The Chicken Feather Moral
By Laura Schiller
Based on: A Company of Swans by Eva Ibbotson
"I hope you enjoyed your bath."
Rom's voice was icy and mocking as he stood there in his black silk dressing gown. Harriet had never been so humiliated in her life. To be mistaken for a woman of easy virtue just for staying behind after the party to talk to him – especially since Marie-Claude had had to tell her to undo the top button on her nightdress – was nothing short of a nightmare. If he were to ravish her, she wouldn't even know what to do, let alone fight him off; even with her dancer's strength, that would be impossible. The physique revealed by that very loosely tied dressing gown of his made it all too clear.
Would she have to let him lead her to that huge mosquito-netted bed? Not that that would be so bad, in itself (she blushed at her own indecent thoughts), but waking up to those cold judgmental eyes the next morning? Was there no way to avoid it?
"But Harriet, you're a grown-up," she suddenly heard a high-pitched, precise voice saying from inside her memory. "You can do what you like."
"Mr. Verney, I believe there's been a misunderstanding," she said, trying to speak firmly, though conscious that her face must be turning the color of the local tomatoes. "I tried to explain to your maids, but they didn't understand … I never came here for … for … " She gestured to the bed. "It didn't occur to me!"
"No?" Rom's dark eyebrows rose sardonically, but his tone was less forbidding than before. "Then what did you come here for, if I may ask?"
He unfolded his arms and waited quietly. Was it her imagination, or did he seem relieved? When he heard what she had to say, would he despise her again? (She couldn't help but wonder why that was so, that men should enjoy a woman's attentions and then despise her for offering them. It chimed with what she'd been taught at Scroope Terrace, but it did not strike her as very logical, or even moral, according to Roman philosophy.) And was it unpardonably rude of her to interfere in his family matters?
She thought of Henry's big gray eyes appealing to her, noticing for the first time that Rom had gray eyes too. She clenched her fists inside the satin sleeves of the negligée Maliki had given her and took a deep breath. For Henry's sake, she had to try.
"I've come," she said, "To talk to you about Stavely. You see, I met this little boy … "