Rod shivered.
"They will bear word to us, will they not?" Gwen asked.
"Be sure that they shall," Brom promised her. "Be very sure of that."
Morning came lustrous, cool and moist—like herself, Delilah thought. She stretched luxuriously, treasuring the feeling of rest, of satiation of sleep, knowing that Cordelia was probably red-eyed and weary, her hair in disarray and her mouth stuffed with pins, trying vainly to cobble together some sort of dress. It made breakfast in bed so much more tasty.
Her modiste, of course, had been up all night, and was still busy with a fabric-bonder, computer, design program, and a ROM library of medieval style plates.
Delilah rose for her first fitting.
Cordelia had risen an hour earlier, her heart singing as she gazed at the cloth and lace. Then she noticed the breakfast tray by her bed, still steaming. So that was what had waked her—the servant. She felt an instant's panic, but found her sketches still carefully hidden away in her boots—in her enemy's house, there would be spies everywhere.
Boots! Yes, she would have to make slippers, too. Then she donned the riding dress, pleased to notice that the dust had been brushed from it. Clad once again in her working clothes, Cordelia buckled down.
Delilah came out of her bedroom into the sitting room of her suite as her modiste was finishing running the hem through the molecular bonder. "Nice timing, Chief." She held up the completed dress.
Even Delilah couldn't withhold an exclamation of delight. It was a daring confection of a dress, all pink and gold, that would set off her peaches-and-cream complexion and blonde tresses to perfection. "Quickly! I must see it!" She slipped into her petticoats and stood impatiently while the modiste fastened the gown around her. No need to trouble with a brassiere—the Middle Ages had not had them, and any reasonably civilized planet in the Third Millennium had them built into the garments with tiny electronic devices that enhanced buoyancy and line.
Of course, Delilah thought smugly, she did not really need enhancing—but it never hurt to fire a broadside. The modiste finished the last fastening—primitive, but they had to be something that could have existed in the Middle Ages, whether they truly had or not—and Delilah whirled away to stand in front of the doorway to her bedroom. The modiste pressed a button, an electronic circuit closed—and the surface of the doorway swirled into silvery reflectance. Delilah gazed at her reflection in the electronic mirror with smug satisfaction, posing side view, back view, three-quarter profile. That snob, Cordelia Gallowglass, could never match such a gown, not even with the most talented seamstress on Gramarye! She was, after all, limited to medieval technology, and certainly, mere needle and thread were so far from the devices available to Delilah's modiste that Cordelia could not have produced even an indifferent dress. But she would have tried—oh, yes! She would have stayed up all night and would stay up all day! Her hands would be raw with pinpricks, her skin pale with fatigue, and her eyes red. She would be snappish and insecure with weariness.
Even if her dress were presentable, though, it could never come within a mile of Delilah's for allure. But then, she thought with complacency, Cordelia could never have matched her for voluptuousness in any case. Delilah was, after all, a projective telepath, and a very talented and very skilled one at that—but the greatest of all her talents was the projection of sexual desire.
Cordelia was digging into her task with verve and glee. Never had she had such beautiful fabrics to work with! It seemed such a self-indulgence, when there were peasant women on her own estates who had only the one blouse and skirt, and those patched. No matter how her parents urged her, she had never been able to bring herself to indulge in outright luxuries.
Here, however, there was the best of reasons. She had to save her poor Alain from the clutches of that poisonous female, Delilah—and had to save him personally.
She had draped the cloth, marked it, then laid it out and chalked the patterns with not a moment's hesitation, following the diagrams in her mind's eye. Then she cut itstaring at the lines, thinking of the separation of molecules, watching the cloth separate itself along the lines she had drawn. Twice she made a mistake; twice she held fabric together, stared at it, and thought of the linen molecules moving, faster and faster until the cloth was whole again, each separate thread having bonded itself to its other half so that it was no longer cut, but as sound as new.
She was as talented in telekinesis as Delilah was in projection.
Now she held the sections of cut cloth together, staring at the edges, watching the threads flow together so well that you could see no seam at all. Molecule bonded to molecule, far tighter than any thread could bind. The unfinished edges folded themselves over, bonded, and made themselves into hems.
By noon, it was done, and she slipped it on for the first fit. She went to the window, opening the casement and letting out a trilling whistle. The aural call was only there to help her concentrate; really, it was her mind that reached out and summoned ...
A robin flew down, perching on the tree branch outside her window. It stared at her, then cocked its head inquisitively. Cordelia stepped back, reading the bird's mind. The robin saw her, and she read her own image from its mind, viewing herself through its eye, stepping back until she could see all of herself.
She gasped with delight.
She saw a fairy-tale princess complete in every detail except the headdress, of course; she had yet to make that. However, it was a dress such as a fairy-tale princess would have thought scandalous. The neckline was daringly low, and it fitted her torso as though it had grown there. Even as she gazed, she thought of a slight rearrangement of electrical charges, and the skirt and petticoat moved toward her legs, clinging. She walked toward the window opening a few steps, and the static charge molded the cloth to her limbs—not completely, for the petticoats muffled the outline considerably, but enough to more than hint at her contours. She viewed them with a critical eye, and decided that her contours might not be so insufficient, after all—and there had been enough boys who had sought to touch them on some of her outings. Not so lush as Delilah's curves, perhaps—assuming that Delilah's were real but more perfectly proportioned.
She turned, walking away from the bird, gazing at the back of her reflection, at the neckline, scooped low enough to show her shoulder blades, cloth clinging to hint at the smooth curves of hips. She looked back over her shoulder, lowering her eyelids, giving her best imitation of Delilah's alluring smile, and tried rolling her hips as she walked. Yes, it did seem to work.
She blushed as she thought of herself actually putting on a performance of that sort before Alain. She would not dare! And even if she did, surely he would not dare to appreciate it!
But the thought did excite her.
Still, the dress was a trifle too loose here and there. She thought at the cloth, and the seam turned inward, the darts tightening until it fit her—well, perhaps not quite like a glove above the waist, but certainly like a flower below.
And, too, it did need some adornment. She blew a kiss at the bird, dismissing it, slipped out of the dress, lifted the lace, measured it off against the cloth, and bonded it so that it filled in the scoop of the neckline, the dip behind her shoulders. Her mother had told her that what was imagined was more effective than what was shown; it was only necessary to give the gentlemen something for their imaginations to work on.
Cordelia certainly didn't intend to give them anything more.
When she was done, she summoned another bird—a bluebird this time—to look at her while she read its mind, and caught her breath with delight. It was quite the most lovely gown she had ever seen, even if she did say so herself. She dismissed the bird with a gay wave, slipped out of the dress and, in her chemise, took up the buckram, the lawn, and the veil, and began to make the headdress.