Provocatively demure. Like a Victorian lady's bare ankle flashed for a second, under frothing lace and frou-frou, over cobblestones and carriage wheels. A tantalizingly innocuous striptease. A masterful sleight-of-hand for a sixteen-year-old girl.
Virginal, knee-grazing skirt. Schoolgirl-collared linen blouse. White. Dark hair framing a pale face. Impish green eyes, butterfly lashes never still. An unchaste smile playing over glossy red lips. Not a country-club-brunch smile in any case.
"Quite the beauty. She knows it too."
"Robillard blood..."
Proud as Lucifer. He knew the Robillards. "I don't think she gets her good looks, or much else, from the Robillards. Irish, all the way down - just like Gerry O'Hara."
"Irish? Oh no, Rhett, I'd say French - her mother..."
"Frank, when will you learn to look beyond a veneer?" Possibly never. It's what makes you such a poor businessman.
"Oh well..." A forced laugh. Too hearty. Lovesmitten eyes. "Everyone's entitled to their own opinion." Cliches. Masks.
A/N: The chapters are named after the wall paint colours at icidulux (a website). They're the colors of the dress Scarlett is wearing in each chapter.