Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [56]
But Miss Wylie was twenty-five years my junior, fashionably gowned and jeweled, and if no great beauty, not plain, either. Her jealousy was a better reflection of my appearance, I thought, than any looking glass.
“Such a beautiful stone, Mrs. Fraser—you will permit me to look more closely?” The Baron bent toward me, pudgy fingers delicately poised above my cleavage.
“Oh, certainly,” I said with alacrity, and quickly unclasped the chain, dropping the ruby into his broad, moist palm. The Baron looked slightly disappointed not to have been allowed to examine the stone in situ, but lifted his hand, squinting at the glinting droplet with the air of a connoisseur—which he evidently was, for he reached into his watch pocket and withdrew a small gadget that proved to be a combination of optical lenses, including both a magnifying glass and a jeweler’s loupe.
I relaxed, seeing this, and accepted a helping of something hot and savory-smelling from a glass dish being passed by the butler. What possessed people to serve hot food when the temperature in the room must be at least in the nineties?
“Beautiful,” murmured the Baron, rolling the stone gently in his palm. “Sehr schön.”
There were not many things about which I would have trusted Geillis Duncan, but I was sure of her taste in jewels. “It must be a stone of the first class,” she had said to me, explaining her theory of time travel via gems. “Large, and completely flawless.”
The ruby was large, all right; nearly the size of the pickled quail’s eggs surrounding the fully plumed pheasant on the sideboard. As to its flawlessness, I felt no doubt. Geilie had trusted this stone to carry her into the future; I thought it would probably get us as far as Cross Creek. I took a bite of the food on my plate; some sort of ragout, I thought, very tender and flavorful.
“How delicious this is,” I said to Mr. Stanhope, lifting another forkful. “What is this dish, do you know?”
“Oh, it is one of my particular favorites, ma’am,” he said, inhaling beatifically over his own plate. “Soused hog’s face. Delectable, is it not?”
I shut the door of Cousin Edwin’s room behind me and leaned against it, letting my jaw hang open in sheer relief at no longer being required to smile. Now I could take off the clinging dress, undo the tight corset, slip off the sweaty shoes.
Peace, solitude, nakedness, and silence. I couldn’t think of anything else required to make my life complete for the moment, save a little fresh air. I stripped off, and attired in nothing but my shift, went to open the window.
The air outside was so thick, I thought I could have stepped out and floated down through it, like a pebble dropped in a jar of molasses. The bugs came at once to the flame of my candle, light-crazed and blood-hungry. I blew it out and sat on the window seat in the dark, letting the soft, warm air move over me.
The ruby still hung at my neck, black as a blood drop against my skin. I touched it, set it swinging gently between my breasts; the stone was warm as my own blood, too.
Outside, the guests were beginning to depart; a line of waiting carriages was drawn up on the drive. The sounds of goodbyes, conversations, and soft laughter drifted up to me in snatches.
“… quite clever, I thought,” came up in Phillip Wylie’s cultured drawl.
“Oh, clever, certainly it was clever!” His sister’s higher-pitched tones made it quite clear what she thought of cleverness as a social attribute.
“Well, cleverness in a woman can be tolerated, my dear, so long as she is also pleasant to look upon. By the same token, a woman who has beauty may perhaps dispense with wit, so long as she has sense enough to conceal the lack by keeping her mouth shut.”
Miss Wylie might not be