“Well, maybe you’re one thing, but I’m another.” May-Jewel squared her shoulders. But could Katherine be right, she wondered. Then she admitted out loud, “It never occurred to me that I’d be the one under scrutiny. I suppose that I was too engrossed with being the mistress of this magnificent manor to even consider such a thing as that. What about my dances and my teas? Would no one come?”
“You can invite them, but I doubt if anyone would show up.” Katherine said, unable to understand her sister’s limited scope of thinking. “Are things so very different in America? With all your raising and your background, you aren’t very knowledgeable about how people and things work in other places are you?”
“It isn’t going to be easy, is it, for one whose background is a tad imperfect,” May-Jewel proclaimed with a pout, “let alone someone with your background!”
Ignoring May-Jewel’s comment, Katherine stretched out on one side of the bed and closed her eyes. To be a woman in a time and a place where women had little to say and naught to command was difficult, but to be an extrinsic daughter of Scotland claiming a part of its fruit could be a struggle, not only with the tenants but with the gentry, and with May-Jewel as well. A second knock on the door produced the grizzled old servant and the massive stableman delivering the first pails of bath water.
* * *
After separating her trunks and bags from Katherine’s, May-Jewel selected a yellow dress from her trunk and then located her toiletries. As her sister napped, May-Jewel stepped behind the flowered panels of the screen and disrobed to bathe. The tub of steaming water received her tired limbs and freed her of the last remnants of the long journey. As she rested her head against the tub’s high back, images of Alexander Fleming pushed into her mind. She pictured his broad forehead half covered with flaxen hair, and attempted to imagine his face without his close-clipped, darker beard, but could not. A soft sigh escaped her wet lips.
Emptying a small vile of rose oil into the cooling water, May-Jewel rubbed her breast and thighs until they absorbed the fragrance. He’s certainly nice to look at. Still, he seems too young to have been Robbie’s partner. He can’t be half a dozen years older than I am. I wonder where he got his experience. Then thoughts of Jeremy crept into her relaxed mind. Jeremy is older and much more mature than Alex. Closing her eyes, she began to compare them but soon realized that they were vastly different. Jeremy was suave and composed, like a true gentleman of the old south of which he was a product. Alex, on the other hand, seemed excitable and always on the cusp of anger. Of course, it could be that their untimely arrival put him in that state. I wonder, she mused, if Mister Fleming would allow his ward to cross an ocean unescorted?
For the first time in weeks, May-Jewel allowed her anger toward Jeremy to subside. She envisioned his slender body and could almost smell his cologne. It wasn’t the first time that she had allowed romantic thoughts of Jeremy to fill her daydreams.
“This won’t do,” she reprimanded herself as she stepped from the tub and wrapped a towel about her shoulders. “Jeremy, you straight-laced fool,” she whispered with affection. “You should have come with me.” Enveloping herself in her dressing gown, May-Jewel smiled at how he hated to be called ‘straight-laced’ and uttered it three more times just for spite. She knew that Jeremy was never anything other than what he presented himself to be, honest and proper and… one dimensional.
Forcing her mind back to the present, May-Jewel visualized Mister Fleming… Alexander… Alex. She found him exciting, yet she couldn’t help wondering if he might be misrepresenting himself. Either way, he would be a challenge. Yes, things do look promising, she thought.
May-Jewel took her time dressing, then rang for Katherine’s bath water before awakening her as she had no desire to go through the ‘you are inconsiderate with the water’ scene again. After styling her raven locks three different ways, she settled for the loose roll of the pompadour with a cluster of ringlets hugging her neck. Still, it was too early to go down to the dining room. Choosing a musty volume of Waverley from a corner bookshelf, she sat by the fireplace to read. But she grew increasingly impatient to start her first evening at Wistmere and put the book back down. Anxious to be about, she awakened her sister and left the room.
* * *
Still somewhat sleepy, Katherine moved about in a dreamy state while changing her dress. Enchanted by the last glow of day that reluctantly hung over the landscape, she paused by the window. All she ever saw from her window in Edinburgh were dusty carriages being pulled over the same old streets by weather whipped horses. She saw weary men and women, shuffling their sidewalk-trained feet from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ and back again. And she saw hungry, neglected children. They all passed by, but none ever raised their eyes to look up at her in her attic window.
Casting aside thoughts of the past, she refocused on her surroundings. The twilight shadows below her darkened. They crept slowly over the ground like a silent army, skillfully skulking behind the line of trees as if awaiting orders to advance. Her gaze fell on the garden and
