In the good old time ’twas hanging for the colour that it is;
Though hanging isn’t bad enough and flaying would be fair
For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair!”
“Did ye not tell me ye’d studied for a doctor, Sassenach?” he inquired. “Or was it a poet, after all?”
“Not me,” I assured him, coming to straighten his stock. “Those sentiments are by one A. E. Housman.”
“Surely one of him is sufficient,” Jamie said dryly. “Given the quality of his opinions.” He picked up the wig and fitted it carefully on his head, raising little puffs of scented powder as he poked it here and there. “Is Mr. Housman an acquaintance of yours, then?”
“You might say so.” I sat down on the bed to watch. “It’s only that the doctors’ lounge at the hospital I worked at had a copy of Housman’s collected works that someone had left there. There isn’t time between calls to read most novels, but poems are ideal. I expect I know most of Housman by heart, now.”
He looked warily at me, as though expecting another outburst of poetry, but I merely smiled at him, and he returned to his work. I watched the transformation in fascination.
Red-heeled shoes and silk stockings clocked in black. Gray satin breeches with silver knee buckles. Snowy linen, with Brussels lace six inches deep at cuff and jabot. The coat, a masterpiece in heavy gray with blue satin cuffs and crested silver buttons, hung behind the door, awaiting its turn.
He finished the careful powdering of his face, and licking the end of one finger, picked up a false beauty mark, dabbed it in gum arabic, and affixed it neatly near the corner of his mouth.
“There,” he said, swinging about on the dressing stool to face me. “Do I look like a red-heided Scottish smuggler?”
I inspected him carefully, from full-bottomed wig to morocco-heeled shoes.
“You look like a gargoyle,” I said. His face flowered in a wide grin. Outlined in white powder, his lips seemed abnormally red, his mouth even wider and more expressive than it usually was.
“Non!” said Fergus indignantly, coming in in time to hear this. “He looks like a Frenchman.”
“Much the same thing,” Jamie said, and sneezed. Wiping his nose on a handkerchief, he assured the young man, “Begging your pardon, Fergus.”
He stood up and reached for the coat, shrugging it over his shoulders and settling the edges. In three-inch heels, he towered to a height of six feet seven; his head nearly brushed the plastered ceiling.
“I don’t know,” I said, looking up at him dubiously. “I’ve never seen a Frenchman that size.”
Jamie shrugged, his coat rustling like autumn leaves. “Aye, well, there’s no hiding my height. But so long as my hair is hidden, I think it will be all right. Besides,” he added, gazing with approval at me, “folk willna be looking at me. Stand up and let me see, aye?”
I obliged, rotating slowly to show off the deep flare of the violet silk skirt. Cut low in the front, the décolletage was filled with a froth of lace that rippled down the front of the bodice in a series of V’s. Matching lace cascaded from the elbow-length sleeves in graceful white falls that left my wrists bare.
“Rather a pity I don’t have your mother’s pearls,” I remarked. I didn’t regret their lack; I had left them for Brianna, in the box with the photographs and family documents. Still, with the deep décolletage and my hair twisted up in a knot, the mirror showed a long expanse of bare neck and bosom, rising whitely out of the violet silk.
“I thought of that.” With the air of a conjuror, Jamie produced a small box from his inside pocket and presented it to me, making a leg in his best Versailles fashion.
Inside was a small, gleaming fish, carved in a dense black material, the edges of its scales touched with gold.
“It’s a pin,” he explained. “Ye could maybe wear it fastened to a white ribbon round your neck?”
“It’s beautiful!” I said, delighted. “What’s it made of? Ebony?”
“Black coral,” he said. “I got it yesterday, when Fergus and I were in Montego Bay.” He and Fergus had taken the Artemis round the island, disposing at last of the cargo of bat guano, delivered to its purchaser.
I found a length of white satin ribbon, and Jamie obligingly tied it about my neck, bending to peer over my shoulder at the reflection in the mirror.
“No, they won’t be looking at me,” he said. “Half o’ them will be lookin’ at you, Sassenach, and the other half at Mr. Willoughby.”
“Mr. Willoughby? Is that safe? I mean—” I stole a look at the little Chinese, sitting patiently cross-legged on a stool, gleaming in clean blue silk, and lowered my voice. “I mean, they’ll have wine, won’t they?”
Jamie nodded. “And whisky, and cambric, and claret cup, and port, and champagne punch—and a wee cask of the finest French brandy—contributed by the courtesy of Monsieur Etienne Marcel de Provac Alexandre.” He put a hand on his chest and bowed again, in an exaggerated pantomime that made me laugh. “Nay worry,” he said, straightening up. “He’ll behave, or I’ll have his coral globe back—will I no, ye wee heathen?” he added with a grin to Mr. Willoughby.
The Chinese scholar nodded with considerable dignity. The embroidered black silk of his round cap was decorated with a small carved knob of red coral—the badge of his calling, restored to him by the chance encounter with a coral trader on the docks at Montego, and Jamie’s good nature.
“You’re quite sure we have to go?” The palpitations I was experiencing were due in part to the tightness of the stays I was wearing, but in greater degree to recurring visions of Jamie’s wig falling off and the reception coming to a complete stop as the entire assemblage paused to stare at his hair before calling en masse for the Royal Navy.
“Aye, we do.” He smiled at me reassuringly. “Dinna worry, Sassenach; if anyone’s there from the Porpoise, it’s not likely they’ll recognize me—not like this.”
“I hope not. Do you think anyone from the ship will be there tonight?”
“I doubt it.” He scratched viciously at the wig above his left ear. “Where did ye get this thing, Fergus? I believe it’s got lice.”
“Oh, no, milord,” Fergus assured him. “The wigmaker from whom I rented it assured me that it had been well dusted with hyssop and horse nettle to prevent any such infestations.” Fergus himself was wearing his own hair, thickly powdered, and was handsome—if less startling than Jamie—in a new suit of dark blue velvet.
There was a tentative knock at the door, and Marsali stepped in. She too had had her wardrobe refurbished, and glowed in a dress of soft pink, with a deep rose sash.
She glowed somewhat more than I thought the dress accounted for, in fact, and as we made our way down the narrow corridor to the carriage, pulling in our skirts to keep them from brushing the walls, I managed to lean forward and murmur in her ear.
“Are you using the tansy oil?”
“Mm?” she said absently, her eyes on Fergus as he bowed and held open the carriage door for her. “What did ye say?”