The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

green—if glimpsed, would not make her look out of place.
    They rode for a time in silence, but Miss Temple was soon aware that the other women shared her own sense of excitement and anticipation, if not her feeling of terrible suspense. Bit by bit they began making small exploratory comments to one another—first about the train, then about the coach or about each other’s clothing, and finally, hintingly, at their destination. They did not at first address Miss Temple, or indeed anyone in particular, merely offering comments in general and responding the same way. It was as if they were not supposed to be talking about their evening at all, and could only proceed to do so by degrees, each of them making it tacitly plain that they would not be averse to bending the rule. Of course Miss Temple was not averse in the slightest, she just had nothing to say. She listened to the pirate and the woman in silk compliment each other on their attire, and then to both of them approve of the third woman’s mask. Then they turned to her. So far she had said nothing, merely nodding her head once or twice in agreement, but now she knew they were all examining her quite closely. So she spoke.
    “I do hope I have worn the right shoes for this cold an evening.”
    She shifted her legs in the tight room between seats and raised her cloak, exhibiting her green leather boots, with their intricate lacing. The other three leaned to study them, and the pirate next to her confided, “They are most sensible—for it will be cold, I am sure.”
    “And your dress is green as well…with flowers,” noted the woman with the feathered collar, whose gaze had moved from the shoes to the strip of dress revealed above them.
    The woman in silk chuckled. “You come as a Suburban Rustick!” The others chuckled too and, so bolstered, she went on.
    “One of those ladies who live among novels and flowered sachets—instead of life itself, and life’s gardens. The Rustick, and the Piratical, the Silken, and the Feathered—we are all richly disguised!”
    Miss Temple thought this was a bit thick. She did not appreciate being termed either “suburban” or “rustick” and further was quite convinced that the person who condemns a thing—in this case novels—is the same person who’s wasted most of her life reading them. In the moment, as she was being insulted, it was all she could do not to reach across the coach (for it was an easy reach) and take sharp hold of the harpy’s delicate ear. But she forced herself to smile, and in doing so knew that she must place her immediate pride in the service of her adventure, and accept the more important fact that this woman’s disdain had given her a costume, and a role to play. She cleared her throat and spoke again.
    “Amongst so many ladies, all striving to be most elegant, I wondered if such a
costume
might be noticed all the more.”
    The pirate next to her chuckled. The silken woman’s smile was a little more fixed and her voice a bit more brittle. She peered more sharply at Miss Temple’s face, hidden in the shadow of her hood.
    “And what is your mask? I cannot see it…”
    “You can’t?”
    “No. Is it also green? It cannot be elaborate, to fit under that hood.”
    “Indeed, it is quite plain.”
    “But we cannot see it.”
    “No?”
    “But we should like to.”
    “My thinking was to make it that much more mysterious—it being in itself, as I say, plain.”
    In reply the silken woman leaned forward, as if to put her face right into the hood with Miss Temple, and Miss Temple instinctively shrank back as far as the coach would allow. The moment had become awkward, but in her ignorance Miss Temple was unsure where the burden of
gaucherie
actually lay—with her refusal or the silken woman’s gross insistence. The other two were silent, watching, their masks hiding any particular expression. Any second the woman would be close enough to see, or close enough to pull back the hood altogether—Miss Temple had to stop her in that very instant. She was helped, in this moment, by the sudden knowledge that these women were not likely to have lived in a house where savage punishment was a daily affair. Miss Temple merely extended two fingers of her right hand and poked them through the feathered mask-holes, straight into the woman’s eyes.
    The silken woman shot back in her seat, sputtering like an over-full kettle coming to boil. She heaved one or two particularly whingeing breaths