The Gown(74)

“What did you tell your friends?” she asked worriedly. “They will be annoyed with me.”

“Over being nervous around dogs? Of course not. And there are rather a lot of them.”

“I do like dogs. I did, before . . .”

She told herself that Bennett’s dogs were friendly animals, trained only to sit and roll over and play dead. Not to chase. Not to snarl and snap and bite at anything, or anyone, that moved. Yet her heart kept racing.

“Can you hear me, Miriam? I am here. I won’t let anything happen to you. Just breathe. In and out. Slowly, now.”

It felt like forever before she was able to look up. “I am so sorry. I hope—”

“Please, Miriam. Please don’t apologize. Do you feel able to go inside?”

At her nod, he helped her out of the car, tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow, and led her across the forecourt to the door. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

The front hall was lined with coats on hooks and boots on trays, and there was a jumble of dog leads in a wicker basket and an umbrella stand crammed with walking sticks and a lone fishing rod. Framed maps and a watercolor portrait of the house hung on the walls, while a battered Persian rug, its colors faded almost to nothing, softened the ancient flagstones underfoot.

“I’ll take your coat and add it to the collection here, and we’ll hang up your bag, too, so the dogs can’t get at it. Right. Let’s go find everyone.”

The sitting room was a close cousin to the entrance hall, with fraying rugs and slipcovered sofas and oil paintings gone dark with age, and at the far end an enormous old fireplace, the sort that might have been used for cooking when its stones had first been fitted together.

A pretty young woman, only a few years older than Miriam, was seated in a chair drawn close by the fire. She was enormously pregnant, her face rounded and rosy, and next to her stood a man about the same age as Kaz, his dark curling hair cut very short. He bent to kiss the woman’s brow, and then, his expression sweetly solicitous, helped guide her out of the chair.

They came forward, and the man held out his hand for Miriam to shake. “Mademoiselle Dassin. Nous vous souhaitons la bienvenue.”

She looked at Walter in surprise. Why had he not told her that his friend spoke perfect, unaccented French?

“Show-off,” Walter said, and made a childish face.

“I’m merely welcoming our guest,” the man said. “I’m Bennett. Delighted to meet you at last. And I do want to apologize for the dogs just now. Kaz tells me you had a bad experience when you were younger.”

“Please, I—”

“All that matters to us is your comfort. And it will do them no harm to stay out of the way for a few hours. For that matter, we’ll enjoy a far more civilized lunch if we don’t have to shout over the barking.”

The young woman now took Miriam’s hands in hers. “Bennett’s right. And we won’t have them pestering us for table scraps either. I’m Ruby, by the way. It’s just wonderful to meet you. I’ve been asking Kaz for weeks now.”

“Thank you. I, too, am very glad to make your acquaintance.”

“Lunch is almost ready, but until then I want you to sit next to me. You can have Bennett’s chair, and he and Kaz can perch on the sofa.”

“When is the baby expected?” Miriam asked once everyone was seated and Bennett had made sure his wife was comfortable.

“At the end of the month. It’s only in the last week or so that I started feeling like a hippopotamus. I can’t even tie my own shoes, and if I need to roll over in bed I have to wake up poor Bennett so he can help me.”

“Good training for when the baby comes,” he said, grinning at his wife. “I’m a light sleeper at the best of times.”

Ruby leaned forward, as much as she was able, and fixed her attention on Miriam. “Kaz hasn’t told us much of anything about you. We know you’re French, but not much more than that.”

“I am an embroiderer,” she said. And then, though she ought to have left it at that, “I work for Norman Hartnell.”

“You do? It must be so—”

“No, Ruby,” Walter said. “I saw the look on your face just now. No questions about the royal wedding. Not a one.”

“Oh, fine,” Ruby said, and smiled at Miriam. “I wouldn’t have asked. Just so you know. I’m sure you can’t say anything, and it would make everything so awkward if I did ask.”

“Thank you.”

“All the same, I am very interested in your work. Was it difficult to learn how to embroider?”

“It was so long ago,” Miriam began, and then stopped short. Only eight years, which was hardly a lifetime. Never mind that it felt like a century or more had passed. “I was fourteen when I began my apprenticeship, and I did not like it at all. Not at first. Perhaps it was the shock of being away from my family for the first time. I had . . . I do not know how to say it in English. J’avais le mal du pays.”

“You were homesick,” Bennett said.

“Yes. There were many nights when I wept and wished to be home, to wake up in my own bed again. But of course it never came true. And I learned to like the work.”

A bell clanged in the distance. “That’s Cook calling us in,” Ruby explained. “Her feet are getting bad, so this is easier than her walking all the way from the kitchen. Although it does make me feel like I’m a cowboy on a ranch.”