“Maybe with a nice wide leather belt,” she muttered. “Something in scarlet with a really flashy buckle.” She ran a hand down the nubby cotton and scowled.
The hemline was all wrong and the color was simply hopeless. She absolutely refused to look like a dowd, whether she was attending the ballet or running from bullets. Sitting on the ground, she dug out her makeup case. At least she could do something about her face.
When Doug returned, she was trying and rejecting several different styles of wrapping the lamba over her shoulders. “Nothing,” she said in disgust, “absolutely nothing works with this sack. I think I’d rather wear your shirt and pants. At least…” She broke off as she turned around. “Good God, what’s that?”
“A pig,” he said precisely as he struggled with the squirming bundle.
“Of course it’s a pig. What’s it for?”
“More cover.” He fastened the rope he’d slipped around the pig’s neck to a tree. With a few indignant squeaks, it subsided in the grass. “The packs’ll go in those baskets I lifted, so it looks like we’re carrying our wares to market. The pig’s a little more insurance. Lots of farmers in this region take livestock to market.” He stripped off his shirt as he spoke. “What’d you put that stuff on your face for? The important thing is for nobody to see any more of it than absolutely necessary.”
“I might have to wear this shroud, but I refuse to look like a hag.”
“You’ve got a real problem with vanity,” he told her as he pulled on his newly acquired shirt.
“I don’t see vanity as a problem,” she countered. “When it’s justified.”
“Pile your hair under that hat—all of it.”
She did, turning slightly away while he peeled off his jeans and replaced them with the cotton pants. To make up for the wide gap of inches, he cinched them with another piece of rope. When she turned, they studied each other.
The pants gathered generously at his waist, billowing down over his hips and riding to several inches above his ankles. The lamba he’d draped over his shoulders and back hid his build. The hat shadowed his face and covered most of his hair.
He might get away with it, as long as no one looked too closely, Whitney decided.
The long wide dress concealed every dip and curve of her body. It left her feet and ankles exposed. Much too elegant ankles, Doug observed, and decided they’d have to be coated with dust and dirt. The lamba, draped around her throat, over her shoulders, and down her arms, was a good touch. For the most part, her hands would be hidden.
The straw hat had none of the style and flash of the white fedora she’d once worn, yet despite the fact that it thoroughly covered her head and hair, it did nothing to disguise the classic and very Western beauty of her face.
“You won’t get a mile,” he muttered.
“What do you mean?”
“Your face. Christ, do you have to look like something that just stepped off the cover of Vogue?”
Her lips curved ever so slightly. “Yes.”
Dissatisfied, Doug rearranged her lamba. With a bit of ingenuity, he brought it farther up on her throat so that her chin was nearly buried in the folds, then pulled her hat down farther on her head, tilting down the front brim.
“Just how the hell am I supposed to see?” She blew at the lamba. “And breathe?”
“You can fold the brim back when nobody’s around.” With his hands on his hips, he stood back to take a long, critical look. She looked shapeless, sexless, and overwhelmed by the circling shawl… until she looked up and shot him a glare.
There was nothing sexless about those eyes, he thought. They reminded him that there was indeed a shape under all that cotton. He shoved the packs into the baskets and covered them with the handfuls of fruit and food they had left. “When we get out on the road, you keep your head down and walk behind me, like a properly disciplined wife.”
“Shows what you know about wives.”
“Let’s get moving before they decide to backtrack this part of the forest.” He hefted a basket on each shoulder and started back down the steep, uncertain path.
“Didn’t you forget something?”
“You get the pig, lover.”
Deciding her choices were limited, Whitney untied the rope from the tree and began to tug the uncooperative pig behind her. Eventually, she found it simpler to bundle him up in her arms like a