She was allowed to do more than one thing at a time, wasn’t she?
She dressed quickly in her simplest work dress and bustled down to the coops to catch Errol while he was at his feed.
He didn’t even look surprised to see her there. “Morning,” he said, blinking at her.
“Goodmorning,” she corrected. “I need a shirt. One of yours.”
He narrowed his eyes, throwing a handful of dried corn at the hens. “Why?”
“Because Jasper ruined his and I need him to look respectable this morning, and Mal’s clothes are too narrow to fit him. A shirt, Errol!”
“Fine!” he said. “Go get one. You know where to find them.”
“That I do!” she sang, bopping the rooster on the head with two fingers before he could retaliate on her way out. “Good morning, little bastard.”
“His name is Titus!” Errol called after her, which made her giggle all the way through her next two tasks.
She was still smiling when she threw the shirt at Jasper’s unconscious face and watched with a sort of suspended, begrudging fascination at all the muscles that moved under his exposed torso as he clawed himself awake, mumbling excuses from whatever was happening in his dream.
Why had it never occurred to her that his freckles might extend beneath his shirt? They crawled over his shoulders, some in little patches where the sun had found its way through his collar, down his throat, and over the top of his chest in the most fascinating patterns.
Frecklesandchest hair.
Well, it had been a time of revelations, she supposed.
“Up,” she said, once he’d come to, his distracting, fascinating bare chest heaving and his breath ragged. “Coffee’s in the dining room. I need you on the dock in an hour for when the moor opens. Good?”
“Bad!” he shouted, but she was already walking away.
It wouldn’t do to stay and continue to examine him in the light of day, after all.
Still, she was grinning to herself at his flustering reaction and his appearance all the way to the theater.
Sadly, Lady Capulet’s gown was not ready yet, and the others that were still in the Rest were in various states of half-creation,so there was nothing to be done but to walk down to the Odalisque directly to find one that would serve today’s purposes.
There were at least two there, one for Nurse and one for Juliet.
Obviously, it would have to be Juliet.
Obviously.
They had decided against putting her in soft, girlish pastels and instead opted for bright, bold colors that Hattie insisted were prized for maidens throughout the desert cultures of North Africa.
“Why would you want to marry a girl you couldn’t spot between dunes?” Hattie had pointed out. “Red and gold. Blue and silver. Green and copper. You get the idea. You can be soft and powderyafteryou’re married.”
Libba had liked that.
And there was a red and gold Bedouin dress with a royal blue lining, loosely based on the cloak Napoleon Bonaparte (the fool; the utter, fashionable genius that was a fool) had worn to march into Egypt.
Sister Jeanne, their Juliet, had been wearing it during yesterday’s rehearsals, so it was easy to find and had its matching jewelry close at hand as well. And, Libba was able to get into it quickly because Monica had designed the costumes to not require a bunch of fussy lacing.
Bless her.
This morning was also one of the rare times that Libba wished she kept more wigs in her own hair texture. All the ones on the pegs just now were for a fair-skinned woman’s head, long blonde and red manes with braided bands and coifs.
She grabbed her two-pronged hair stick and resolved to simply claim that a simple, stabbed-through twist was part of her home culture, though she did stop to bring down and shape several small ringlets around her face.
She put a tin of rose oil rouge in her bodice as she hurried down the cobbles toward the docks, still knotting the overcloak atop the red dress. Her boots hit the street corners in good time, with the sun still making a lazy path up over the water line.
