Any woman in her right mind would dislike the idea of meeting her fiancé garbed as a vestal virgin missing only a lamp—and obviously a white dress with a modest ruffle at the hem confirmed that particular illusion.
After their exchange of letters, she was fairly certain that Kinross wanted to marry someone boldly sensual. Someone who could bandy about words like prick, words that Edie barely understood. She wanted more than anything to look into his eyes and see desire. Lust, even. If he looked at her and his prick wasn’t on the dial of noon, to put it in a lyrical but earthy fashion, she would be humiliated.
She wanted to dazzle him.
The stupid thing was that she wasn’t even certain she would recognize him. She was betrothed to a tall man with a Scottish burr, but she couldn’t recall his face at all.
Still, his letter—that letter—had given her just enough that she had decided he had a pair of laughing eyes. Not dissolute eyes or a rakish expression. But desirous.
Only after Mary had offered every single gown she’d packed, and Edie had rejected each and every one as unbearably lackluster, did she give in to the inevitable and send her maid to find Layla.
“May I wear one of your gowns instead of mine?” Edie asked, when Layla appeared in the doorway. “I loathe my frocks. They make me look like an insipid fool.”
“You know perfectly well that a young unmarried lady should wear only pale fabrics.” Layla strolled across the room and pushed open the window.
“No smoking!” Edie ordered, pointing at a chair.
Layla sighed, and sat down.
“I am practically married. Kinross is here, and I simply cannot wear one of these dreary gowns.” She didn’t know how to put it differently, but if she didn’t see desire in his eyes, she might break off the betrothal out of pure embarrassment. She couldn’t stop feeling that perhaps he had offered his hand due to her silence.
“Darling, you’re a willow compared to me,” Layla objected. “It’s not that I don’t understand, because, truly, I do. Your coloring has never been flattered by soft tints. Still, we don’t have time to miraculously remake one of my dresses.”
“We are the same height. I may be a little slimmer in the hip area, but our bosoms are the same.”
“My bosom is as unfashionably large as my hips.”
“You can call your bosom unfashionable if you wish, but I like mine. And it is nearly the same size. Any gown will work,” Edie insisted. “Don’t you see, Layla? Kinross has never really seen me, though I appreciate the fact that he chose a wife on the basis of rational analysis. I truly do. I approve.”
Layla rolled her eyes. “Rational analysis is an absurd reason for marriage. Your father once told me that after your mother died he made a six-point list of attributes for his next countess, and I met five of them. Look how well that’s turned out.”
“What was the sixth one?”
Layla got up again and went over to the pile of dresses. “Fertility, of course,” she said, turning over the gowns. “The ability to turn out baby earls by the yard, if not by the dozen. What about this green one? It’s not as bland as the white ones.”
“You and Father love each other,” Edie said, ignoring the fact that Layla was trying to rearrange the neckline of her green gown into something sensual that it could never be. “You just don’t—”
“Like each other,” Layla said, completing the sentence. With a quick jerk, she ripped out the lace trim around the gown’s neck.
“I don’t believe that. I believe you do like each other. I just think you need to talk more. But never mind your lamentable marriage for the moment. I’m trying to ensure that mine works out happily. I don’t want Kinross to think that I’m some sort of insipid lily.”
“He’s unlikely to think that after reading your letter,” Layla observed. “Thank goodness your father had that book of Shakespeare quotes. Do you suppose Kinross imagines you a bluestocking who’s actually read all those plays?”
“He’ll soon find out differently,” Edie said. “You’re destroying that dress, Layla!”
Her stepmother held up the green dress, now relieved of its white lace. “If you pulled down the sleeves to bare your shoulders, this one could be very appealing.”
“I don’t want to be ‘appealing.’ I want to be the sort of woman who tosses about bawdy jokes.”
“That woman would definitely love this dress. Perhaps I shall run away from your father and open my own dress shop.”
Edie went over and picked up the gown. “I can’t wear this: look, you’ve torn the shoulder seam. I just don’t want to play the part of a virginal swan.”
“You are a virgin,” Layla said, sighing. “Think of it as an unavoidable stage of life, like getting old and toothless and having to drink soup. Unfortunately, men seem to think that women are like new wine, good only before being uncorked.”
Edie tried, and failed, to work that one out.
“Thus the fact that women well into their thirties—and married—still wear nothing but white. I view ladies mired in that delusion as nothing short of pitiable.” Anyone could guess at that scorn by measuring the distance between a white gown and Layla’s daring—and colorful—concoctions.
“I’m not denying my virginity,” Edie said, returning to the stool before her dressing table. “I just don’t want to play the demurely chaste Lady Edith, the way I did when I was ill—indeed, as I’ve done all my life.”
“Your father won’t like it.”
“My father divested his authority over me when he signed those betrothal papers. Now I need to make absolutely certain that my husband doesn’t think he’s been invited to play the role of father.”
“Good point,” Layla said. “Do you suppose that the age difference between myself and your father has led him to consider me a child?”
Edie rolled her eyes. “Has it never occurred to you?”
That seemed to penetrate. Layla tossed the green dress back onto the bed. “I have just the gown for you. Mary, please return to my chamber and ask Trotter to give you the claret silk. This is a sacrifice, darling,” she said, turning back to Edie. “I thought to wear it myself tomorrow evening, but I think you have the greater need.”
She walked over to the window.
“Don’t you dare take out a cheroot,” Edie ordered.
“That tone must have been a direct inheritance from your father. Just as well, since you’ll need to give an order now and then when you’re running a castle.”
“I’m practicing on you. No more smoking anywhere in my vicinity.”
“I’m trying to give them up,” Layla said, leaning against the frame and staring out the window. “Your father doesn’t like it, and we’re sharing a room while we’re here.”
Edie considered asking how that unaccustomed proximity was working out, but just then Mary reappeared with a pile of iridescent silk in her arms.
“Here it is!” Layla crowed, turning about as the door opened. “That color is called China rose. Isn’t it the most delicious thing you ever saw? Darker than cinnabar, more saturated than claret . . . well, close to claret.”