Page 16 of Frankly, My Dear

“Well, you’ll be rid of me soon enough. Where’s this steamboat office you mentioned?”

“Don’t you think you ought to change your dress first?” he asked as his eyes swept her low décolletage and crumpled gown.

“I don’t have any other clothes.” Suddenly Selene had a ridiculous notion. Looking at the moss green velvet drapes with gold tassels lining the tall windows, she giggled. “Hmmm. Maybe I could make these drapes into a dress àla Gone With the Wind.”

“What? Don’t you dare touch those drapes. The hotel would charge me a fortune.” He looked at her as if she were truly crazy. “Do you often make gowns out of hotel drapes? Can’t you conjure something out of that magic box you carry around like a—”

A loud knocking on the door interrupted his words.

“James, open the door. Quickly. The city guard will be here soon.”

“The police?” Selene mouthed silently. What kind of disreputable character had she attached herself to? He could be Jesse James, or something. No, that was another time period. Wasn’t it? “Who is it?” she asked James.

“My overseer, Fergus Cameron.”

James opened the door and a large, burly, red-haired man slipped inside. Taking one look at Selene, he cast a reproving look at James and snorted with disbelief. “So Corporal Atwood was right. Well, you’ve really landed in it this time.”

“Why is Atwood coming here, Fergus?” James asked with forced patience.

“For her,” he said, pointing accusingly at Selene.

“Me?” Selene squeaked out.

Fergus ignored Selene and addressed James. “Seems your brother Victor went to the authorities. Claims you’re harboring an escaped slave. Name of Selene.” He inclined his head in her direction. “Can I assume she’s Selene?”

James nodded, and Selene gasped.

“Did you really tell Victor and your father that you planned to marry her?”

James shrugged. “I wasn’t serious.” Then he turned to Selene. “Are you sure you don’t have your manumission papers with you?”

Selene counted to ten silently. “Why won’t you believe that I’m not black?”

Both men scanned her body disbelievingly.

Selene sighed deeply, struggling for patience. “Listen, you two blockheads. I am not a racist, and I would have no objection to being black, in my own time, but read my lips. I…am…not…black!”

“That’s what they all say,” Fergus commented to James. “Every light-skinned Nigra from here to Mississippi is trying to pass these days.”

She turned her back on Fergus and informed James through gritted teeth, “I can prove that I’m white, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to expose myself to you creeps.”

James lifted an eyebrow cynically. “Lady, I’ve seen your breasts…and a great deal more of your flesh. Your skin is dusky…everywhere.”

Selene’s face flamed. She couldn’t believe he would make such a remark in front of another man.

“I told you before that I got an all-over body tan so I could model swimsuits.”

“What’s an all-over body tan?” Fergus asked James.

James rolled his eyes as if to say, “Who knows?”

“I lay out in the sun in the nude.”

Both men turned as one and stared at her as if she’d just sprouted three noses.

“Why?” James asked.

“Because Sports Illustrated magazine wanted models with suntans,” she answered tiredly, sensing the hopelessness of explaining herself properly.