Owning Beauty

Ashen had never dressed up for a man before, never put on this cream-colored gown with silken texture and pearlescent hues. She had never secured her plain black hair in an upward swirl with a golden comb or seen beauty in the face of a mirror. She looked upon her own face without smiling and wondered at herself for doing all this now.

“Are you sure you know how to play this?” Pieter’s voice drifted into her bedroom from out front where she had left him. “I thought you were a piano teacher.”

Ashen studied her expression in the glass, then sighed and affixed her pearl earrings. In for a bar, in for the song. She stepped out into her apartment living room to see Pieter ever so carefully setting the violin back down on her glass table.

“Sometimes you surpri—” He looked up at that moment and faltered to silence. Pieter had never seen her beautiful.

“Is my playing surprising?” Ashen asked plainly. She had loved music from her childhood, from before she had any opportunity of making it a vocation. She had loved the violin when first Red Wolf showed her how to play it and loved the piano when he bought one for her music book and taught her to turn lines and bars into notes. Red Wolf was leader and brother to her in one and he had loved it when she played.

Pieter shook his head, still seeming dazed. “No. Just… your versatility, I suppose.”

He did not sound very convincing, but Ashen let it go. She had never had a man lose his silver tongue around her either and the sensation was not entirely unpleasant. In fact, the edges of a smile began to glimmer about her mouth as she picked up her wrap and let him help her into it. His hands lingered as he did before he finally handed her the violin to put in its case for carrying.

“I look forward to meeting your family,” he said cautiously, rightly presuming he was on trial this evening.

She turned to him and realized suddenly she was still smiling and that her smile was not practice. It was not because a smile was called for but because it had simply happened while she wasn’t paying attention. “I’ll play a song for you tonight,” she said, and then she turned away and walked outside, waiting a moment for him to compose himself enough to follow.