A Spear of Summer Grass by Deanna Raybourn Read Free Book Online

occasional indulgence, but Wickenden lit up like a boy who had just seen his first naughty photograph.
    “How deliciously scandalous,” he breathed. He leaned close to my ear, whispering a few inappropriate suggestions, but I pretended not to hear. A steward rang the veranda bell just then, sounding the signal for passengers to board the train. Dora hurried on, but Wickenden caught my hand.
    “Silly girl. We needn’t go yet. It takes ages to warm those damned engines up. Unlike mine,” he finished, sticking a fat, limp tongue in my ear.
    I turned to smile at him as I took the end of my cigar and held its glowing tip to his trouser leg. It took less time than I would have thought. The linen of his suit was excellent quality, woven so fine the cigar burned right through and singed his skin before he realised what was happening. He jumped up, scattering sparks and swear words into the darkness.
    I swayed off towards the train as he hurled a variety of names at my back. As usual, they rolled right off, and I returned to the carriage to find that the beds had been made up with fresh linen and blankets and Dora was already tucked up for the night. She had left out my night things as well as a jar of my cold cream from Elizabeth Arden. A better lady’s maid would have stayed up to put away my clothes, but I had to make allowances. She was family after all. I stripped off my dress and underthings and began to wash.
    “Did he make a pass?” She didn’t look up from her book, but the fact that she was reading meant she was feeling better. I glanced at the title. Meditations on the Song of Songs .
    “He did, and a clumsy one at that. No finesse at all.” I dried myself and began rubbing in the cold cream.
    “What did you do?”
    “Burned him with my cigar.”
    She smothered a laugh and returned to her book as I snuggled down in the covers. The train pulled away, blasting its whistle into the long African night.
    * * *
    The next morning we stopped for breakfast at another of the innumerable stations, and I ate a plate of surprisingly tasty eggs with a few questionable sausages and a bowl of cut tropical fruits spritzed with lime. Dora nibbled at corn gruel and weak tea, and when it didn’t immediately reappear, she added an egg and some toast.
    “Do you realise that’s the first full meal you’ve eaten since Marseilles?” I asked, helping myself to a slice of her toast.
    She perked up. “Really? Do you suppose I’ve lost weight?”
    Dora’s hips were the bane of her existence. She spent most of her time slimming—a vain effort in more ways than one.
    “Hard to tell in that frock,” I answered, slathering the toast with passionfruit jam.
    She pulled a face. “I don’t suppose it’s very becoming, but you know I don’t really understand clothes.”
    I shrugged. “You’re fighting a losing battle anyway, Dodo. Straight lines don’t flatter your figure,” I told her. Dora’s shape might have been fashionable in Edwardian times, but fashions had changed and unfortunately Dora’s body didn’t. The pouter-pigeon silhouette which came naturally to her—heavy breasts and rounded hips—was hopelessly out of date. There wasn’t a dress to be had in all of Paris that would have complemented her small waist and Junoesque curves. It was all slim seams and clinging fabrics that conspired to make her look lumpy and dull. Her hair didn’t help. It was nice enough—the colour of dark honey and rippling like a windy pond when she took it out of the pins. But it was long enough she could sit on it and the roll she wore at the nape of her neck made her look like someone’s grandmother. All that hair gave her a perpetual headache, too, but it just went hand in hand with her digestive troubles.
    “Then there’s no point to my bothering about clothes since nothing looks good on me anyway.”
    I didn’t trouble to respond. Usually Dora had as much vanity as a dust mop, but every once in a while she got onto the subject