Deserter by Mike Shepherd Read Free Book Online Page A

of Navy issue: battle dress, khakis, whites, and the standard formal evening dress of a junior female officer. She pulled the formal from the lineup and held it next to the cream dress. One was appropriate for a fairy Princess. The other was just flat dowdy.
    The uniform’s white, floor-length skirt was cut from the same design as a millennia of gunnysacks. Kris had chosen the blue wool blouse that had the tight choker neck, thereby avoiding any hint of décolletage. Miniatures of her few medals were already in place. Abby looked back and forth between Kris and the standard dress uniform. “The colors are not your best,” she said as she chewed on her lower lip.
    “The colors are established Navy wide,” Kris answered back.
    Abby laid the Wounded Lion’s blue sash across the blouse. The light, watermarked blue of the sash and the dark blue of the blouse could only be said to fit because a thousand years of valor and service said they did. Abby shook her head, opened her mouth.
    Kris cut her off. “That is what I am wearing tonight.”
    Abby turned to Harvey and Jack. “Do all military uniforms seek to make a woman look so . . .”
    “Unappealing?” Jack offered.
    “Yes.”
    “It seems that way,” Harvey agreed. “Women are there to do a job, not flirt,” the old trooper growled.
    “But the men look so dashing in their uniforms,” Abby said.
    “A historical anachronism left from days past,” Kris spat. “We women, however, have all the advantages of the modern era.”
    “Or error,” Jack put in with one of his patented grins.
    “Supper is ready,” Nelly spoke up, still in a low-tech voice, startling Kris. “Harvey, Lotty wants you downstairs to pick up a tray. Will you men be eating in the kitchen?”
    “Looks that way,” Jack said, and the men left Kris and her new mistress of the wardrobe to dress. Having won on the most important point of debate that afternoon, Kris let Abby do as she pleased. Pampered, made over, and perfumed, her short, blond hair wound around her head in a confection that Kris never would have attempted, she was dressed in less than an hour. Nelly was back around Kris’s shoulders, a second reason to wear the uniform, before she and Abby crossed swords again. Abby returned with the diamond and gold tiara Mother had bought at some overpriced rummage sale. “Perfect for a Princess,” Mother had gushed.
    As Kris did then, she said, “I’m not wearing that.”
    Abby started to say something, looked at Kris, and seemed to think better of it. “What will you be wearing?”
    “Right beside that in my jewelry box was a simple silver circlet, standard issue for any woman junior officer in formal dinner attire.”
    “Not that!”
    “Yes that.”
    Abby glanced at the tiara, then eyed the circlet. “A Princess should wear a tiara.”
    “That is a tiara. Says so right in the dress regulations. Tiara, formal, junior officers, female.”
    “Do senior officers wear something nicer?” Abby said, trading the diamond concoction for the Navy issue.
    “Yep. They get nicer and nicer until Admirals are wearing something pretty fancy.”
    “And are very old,” Abby said with a sour frown on her face.
    “Horribly old,” Kris agreed.
    Tiaraed and sashed, Kris made her way carefully down the stairs in heels twice as high as she normally wore . . . which also were prescribed in regulations. Maybe Abby had a point. Whoever designed this outfit sure hadn’t put her physical comfort or appearance at a very high priority. Was the uniform regulations development bureau the last place in the Navy where a woman hater was allowed free rein? Jack, now in a tux, stood at the bottom of the stairs.
    “You going to catch me when I fall?”
    “Looks like it.”
    “You could come up here and help me stay on these heels.”
    “And get spiked by one? Sorry, not in my job description.”
    “Seems like your job description is getting kind of short.”
    “Yes, isn’t it,” Jack said, stepping aside