Columbine by MIRANDA JARRETT

serious affair, but at least beforehand people were whispering and smiling among themselves, and Dianna wished Hester were here to identify everyone and perhaps introduce her. So far she had received only nods and curious stares in response to her shy smiles, and when, at last, another young woman came to sit beside her, she eagerly made room.
    The newcomer introduced herself as Ruth and made a great show of arranging her skirts neatly on the bench on either side of her.
    “I don’t know how my mistress thinks she’d fare in a forsaken place like this,” she sniffed.
    “She’d perish, she would! Our meeting house in New London’s ten times finer than this, with silver candlesticks an’ carving on the’ pulpit!”
    True, the Wickhamton meeting house was plain, the wails simply whitewashed and the benches pegged together from pine. There were no statues and no stained glass, none of the rich cushions for kneeling or embroidered hangings that Dianna remembered from the churches in London. But she doubted the New London meeting house was so much grander that Ruth had reason to complain, and, besides, Dianna liked the building’s simplicity, much as she liked Plumstead’s and much, too, as she already disliked Ruth.
    “You are visiting?”
    “My mistress be here by the’ especial invitation of a certain gentleman,” said Ruth archly.
    “Though, of course, as is proper, she stays wit’ her aunt, Madame Bass.”
    Before Dianna could ask the man’s name, Ruth leaned forward excitedly.
    “Oh, there they be now!
    Did ye ever see a more handsome couple?”
    Dianna looked, and her heart sank. Walking proudly to the first bench was Kit, his dark green velvet coat the ideal color for his eyes, the white linen of his shirt in striking contrast to his sun browned face. No other man there could even come close to him, decided Dianna sadly, except perhaps Jonathan, though Dianna found his darker coloring less appealing than Kit’s gold.
    But while under one arm Kit carded a wide-brimmed beaver hat with a plume, tucked beneath the other was the hand of a young woman every bit as fair as himself. She was elegantly tall, her movements fashionably languid. Her blond hair was artfully dressed in a tumble of curls, crowned by a tiny lace cap, and her skin was pale and perfect. As Kit stepped to one side to let her pass, she smiled brilliantly at him and boldly brushed her skirts across his legs as she moved by him.
    “That be my mistress, Constance Lindsey,” whispered Ruth importantly.
    “Don’t that gown become her? It’s in the latest fashion at court.”
    “Nay, it’s not,” Dianna whispered back. It was small of her, she knew, but she couldn’t help herself.
    “No one’s worn turned-back petticoats for at least three seasons. I’m new arrived from London myself,” she added hastily as Ruth eyed her with suspicion.
    “Well, no matter, it does become her,” said Ruth firmly.
    “And when she marries Master Sparhawk, then he can take her to London an’ she can see for herself. Master Sparhawk be rich enough t’give her whatever she fancies.”
    Dianna tried to keep her whispered voice level.
    “They are betrothed?”
    Ruth tossed her head.
    “Well, nay, not yet, but they will be before she goes back to New London.” Behind them an older woman shushed Ruth loudly, and Dianna realized that, while they’d been whispering,
    the service had begun. She bowed her head with the others, glad no one could see the unhappiness she knew clouded her face.
    Miserably she pictured herself as she must look in Lucy Wing’s worn grey linsey-woolsey, her haft braided beneath a plain white cap. Her hands were red and rough from the cold, and when she’d caught sight of her reflection this morning in a polished pewter bowl, she had been shocked by how pale and thin her face had become. She had never been a beauty like Constance Lindsey, but, oh, how she wished Kit had seen her, just once, before her father’s death, when she