It occurred to her that between powdering her face with lead, eating arsenic tablets, and squirting poison plant juice in her eyes, it was a wonder that the other Caroline had lived long enough to get struck by lightning.
Her beauty regime was deadly.
“Do you know how long my eyes will stay, er, big and bright as stars?” she asked Mary Ann, who was still staring at her with an uncertain expression on her rather blurry face.
“Long enough to catch a new husband, it is to be hoped, Miss,” the maid said brightly and Caroline realized that was all the answer she was going to get. She would just have to blunder through the ball as best she could and hope she could see where she was going well enough not to trip or fall.
“Great,” she muttered. “Thanks, Mary Ann.”
“You’re welcome, Miss,” the maid said blandly. “Here—let me put up your hair as best I can and then we’ll get you dressed.”
With a couple of quick twists and some bobby pins, she put Caroline’s hair up into what looked like a very pretty chignon, as far as she could tell, by leaning forward and looking directly into the oval mirror.
There were even a few curls hanging free to frame her face—and her puffy red earlobe which had been burned by the straightening tongs, Caroline saw with some dismay. She did her best to bring the curls around to cover it while Mary Ann busied herself with something else on the other side of the room. After a moment, she called to Caroline.
“All right, Miss—I’ve got your chemise and pantalets all ready. Come over by the fire so I can help you into them.”
Caroline came over obediently, and allowed the lady’s maid to whip the filmy peignoir over her head, leaving her shivering and nude—but only for a moment. Quickly, she presented Caroline with a pair of what looked like long, loose, white linen trousers.
These must be the pantalets, Caroline thought, eyeing them dubiously.
There was only one problem—they were crotchless.
And she didn’t see just a hole in the crotch, like a pair of naughty panties back home. No, these had absolutely no crotch at all. The two legs of the trousers were sewn separately to the drawstring waistband and there was only empty air between—meaning her lady bits were going to be blowing in the breeze in these things.
“Well, come on, Miss Caroline—step into your pantalets.” Mary Ann sounded impatient as she held them out for her. “We have a lot to get on so please hurry.”
“But…but…” Caroline wanted to protest that the trousers were crotchless but it was clear her maid already knew that. Was she playing some kind of elaborate joke on Caroline? Or were they supposed to be this way?
“But what, Miss?” Mary Ann sounded more impatient than ever.
“Don’t you have any that have material in the middle of them?” Caroline asked. “These are…indecent!”
“Indecent?” Mary Ann actually broke out laughing. “They’re as fine a pair of pantalets as any young lady could hope to wear, my lamb!” she exclaimed. “And anyway, if there was material in the middle covering your Venus mound, how would you squat over the privy in the necessary room if you need to answer Nature’s call during the ball?”
So that was the reason for the crotchless pantalets!
Finally Caroline understood. But she couldn’t help thinking that none of the historical dramas she watched on the BBC went into this kind of detail. She wished they would have! Despite having watched dozens of her beloved dramas, none of them had prepared her for actually living in this era.
“All right,” she said, and stepped into the white linen pantalets, which framed her sex indecently.
“Good—now for your stockings and shoes and then the chemise.” Mary Ann helped her into some thick black stockings that came up over her knees and tied at mid thigh and then brought out a pair of little black boots with dainty heels and buttons up the sides.
They looked like something you would buy on Etsy for a Steampunk themed costume party, Caroline thought, as the maid bent in front of her and fastened the tiny buttons carefully all the way up to her ankles. The leather they were made of was as soft as butter but they had hard, ungiving, wooden soles that made her feet start to hurt almost immediately.
With shoes and stockings tended to, the maid threw another loose linen shift over Carline’s head. It had very short sleeves that fell around her shoulders and the hem came to around mid-thigh. The top of it was pretty low, probably so it wouldn’t show beneath the dress, Caroline speculated. This must be the chemise.
“All right—and now for your corset,” Mary Ann declared and began fitting the garment—which stretched from mid-breast down to the tops of her buttocks—around Caroline’s waist. There were a row of silver hooks and eyes down the front of it and the maid hooked her in quickly and professionally, making certain the corset was closed all the way down.
When she was done, Caroline found it a little snug, but not too uncomfortable.
This isn’t so bad, she told herself, looking down at the pronounced hourglass figure the corset gave her. Not as bad as wearing SPANX, anyway. She had worn those for her cousin’s wedding, to fit into the ridiculous brides’-maid dress, which was two sizes too small. That had been torture but this wasn’t bad at all. It was—
“All right now, Miss Caroline—you’d best hold onto the bedpost and suck in your breath,” Mary Ann commanded.
“What?” Caroline asked but her maid was already pushing her over to the bed and she grabbed one of the carved wooden bedposts by instinct. She started to ask another question but just then Mary Ann gave a tremendous yank on the corset which seemed to squeeze the breath right out of her.
“Oh!” she gasped in a breathless voice as her waist contracted what felt like a full two inches. “Oh, God—I can’t breathe! Please stop!”
But it was clear Mary Ann wasn’t done with her.
“Suck in hard, Miss Caroline!” she exclaimed. “We need to lace you tighter if you’re to wear the green taffeta your Ma-ma wants you in tonight.”
“No, please—” Caroline started to protest but just then the maid gave another mighty heave on the corset strings and she felt her waist grow even smaller.
Now I understand why women fainted all the time in the past, she thought dizzily. I literally cannot get a deep breath—or almost any kind of breath at all!
“Please!” she wheezed at Mary Ann. “Please, I’m dying!”
At last the maid stopped squeezing her—but only because the desired effect had been achieved.
“All right, I think that will do.” Mary Ann stepped back, dusting her hands together as though finishing a hard job. “You should fit into the taffeta now.”
“But I can’t breathe!” Caroline protested. “Can’t you loosen it a little?”
“Afraid not Miss—you wouldn’t fit if I did,” Mary Ann said matter-of-factly. “But aren’t you glad I didn’t let you have that muffin you wanted?”
“I…guess so,” Caroline panted, looking down at herself. She had always been shaped like an over-full hourglass but now her shape was even more pronounced. She hadn’t had a waist this small since middle school and as for her breasts—the corset pushed them up and out so that the tops of them jiggled alarmingly, like flesh-colored Jell-O.
“Now let’s get you into the cage,” Mary Ann said, drawing her attention away from her own wobbling mammaries.
“The cage?” This sounded ominous to Caroline but the device that Mary Ann brought over to her looked even worse than it sounded.
A rounded cage with a drawstring waist and ten or twelve ivory colored hoops depending from it hung from the maid’s hands. There were cloth panels running vertically like stripes down the cage and holding the hoops in place, Caroline saw, but it didn’t look very giving or flexible at all. Unlike the hoopskirt crinoline her best friend had worn under her wedding dress, the hoops looked stiff and Mary Ann hefted the “cage” around as though it was heavy.
“Here you go, Miss—step in and I’ll draw it up
around you,” she said, as she allowed the cage to collapse down, its smaller upper hoops folding down into the larger, bottom hoops until it lay nearly flat on the floor.
“What is this made of—the hoops I mean?” Caroline asked, stepping into the center of the cage and watching as Mary Ann pulled it up and tied it around her waist. It wasn’t as heavy as she’d been fearing but it still had considerable heft and bulk. It wasn’t going to be much fun to walk around in all night—let alone try to dance in, if someone asked her at the ball. Oh God, she really hoped they didn’t ask her!
“Whale bone, of course, Miss,” Mary Ann said matter-of-factly. “So much lighter than those old iron cages ladies used to wear!”
Ugh! Caroline couldn’t imagine wearing something as cumbersome as the cage but made of iron. It must have been horribly heavy! She moved so that the cage swayed around her legs and was thankful for the whale bone. Though she also sent out a mental apology to the whales who had given their lives for this ridiculous garment. It extended about two feet around her on all sides—how was she ever going to move in it, let alone move gracefully?
“Now then, on with your crinoline and then it’s time for the dress,” Mary Ann remarked, nodding in satisfaction.
The next garment she fetched was long and white and flouncy with lots of lace sewn all over it. It went over Caroline’s head and covered the cage like a bunch of frothy white frosting on a cake. Then it was finally time for the dress.
With a flourish, Mary Ann brought out what appeared to be yards and yards of shiny emerald fabric and draped it over Caroline’s head.
“Here now, Miss—put your head through here…and your arms through there,” she directed, helping Caroline put it on. “Good—good…” She fastened Caroline up the back, adjusted the short sleeves so that the chemise sleeves were covered, and then pulled the dress out and draped it carefully over the crinoline until she was apparently satisfied. Finally, she stepped back and nodded, smiling.
“Is it good?” Caroline asked, still feeling breathless. The tops of her breasts were exposed, still wobbling all around, but everything else was being pinched in by the corset. She had that same feeling you get when you’re strapped too tightly into a roller coaster you’re not sure you really want to ride on.
“It’s more than good—it’s lovely,” Mary Ann said decisively. “And you’d look lovely too, Miss Caroline—if only you’d let me do something else with your hair and powder down your face.”
“Sorry, I can’t do that,” Caroline said and, seeing that her maid looked like she wanted to put up a fight, she added, “Um, I think I feel the call of Nature, actually. Is there someplace I can go before we leave the house?”
“Well, there’s the water closet, of course—cross the hallway.” Mary Ann frowned. “Do you need help, Miss? I do wish you had gone before we got you all dressed.”
“I didn’t have to go before I got dressed,” Caroline said, frowning. In fact, she didn’t really have to go now. She just wanted to get someplace private where she could wipe the pig-fat lipstick and blush off her face before she went out in public. The cosmetic—if it could be called that—was both revolting and clownish as far as she was concerned and she didn’t want to be seen in it.
“All right then.” Mary Ann sighed. “Be quick though, if you please—you and your Ma-ma are to leave for the ball very shortly.”
“All right. Thank you.” Caroline gave her a quick nod of the head and slipped out the door—or tried to, anyway. Walking in the stiff whalebone hoopskirt and the vast, flouncy dress was easier said than done. After some maneuvering, she realized that if she reached down and grabbed one of the hoops through the dress, she could tilt the cage and get through the narrow doorway that way.
“You’d best be careful doing that at the ball tonight,” Mary Ann called after her as she finally escaped into the hallway. “If you’re flashing your ankles to all and sundry, there’ll be talk, Miss Caroline. You don’t want people to think you’re a loose woman!”
Flashing my ankles? Caroline shook her head. So it was okay to have her breasts on display like fruit on a tray but someone might be driven mad with lust by the sight of her boot-clad ankle?
This was the weirdest place she’d ever been and at the moment, all she wanted was to go home.
No—at the moment what she wanted was to get the pig fat off her face, she reminded herself. She could worry about getting home later—right now she felt like a roast all greased up to go on the spit and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling at all.
Her eyes still blurry from being dilated from belladonna, she went across the hall and groped for the first door she came to. It opened and she stepped inside…into darkness.
Chapter Nine
It wasn’t completely dark though. Her dilated eyes soon adjusted and she saw that there was a fire here too, though it had been allowed to die down to embers. There was a large bed at one end of the room with some dark, heavy furniture around it. Beside the fireplace was a bookcase filled with books.
Caroline had always been a reader and the sight of books drew her interest. Whose room was this, anyway? And what kind of books would they have? She couldn’t help hoping they would be better than the book the other mother had given her to read.
Forgetting that she was looking for something to wipe off her lipstick and rouge, she went across to the bookcase and, by the light of the dying embers, began to peruse the titles.
Beach’s Family Physician and Home Guide for the Treatment of the Diseases of Men, Women, and Children on Reform Principles, read one. Another was, Clinical Medicine: A Systematic Treatise on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases. There was also, The Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy and The People’s Medical Journal, and Family Physician, Volumes1-20.
The titles were disappointing to Caroline, who had been hoping for a good novel to read. She didn’t consider the medical texts to be worth reading—except for a laugh—since she had an idea that this world’s medical advice was probably about as enlightened as its sexual views, as expressed by the other book she’d read by Mrs. E. B. Duffey.
Her eye fell on a strange one next. A Treatise on Baths: Including Cold, Sea, Hot, Vapor, Gas, and Mud Baths.
“Baths?” muttered Caroline. “Who cares that much about baths?” This world was so weird.
Looking further, she saw a book which made her blood run cold: Insanity and its Treatment—a Volume of all Known Cures Including Trepanning, Ice Baths, and The Administration of Electro-Shock Therapy to the Brain.
“Oh my God,” she whispered uneasily. “Trepanning—isn’t that drilling holes in someone’s head?”
“As a matter of fact, it is.”
The deep voice, coming out of the shadowy confines of the room, frightened Caroline so badly that she screamed and dropped the book, which she had picked out of the bookcase.
“What…who…” Her voice came out high and breathless because the damn corset wouldn’t allow her to breathe properly.
“What the devil are you doing in here, Caroline?” Suddenly Richard appeared by her side. He must have been sitting in the shadows, watching her peruse his books. He poked up the fire so that it blazed higher and she could see the dark frown on his face as he turned to her. “Are you looking for something to use against me? Something to hasten the end of our Joining?” he demanded.
“Of…of course not.” Caroline turned to him, putting a hand to her pounding heart. “I’m sorry. I was looking for the, uh, water closet.”
“You know damn well the water closet is down the hall,” he growled. “So I’ll ask you again—what are you doing in my rooms?”
“I couldn’t see where I was going because Mary Ann put deadly nightshade in my eyes,” Caroline explained. Why was he being so cold when he’d been so gentle with her earlier? “I wasn’t trying to invade your privacy! All I wanted was a napkin to wipe this stuff off my face.” She gestured at her rouge and lip paint with some disgust. “It makes me look like a clown!”
Richard made no answer and after a moment, she realized he didn’t intend to. Silently, he reached into his inner pocket and pulled out a plain, clean white handkerchief. Cupping her face in one hand, he gently but firmly wiped the rouge from her cheeks and the paint from her lips.
Caroline would have said something—would have protested being treated like a child with a dirty face. But she found she couldn’t say a word.
Now that she was back in close proximity to the big Kindred, she had fallen under his spell again. The touch of his big, warm hand on her cheek and neck made her heart start pounding at once. And this time she noticed something she hadn’t before—he smelled wonderful. Like leather and dark spice and some sharp, clean scent that was indefinable but undeniably masculine.
What is that cologne? she wondered as Richard finished with her and lowered the handkerchief—though he continued to cup her face. I’ve never smelled anything like it but it’s amazing.
She became aware that he was looming over her in the semi-gloom of the dim room and that being in such a vulnerable position with any other man would have made her feel intensely uncomfortable.
But with Richard, she somehow felt at ease.
As though I’d known him for years, she thought and remembered the dreams again. She had known him, in a way—or at least she’d been seeing him regularly almost every night—every time she closed her eyes to sleep. It had taken his touch, however, to bring the dreams back, to remind her of why he was so familiar…
Then his hand moved, involuntarily brushing her burned earlobe and making Caroline wince away in pain.
“You’re wounded.”
His words surprised her into a quick denial.
“What? No, I’m not—of course I’m not. I—”
“Here.” His fingertips caressed not the burned lobe itself, but the top of her ear, causing Caroline to shiver.
“Oh that.” She tried to laugh but it came out sounding high and nervous. “Mary Ann accidentally burned me with the tongs when she was trying to straighten my hair.” She gestured at her curls. “It didn’t work.”
Trapped in Time Page 8