Jenna Starborn (17 page)

“They're all quite lovely,” Miss Ayerson said with a certain wistfulness. I had scarcely ever heard her speak with anything other than complete indifference, so this change of tone caught my attention. I looked up at her with a little smile.

“In the eyes of the Goddess, we are just as beautiful and certainly as valuable,” I said, “although I admit at the moment I am having a hard time convincing myself.”

She smiled back, gave the tiniest of shrugs, and said nothing.

“Look! Mr. Taff—and Mr. Fulsome—oh, and Mr.—Mr.—I cannot remember his name, can you, Miss Ayerson? He came here that one time with Miss Ingersoll and he took you and me riding in his convertible craft—”

“Mr. Luxton, I believe,” Miss Ayerson said coolly. “Joseph Luxton. He must be one of the houseguests Mrs. Farraday mentioned.”

Joseph Luxton was a man so good-looking it was almost sinful. He had lustrous black hair and chiseled features, with lips so full and dramatic that they could only be called sultry. His eyes-startling in such a dark face-were an electric green that seemed to create an energy of their own. They could have powered every generator in the underground facility and still singed our skin if they turned our way. Though he would never look our way; he was bored even with the exalted company he was keeping, as his slouching posture and half-sneering expression attested.

“Oh, my,” I said comically, and gave Janet Ayerson another rueful smile. Again, she returned my expression and gave a little nod. Not much more we could say in front of Ameletta, but our glances spoke volumes. “With that so near at hand, one wonders what the attraction is for Miss Ingersoll in other quarters.”

“I have often thought the same thing,” Miss Ayerson replied.

The other two men in the party had passed under my camera view before I had gotten much chance to study them. They appeared good-natured enough, if not particularly intelligent, and I would have had a hard time telling them apart without a little study. Both were fairhaired and fair-skinned, athletic, well-cared for, smiling. More than that I could not determine.

“Well! And this is the company we shall be keeping this evening!” I said as I turned back to my fellow watchers once the parade was over. “Offhand, I cannot think of a single thing I could have to say that would interest any of them in the slightest.”

“You need not worry—they will talk to each other and not realize you are at the table,” Miss Ayerson said with a touch more dryness than she was used to exhibiting. “Mr. Ravenbeck will from time to time address a remark to you, to let you know that he at least realizes you are a human being, and you will answer, and then you will become invisible again. But it is still entertaining to listen to them talk and, later, to play games. I would not miss it.”

“Oh, no!” Ameletta breathed. “I would not miss it for the world!”

I would have gladly missed it—except a certain perversity of spirit had cropped up in me as the afternoon had worn on and told me that I should attend this dinner, attend it, enjoy it, and learn from it. If I truly believed I was as good as any other man or woman at the tableif my religion and my philosophies were not to fail me at some more critical juncture in my life—then I needed to prove it to myself and not shy away from a convivial evening because of wholly unmerited feelings of inferiority. I might not be Bianca Ingersoll's equal in looks, liveliness, or social standing, but I was willing to bet my intellect surpassed hers. And I could match her, atom for atom and soul for soul, on the Great Mother's delicate scales, and I would not be found wanting.

 

 

M
iss Ayerson and I had agreed that she and Ameletta and I would go down to dinner together so that we could provide one another other moral and physical support. Accordingly, I dressed in my gray silk suit and set a small pearl barrette in my hair and then waited patiently in my room for the knock to fall on the door. It came precisely at the agreed-upon hour.

I opened it to find Ameletta, as expected, in her pearl and ivory dress, her blond hair caught in a butterfly flurry of ribbons. But Janet Ayerson looked as I had never seen her look before. Gone was the quiet, scarcely noticeable black tunic; in its place was an embroidered crimson jacket over a long, pleated silk skirt of the same color, and on her pale face she had brushed the lightest combination of cosmetics.

“Janet!” I exclaimed, startled into using her given name, though she had been experimenting with mine for the past few days. “You look magnificent!”

She looked self-conscious as well, but I could tell my genuine approval pleased her. “Hardly that,” she said, with a semblance of her usual calm. “But it is the best I could do. You look very nice as well.”

“I look
dreadful,”
I said with a grimace. “But I am glad one of us at least shows some elegance. Ameletta, you look charming. How pretty your hair is!”

“Miss Ayerson styled it for me,” she replied. “Oh, please, can we hurry downstairs?”

Janet and I laughed, and we made some haste as we went down the hallway and the main stairwell. The group was to gather in a midsize drawing room adjacent to the formal dining room so that we could all go in to dinner together. Not surprisingly, my party was the first to arrive. Janet convinced Ameletta to sit quietly beside her on a pretty little love seat and practice the words to a poem she had been taught, as a way to distract the girl from impatience. I wandered idly through the room, inspecting the art on the walls as if I had never seen the prints before.

Thus we were separated by the width of the room when the first of the grand visitors arrived. Mrs. Ingersoll and her daughter Melanie swept in together, followed by Mr. Fulsome and Mr. Taff. I turned to greet them, and Janet and Ameletta came to their feet, but we might have been pieces of animatronic sculpture for all the heed they paid to us.

“My dearest, it is not worth worrying about. You shall have the surgery done, and you will be recovered by the Dominion Ball, and it will not matter at all,” Mrs. Ingersoll was saying to her daughter. The two looked like a study in the life cycle of a rose, for Melanie wore a bright fuschia dress, short and sparkly, and her mother wore the same color, several degrees paler, in soft pleated folds like discarded petals.

“But, Mother, if I have the surgery even next
week
I shall still have a swollen face by the time of the ball and I cannot possibly go out in public looking like that.”

“Have it after the ball, then. The bump is so small, no one will notice—”

“What, that little nudger on your left nostril? I didn't notice a thing till Bianca mentioned it to me,” was the gallant remark of the man I had decided was Mr. Taff.

Melanie whirled on him with a muffled shriek. “Bianca told you about it? What did she say? Oh, that spiteful cat—”

“Just that you weren't satisfied with the work at the Roberson Clinic. She thought the doctors were inferior and the PhysiChambers substandard. I'm thinking of having a little mole removed myself,” he added by way of extenuation, “and she just thought it would help me decide between that and the Hopeton Clinic.”

Melanie had her hand over her nose, where the offending knot was located. “Oh, if she told you, she told all of you—I'm so embarrassed—”

“Nothing at all to be embarrassed about,” spoke up Mr. Fulsome. “Had a scar bleached out just last year. Best thing I ever did. Right under my hairline. Couldn't run a comb through my hair without shuddering—never liked to be out anywhere I might encounter a strong wind, for fear my hair would rise and the scar would show.”

I glanced at Melanie for signs of a laugh, for this sounded like a joke to me, but she looked neither amused nor distracted. “I'm going to kill her, Mother, I swear I will.”

Her mother patted her absently on the shoulder. “Nonsense, sweetheart, she wasn't trying to make you look ridiculous. You're so sensitive, Melanie. You shouldn't let things affect you so.”

Mr. Fulsome had strolled over to the rose-girl's side and was pulling up the fall of hair that laid a romantic blonde patch across his forehead. “See? Well, of course, can't see a thing now because nothing to see. All gone. Man was a genius.”

Melanie turned away, but Mr. Taff came over to inspect the site. “Really? Where'd you have it done? I've this little—it's a nothing, really, this mole, there by my ear—can you see it?—I've thought for ages about having it removed.”

Mr. Fulsome dutifully glanced behind the other man's ear. “Oh! That! Yes, sort of thing you'd want to get rid of eventually.”

“And you went where? Roberson? Hopeton?”

“No, a new place, on Brierly. Combination spa-surgical facility-recreational place. Athletic leagues and so on. There nearly a month, liked it so much. Try it.”

I could not help noticing that Mr. Fulsome dropped his articles and predicates from his speech with some regularity, almost as if he was too lazy to form the words “you” and “I” and “the.” But this laziness paled beside the triflingness of their very lives, that they could spend so much time discussing the merest of vanities as if there were no more important matters in the world.

Melanie flounced over to the other side of the room, her arms crossed and her pretty face drawn into a sulky frown. “Well, I don't want to go to any spa on Brierly,” she said.
“I
like the Roberson Clinic, and that's where
I
shall go, and I hope Bianca gets all sorts of warts and moles and ugly things all over her face and no one thinks her pretty anymore.”

This was a speech worthy of Ameletta, but I was astonished to hear it uttered by a grown woman, in the presence of her mother (who should have taught her better) and two eligible young men (whom I would expect her to be trying to impress, not disgust). Yet no one in the room except me seemed embarrassed for her. Except perhaps Janet Ayerson, and so many people separated us that I could not see her face.

The next two people to arrive were Bianca Ingersoll and Mr. Ravenbeck, who must have met on the way from their not-quite-separate-enough bedrooms. Once again, she entered the room on the arm of the master, her arm linked through his so casually it was as if she did not notice she was tethered to a package of male energy. I could not imagine ever touching this man without a sense of caution and portent; I did not think I could ever overlook his combustibility.

“Oh, are we late?” Bianca Ingersoll sang out, and her voice matched her countenance, so full was it of silver and luxury. “I was afraid I would be the last one down, as I so often am, but no, here was Everett, leaving his room just as I was.”

“Ah, but I was delayed by business, and you were delayed by vanity,” Mr. Ravenbeck said. The light tone made it unlikely that this was an actual rebuke, though I would not have liked to have had such a thing said to me, however gaily. “Thus my behavior is excusable and yours is merely rude.”

“Oh, you cruel man!” Bianca Ingersoll cried, but in such exaggerated tones that it was clear she was flirting, not protesting. “Mother, call for the aircar. I will not stay even for one dinner in a house where I am being insulted.”

Mr. Ravenbeck resecured her hand, which she had snatched away from him, and planted a solemn kiss on her knuckles. “And yet the result you have achieved is so perfect that I cannot but forgive the rudeness,” he added. “I would not have had you ready one second earlier if it would have detracted by one iota from your beauty.”

There was a general laugh from the assembled company—half laugh, I amend, and half sigh at the really quite exaggerated compliment. I did not think I would like something so patently insincere to be said to me either, but Bianca Ingersoll seemed to accept such heavy-handed gallantry as her due. And, in fact, she was quite stunning, dressed as she was in a strapless, floor-length gown of emerald silk, with that frothing blonde hair trained to run over one shoulder and down the front of her dress like a cascade of spidery lace.

“Well, she can have dawdled as long as she likes beautifying herself, but she's still not the last one down,” Mr. Taff commented. “Luxton hasn't made his appearance, so we still can't sit down to eat.”

A quick frown pulled down Miss Ingersoll's faint, delicate brows; I supposed she had planned to make the final appearance of the evening and did not like to be beaten out for that honor.

“And as he has neither business nor beauty to delay him, we must ascribe his sole motivation to discourtesy,” Mr. Ravenbeck said. “So let us vilify him one and all when he makes his way into our presence.”

They had not long to wait before falling in with this admirable plan, for almost as the words left Mr. Ravenbeck's mouth, the handsome Mr. Luxton slouched in. If possible, he looked even more attractive than he had on the security monitor that afternoon, for he exuded an almost feral charisma that was both mesmerizing and seductive. He was dressed all in black, which emphasized both his extraordinary green eyes and his dark complexion, and his arrogant cheekbones tilted back in surprise when his entrance was greeted with howls of derision and disapproval.

“That's a strange reception. I thought I was welcome here,” he said in a sleepy, drawling speech whose rhythms were infinitely attractive. “Shall I go away again?”

I thought it strange that fully one third of Mr. Ravenbeck's guests had, in a few short minutes, offered to leave before their first meal was ever served; but he, like Bianca, was not serious.

“Our disapproval stems from our hunger, and not your existence,” Mr. Ravenbeck explained. “You have kept us waiting and we cannot love you for that.”

“Surely Bianca is still behind me,” Luxton said in that lazy voice. “I can't have held you up at all.” A movement of that blonde head caught his attention, and he let loose a low, irresistible laugh. “Oho, I see she has arrived on the scene already! Why so eager, Bianca? You must find the company extraordinarily agreeable.”