‘I like that outfit,’ Adam remarked presently when she couldn’t think of anything to say—well, how to express herself anyway.
Which was probably why she took his remark up so eagerly. ‘Do you‘? Actually I chose it myself—Jeanette let me loose—but I think she approved. She said it was perfect for——’ Roz stopped, then shrugged and smiled faintly, ‘a lady of the manor to be comfortably at home in the evenings in. Jeanette has some … rather old-fashioned notions, but then she’s very wise too and …’
‘Well, I think she’s right about everything on this occasion,’ he broke in with his dark eyes looking amused. ‘You are the lady of the manor,’ he added.
Only in name at the moment, Roz thought but did not say.
But he went on, ‘Do you always take Jeanette shopping with you?’
‘Nearly always. Even your mother thinks she has a marvellous eye for clothes. Adam, do you think we could do something about that‘? I mean, put her through a dress designing course and a millinery course? Do you remember that hat I wore to the Prime Minister’s Cup‘? Oh, well, you probably don’t,’ she shrugged as he narrowed his eyes, ‘but …’
‘Yes, I do. You were all in sapphire blue that day, that made your eyes look like sapphires, except for the hat——I mean it wasn’t all blue, it had pink rosebuds on it. It was very pert and attractive.’
Roz blinked. ‘Oh. Well,’ she said almost as if she’d forgotten what she’d been saying.
‘Jeanette had something to do with the hat, I gather,’ Adam suggested.
‘Yes! She virtually remodelled it!’ Roz said gratefully.
‘It had this long yellow feather on it originally, but when we got it home, we decided we’d made an awful mistake because it made me look like … something out of the Folies Bergére.’
Adam’s teeth glinted in a. smile. ‘I can’t imagine that.’
‘Well, no, knowing the rest of me I don’t suppose you can,’ she said, smiling back with an imp of mischief dancing in her eyes suddenly. ‘But the point is …’
‘Jeanette replaced the feathers with the rosebuds?’
‘She made them. She stiffened some silk in beaten egg white and before it had set she fashioned these gorgeous lifelike rosebuds out of it. Then she sprayed them with hair spray in case I was beset by wasps-—-she learnt that trick from her mother, who decorated a Christmas cake with stiffened ribbon, but the ants got to it.’
‘Perhaps the icing enticed the ants,’ Adam said gravely.
‘Perhaps,’ Roz conceded. ‘I didn’t have any trouble with creepy-crawlies, but …’
‘As for the rest of you,’ he interrupted, ‘I think they’d have adored you at the Folies Bergére, but I doubt if you’d have liked it much. That’s what I meant.’
‘I … wouldn’t have thought I was … buxom enough for that kind of thing. What a horrible word, but do you know what I mean?’ And she was assailed by a fit of very natural laughter.
Adam laughed too, then he said, ‘It’s not always a question of being buxom, Roz. Your figure’s perfect, for you. In fact it’s astonishingly lovely.’
Her smile faded. ‘Then why———‘?’ she whispered. ‘I mean, if you think that why are we …’ She stopped and twisted her hands together uncomfortably.
He sat up. ‘I thought you’d understood and accepted it.’
‘I …’
‘Roz, moments ago you were happy and relaxed and you were chatting to me as you haven’t for ages. You slept today, and I’ve never known you to sleep during the day—don’t you see, it’s working already, my dear.’
‘I can see,’ she cleared her throat, ‘that I haven’t been a very successful wife, which I promised myself I would be, you know. I didn’t say to myself, well, I haven’t got much option about this, so I’ll make it as difficult as possible. I said the opposite. I … want you to know that, Adam.’ She looked down at her hands, then lifted her lashes.
‘Do you think I don’t?’ he retorted.
She flinched. ‘Then …’
‘Roz,’ the light of impatience died out of his eyes suddenly, ‘look, all I’m suggesting is a short break from each other, that’s all, and I want to make sure you understand that before I go. It’s nothing to get into a panic about.’