Red, White and Blue (Book Two of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Eleven: White

Oxford, 1881: 

The white dress dazzled, and Ellini glowed. 

She looked slightly embarrassed that a pretty dress had made her so happy, but that only contributed to the rosebud blush suffusing her cheeks and made her glow even brighter. Every now and then, she would gather up great, gorgeous armfuls of skirt and let them go again, seemingly just for the pleasure of hearing the fabric rustle.

Sarah had found her a full-length mirror from somewhere, and she stood in front of it, looking happy and nervous and mildly ashamed, while the white satin swept to the floor like an arctic waterfall.

It transpired that Sergei had thought of everything. He had bought her a pair of white satin slippers and some long white gloves to go with the dress. To Jack, this had seemed like a transparent attempt to demonstrate how much more money he had than her new fiancé. But Ellini seemed to appreciate them – especially the gloves, because they hid her nail-less hands, and gave her something to fiddle with when she was feeling shy.

She was doing this now, because Jack was standing behind her, watching her luminous reflection in the mirror.

He was suddenly seized with the desire to ease her out of the dress, just so he could see whether the rest of her body was as luminous as the parts that were showing. He had already seen the rest of her body, of course – both in recent memory and, presumably, in the unreachable past – but he wondered if he had ever seen it while she'd been in such a luminous mood. He could almost see the life fluttering beneath the surface, and it made her skin look exquisitely sensitive. He wanted to touch it just to see whether she moaned, fainted, or melted.

Did she blush all over? Did everything look so tremblingly touchable? And was it all as sensitive as it looked? How loud would she moan if he touched her right now?

And then he realized that he was touching her – his left arm had sneaked out of its own accord and started stroking her neck. And, for a second, she really did close her eyes – as he had been imagining she would – and her lips parted, as though she was going to moan. For the first time in what seemed like years, Jack felt his cock stir. But then she opened her eyes, and the spell was broken.

"What are you doing?" she said.

Jack frowned, and then gave up searching for an answer that wouldn't sound unsettling. If he couldn't be honest with his mouse, who could he be honest with? "I don't control that one," he said, nodding toward his left arm.

Ellini appeared to accept this – he wondered whether it was an excuse that men had used on her before. 'I do beg your pardon, madam, but I don't control that particular appendage – I'm a martyr to it, I swear.'

She went back to fidgeting with her gloves and smoothing down her skirts, as though she was trying to forget the hand on her shoulder. Jack took pity on her and removed it. But both his hands were trembling as he reached into his pocket for a cigarette.

"You look very pretty today, mouse. I mean it."

The glow increased to a level that was almost blinding, although she tried her hardest not to show how pleased she was. Jack couldn't help laughing.

"What's so funny?" she asked, her smile faltering a little.

"Nothing. It's just I've never caused that expression to appear on anyone's face before. Closest I ever came was when I told a very fat female scholar from Lady Margaret Hall that I'd take her out to dinner – and, to be honest, I think she was just as excited by the dinner as the invitation. She'd been writing her thesis on me. She said it was her greatest ambition to go to bed with a man who'd changed the course of history." He thought about it, and then added, "You know, I'm not sure it's good for people to achieve their greatest ambition so young."