Cast a Pale Shadow(28)

He was down four steps before she hissed for his attention again. "Pssst, Nicholas."

"What?" This time when he turned, he had to grab her shoulders to keep from bowling her over, she had crept so close behind him. She was one step up from him and their eyes were nearly level. He leaned even closer to hear her conspiratorial whisper.

"I thought, since we're out in the hall where anyone could see us, maybe we better kiss goodbye again. You know, appearances?"

"Wife, you think of everything."

She closed her eyes and waited. His lips touched hers while his hands slid with sizzling slowness from her shoulders to her waist. He drew her closer as he whispered "Open." against her mouth and without hesitation, she obeyed. His tongue played against hers sending delicious shivers to her toes. She responded by following his retreating tongue into his mouth and thrilled as he moaned softly. When he let her go, her buttery knees made her sink to her seat on the step.

"Think that will satisfy any peeping Toms?" He laughed as he bounded away from her.

"You've had a lot of practice at kisses, I take it?"

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, arching his brow to look up at her. "You have apprenticed yourself to a master, Sugar Lips."

"Oh, go to work," she ordered.

"Regrettably, I must." With a flourish, he tipped an imaginary hat and was gone.



*****



Her mouth full of straight pins, Augusta mumbled something that sounded like "Turn," and Trissa dutifully and carefully turned about thirty degrees. From her slightly dizzying perch atop the sturdy trestle table, Trissa looked down at the warm, busy kitchen where Augusta pinned up her hem, Beverly stitched a button on a cream angora sweater, and Ruth, the cook, peeled potatoes for a stew whose browning meat, onions, and spices already teased Trissa's hunger with their aroma. She was happy that the stew was for tomorrow's evening meal.

"Stew's always better the second day," Ruth had instructed her when she expressed her regret that she and Nicholas planned to eat out that night. "I always plot a day ahead. It's pork chops and applesauce tonight you'll be missing."

Like the boarders, Ruth had accepted her without a blink at the extra work she might cause. "Shoot, what's one more plate to wash?" she had scoffed. "She can't eat more'n a bird, I expect." In the Ozark Mountains where she came from, she told them, nine at the supper table would make a body darn near lonesome. When Trissa had offered to scrape the carrots, Ruth had clucked and fussed over her as if she were peeling away gold leaf from a national treasure. "Watch out now, lambie, you're gouging out half the viteymins there. Jest skin it. Don't whittle it."

There had been little time for the rest Nicholas told her to get, but she did not miss it. Shortly after he had left, Augusta had come bustling in to clear away her tray and ask her what she wanted for lunch. Trissa did not know what Nicholas had told her when they had their little talk before he left for work. Whatever it was, Augusta seemed pleased that Trissa was not in the fragile state she apparently expected.

When Trissa insisted on helping with the dishes, she had taken her downstairs to meet Ruth who had the breakfast mess so well in hand that Augusta and Trissa were left with the happy chore of finding Beverly so they could spend the rest of morning playing "dress-up," This game involved rooting in Augusta's cavernous closets for any bit of clothing that might be altered to fit Trissa. The more Trissa protested, the faster the skirts, blouses, and sweaters flew off their hangers. In a half hour, there were three piles which came up to her knees, wool skirts, silk shells, a camel's hair coat, a Chanel suit, embroidered linen blouses, and Trissa had wriggled in and out of more clothes than she had tried on in her lifetime.

Augusta was a bit taller and broader shouldered than Trissa, so most of the garments needed alteration. "No problem. Before I married James, I was a showgirl at The Dunes in Las Vegas. And before that I worked the costumes all summer with my mama at the Municipal Opera. I can still whip up a hem and pop in a dart faster than a Hong Kong tailor. By the weekend, Baby, you will have a trousseau that will make Audrey Hepburn look threadbare. These clothes may not be trendy, but they're classic. Chanel will never go out of style."

Less nimble-fingered but no less willing, Beverly had bent her head over needles and pins and tape measures as well. Most of the early afternoon, they had spent in the back parlor where Beverly's stories on the television had provided the background noise with Beverly stopping once in a while to fill in the background on a character.

"That's Joanna. Her husband is supposed to be dead but he ain't really. He faked his death so he could run off with his secretary and Jo could have the insurance money to pay for the baby's operation. Course, the baby ain't his but he don't know that and Joanna ain't really sure. Something's going to happen with the blood; you wait and see. Little Marky's going to need a transfusion, and it'll turn out that nobody's blood will match. Then Jo will have to go to Doctor Mike and confess everything."

"Confess everything?" yipped Augusta, who rarely watched the shows. "If Mike's the father, what's she got to confess? He didn't do it blindfolded, did he?"

"Well, no. But he was drugged. Ramona put something in his drink at the hospital benefit ball, hoping to lure him into bed. But he got so disoriented that he took Jo instead. She was wearing a harlequin costume just like Ramona's."

"And what about Jo? Was she drugged, too?" asked Trissa.

"No, but she's always had a secret yen for Mike, and she just couldn't resist."

With silly banter and busy fingers the day flew by. When the first tantalizing sniffs of the stew meat browning wafted out to them, Augusta suggested they move to the kitchen. One by one the boarders would soon be coming home, and Augusta said she liked to see them come in the back door and ask them about their day.

Hattie Kenyon was the first to return. She came fuming in bemoaning the ignorance of her students as if it were a conversation that had been interrupted just moments ago. "Never in my life have I seen a less prepared bunch of louts. They sit on their brains and ponder nothing more monumental than the probability of being able to pick their noses with their elbows. And they consider themselves intellectuals." Everybody pretended to listen, nodding and clucking their tongues, until she had finished and gone off to grade her Chaucer essays.

May Lassiter floated in next, playing a concerto in her head, smiling and nodding at them all, a bit startled to see Trissa towering over her as she stood on the table for hem pinning, then greeting her warmly with sudden recognition. She expected a piano student shortly and hurried away to prepare. Scales and chords and snatches of melody soon filled the air.

Beverly, too, had to leave to get ready for work. Ruth wrapped a pork chop sandwich for her to take and put some of her homemade applesauce in a baby food jar so she could eat it later at work.

"I think I'd better go get dressed soon, too," Trissa suggested as Augusta finished the hem and gave her a hand so she could step down off the table. Trissa pulled on her jeans under it then carefully removed the pin-filled skirt. "Nicholas said about five."

"Yes, mustn't keep the groom waiting," Augusta teased. She shook out the cream sweater and handed it to her and folded the skirt to hem later. When she looked up and smiled, it was with such a merry twinkle in her eyes that Trissa felt warmed by it.

"Oh, Augusta, I don't know how to thank you. This has been like Christmas and homecoming and birthday all in one."

"Don't forget honeymoon."

"Yes. I haven't been so happy in... in all my life." Impulsively, she gave Augusta a quick hug, and Augusta responded by wrapping her in her warm embrace and kissing her on the forehead. Like a mother might. When the moment ended, Trissa turned quickly, blinking away tears, and raced up the steps.

She was to wear the cream sweater and a softly pleated chocolate wool skirt. Both Augusta and Beverly pronounced them their favorites of the alterations they had completed that day. Beverly had tightened the pearl buttons down the back of the sweater, and the skirt had required only shortening and a little nip at the waist to fit her perfectly. Augusta loaned her some pearl drop earrings and a pearl and rhinestone clip for her hair.

When Trissa went to the closet to find her shoes, she was astonished to see how they reflected their new shine back at her. She did not remember their gleaming so, even on the day she had bought them.

Nicholas. Pair by pair, loafers, flats, suede pumps, she brought her shoes out into the light. Each pair was polished and buffed or brushed to perfection. Even the old ankle boots she ratted around in but hadn't worn anyplace beyond the woods in two years shone like brand new. She marveled at the time he must have spent on them. She reassembled them in their straight little row and shut the closet door just as Augusta called her from below.

Nicholas was home. She slipped on her pumps, grabbed her purse and coat, and flew down the stairs.