Barbara Hambly - 02 TRAVELING WITH THE DEAD

Lydia felt slightly relieved at this confirmation that other people-older and in positions of social authority-were far more tactless than she.

Much as it annoyed Lydia to admit it, Ysidro had been quite right. In Constantinople as in Vienna, Margaret Potton was her mantle of respectability, her mere presence making it entirely unnecessary for Lydia to say to anyone, As you see, I am not a jauntering slut. Her presence had certainly worked its intended magic at the embassy yesterday afternoon. Without Margaret, Lydia guessed she would still have been admitted, would still have had her queries answered... would still have spoken to Sir Burnwell, stooped and gray and with the slightly puffy face of an intermittent sufferer of kidney problems...

But only the presence and respectability of a companion had brought Lady Clapham into the office, holding out her hands and saying, My dear, I'm so sorry...

So sorry.

Cold closed around her again, dimming the voices of Mile. Ursule, Lady Clapham, Miss Potton, as if the small, neat, and extremely Parisian room with its powder- blue satin wallpapers and gilt mirrors was at the end of a very long corridor.

Wednesday. James had been missing since Wednesday afternoon.

"Which one do you like, my dear?"

Lady Clapham's voice pulled her back to the present. The dressmaker had spread out on the table two gowns, one straw-yellow with an overgown of white georgette, the other fawn-and-white-striped mousselme de soie trimmed with pink silk. "I think that's up to Miss Potton," Lydia said, manufacturing a smile with an effort and stepping close to get some idea of how the dresses actually looked. Miss Potton turned red and pale and pink, and blotchy combinations of all three, and finally settled on the mousseline de soie, for which Lydia then bought a pair of white satin slippers, kid gloves, and a thin gold chain with a pendant of rose quartz and earrings to match.

"You really shouldn't have," Margaret said softly when, later in their bedroom, Stefama Potoneros was lacing her into the gown. "I mean I... it must be terribly expensive."

It hadn't been, in terms of higher fashion, reflected Lydia, putting on her spectacles to turn and look over her shoulder at the girl. Mile. Ursule had expertly graded ranks of gowns for all occasions, and the fawn and white silk, however pretty, was designed to be no competition whatsoever for Lydia's point lace and baby ribbons. But to a girl without a family, who had spent any number of years in the dreary confines of the typical governess' quarters, it must seem like Cinderella's ball dress.

"I can't..." Margaret stammered. "I can't repay you..."

"Good heavens, no!" Lydia said. There was a silence, Margaret undoubtedly remembering-as Lydia remembered-the hysterics in Sofia, the furious outburst upon their arrival the night before last. A little awkwardly, she explained, "It's nothing, really. I mean... what's the point of being an heiress, and putting up with uncles and aunts telling you how to live and who you have to marry, if you can't... can't buy someone a present now and then? And I know it helps to have the right thing to wear."

"I thought if you were an heiress, it meant you could do what you wanted," said Margaret as Lydia barely touched the eiderdown puff to her cheeks, then leaned forward until her nose nearly touched the glass to inspect the results in the mirror.

Lydia shook her head. "Well, I don't know about other heiresses. My father and his two sisters had a terror of fortune hunters, and my life was... rather restricted at times."

I'll not have you turning my money over to a scoundrel, had been her father's exact- and oft-repeated-words.

Not, A man who only marries you for money will make you wretched.

Not, How do you expect such a man to fit into the life you want to make for yourself?

I'll not have you turning my money over to a scoundrel.

His money, even should he die.

She rubbed the rouge on her fingertips, smoothed the tiniest hint of a blush along cheekbones and temples, seeking the perfection that had been her only protection against everything they could do.

"It couldn't have been that restricted, if they let you go to Oxford," said Margaret. She picked up the powder puff, turned it cautiously over in one square, disapproving hand. "Do all heiresses learn to use cosmetics like this?" "Only if they have a nose like mine." Lydia squinted at the effect of the rouge, then licked the end of her eye pencil and began careful shading along the upper lashes. "James-he was a friend of my uncle Ambrose, the dean of All Souls- arranged with one of the pathology professors to help me borrow money under another name. I begged Uncle Ambrose not to tell Father, and I'm not sure he would have agreed if he'd known I was studying medicine. It was exhausting, going back and forth by train and concealing sessions when my tutor came down to town. Fortunately, our place was near Oxford-Willoughby Close-and Father spent weeks at a time down in London. If my mother had been alive, I could never have done it."

"What did they do when they found out?" Margaret asked, blue eyes wide with alarm.

"There was a row," Lydia said evasively. Why, after eight years, did her father's cold fury still hurt? "Would you like to try this?" she added, seeing the other woman's hand stray to touch the rouge pot, the lip rouge, the several types of powder and skin food indispensable to the artifice that Lydia regarded as her armor against the world.

"C- could I?" Margaret stammered, turning pink again. "I know I shouldn't-the sisters at the orphanage all said that ladies don't use such things..."

"Well, I never met a lady who didn't," Lydia said with a smile. "It's just that there's a trick to doing it so that nobody notices. Here."

The transformation was not a startling one, but having spent years compensating for what she considered her own shortcomings-a slightly aquiline nose, too-thin cheeks, and unfashionably shaped lips, to say nothing of a preference for knowledge above society gossip-Lydia knew how to apply rouge and powder to reduce the impact of the other woman's shallow chin and snub nose, and to give her better cheekbones than she'd been born with. At the end, staring mto the lamplit glass, Margaret breathed, "Oh..." in a kind of wonderment, the blue eyes widened and deepened, the pale, pretty face surrounded by raven masses of curls as it had been, Lydia knew well, in her dreams. "Oh, thank you!"

She fumbled for her eyeglasses.

Lydia laughed. "You aren't going to wear them to the reception, are you?" "Of course." Margaret settled them firmly on her nose, even as Lydia was removing her own to be helped into her gown by the maid. "If people don't like me in my eyeglasses, that's just too bad." She blinked mildly at Lydia as the Greek maid laced her expertly up the back. "Thank you," Margaret said simply.

"Thank you so much for doing this for me. I've never been beautiful before."

Lydia smiled a little and shook her head. "I'll teach you how to do it, if you'd like," she said, stowing her spectacles in a silver-mounted leather case and making a final inspection of herself in the mirror. Stefame's sister Helena had come to the door twenty minutes ago with word that Sir Burnwell and Lady Clapham were waiting downstairs with the carriage; they should, Lydia guessed, arrive at the palace in fashionable good time.

She worked her tight kid gloves onto her hands and surveyed Margaret once more, pleased with the results in spite of the glasses. She had done her best-the fact that Miss Potton was her companion was no reason not to make her as beautiful as she could be, though she knew girls of her own year as a debutante who would dispute that-and she suspected that her companion's raven hair and tourmaline eyes made her prettier than herself.