling sick. Sick of people deciding what is best for me without ever asking my opinion. Sick, too, of the snide remarks and veiled insults that go on behind my back with regard to my quite unavoidable coloring. I will not stand for further insults. Good day to you. All of you!”

With that she swept out of the door in high dudgeon . . . and catapulted into none other than Lord Walsh, who caught her by the arm to keep her from falling.

“Ready to bowl me over again, Miss Ramsay?” he asked, without smiling, in a deep, unruffled voice. “We really must make an effort to encounter one another without violence one of these days.”

Already humiliated by what she took to be Miles Fletcher’s intentional slight to her in bringing along so many females and in taking over her room, wardrobe and the assessment of her coloring, was struck by how appropriate Lord Walsh’s inquiry was under the circumstances of her pursuit of him.

Speechless, she ducked her head, mumbled an insufficient apology and wrenched herself free of his hold. She ran, seeking in this house full of people, some place where she might vent her frustration alone. The anonymity of darkness beckoned to her from the doors that led outside. She answered its call by ducking into the night.

Gracie held up her hand in the uneasy silence that descended in the wake of Aurora’s outburst. “Oh dear!” She turned a stricken look on her brother. “Miles, you must go after her.”

He was already on his way. “Wait here,” he said as he swept through the door. He would not be stopped by Lord Walsh who promenaded in the hallway just without, though the earl raised his hand and cried out. “Is aught amiss?

“No time to explain, Walsh,” Miles said, waving his walking stick like a pointer, “only tell me, which way did she go?”

Walsh helpfully grabbed the end of the ebony stick and jabbed it in the direction of the stairs, saying, “Flapped the unflappable Amazon, have you?”

Down the stairs Miles plunged, following the flash of Aurora’s skirts as persistently as Walsh’s aroused curiosity followed him. “Guilty, as charged,” he admitted tersely.

Walsh leaned over the stair rail. “Whatever did yu do or say, Miles, old man? I would have thought you might as soon squeeze tears from a stone.”

Miles frowned. The earl’s attitude did not bode well if Miss Ramsay’s objective was to win his affections enough to wrench a proposal from him. Without responding, without pausing he lunged through a doorway into the night. Miles Fletcher, a gentleman who was not at all wont to discommode himself by hurrying after anyone, male or female, charged along the walkway to the bridge, slowing only when he realized that the pale figure stopped in the middle was Aurora.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness. She stood leaning over the wooden railing staring down into the water, a moonlit picture of dejection.

Miles stopped to lean upon his walking stick, catch his breath and plan what he would say. His sublime Diana peered into the water as though it were a looking glass. Her defeated posture would seem to indicate she was not happy with what she saw. Miles felt himself responsible for her dissatisfaction.

Pulse returned to a more even tempo, Miles walked up beside her, his reflection joining hers, caught in ripples that made indistinct their boundaries, so that in the water, they became one.

“I should like to tell you a story.” His voice was as subtle as the wind rustling in distant trees. He meant to lull her with it.

“What story?” She shifted uncomfortably away from him

--still angry. “Perhaps it were better told to another female, like that Gracie creature you brought along without so much as asking me if I minded.”

“Did you mind my sister’s presence? I do apologize.” He studied the water. “It is just that you had said you might like to meet her, and she has such an eye for color, I assumed her opinion would please you as much as it pleases me.”

“Your sister?”

She was startled. He heard shock in the high pitch of her voice. He turned to study her profile. Good Lord! She had not known Gracie was his sister! Could it be jealousy that had lit the tinder of her impatience with his lack of consideration? Was it jealousy made her fly from the room? The idea pleased him.

“As to telling Gracie this story. . . I have told my sister all of my tales at one time or another. I am certain she would only yawn at me.”

She sighed. He could not tell if the noise was a sign of relief or exasperation. “Tell me your story.”

He held out his walking stick. The pale, marble-fisted top with its silver fitting, caught the moonlight so that it seemed to float above the white of his glove, held suspended by magic instead of an ebony stick so dark it disappeared in the darkness. “The tale is that of my walking stick’s creation.”

“This fist?” She ran her fingers lightly across the knuckled knob. “Does it remind you of me?”

He ignored the jibe. “It was in Greece, at a temple, I found this handful of marble--another crumbling bit of marble in a city filled with crumbling bits, bits of little or no value--refuse to the inhabitants, who used such fallen dross to fill in walls, or as kick balls for young boys.

“The guide who led me about, when shown this marvelous misplaced hand, would have tossed it back down in the courtyard had I not stopped him.” He dared move closer to her, studying her shadowed features. Moonlight washed the brilliant fire from her hair and paled the freckling of her complexion and still she was beautiful. Softly he said, “My gift, dear Miss Ramsay, is in recognizing beauty where no one else will acknowledge it--beauty in ruins, beauty locked away in cupboards and attics, beauty that requiresbut the right setting, the perfect frame for all the world to open up their eyes and acknowledge that yes, here stands a masterpiece.”

He stared intently at her. Perhaps it was time to tell Aurora why the display of her beauty was so important to him. Perhaps not. The truth, in this fragile moment, seemed too harsh. He settled for a piece of it.

“I perceive a rare treasure in you, my dear. Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”

Aurora shivered, though the night was warm. A tear, he thought it was a tear, glistened in the corner of her eye. She leaned over the bridge, and he realized she did so that it might fall unnoticed, a single drop lost among many in the water below. Miles had not meant to provoke tears, but perhaps emotion was a good thing. He tried once more to convince her of his proper motivation.

“I would frame you to advantage, Miss Ramsay. It is my gift, my most singular talent. I offer it to you with good intentions. I would set you off, you see, like a fist set in chased silver.”

Aurora said nothing, but a breath shuddered from her lips that made Miles believe he argued his cause well. She was convinced. He read the language of her body unerringly.

“Come, we have much to do.” He held out his hand.

She turned her gaze from the water, fixed him with a moonlit stare for what seemed an eternity. Without a word, she took his hand.

“Miles would never insult a lady. He is all compliments when it comes to women, you see. A dangerous fellow where hearts are concerned because of it.”

Grace Fletcher--viewed with far less jaundiced eye now that her relationship to Miles was established-- was helping Aurora with buttons. They were accompanied by the seamstress. Unused to the company of women, Aurora found it strangely discomfitting to discuss Grace’s brother as she was stripped of her gown. It was as if she stripped herself of defenses along with the muslin.

“Take heed, Miss Ramsay,” Grace found nothing unusual in their circumstance. She rattled on without pause. “As one who knows,” she confided, “I would warn you to guard your heart jealously. You must not take anything Miles says, pretty words or plain, too much to heart--else you will suffer as much as any other female who has mistakenly believed my brother might love her for more than the moment.”

That Miles Fletcher was a ladies’ man came as no surprise. Moved by his eloquence in the moonlight, even more than by his kisses, it made her stomach tighten to think his words might be no more than a dashing rake’s efforts to charm her.

“Arms up, miss.”

Aurora turned this way and that as she was bid. The seamstress efficiently snaked her measuring tape over her shoulder, then encompassed her arm, her waist, and the fullness of her breasts. Mrs. Hall’s gentle, unintrusive ministrations wove a mesmerizing sort of spell, just as Miles Fletcher’s gentle, unintrusive compliments had. Had she not been so determined to marry Walsh, Aurora was sure her head would have been turned by those words. Never before had a man told her to her face she was rare and beautiful. Never before had a man gone to such lengths to ensure she believed him.

Grace’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “My brother’s nature made thus perfectly clear to you, I do not hesitate to confide that he has become quite tiresome in filling my ear with nothing but praise for your honey-gold skin and fox-folored hair.”

Aurora shivered. In discussing Miles with his sister thus, she felt as if she allowed him to get too close to bared flesh.

“I’ve done with my measurements, miss,” Mrs. Hall said. “If you will be so good as to pull this dress over your head, we will mark the bodice.”

Aurora nodded and raised her arms for the cascade of

parchment-colored silk that washed over her head.

The flow of Grace’s conversation washed over her as smoothly as the silk. “What was the word he used to describe you on the first occasion we had to see you?” she asked without expecting any answer. “I remember being quite struck by it at the time.”

Grace’s fingers were as busy as her tongue as she tugged at string closures. Aurora felt tugged at from all directions. Mrs. Hall tugged in front as much as Grace in back, her fingers delving into the neckline of the evening gown, deftly pinning it in lower because the Fletchers had unanimously determined Aurora’s décolletage too high to be considered fashionable. Aurora blushed to be handled in such a manner, no matter how impersonally it was done.

“What was it he called you?” Grace asked herself again. So distracted was she, that Aurora had not heard a word of what she was saying until the babbling brook that was her tongue, ceased running. Had she been asked a question? Did Grace expect some sort of reply?

She frowned uncertainly at her lowered bodice. There was a great deal more cleavage to be seen than she was accustomed to. “Surely that is too low?”

Grace peered over her shoulder, then turned Aurora on her heel to peer absently at the objectionable neckline. “Sublime!” she crowed, eyes brightening.

Aurora flushed. “You find this embarrassing display sublime?”

“Have I pinned it too low, miss?” Mrs. Hall was concerned.

Grace blinked and then burst into peels of contagious laughter. “No, no,” she gasped. “The neckline is fine, but not at all what I was referring to. Sublime is the word that my brother used to describe you in the first instant he saw you, Miss Ramsay.”