Outlander 03 - Voyager

“Well, aside from the fact that I’ve nothing to wear…” I temporized, trying to figure out what he was really up to.

“Och, that’s no trouble,” Rosie MacIver assured me. “I’ve one of the cleverest sempstresses on the island; she’ll have ye tricked out in no time.”

Jamie was nodding thoughtfully. He smiled, eyes slanting as he looked at me over the candle flame.

“Violet silk, I think,” he said. He plucked the bones delicately from his fish and set them aside. “And as for the other—dinna fash, Sassenach. I’ve something in mind. You’ll see.”

58

MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH

“Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?

And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?

And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?

Oh they’re taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.”

Jamie put down the wig in his hand and raised one eyebrow at me in the mirror. I grinned at him and went on, declaiming with gestures:

“’Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his;

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 decolletage 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 decolletage 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.