She was smiling when the tall model in the gold gown approached her.
“Congratulations,” the woman said in a cool, low voice. “The gown will look beautiful on you. It is only too bad you can’t wear it as it is. Viscount Haye was much taken with it, you know.”
“He was?” Daisy asked. She had to look up at the model, and got the feeling that the woman was looking down at her in other ways, too. She was smiling, which somehow made it worse. The woman was slender and long-limbed as a boy, with only her small breasts and a hint of supple hips to show her gender, but she nevertheless exuded female sensuality. Daisy wasn’t surprised. She’d met too many kinds of women in jail to ever make the mistake of comparing the size of a woman’s breasts or hips with the size of her sexual appetites or inclinations.
She also knew when she was being taunted, and she’d been oppressed long enough to know too well how people who couldn’t speak freely could still voice their opinions clearly. She waited because she wanted to know more.
The model understood. “He offered to buy the gown for me,” the model said, nodding her sleek head. “But I have no use for it, and so I told him. Anyway, he liked it even better when it was off.” Her smile grew wider; she nodded again and glided away, looking as though she’d accomplished something.
Her words could be taken several ways. Daisy was no fool and took them each and every way they could be. She’d been warned. That much, she was sure of. She just didn’t understand what she’d been warned of, or off.
“What did she mean by that?” Helena asked, frowning.
Daisy had known Helena Masters for only the week since she’d hired her, but already knew she was a dear person. Her new companion was an educated woman who’d been married for a decade before she was widowed. But she’d been married to a decent man and had always lived among decent people, and so was still an innocent at heart.
Daisy laughed. “She could mean that the viscount likes to wear gowns, or that he likes women who don’t wear them. It doesn’t matter. Really it doesn’t.”
But it did; it mattered to her plans for the future, and she was still thinking about it as she left the shop.
The light at sunset showed the glorious sunrise of Daisy’s new gown. It was silken and it slithered, scintillating with every step; it flowed and glowed gold, moderated by a pink that looked as innocent as the underside of a rose petal. The dressmaker delivered it in plenty of time to dress for dinner. But Daisy had to try it on right away to be sure it was what she wanted to wear tonight.
She wanted to wear it; in fact, she never wanted to take it off. It glorified her; it flattered her, and made her feel both rich and right. She stood in the center of the bedchamber of her hotel and gaped at the magnificent creature she saw in the long looking glass. She was, she thought, a long, long way from Botany Bay, and a universe distant from the stinking prison ship that had brought her there. The elegant beauty in the mirror could never have set one silken slipper’s toe in such a place, or ever dreamed of it. Nor had she dreamed she could look like this. And Tanner! If he’d ever seen her in such a dress…
Daisy’s eyes went dark and blind to the moment as she saw something that wasn’t in the mirror.
Tanner would have stopped and stared at her the way he always did when he saw her looking good, or in a different light-the way he did if he chanced to see her rising from the tub after a bath, or with her arms in the air as her gown slid down over her body while she was dressing, or even outside, hanging up the wash, with the sunlight silhouetting her body.
His mouth would get loose; he’d grin and grab for her, and she was never ever allowed to say no. It wasn’t a great hardship, not really; she didn’t know why she never got used to it, why she never stopped dreading it, her skin crawling, her stomach in a knot whenever she saw him looking at her like that. What he did took only a few minutes, after all.
But it always took too long for her. And she hated that she gave such pleasure to him when she didn’t want to. That was why she dressed in the dark, and bathed only when he was out of the cottage, and…
Daisy drew a deep, shuddery breath. He wasn’t here now. He’d never be here again. She could dress like a princess and bathe in the light, and no one would ever be able to touch her if she didn’t want him to, no one.
“Daisy?” Helena asked. “Is there something wrong with the gown?”
“No,” Daisy said, returning to the present. “It’s perfect.”
“It’s magnificent,” Helena said. “More than that, you look so beautiful in it. The fit is perfect, the color brings out your hair, your eyes-you’ll astonish them. But is it a very grand dinner? Because that is a very grand gown.”
Daisy blinked. She saw Helena’s reflection behind her in the mirror. Her companion and her maid were staring at her with identical expressions of wonder. But the gown now looked wrong to her, theatrical and overdone compared to what they wore: the maid in her simple gray frock, Helena in one of her usual modest, high-necked lavender day dresses. The maid looked dazed, and so did Helena. But her new companion, Daisy thought, also looked a little wistful. She realized why. She’d spent too many years wanting what she couldn’t have not to know what she was seeing.
Daisy shook her head to clear it. Then, to make her audience laugh, she overdid it, shaking her head like a puppy coming out of the water. She grinned. “Too right! Trust you to put your finger on it. It’s too magnificent! I can’t wear this tonight. I don’t know if I ever can, unless I’m invited to a coronation-as the queen. I’ll wrap it in tissue and put it away until I do have a reason to wear it, some very special occasion. Tonight I’ll wear a gown I had made up before I came here. It’s rose-colored, too, and very pretty, actually, and I have a gold paisley shawl to make it livelier. But this?”
She raised her arms and held them straight out from her shoulders. “I’m afraid to move in this! I feel like a frog in a silk purse, mucking it up just by letting my skin touch it. I don’t want to get it dirty or damp, I don’t know how to live in it! The viscount was right: It isn’t for me, no matter how it’s dressed up or down. And you know what?” She snapped her fingers. “That for the viscount’s taste! I have to live my life as well as be fashionable. We’ll go back tomorrow and pick out some simple gowns that I can wear without worrying.”
“But you’ve already ordered some,” Helena pointed out.
“Well, so I have, but we also have to get something else. You need new gowns, too!” She saw her companion’s face grow still and added quickly, “Not that there’s anything wrong with what you wear, but if I’m to look splendid-and every gown Madame Bertrand makes is splendid-then you must, too. I’m paying for it,” she went on, raising a hand. “Think of them as uniforms. Well, a fine thing if I go wafting in prinked to my ears, and let you look plain. I’ll look like a terrible vain creature, trying to keep you from being noticed, because you’re very pretty, you know.”
Helena laughed. “How could anyone look at anyone but you? With your face and hair? No one sees any other female when you’re in the room. And anyway,” she added more quietly, “a companion isn’t supposed to look dashing.”
“Why not?” Daisy asked, putting her hands on her hips. “That’s ridiculous. Why shouldn’t you look well? Please don’t argue.” She raised her arms again. “But please help me out of this beautiful thing right now, because I’m afraid to take a step in it!”
Daisy was afraid to step into the earl’s house that evening, too, but she wouldn’t let anyone know it. She wore a fine gown, if not a spectacular one. Her hair was drawn up in a cluster of curls, a simple cameo that she’d bought the other day hung on a spiderweb-thin chain at the base of her throat; her slippers were new, too. From her new underthings to the new cape on her back, there was nothing to be ashamed of.