“Is that damned twit here, Sampson?”
“Which damned twit, Master James?”
“Don’t you rub my nose in it, Sampson. She’s here, isn’t she?”
“Naturally she is here. Where else would she be?”
He looked up then and saw her. He looked away from her, back to Sampson. “The Duchess and Marcus are having a party?”
“Yes, but your arrival won’t inconvenience anyone. You’re expected. Mr. Badger doubtless has dinner for you. He’s had dinners prepared for you for the past three days. We all discussed it and decided that you’d realize within a week that she’d come here.”
“Tell me she’s all right, Sampson.”
She said then, “James.”
He looked up at her, shook his head, and looked away. “Where the devil is she?”
“James!”
This time he took several steps forward and looked up at her again. “Jessie?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not Jessie. You look nothing like Jessie, but you have her voice. What did you do to Jessie?”
She walked slowly down the stairs because she had no choice. She didn’t want to trip on her skirts and break her neck. But she wanted to run. She wanted to leap on him and hold him hard against her and not let him loose, even to let him eat Badger’s dinner.
She reached the bottom step. He’d walked toward her and had stopped three feet away. He was staring up at her.
“Hello, James. I’m very surprised to see you.”
He stared at her silently for another very long minute. “My God, I don’t believe this. Just look at you. What did you do to yourself? Oh, I know. Maggie got hold of you.”
“Yes,” she said, her chin up, feeling like a queen, feeling like a female that James Wyndham could admire, perhaps even lust after as he did Connie Maxwell. “Everyone got hold of me.” She knew her breasts were round and white and there was ample cleavage. Her hair was exquisitely arranged and the fall of curls from within the circle of braids surely looked romantic cascading down her back. A streamer waved down each side of her face, nearly touching her shoulders. She was wearing lip cream. She only had a single file of freckles marching across her nose. She had looked at herself when she’d gone to her bedchamber. She knew she looked as lovely as any lady in the Green Cube Room waltzing around. Even her hands were soft from all Maggie’s cream.
“You look ridiculous.”
Her mouth dropped open. “What did you say?”
Sampson said smoothly, “James sometimes falls into his dear mother’s speech habit, Jessie. I believe he really said that you looked ravissant, in the manner of the French.”
“That wasn’t even close, Sampson,” James said over his shoulder. “My mother could take you out in the first round. Stay out of this. Now, my girl, just what the devil do you think you’re doing? You look like a painted hussy with that red cream smeared all over your mouth. Your breasts are about to pop out of your gown, breasts I didn’t even know you had, or maybe you puffed them out with handkerchiefs? You’ve lost your freckles—Why is that? Have you locked yourself in a dark room for the past two months and sacrificed an acre of cucumbers? Just look at that bloody gown. You can’t even walk for fear you’ll trip over that damned flounce or your equally damned feet. Your hair looks like you’re ready to go on the stage in some Medieval play. I bet you can’t even move your head without fear of it all spilling out of its pins. Dear Lord, you’ve got pins in your hair, you! What is the meaning of all this?”
She felt crushed, her illusion of beauty in shambles at her feet, feet that did hurt just a bit because the Duchess’s slippers were on the small side. She said, “I can move my head without my hair falling apart.”
He waved his hand through his hair, strode up to her, and clasped her upper arms in his hands. He lifted
her off her feet and set her down again on the marble floor. “All that is nonsense. Forget I said anything. I lost my head for a moment. You’re here and you’re safe. I prayed Marcus would take you in. You’re so damned pathetic, I doubted he’d boot you out.”
“I’m not pathetic, at least I’m not anymore, but you don’t like me either way, do you? Damn you, James, I’m beautiful, Marcus said so. Sampson said so. Maggie said so.”
“They did, huh? Well, they haven’t known you since you were fourteen years old. They haven’t seen you plunge out of a tree like a shot duck. They haven’t watched you munching on a piece of straw, an old felt hat pulled down over your eyes and singing a ditty the Duchess wrote. Nor have they smelled you with cucumber all over your face.”
“What does that have to do with anything? What does that have to do with my being beautiful now? Look at me, James. Damn you, look at me.”
“I’m looking. I’d be afraid to touch you for fear you’d fall into shimmery little female pieces. Now, what did Spears say about all this?”
“I haven’t yet met Spears.”