Widow in White

Chapter Twenty-One: A Personal Matter

Laura hardly spoke to Richard for a week, and his bed remained empty every night. It was part of his vanity that he never asked for her to come to him, but it wounded quite another part of his vanity when she didn't. He blamed it entirely on her fit of temper, unaware that his manner was so brusque towards her that she assumed it was he who was in a bad mood and did not want her. But his bad mood, in the end, paid off. It was she who relented, she who took steps to make amends.

On Tuesday evening as he was dressing for dinner, Laura came into his dressing room, dressed in a coquelicot evening gown of the very latest cut: full in the skirts and very low and broad in the bust. Her shoulders were bare, but for the two little puffs of silk masquerading as sleeves, and the pale swells of her breasts fluttered lightly with her breath. A gold satin sash was tied in a large bow around her waist, just waiting to be unwrapped. Richard forgot himself for staring at her and only eventually drew himself to the fact that she seemed to be waiting for something.

"Are you... going somewhere?" he asked, confused.

"I'm coming to dinner."

He saw her peace offering for what it was and pretended not to notice the warp of petulance in her voice. "Are you? Well thank you very much."

Still, she hovered in his doorway. "Can I wear that necklace again?"

"Would it not be too much?" he asked, worried that Elizabeth might say something about it to her.

"That's really the point. I ought to look like a mistress."

"You look like heaven."

She flushed until she was nearly the colour of her dress. He dragged his eyes away from her and tried to concentrate on tying his cravat.

"I'm not going to be able to think straight with you dressed like that," he said, not looking at her. "Can't you add a fichu or something?"

She came forward and stared at herself in his mirror, her expression suddenly doubtful. "Don't you like it?"

"Laura my dear, I like it too much." He restrained the impulse to kiss her, because it would crush her gown. "And when we are alone one night, perhaps you'll wear it again so I can appreciate it properly. But tonight, I would prefer my wits about me."

The ghost of a smile appeared on her face, then she turned and left the room. Richard finished his cravat and went into his bedroom to unlock the safe. The sapphires were impossible, of course, but there were some pearl earrings that he liked and that Elizabeth did not care for, and he thought they would suit Laura.

When he came into her bedroom, she was involved in tucking a black net fichu into the neck of her gown.

"Thank you," he said, bending to kiss the top of her head. She looked up as he did so, and his kiss landed rather awkwardly on the corner of her mouth. And that demanded righting, so it was some time before they disentangled themselves. But he had avoided crushing her dress, he thought with relief, and remembered the pearls.

"Here," he said, getting on his good knee and searching the floor beneath her chair for the pearls he'd dropped. "I think these will do." He found the box and opened it before her. "Alright?"

"Very. Are they real?"

He did not wish to lie to her again. "Afraid so. But you're only wearing them in the house, so no harm can come to them."

She fixed them in her ears and examined herself critically in the mirror. "Thank you. They're lovely. Though I'll have to change my belt."

She stood and rooted through a drawer, coming out with a white satin ribbon, which replaced the gold brocade.