The Girl from Everywhere (The Girl from Everywhere #1)(29)
“But if you still want to escape, take the afternoon. Waking him up, it’s not going to be pretty.”
I bit my lip. “I . . . I took leave this morning.”
“I won’t tell on you.” Bee walked over to my hammock and kicked the lowermost curve. “Kashmir!”
He flipped himself out of the sling and onto his feet, his eyes wide and his hair mussed. “What?”
“Budge yourself and take this girl ashore. She’s getting underfoot.”
He blinked twice and then saluted. “Aye, captain!” With little effort, he swept me up and hoisted me over his shoulder, knocking the air out of me. “Shore leave!” he shouted as he trotted down the gangplank.
“Kashmir!”
“Ah!” he said as I pounded him on the back. “That was my kidney!”
“Put me down,” I said breathlessly, “or I’ll take out the other one!”
“You should know, amira,” he said, emphasizing the Persian accent he often kept hidden. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists!”
I smacked his rear as he trotted ashore. On deck, Bee was shouting. “Ayen, pull back his blankets. Rotgut! Start some broth! And get a bucket of cold water!” I thought again of Ulysses, and of the sirens. Would Bee tie the captain to the mast until he was himself?
Kashmir set me down on the dock and put his hands on the small of his back. “I know one of our options on leave is brawling, but usually that’s later, after the drinking and the gambling.”
I straightened my skirt, staring toward the ship, wanting to run back, wanting to run away. “Do you think they’ll be all right?”
“I have an idea,” Kashmir said, pulling at my sleeve. “Let’s find you some new clothes.”
“You can’t distract me with shopping,” I said. “I hate shopping.”
“And it shows! I’m not trying to distract you, I’m trying to help you.”
I knew what he was doing, but I gave in anyway. “I’m only helping you look good by comparison.”
“I don’t need any help to look good. All you’re doing is making it seem like I keep unfashionable company.”
He jumped back before I could swat him.
The street was much livelier than this morning. Wharf rats milled around the esplanade, ready to dive deep after a penny tossed into the ocean, and fishmongers were selling shellfish out of bushels on their backs. Riders cantered regularly down the dirt roads, men and women alike riding astride rather than sidesaddle, with long hair and garlands of flowers streaming behind them. Nearby were the distinctive sounds of a ukulele being played; I scanned the street and found the shop, wedged between a bar and a feed seller. An old man was smiling and strumming, smiling and strumming, while inside the shop, his sons bent their heads over their saws.
This time, we turned away from Chinatown and toward fashionable downtown. Merchant Street was graveled to keep mud off lacy hems and shiny leather shoes. Discreet shingles offered the services of lawyers and bankers, factors and financiers, giving way on Fort Street to more ornate and fanciful signs advertising milliners and engravers, jewelers and dressmakers. Kashmir paused in front of a lovely shop with a bay window shaded by a fragrant jasmine vine, and on the scent rode an incongruous memory of racing through the hot streets of Calcutta.
He took a moment to finger comb his hair and button his jacket; even creased from long wear, it was still quite debonair. “Let me do the talking,” he said then. “I’m afraid if you make any decisions, you’ll end up with a whiskey barrel and a pair of galoshes.” Then he breezed in through the door.
Putting on airs in the most typically outrageous fashion, he ran his hands over every bit of lace in the shop, demanded tea in a perfect imitation of a posh English accent, and then announced I needed a new set of clothes immediately.
“We’ve just arrived from London, where she had an entirely new wardrobe made, and look, look how she grows! What is this, burlap?” He rubbed a piece of cotton between his fingers. “We need a finer weave. Her parents feed her too much. I swear, a girl at liberty to eat what she likes is at liberty to grow as tall as she likes! But do they listen to me? I am only the tutor, they say, they do not hire me to know anything. No, not Chinese silk, it’s too inconsistent. Do you have any from Piedmont?”
The Tutor was a persona he took on sometimes, often in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whenever he and I were alone together in front of others. It was bossy, superior, and very entertaining. Kashmir picked words out of people’s mouths as easily as he did the coins from their pockets, but I had no idea where he’d ever met such a supercilious personality. He was pulling out all the stops. He flounced onto a couch and shook back his curls as the two women hid their laughter behind their hands. The sign outside proclaimed them the Mercier Sisters, Fine Dresses, and I learned their names were Nan and Emily.
Measurements were taken, and much was made of how this lavender trim set off my eyes, or the green would complement my hair. Then, of course, Nan noticed my muddy sandals.
“Simpleminded girl,” Kashmir said, shaking his head and tut-tutting. “She had a lovely silk pair when we left California, but she was battling a touch of mal de mer and an old salt convinced her the cure was to drink tea out of her right shoe.”
Nan, the older sister, shook with laughter, but Emily’s eyes were round. “And what happened to the left?”