It was the hair…

It was the hair that Portia noticed first, coiled like wire beneath its heavy metal pins. As she turned, it caught the light, the multitude of different shades of gold and caramel that laced around each other shining in an almost religious fashion about her head. She was talking animatedly to a small Arab man, her white shirtsleeves rolled neatly up to her elbows, a pair of little round glasses hanging off the end of a string of glass beads around her neck swinging this way and that as she pulled her hands out of the pockets of her trousers and started gesturing forcefully at different point of the site in front of them.

Portia watched, somewhat amused, as the little man scuttled off and Dr Blanche Mottershead heaved a great sigh and pushed a few escaped curls back from her face. She certainly seemed to live up to her reputation; extremely intelligent, witty, and most importantly in this case, in possession of an often unpredictable temper. But she seemed to hold a certain beauty that Portia's informers had failed to tell her about. Thought she was perhaps not classically beautiful, she was, in her own way, really rather striking. The full curves of her hourglass figure, and the wild curls that seemed to be so desperately trying to escape her neat, tidy metal pins, all seemed to appear strangely wonderful to Portia.

She stopped, becoming very still, and looked up straight into Portia's eyes, returning her gaze steadily, seemingly drinking in every detail of her as Portia her self had been doing not moments before. A little smile seemed to twitch at the corners of her full mouth and suddenly Portia found her strolling over, and all of a sudden they were standing not a foot apart. She stuck out her hand and said,

"You must be Portia St. Clair. I'm Dr Blanche Mottershead." Portia took her hand and shook it.

"I know. I've heard a great deal about you," she said. Then she smiled, and looked into the woman's bright green eyes, and added, "And please, call me Portia. I have a feeling that we are going to become very close to one another."