Chapter 32:

Jubilee sat down gingerly on the seat and shook her head in bewilderment. She would never get used to this!

'Going' had been a somewhat more involved process than Jean had made it sound. There had been much rummaging around in wooden crates before Jean had found a hat for Jubilee. When Jubilee had tried to forestall the redhead, Jean had waved aside the stammered protests and continued her search. She had finally come up with one, which she handed to Jubilee with a smile and then fussed with it until it was perched just so on Jubilee's raven-black locks. Finally satisfied, she led the girl out of the room and met Ororo downstairs.

Jubilee thought they would leave then, but such was not the case. There was another wait of about ten minutes, and she was just starting to wonder what they were waiting for when they heard the sound of wheels on the gravel drive. Jean opened the front door and stepped out into the bright sunshine, and Ororo and Jubilee followed. Jubilee stopped short when she saw the carriage.

It was a large black covered carriage, capable of seating four. Jean and Ororo climbed in without hesitation, but Jubilee hung back, suddenly unsure Jean turned around once she got herself seated, and held out a hand to her with a gentle, understanding smile. "Come on," she said. "Step up. We live in town, Jubilee, and everyone has carriages to ride around in, or horses to ride. Very few people walk anywhere. And you're not a slave anymore, you're a free woman, and you're one of us. Come on up. Don't be afraid."

Jubilee climbed up, slowly, and settled into the seat across from Jean. Ororo leaned over to speak to the driver, and Jubilee felt the carriage begin to move.

The roads were well-smoothed, and the carriage proceeded down the lane at a surprisingly good clip. Jubilee, overcoming her earlier shyness, leaned out of her seat to look out the window. The road was bordered on either side by a rail fence, and lots of green fields. To her left, off in the distance, she saw a low building of some sort; a stable, she presumed. She pointed and asked, "What's that?"

"Those are the breeding stables Charles owns," Jean said after a look at what Jubilee was indicating. The horses were walking slowly enough that they had a good view of the stables as the carriage passed on the road. "Charles loves horses. Scott's okay, but he doesn't really have that passion for them the way his father does, even though he's the manager of the stables."

Jubilee watched as a figure led a tall black horse out of the stables. "I wonder if I could see that sometime," she said, more to herself than the other two women.

"You will," Jean said cheerfully, confidently. "Remy will have to take you over there to choose a horse for you to ride."

Jubilee was about to ask why she would need a horse when there was the sound of hoofbeats on the grass, and a second later the loveliest horse Jubilee had ever seen came into view. She was coal-black, the color Papa had called shadow black, with a high crest, long, flowing black mane and tail, and a fiery, intelligent look in her sky-blue eyes. Jubilee gasped and pointed. "Look!"

Jean smiled at the girl's enthusiasm. "That's Charles's new filly. Bought her about six months ago for a fairly low price, considering she's pureblood Arabian. But she's something of an outlaw; completely wild, and she's never been halter broken or trained."

Jubilee breathed out, slowly. "Papa would give his right arm for a horse like that," she said. "Is she intelligent?"

Jean shrugged. "I don't know, Jubilee, I don't bother with the horses. They scare me a little, frankly. I have a mare in the stables that I ride once in a while, but that's as close as I'll get to the horses."

Jubilee sat back down, looking at Jean mystified, as the black filly stopped at the corner of the pasture and the carriage continued on. "How can you be scared of horses?"

Jean shrugged. "I was raised in the middle of a town," she said candidly. "I walked everywhere, or took a carriage. I'm a city girl, not a country one." She grinned. "Look up ahead. That's what I grew up with."

Jubilee looked up ahead, leaning out of the window, and saw a town so much bigger than Jackson that she suddenly felt a wave of homesickness hit her. She blinked furiously to clear the tears from her eyes. She missed the narrow, dirt streets. She missed the little stores and shops and all the people she had come to recognize after four years of seeing them so often. Most of all, she missed home, and Papa. She had to fight not to cry. That wasn't home for her anymore, as much as she wanted to be able to go back. She couldn't. Logan didn't want her, didn't love her, anymore.

She wiped the tears away furtively as she stepped out of the carriage in front of the milliner's, whatever that was. Jean went to the door, opened it, and she and Ororo stepped in, Jubilee following. And then Jubilee stopped.

Jean turned to say something to her, and smiled when she saw Jubilee's awestruck expression. "This is a dressmaker's," she said. "I guess, where you lived, you had to make your own clothes, right?" Jubilee nodded dumbly. "Well, here we can go and buy our dresses ready-made. We don't have to make them unless we want something that isn't in the store. And eve then Mistress Hannah can make dresses fir us if we want it." She opened her arms wide. "So let's go shopping, and get you some clothes!"

Jubilee found that shopping with two women wasn't like going to the drygoods stores with Logan and picking out bolts of cloth to sew into clothes. For one thing, this shop had so many different colors, types, and styles of dresses that she had no idea where to start. She wandered down racks of dresses in satin, wool, cotton, calico, gingham, and other fabrics she couldn't even name, and when she finally picked out a dress of modest, somber charcoal-gray cotton, Jean shook her head, laughed, and took the dress away from her. 'Silly, you're not going to a funeral." She said.

"But that's all the colors I'm used to wearing!" Jubilee protested. "I can't wear all these bright colors, I'm a--"

"Slave?" Jean said, smiling as Jubilee trailed off in confusion. "You're not a slave anymore, dear. Remy told us he brought you here to free you, and then he wants to marry you. So you can't go around wearing dark colors. Come on. We'll help."

Ororo came up with a blue dress, and gave it to Jubilee. "Mistress Hannah has a changing room in the back. Go back there and take off the dress you're wearing, and put this on and come out so we can see how it fits." Jubilee took the dress and went through the door at the back of the shop, and soon afterward came out wearing the dress.

Mistress Hannah came bustling over to see how things were going, and made an approving sound when she saw the dress. "Right lovely color for her, with her eyes matching and all, eh?" She walked around Jubilee, and the girl blushed at being the object of such scrutiny. Hannah made a disapproving sound. "But too thin. Much too thin. You'll have to put some meat on those bones, eh, Jean?" She smiled at the redhead.

"I don't have to," Jean replied cheerfully. "Remy will. He brought her here and installed her in the room next to his in the family wing up at the house."

"Ah," Hannah said, as if she understood. For all Jubilee knew, she very well might. "Well, since she will be gaining some weight, perhaps an extra seam here, which can be let out later, will suffice." She took a pinch of fabric around a side seam beside the bodice and looked at Jean. Jean nodded. "Very well, then," Hannah said cheerfully. "This is her town dress, is it not?"

"Yes," Ororo said, when Jubilee looked mystified. "She will need two or three everyday dresses, and two dinner dresses."

Jubilee stared at them. "I have to have more than one?"

Jean nodded. "We do things a little differently, Jubilee. You'll have a couple of everyday dresses, a little plainer than the one you have now. The dress you have on will be your town dress, the dress you put on when you go out. And because Charles insists that we dress for dinner, you'll have to get two fancy dresses for dining."

Jubilee's mouth dropped open at the thought of so many clothes, and Jean laughed. "Go on in, take that off, and try this on," she said, pushing an armful of earth-brown cloth at her. "This is one of the everyday dresses."

Jubilee walked back into the room and closed the door, then began the process of slipping out of the dress. She was stunned. She would need so many clothes? Why, it was easier being a slave, she didn't have to wear so much. And with this many layers of clothes on, how was she expected to move? What kinds of chores could she do in dresses like this? She wished with all her heart that she could go back to Papa, where all she wore…all she had to wear…was her white petticoat, her white pantaloons, and a plain, no-frills frock of plain gray, black, or denim blue cloth. She wished mightily for that denim cloth; the clothes made from it held up well to the hard traveling she and Remy had been doing.

She chose, for her everyday dresses, two frocks of plain sparrow-brown stuff; then when Jean picked out a buttercup yellow dress for dinner wear, she firmly refused and chose instead a cranberry dress with long sleeves and a smaller bustle than anything else. "Remy likes red,' she said in explanation to the other two women, carefully not mentioning the fact that the red dress was easier to move in than the yellow one, which was incredibly heavy and made of so many layers of frothy satin she wondered how long it Had taken to make it.

She slipped into the red dress that evening, and was doubly glad for her choice. The dress was hard enough to move in; the stupid shoes just made walking harder.

They had stopped at the cobbler and gotten her shoes to match the dress. They were ridiculous little high-heeled slippers that Jubilee hated but that the cobbler insisted were all the fashion lately. Jean had backed him up, but Jubilee insisted on getting a pair of sturdy buttoned shoes like she had been accustomed to wearing, despite the cobbler's protestations that a small, dainty foot like hers should be in delicate, dainty shoes. Jean smiled, and let her have her way, and Jubilee also purchased a pair of boots, like the ones she had gone riding in at the ranch.

Remy was sitting at the far end of the table when she and Jean made their entrances for dinner, and she saw that he approved of her choice too, from the way his eyes flashed approval at her. All the men in the room, Charles included, rose from their seats as the two women entered, a courtesy that Jubilee felt disconcerted by from the novelty of it, and Remy pulled her chair out for her as Scott pulled out Jean's. Ororo stood in the doorway of the dining room, similarly dressed but with a billowing white apron on over the dress as she directed servers to place the dishes they carried in the appropriate places on the table. When all the platters were carried in, she removed her apron and sent it into the kitchen with one of the maids, then Henry pulled out her chair for her.

The table was loaded with more food than Jubilee had ever seen in one place her whole life. Even the Railmaster, the richest man she'd ever known, didn't eat like this. A huge haunch of beef graced the center of the table, its savory aroma setting her mouth to watering; there were potatoes and some kind of green vegetable on the side, and a large bowl of something Jean called a 'salad', which was nothing more than raw greens mixed with a 'dressing' of oil, vinegar, and herbs. It was surprisingly good, though, Jubilee admitted when she tasted it; the 'dressing' turned what she would have thought to be horse food to something palatable for human consumption. Then, to drink, there was wine. Jubilee didn't like the taste, but she sipped it obediently. Jubilee wondered, wistfully, if Logan would have liked some of this. There was a plate of steaming hot, fresh bread, with a soft cheese that tasted so much better than the stuff that Remy had bought from inns along the way. Butter there was, too, but Jubilee, after the first taste, avoided it, choosing cheese for her bread instead. The butter she had made at the ranch for herself and her dear Papa tasted much better, and she smiled behind her slice of bread. As fancy as these people were, they still couldn't make butter. It made her feel better.

The food on the table disappeared faster than she'd ever thought possible, and when she finally sat back, watching as the plates were carried back to the kitchen, she wondered what everyone was waiting for. Moments later, a serving girl came out with three apple pies. The others smiled, and dug into it, and Remy cut her a huge piece and dumped it on her plate, despite her protesting that she was full and didn't want it. She ate obediently, feeling like she was going to burst the seams of the gown, and rose when the others did. Suddenly, she was feeling tired and sleepy, and Remy saw. Charles was about to address her, to ask her if she would come to his study to talk with him, but Remy gave his head a tiny, negative shake. Charles looked at the sleepy girl, and decided it would be better for Remy to take her up to her room.

Jubilee was so sleepy she barely noticed when he started unlacing her dress. She did snap at him when he started to loosen her shift, and insisted she could get undressed by herself. Protests notwithstanding, he waited until she had fallen asleep before he left her room, quietly closing the door.