Janie straightened. “You don’t have to tell me. I can guess what happened. The captain made sure he got Clay’s money,” she said, tightening her lips. “Damn that Clay Armstrong! Pardon me, but this whole thing is his fault. If he weren’t so pig-headed stubborn, none of this would have happened. Nobody could talk any sense into his head. No, he wanted his Bianca, and he meant to have her. Do you know he went to four ship captains before he found one low enough to do the kidnapping? And now look at everything! Here you are, an innocent little thing rough handled by a bunch of filthy men, threatened in disgusting ways, forced to marry someone you don’t even know and, after this, probably don’t want to know.”
“Please, Janie, it isn’t so bad, really. The doctor said we wouldn’t be bothered by the men since I’m married to Mr. Armstrong, and I know they won’t hurt you. I’m sure it can be annulled once we get to America.”
“Me!” Janie said angrily. “I should have known those scum would threaten you with me. And you don’t even know me!” She put her hand on Nicole’s shoulder. “Whatever you want from Clay—an annulment, whatever—I’ll see that you get it. I am going to give him a piece of my mind like he’s never heard before. I swear that he’s going to make everything up to you—all the wasted time you’ve spent going back and forth across the ocean, the money you saved for the dress shop, and—” Suddenly, she stopped in midsentence and gazed amusedly at the trunks along the wall.
Nicole started to sit up. “What is it? Is something wrong?”
Janie’s broad face broke into a grin of pure devilment. “ ‘Buy the best, Janie,’ he said to me. There he was, standing on the dock, looking at it like he does everything, as if he owned it, and he was telling me to buy the very best.”
“What are you talking about?”
Janie looked as if she were in a trance, staring at the trunks as if mesmerized. She took a step toward them. “He said nothing was too good for his wife,” Janie said as the smile on her face deepened. “Oh, Clayton Armstrong, you are going to pay dearly for this.”
Nicole swung her legs over the side of the bed and stared at Janie in puzzlement. Whatever was she talking about?
As Janie began to unfasten the ropes that held the trunks to the wall, she kept talking. “Clay gave me a bag of gold and told me to buy the very best fabrics available, the most expensive trims. He said that I could help his wife make dresses on the long journey,” she chuckled. “The furs could be worked by a furrier in America.”
“Furs?” Nicole remembered the letter. “Janie, those fabrics are for Bianca, not me. We couldn’t make them up for me; they would never fit her.”
“I have no intention of making clothes for some woman I’ve never seen,” she said, struggling with a knot. “Clay said the clothes were for his wife, and as far as I know, you’re the only one he has.”
“No! It isn’t right. I couldn’t take something meant for someone else.”
Janie reached under the pillow of the top bunk and withdrew a large ring of keys. “This is for me, not you. Just once, I’d like to see something Clayton couldn’t buy or have just for the asking. He has every girl and woman in Virginia making fools of themselves over him, yet he has to pick some woman in England who I ain’t sure even wants him.” As she unlocked a trunk and carefully raised the flat lid, she smiled down at the contents.
Nicole couldn’t help being curious. She walked beside Janie and looked down into the trunk, gasping at the loveliness there. It had been years since she’d seen silk and she’d never seen silk of such quality.
“The English are afraid of what they call the lower classes, so they pretend they’re part of them. In America, everybody’s equal. If you can afford to have pretty things, you don’t have to be afraid to wear them.” She withdrew a shimmering, delicate length of sapphire blue silk, twisted it around one of Nicole’s shoulders, drew it down her back, and tied it loosely about her waist. “What do you think of that?”
Holding it to the light for a moment, Nicole rubbed it against her cheek and moved her body so she could feel it on her bare arms. It was a sensual, sinful pleasure.
Janie was opening another trunk. “And how about this for a sash?” She withdrew a wide satin ribbon of midnight blue and wrapped it around Nicole’s waist. The whole trunk seemed to be full of ribbons and sashes.
Another trunk was opened. “A shawl, my lady?” she laughed, and before Nicole could speak she withdrew at least a dozen shawls—paisley from Scotland, cashmere from England, cotton from India, lace from Chantilly.
Nicole was gasping at the abundance and the beauty while Janie unlocked trunk after trunk. There were velvets, lawns, percales, soft wools, mohair, swans-down, shalloon, prunella, tammy, tulle, organdy, crepe, the delicate French laces.
Somewhere in the midst of all the lush wealth Janie was flinging about, Nicole started laughing. It was all too much. As she sat down on the bed and Janie started tossing the fabrics on top of her, both women started laughing, wrapping scarlets and turquoises, greens and pinks, around themselves. It was a silly, hilarious time.
“But you haven’t seen the best yet,” Janie laughed as she pulled long pieces of pink tulle and black Normandy lace off her head. Almost reverently, she opened a large trunk at the back of the pile and lifted an enormous fur muff from the trunk. “Know what fur that is?” she asked as she placed it in Nicole’s lap.
Nicole buried her face in the long, deep fur, ignoring the six colors of silk wrapped around her arm and the transparent India gauze across her throat. There was only one fur that rich, that dark—so deep, so thick you could almost drown in it. “Sable,” she said quietly, reverently.
“Yes,” Janie agreed. “Sable.”
Holding the muff, Nicole looked about her. The little room was full of colors that flashed or cried, shouted or lay still in sulky sexuality, all seeming to be alive and breathing. Nicole wanted to roll in them and hug them to her. There had been no beauty in her life since she had left her parents’ chateau.
“Well, where do you want to start?”
Nicole looked at Janie and burst out laughing. “With all of it!” she laughed, hugging the muff to her and kicking six ostrich feathers into the air.
While she removed a chiffon shawl from around her legs, Janie lifted some magazines from a trunk. “Heidledoff’s Gallery of Fashion,” she said. “Just choose your weapon, dear Mrs. Armstrong, and I shall show you my trunk of steel—pins and needles, that is.”
“Oh, Janie, really, I can’t.” Her voice held no conviction as she rubbed the sable muff along her arm, thinking she just might sleep with it.
“I’m not listening to another word. Now, if you think you can spare one arm out of that thing, let’s put these back and get started. After all, we only have a month or so.”
Chapter 3