Corset Diaries

by Katie MacAlister

  “Will you teach me how to jump? I want to know how to jump. Dad used to do it and he promised me he’d teach me when I was older, and then Uncle Trevor hurt himself and died and he went back on his promise. You promised me I could go riding with you tomorrow, you can’t go back on it now.”

  “Whoa! Can I finish a sentence, please?” Her lower lip threatened to commence immediate pouting. “First of all, I’m not going to teach you anything—your father is. I’m just going along to keep him on an even keel, so to speak. He’s a much more experienced rider than I am, but I have to say your chances of learning to jump now are slim to none. However,” I said, holding up my hand to forestall the protest I could see her about to make. “That doesn’t mean he won’t ever teach you. You have to be a good rider before you learn to take jumps and such, so you’ll have a lot to do before you’re ready. And I’m not going to go back on my word; I try very hard to never do that. So just calm down and keep your nose clean so your dad won’t yank his permission.”

  She glared at me. Why was I not surprised? “My nose is always clean.”

  The following morning we took Melody with us. The ride itself was pretty much a nonevent since Max absolutely refused to allow Melody’s horse to go beyond a walk, as well as insisting that we flank her in case Penny spooked. We walked the horses all over the field while Max instructed Melody in the proper seat (she wasn’t riding sidesaddle, the lucky puck), how to hold the reins, and so forth. Pretty tame stuff, but she was thrilled to death. Max looked like he’d rather have his fingernails chipped out with an ice pick than be there, but he survived the experience.

  Oops, time for the morning prayer thing again. Loads to do today; it’s the much anticipated garden party. Everyone’s family members have been invited. The thought of the party has been the only thing holding everyone downstairs together. I’m worried about what’s going to happen once it’s over. Will they make it another week to the servants’ ball? Gah.

  Sunday

  September 19

  11:10 A.M.

  Bed, with a hot-water bottle, a stack of magazines, and a pot of cocoa

  The cramps woke me up this morning.

  “Oh, no,” I groaned as a bad one hit, forcing me into a fetal ball.

  “Hmm?” Max murmured sleepily above me, his voice muffled because curled up as I was, my head was level with his stomach. It was warm beneath the blankets and smelled of a marvelous blend of Max and the faint, lingering odor of sex, but even that wonderful mixture couldn’t distract me from my agony. “Tessa? What are you doing down there?”

  “Cramps,” I groaned, trying to relax even though every muscle wanted to tighten up against the pain.

  “Cramps?”

  “CRAMPS!” I yelled at his belly.

  He pushed the blankets down until my head emerged.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. Is there something I can do?”

  “Yes. Go ask Melody if there’s any of my ibu left.”

  “Ibu?”

  “Ibuprofen. Are you going to repeat everything I say?”

  “No, I’m sorry, it’s been a while since I lived with a woman.” Max slid out of bed and grabbed his dressing gown.

  Another gripping cramp hit and I groaned my way through it.

  “Are you normally in that much pain? Carol—my ex-wife—didn’t seem to suffer as much as you are.”

  I clutched my abdomen and glared at him. “Look, either you go find me some frigging ibuprofen, or I disembowel you to show you what it feels like. The choice is yours.”

  Wisely, he decided to find me some ibuprofen. Melody had used all of my precious stash, and all Alice had was a couple of aspirin that didn’t do much but take a bit of the edge off the cramps.

  Ellis offered to prepare a willow bark draught, which I refused. “Not unless it’s laced with codeine.”

  “Of course it’s not,” she said as I crawled into my own bed. “That wouldn’t be authentic, although if I had some laudanum, I could give you that. I doubt, however, that Roger is able to acquire that, since it contains opiates. Would you like some cocoa?”

  “Yeah. And something salty, too. Can you rustle up a hot-water bottle, do you think?”

  She could and did. By the time Max and the shooting-party guests and the rest of the house went off to church, I was as comfortable as I could be, which isn’t saying very much. I have no idea how women the last few thousand years have survived without heavy medication during their monthlies, and you know what? I don’t care. All I care about is that I survive the next twenty-four hours. I think I stand a good chance of that, thanks to Max. When he returned from church, he carried with him a bottle of ibuprofen he’d sent Teddy for at the local Boots (drugstore). I’m starting to feel human again, thank heaven, and am planning on making my grand reappearance at the al fresco luncheon in a couple of hours.

  Before I get into the shooting party, let me backtrack a couple of days and detail the happenings at the garden party.

  Everyone, especially the younger members of the staff, were really looking forward to the party, as it would be the first time they were allowed to see their families since the filming started.

  All of the maids’ families came—mostly parents, although I did meet Alice’s sister and Easter’s elderly grandmother, who was in service when she was a young girl.

  “She’s a good girl, our Easter,” Granny Chester said. The wardrobe department at U.K. Alive! had raided their sister film studio’s costume department to outfit everyone, and Granny, a tiny little woman with curly white hair and two of the biggest chin warts I’ve ever seen, very much enjoyed wearing a shiny black bombazine dress and frilly white widow’s cap that bobbed as she spoke.

  “Easter is a delight—we love having her here. And she’s just a whiz with fires.”

  “Aye, gets that from her granddad, she does. Always lighting fires, my Harold was. Burned down the local church once.” I must have shown my horror because she hastened to add, “No one was hurt in the fire, and the church was rebuilt bigger than before with the insurance money, so in the end, ‘twas a good thing Harold did.”

  I refrained from commenting on that, and made a mental note to myself to have another talk with Easter.

  Alec the handsome coachman strolled by, his hands in the pockets of dark green breeches, an old gold waistcoat topping his usual snowy white shirt, the sleeves rolled back to show the fine sprinkling of golden hair on tanned arms. I leaned out over the tea table, where I was presiding over a huge tea um, and called to him. “Alec, would you like some tea? Lemonade? There’s ale, too, if you’d prefer that.”

  Alec gave me a curious glance, then smiled his dazzling smile. If I hadn’t been so madly in love with Max, I would have swooned at the effect of that smile. Well, OK, I swooned a little bit, just on the general principle of the thing, but quickly overcame my swoony tendencies by reminding myself that not only was Alec much younger than me and had a proclivity to flatulence jokes, but I had Max. Max just wasn’t ready to admit that state of affairs yet. “You must be Tessa. I’m Julian, Alec’s brother.”

  My jaw dropped. “My God, there’s two of you? Twins?”

  His cheeks dimpled as he grinned. “That we are.”

  “God help the women of England.”

  He laughed and spent a few minutes chatting with me about his job. Unlike his horse-obsessed brother, Julian favored fast cars, and spent all his spare time working on rebuilding a racing car.

  Later, Mrs. Peters introduced her husband, Barry. “Barry is the president of the All England Ghost Hunting Society,” she said proudly. “It was he who did all the historical research into Worston and determined the identities of the ghosts who presently haunt its halls.”

  “How very fascinating,” I said, smiling at the short, round man. His eyes, greatly magnified behind big glasses, and the fringe of shaggy gray hair with two little odd tufts that stood on end reminded me of a scholarly owl. “Mrs. Peters has had great luck with the resident ghosts, what with them man
ufacturing ghostly herring and stuff. I’m hoping she invites me to a séance before the month is out.”

  Mrs. Peters dragged her husband away before he could answer, mumbling something to him about not wanting to upset the ghosts.

  “Tessa, there you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  I turned at the sound of Barbara’s cooing voice, more than a little surprised at her pleasant tone, not to mention the fact that she’d sought me out. Ever since the dinner party from hell, she’d been giving me the cold shoulder. Oh, not when the cameras were around; then she’d be just as gushing as ever, although I could tell from the hard glint to her eye that she was still mad at me for sleeping with her brother. Why, I had no idea. Maybe it was just the general principle of the thing, but she made it clear she did not approve.

  Why is it that everyone, male or female, always blames the woman when it comes to an affair? You’d think that women would be supportive of their sex and take the female’s side, but no, Barbara treated me like I was the biggest hussy of all time. The only time she’d willingly spoken to me in the last few days was to complain about Mrs. Peters hunting ghosts in her room—it seemed that Barbara’s boudoir was particularly high in ghost density. Barbara’s irritation with me even stretched as far as allowing her to take Henry back into her good graces, although I suspected by his hangdog air that she was keeping him very subdued, poor guy. I wanted to ask him what happened to Dorie, but never had the chance to catch him alone.

  Back to the garden party. Barbara had, as was usual with her, a camera trailing behind her. She oozed up to me, all smiles and graceful gestures of her hands, Tabby and Matthew hot on her tail, along with a very pretty blond woman in an elegant red-and-white striped dress with matching hat and parasol. No shiny black bombazine for her; this lady screamed nobility.

  “Have you seen dearest Max?” Barbara asked, not introducing the striped lady. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on who she was. She certainly wore the Victorian dress with a panache that I lacked, her graceful figure positively hourglass under the effect of the corset.

  “I think he’s down at the lake with some of the guys, doing a spot of fishing.”

  Barbara made a face, which she quickly changed into an acid smile. “Is he? Did you hear that, Cynthia? He’s fishing. You love to fish, don’t you? We’ll stroll down there.”

  Cynthia, who had been giving me a cool appraisal, smiled. “Yes, it would be lovely to see Max. I’ve missed him.”

  An icy chill shivered down my spine at those last three words.

  The blonde’s smile deepened, but none of it touched her steely gray eyes. “How are you doing as duchess? I imagine by now you’re settling down well into the role. I must admit, I feel the tiniest morsel of regret that I didn’t see the job through, but Max agreed that although I was imminently suited as his duchess, losing a month of time would be too great a sacrifice to my career.”

  Cynthia. Blond Cynthia. The woman in the picture. “Oh. You’re the Cynthia who walked off the job four days before shooting.”

  “I had to, I simply had to. You have no idea the dreadful frocks Roger insisted I wear.” She eyed my white-and-green-ivy batiste gown. “Or perhaps you do. Regardless, I simply could not tolerate his demands. They would have crushed my artistic spirit.”

  I remembered then that the bio sheet on Cynthia said she was a sculptor.

  “It’s been lovely chatting with you. Tess, is it? I do hope you stay for the entire show, despite the many trials you must be enduring. Barbara, shall we go to the pond? I simply must see Max. The poor lamb has suffered enough without me these last few weeks, don’t you think?”

  Remember the icy chill going down my spine? It had turned into glaciers, big fat glaciers that moved into my bloodstream and froze my blood solid.

  Barbara laughed gaily, then waited until the camera turned to follow Cynthia as she strolled across the rose garden, nodding graciously to clusters of people just as if she was the one playing the duchess.

  “Isn’t she lovely? Cynthia is Max’s girlfriend. They’re engaged. Didn’t he tell you? Tsk,” Barbara said, her mouth stretched wide in a cruel smile. “That brother of mine. Always breaking hearts.”

  As Barbara hurried after Cynthia, quickly catching up to her and sliding her arm through the blonde’s, great warning claxons went off in my head to alert my entire body to the horrible surprise attack that had just been leveled at me.

  Girlfriend? An engaged girlfriend? To Max, my Max, the warm, adorable, sexy Max who woke me up that very morning in a manner that kept a smile on my face until Cynthia started her bombing run? That Max?

  “No,” I said aloud, setting down the teacup that I absently held, moving around the tea table, purposefully striding toward the lake. “Not that Max. It has to be another Max, some other Max entirely, because I know my Max, and he wouldn’t play Cowgirl and the Randy Stallion with me if he was engaged to someone else.”

  “No, of course Max wouldn’t,” Alice said as I passed her.

  “Do what?” her sister asked.

  “Play Cowgirl and the Randy Stallion with Tessa.”

  “Why not? I’d play it with him. He’s gorgeous.” Their voices drifted back to me as I marched onward.

  “He wouldn’t, he’s not that kind of man at all. He’s a good man, a caring man, even if he is a bit stubborn and pigheaded at times, still, stubborn and pigheaded is not a two-timing scumwad.”

  I pushed my way through the family members gathered around the servants, grabbed my skirts, and ran down the incline to the lake.

  “He’s not like that, he’s not like that, he’s not like that,” I chanted as I ran. A crescent of trees hid most of the lake from sight of the house, but as I rounded the curve of trees I could see a group of several people clustered together, all looking at the same thing.

  “I love him. I have faith in him. I believe in him. He wouldn’t hurt me,” I ground out through my clenched teeth as I shouldered my way through two footmen, three family members I had been introduced to but promptly forgot, past Matthew, past Tabby, past Barbara to where Max stood with his hands on the red-and-white hips of Cynthia while she sucked the tongue from his head.

  “Tessa,” Max said when she finally released his lips (with an audible wet, sucking noise, I might add).

  “Damned right!” I snarled, and shoved him into the lake.

  I didn’t even stay to see him get soaked; the loud splash and resulting gasped “Oooh!” from the crowd was enough to tell me he went under. I took three steps, decided I was just as much a hypocrite as Barbara was, and turned around, marching back to where Cynthia was watching a waterlogged Max try to get to his feet.

  I put both hands on her back and shoved her in, too. She slammed against Max with a shriek that could have pierced leather, a shriek that got even louder as both she and Max went down into the mud and slime and dirty water of the lake.

  I smiled sweetly for the camera, dusted off my hands, then turned and walked back up to the house.

  It would have been a very satisfying moment had my heart not been breaking.

  Ironically enough, it was Melody who found me. I had assumed Max would come storming in with some slick explanation on his lips, which is why I shoved the wardrobe up against the door to the connecting bathroom.

  But Max wouldn’t tap hesitantly on the door to my room, so when the knock came, I unlocked the door and opened it to see Melody.

  “How come you’re wearing that?” she asked, pointing at my legs.

  I looked down at my jeans, then moved back and waved her into the room, locking the door behind her. “Oh. Uh. Well . . . I was going to go home, but I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Because of my dad?” she asked, her brows pulled together in a manner so much like Max’s puzzled frown that my heart gave a lurch and tears pricked the backs of my eyes.

  “It’s a bit complicated, squirt. I’m not leaving, though. That wouldn’t be fair to everyone else.”


  She just looked at me with her blue imitation-Max eyes, eyes that seemed to be a lot older than they should be. I fidgeted around with pulling out a skirt and bodice, shaking out the corset I’d managed to get out of just twenty minutes earlier, and getting a clean pair of combinations. “Why do you think they say ‘pair’ of combinations, just like a ‘pair’ of underwear?”

  Melody shrugged. “I don’t know. Are we still going riding tomorrow?”

  “Did your dad say tomorrow was a riding day?” Max told Melody he would teach her riding three days a week, the days to be negotiated.

  “He said I had to ask you. Were you going to leave because Cynthia was kissing Dad?”

  “No. Tell your father that he can take you out whenever he wants; I won’t be going with you anymore.”

  “Oh,” she said, her face placid.

  “Well, don’t get upset about it or anything,” I said, slamming the bureau drawer after pulling out a pair of garters. I knew I was being childish, but dammit, my heart was broken. Max destroyed everything I had believed and hoped for and wanted so desperately with one wrestle of his lips on that blond she-devil.

  “I won’t,” Melody answered snappishly.

  “Good,” I said. “I’m glad you don’t care.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Good,” I repeated. “Because I don’t either. Care, that is.”

  I ruined my tough front by bursting into tears, a real flood, the kind of sobbing that shakes your whole body. I crumpled up onto the floor and grabbed my knees and bawled and bawled until I thought I was going to throw up.

  Melody watched me for a couple of minutes, then she left without saying one single thing, which made me cry harder, if that was humanly possible.

  That’s how Max found me, lying on the floor, surrounded by stockings and petticoats, heaving into the chamber pot I never used.

  “Tessa,” he said, in what would have been a soft voice if he was still the love of my life, but he wasn’t, so it was just a plain, old, ordinary voice that just seemed to be velvety soft and warm and wonderful.