Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [112]
“You have a most remarkable memory for color,” I said, surprised and slightly unnerved.
“Oh, I remember this dress very well,” she said. She touched the full sleeve lightly. “A gentleman once told me I reminded him of Persephone in it; springtime incarnate, he said.” A faint smile of memory lit her face, then was erased as she lifted her head toward me.
“What color is your hair, my dear? I hadna thought to ask. You sound a bit blond, somehow, but I’ve no notion whether that may be actually the case. Pray, do not tell me ye’re black-haired and sallow!” She smiled, but the joke sounded somehow like a command.
“It’s more or less brown,” I said, touching my hair self-consciously. “Faded a bit, though; it’s gone light in streaks.”
She frowned at this, seeming to consider whether brown was quite suitable. Unable to settle the question for herself, she turned to the maid.
“How does she look, Phaedre?”
The woman took a step back and squinted at me. I realized that she must—as the other house servants were—be in the habit of giving careful descriptions to her mistress. The dark eyes passed swiftly over me, pausing on my face for a long moment of assessment. She took two pins from her mouth before replying.
“Just fine, Miss Jo,” Phaedre said. She nodded once, slowly. “Just fine,” she said again. “She got white skin, white as skim milk; looks real fine with that bright green.”
“Mm. But the underskirt is ivory; if she is too fair, will she not look washed out?”
I disliked being discussed as though I were an objet d’art—and a possibly defective one, at that—but swallowed my objections.
Phaedre was shaking her head, definitely.
“Oh, no, ma’am,” she said. “She ain’t washed out. She got them bones as makes shadows. And brown eyes, but don’t be thinkin’ they’s mud-color. You recall that book you got, the one with the pictures of all them strange animals?”
“If you mean Accounts of an Exploration of the Indian Subcontinent” Jocasta said, “yes, I recall it. Ulysses read it to me only last month. You mean that Mrs. Fraser reminds you of one of the illustrations?” She laughed, amused.
“Mm-hm.” Phaedre hadn’t taken her eyes off me. “She look like that big cat,” she said softly, staring at me. “Like that there tiger, a-lookin’ out from the leaves.”
An expression of startlement showed briefly on Jocasta’s face.
“Indeed,” she said, and laughed. But she didn’t touch me again.
I stood in the lower hall, smoothing the green-striped silk over my bosom. Phaedre’s reputation as a sempstress was well founded; the dress fit like a glove, and the bold bands of emerald satin glowed against the paler shades of ivory and leaf.
Proud of her own thick hair, Jocasta did not wear wigs, so there was fortunately no suggestion that I adopt one. Phaedre had tried to powder my hair with rice flour instead, an attempt I had firmly resisted. Inadequately concealing her opinion of my lack of fashionable instinct, she had settled for snaring the mass of curls in a white silk ribbon and pinning them high to the back of my head.
I wasn’t sure quite why I had resisted the array of baubles with which she had tried to further bedizen me; perhaps it was mere dislike of fussiness. Or perhaps it was a more subtle objection to being made an object, to be adorned and displayed to Jocasta’s purpose. At any rate, I had refused. I wore no ornament save my wedding ring, a small pair of pearl earbobs, and a green velvet ribbon round the stalk of my neck.
Ulysses came down the stairs above me, impeccable in his livery. I moved, and he turned his head, catching the flicker of my skirts.
His eyes widened in a look of frank appreciation as he saw me, and I looked down, smiling a bit, as one does when being admired. Then I heard him gasp and jerked