A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [18]
And let’s hope, thought January dourly, that our bonny Galen and la belle dame sans merci didn’t decide the office was a more private venue for their tête-à-tête than the parlor. That would be all it needs, for Galen’s father to find the pair of them coupling like weasels on the desk.
Cross passes. Footing steps. Casting off and casting back, and swooping into the grand promenade.
“I’m going to strangle that woman!” Dominique had changed into her costume for the tableaux, and, as Guenevere, had dispensed with the corsets and petticoats of modern dress, unlike at least four of the assorted Rebeccas and Juliets circulating in the crowd. Without them she looked startlingly sensual, thin and fragile and very reminiscent of the girls of January’s young manhood in their high-waisted, clinging gowns. He had never adjusted to the sight of women in the enormous petticoats and mountainous sleeves of modern dress.
“Not only does she disappear without helping Marie-Anne and Marie-Rose—and after making them wear those frightful dresses in the first place, and Agnes is ready to spit blood!—but because I’m hunting high and low for her I miss the only real excitement of the evening!”
“She’ll be in the parlor,” pointed out January mildly. “She still has to fix her wings.”
“Ben, I looked in the parlor. It was the first place I looked. And in the supper room. And it would have served that … that uppity tart right if he’d torn those wings right off her back.” Minou adjusted the fall of one floor-length sleeve of buttercup yellow and straightened the dark curls of her chignon. “Did you hear what she told her mama about price and terms to take back to Peralta Père? If I ever saw such a …”
“I’ve looked everywhere.” Marie-Anne Pellicot, her long oval face visibly beautiful despite a domino mask of exactly the wrong shade of gray-green for her pale crème-café complexion, hurried up, vexation replacing her earlier tears. “It’s nearly eleven! She promised to dress our hair.…”
Her sister was right behind her. January heard Ayasha’s voice in his mind: A designer who knows what she’s doing can guide beauty to a woman’s form or make that selfsame woman ugly, just in the way she cuts a sleeve. He knew what his wife would have guessed—and said—about Angelique, just from looking at those two dresses, on those two particular girls.
For all her tartness, Ayasha had been a kind woman. She’d never have let Angelique anywhere near those poor children’s hair.
“If the parlor is the first place you looked, look again,” advised January. The music had soothed away his anger, and he was able to look dispassionately at Angelique and at the situation, only wondering what he was going to say to Mme. Trepagier to keep her from undertaking some other mad attempt to see the woman. He hadn’t liked the hard desperation in her eyes as she had said, I must see her. I MUST. “She and Galen may have gone somewhere else for their quarrel, but if she’s going to repair those wings she’ll have to go back where there’s light.”
“Galen?” Marie-Anne looked surprised. “Galen left after what she said to him in the lobby. Which was horrible, I thought—he can’t help it if he stammers.”
“Galen.” January sighed. “He came back.”
“Tiens!” Dominique flung up her hands. “Just what we need! That … that …”
“Wasn’t that you who slammed the door?” asked Marie-Rose, trying vainly to tug the lower edge of her bodice into a more flattering position on her hip.
“Have you checked the attics?” Hannibal swiped rosin onto his bow with an expert lightness of touch. “Those back stairs go up as well as down.”
“I swear I’m going to … Ah! There’s Henri.” The annoyance melted from Minou’s face, replaced by a mischievous brightness at the sight of her elephantine beau emerging awkwardly through the curtain of the passageway to the Théâtre. She stroked a tendril of her hair into the slightest hint of seductive