Pilgrims Don't Wear Pink by Stephanie Kate Strohm Read Free Book Online

look like in a purple minidress and green scarf. Focus, Libby. “I’d start off with one of the simpler recipes and then play to your strengths with the crafts,” Ruth advised.
    â€œI was thinking I’d lead with needlepoint. Little sailboat samplers embroidered in indigo thread.” I could see them in my head—adorable. And accurate! Needlework was a really common pastime for colonial women, and homespun linen thread dyed with indigo was the most readily accessible material. Plus indigo is just beautiful. By the time I was done with this place, I would have Martha-ed Maine up!
    â€œGood.” Ruth nodded approvingly. “Good. They’re usually a sweet group of girls, so you should have no problems. If the ghost doesn’t get you, that is,” she added.
    I half expected her to punctuate it with a “Bah, humbug!”
    â€œClean yourself up, sweep the front steps, and you’re done for the day. You did good, kid,” she concluded gruffly.
    Using the window’s reflection, I wiped the sooty streaks off my forehead and repinned my hair out of my eyes. My beet-and-ash makeup line was holding up remarkably well, even hours later. Maybe I could market it as EverAsh EverLast. Grabbing a broom out of a tiny cupboard under the stairs, I headed out to the front steps. The sun was lower in the sky, just above the water, bathing everything in a golden glow. A whistled tune I recognized as “Hey, Ho, Blow the Man Down” drifted down the lane. It segued smoothly into a low wolfwhistle. The insanely hot Squaddie who had smiled at me yesterday was leaning against the front gate, in his tan breeches and white shirt, navy jacket flung casually over his shoulder.
    â€œSome girls,” he said with a rakish grin, “were just born to wear a corset.” His eyes lingered on my neckline, and he whistled again.
    So maybe he’d used a historically inaccurate term for eighteenth-century undergarments . . . and maybe on a modern street corner it would have been kind of pervy . . . but I felt like I was in a movie. The star of my very own Ang Lee–directed period film or BBC-produced miniseries or historical HBO special. This, right now, was the life I had always wanted, but I was afraid only existed in my head or at the movies. Thrilled to the tips of my toes, I blushed to the roots of my hair.
    â€œYour name, Cinderella?”
    â€œLibby.” If my life was a romance novel, sparks would have been flying and bosoms would have been heaving. But with a sailor dangling over the garden gate, for the first time I was entertaining the possibility that maybe life
was
a romance novel.
    â€œGood.” He plucked a primrose off the vine twining about the white picket fence. “Now I won’t have to search the kingdom to find you again.” He twirled the flower in between his fingers. “I’m Cameron.” He squinted into the sun. “Cam.”
    â€œCam.” I sighed rapturously. I could hear an imaginary
West Side Story
orchestra tuning up: “The most beautiful sound I ever heard . . .” Except instead of “Maria,” the violins were singing “Cameron.”
    â€œCome here often?” he joked.
    â€œFrom now on? Every day.” I grinned ruefully. “I work here now.”
    â€œThen now I know where I’ll be.” He tossed the rose up to the steps. I caught it as he quoted, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep.”
    â€œThe more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite,” I completed the couplet. Thank you, freshman English.
    Cam raised his eyebrows and let out a long, impressed whistle. “Until we meet again.” He bowed, then bobbed his head toward the water. “I must down to the seas again.” He slung his jacket over his shoulder and strolled confidently away, whistling “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” which I recognized from