“Oh, I knew it would be,” laughed Reba. “George is a true peacock!”
“Of course,” added Carolina, for sight of the beautiful suit had made her spirits rise inexplicably, “I realize that when I do find Thomas there will be some perfectly good explanation of the whole thing. He will have accompanied that woman only because his coach broke down as he was leaving Kent and she took him into hers, or one of his horses slipped in the mud on the way here and was injured and he stayed out of concern for it and finally let her pick him up in her coach—” Her voice dwindled away. She didn’t really believe what she was saying.
Reba gave her friend a cynical look. Carolina might make all the excuses for Lord Thomas she liked but she was of the firm belief that no coach breakdown would have kept Lord Thomas from London. If his horse had been injured he would simply have had the poor beast shot, for his impatience was famous. As for his striking up a chance acquaintance with the actress, that was perfectly possible, but where had it now led?
“At least now you’ll know,” she told Carolina bluntly.
“Yes.” Carolina didn’t meet Reba’s eyes. “Now I’ll know.”
“We can bribe Angie the scullery maid to let you out and then back in again. Geraldine Darvey says she’s done it for others, that it’s all in the way you ask her. I’ll just get Geraldine!”
When she came back with tall reed-slender Geraldine in tow, Carolina was holding up the ice green suit, surveying it with measuring eyes. Geraldine was in animated conversation with Reba as they came through the door.
“I’ll go down and ask Angie for you, if you like,” Geraldine told Carolina. “She won’t mind. I remember before you came”—Geraldine had been a student at Mistress Chesterton’s longer than anybody else—“she used to let Eleanor Wattle out and in. Night after night. Of course that was before Eleanor Wattle ran away with her lover.”
Carolina looked up sharply. She hadn’t heard about Eleanor Wattle. “What happened to her?” she asked.
“To Angie? Nothing. Cook never found out Angie was staying up to unlatch the door.”
“No—to Eleanor who ran away?”
“Eleanor? Oh, nobody knows. All we heard was that her lover left her in Dover and her parents turned her out.” She hesitated. “I thought I saw her on the street the last time we went to Drury Lane. She was thinner, of course, so I couldn’t be sure. She was wearing a face mask but her mouth is so distinctive, the way her lips curl up at the corners.”
And prostitutes wore masks to Drury Lane. . . .
“Did you speak to her?” asked Carolina.
“No. I was about to but some man swaggered up just then and spoke to her. Somehow I didn’t think she knew him. But she took his arm and away she went— away from the theatre.”
“I hope it wasn’t Eleanor,” said Carolina soberly.
“Yes. So do I.”
For a moment the three girls were silent, each thinking her separate thoughts. Life, which had seemed to Carolina only yesterday like a smooth and sunny plain, was suddenly spiked and rocky. How many girls, she wondered, ended up like Eleanor, abandoned by their lovers, cast out by their families, turning away from old friends as they roamed the streets, making a shaky living from men from day to day? What happened to them when their fresh young looks turned shopworn? When they grew old or got sick? Carolina gave an inward shudder at young Eleanor’s fate.
It never occurred to her to think that she was just as reckless, that she had indeed contemplated running away with Lord Thomas—that she was even now, in the back of her mind, contemplating it.
Or to think of what might happen to her if she did.
Chapter 9
Geraldine had gone to find Angie, and in the spacious front bedroom Carolina was down to her chemise and studying the satin suit which Reba had now laid out on the bed.
“You won’t have any smallclothes,” Reba pointed out.
“I’ll do without,” said Carolina grimly. If she was going to roam the London streets dressed as a man, who would know she wasn’t wearing underwear?
“But we don’t have a man’s cloak for you, you’ll freeze out there in the snow!”
Carolina shrugged. She might get awfully cold, true, but at the moment she had her anger at Lord Thomas to keep her warm. For her emotions swung like a pendulum, back and forth: He had turned to another woman, he deserved nothing but scorn! He had not, there was some terrible mistake, he loved her! Back and forth!
“Do you know, I really believe this will fit.” Trying to control her own tumultuous emotions, Carolina held the gleaming new ice green coat with its wide cuffs against her own figure. She sighed and put it down.
Common sense was coming back to her. “Your Cousin George will kill me if I wear this suit, Reba. Suppose I tear it or spill wine on it?”
“No matter. I can placate George.” Reba picked up the new suit and held the fabric close to Carolina’s flushed face. “And the color suits you admirably.” She laughed. “George couldn’t have done better if he’d had you in mind!”
“How? How can you placate him?” Carolina demanded bluntly.
The russet eyes that were suddenly turned on her were as unyielding as oak. Reba wore the same expression her father’s creditors had so often met. “Because if he complains,” she told Carolina in a hard voice, “I shall remind Cousin George that I have only to tell his mother about his affair with that chambermaid he’s so enamored of, and his mother will remove him from his studies at the Inns of Court and bring him home to Hampshire where he will never see her again.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t really do that, would you?” Carolina was shocked, for she had always felt that life was quite unfair to lovers.
“Well—at least I could make George believe I would,” laughed Reba, who had long ago realized that Carolina’s standards and hers were worlds apart. She had no wish to appear hard or unyielding in her young friend’s view. “So you are not to worry, Carolina, you may treat these clothes as your own—and if you wreck them, I’ll make it up to George by covering up his affair. For I’ve no doubt George will move the wench in with him again when he returns!”
“Oh, Reba, you are a good friend!” Carolina gave the merchant’s daughter an impulsive hug.
Reba stepped back and considered Carolina’s figure. “Of course you’ll have to bind your breasts down else you will not look flat enough for a boy,” she said critically. “But never mind, I have yards and yards of this stuff.” She pulled out a length of gauze. “And it should do the trick.”
Carolina gave the gauze a look of distaste. She would have preferred to breathe during this venture but plainly it was not to be. She submitted to Reba’s nearly crushing her ribs in her efforts to flatten out a pair of firm upthrust young breasts.
“Enough, Reba!” she finally panted. “I’m certainly flat enough now, but what will I do for a shirt?” Neither girl had thought of that and they looked at each other in alarm.
“Maybe Angie can—” began Reba when Geraldine came tearing back with disastrous news.
“You can’t go!” she cried dramatically. “Cook says Angie went home with a stomach ache, she won’t be back till morning. And I dare not ask Cook to do it—she’d run straight to the headmistress!”
“Nevertheless, I am going.” Carolina was struggling into the satin trousers as she spoke. At least she had a pair of green silk stockings and green garters that would do nicely! She looked up at Geraldine. “But I will need a man’s shirt or at least something that resembles a shirt.”
“But you can’t go!” wailed Geraldine. “All the doors will be locked.”
But having finally made up her mind, nothing could stop Carolina now. She felt carried forward irresistibly, as if she were in the first wave of a cavalry charge. Her future with Lord Thomas hung in the balance. Tomorrow might be too late!
“I’ll go out the window,” she said dispassionately. “From the second floor? With these high ceilings?”
“Yes. There’s a
coil of heavy rope in one of the pantries. I saw it when I was searching for one of the maids to press my petticoat the other day.”
“Well, I don’t mind fetching it,” said Geraldine doubtfully. “For you certainly can’t go downstairs dressed like that” She eyed the green satin trousers dubiously. “But I still think you’ll be killed.”
“No, I won’t. I’m used to climbing trees. ’Tis not so long a drop.”
Rolling her eyes, Geraldine left the room again. When she returned she had not only the rope secreted under one of the brocade panniers that decorated her hips, but a man’s shirt as well.
“It must belong to Cook’s nephew,” she told Carolina excitedly. “I filched it from a pile of clean laundry that hasn’t been sorted yet—Cook must let him send his laundry here to be done—I’ll wager Mistress Chesterton doesn’t know about it! It should fit you.” She held up a flowing shirt of coarse white cotton. “Too bad it’s so plain; it could use a ruffle or two.”
“And it shall have ruffles!” cried Reba, seized by inspiration. “I’ll rip the lace ruffles from one of my chemises.”
“We haven’t time to sew it all on properly,” objected Carolina, who was no hand with a needle.
Reba shrugged. “Then I’ll baste it on with big stitches. And you’ll have a spill of white lace at your wrists and a whole cascade of white lace at your throat—you can pin it in place with my emerald pin.” Carolina gave her a grateful look and struggled into the wide-cuffed, skirted coat, trying it on. She turned about before the handsome cheval glass Reba had brought with her from home. What she saw was a handsome stripling with a girl’s flushed face and a thick cloud of unruly silver-gold hair. Her boots—the inclement weather made boots almost a necessity this time of year—were quite correct for a young man since there was little difference between men’s and ladies’ boots anyway. The trousers fitted her sleek hips admirably. “Do you think it needs a little padding in the shoulders?” she asked Reba anxiously.
“No, you’re fine.” Reba, who had sacrificed a chemise to the project, looked up from her hasty stitching. “I think the tailor made a mistake on the shoulders anyway. George will never be able to get into that coat. At least it fits you!” She laughed as she expertly bit the thread in two. “Indeed I think you’re a better man than George in that suit.”
“My hair worries me,” muttered Carolina. “I don’t see how I can—”
“Make it look like a man’s periwig? Well, maybe you can’t do it and I can’t do it, but Madge Wentworth down the hall could have made her way dressing wigs if her father hadn’t happened to be such a successful wool merchant!”
“Madge doesn’t like me,” demurred Carolina with an uneasy look at Geraldine, for Geraldine was Madge’s roommate and best friend. “When her betrothed called on her two months ago, she thought he paid too much attention to me and not enough to her.”
“Nonsense,” said Reba airily. “Madge owes me a favor. Didn’t I lend her my best fur-trimmed cloak to go out walking with him? Even though I hadn’t worn it yet myself!” She waved her needle peremptorily at Geraldine. “Bring Madge!”
A natural follower, Geraldine ran from the room and returned dragging her roommate, who seemed to have forgotten all animosity in the excitement of the venture.
Madge had brought with her a comb and a curling iron and she swiftly proved Reba’s assessment of her prowess. She heated the curling iron in the candle flame and promptly set to work on Carolina’s hair. Carolina choked back an involuntary screech as the hot curling iron seared the flesh of her neck.
“It’s a small burn and it’s where it won’t show,” Madge assured her contentedly. “And butter will ease the pain. Geraldine, do you think you could bring us some?”
Seated at Reba’s dressing table, Carolina looked up at Madge in some alarm. She was almost sure Madge had let the curling iron slip deliberately for in the mirror she could see that Madge’s movements were very deft and sure. Could it be that Madge was getting her revenge?
She was never to know, for after that one small burn Madge plunged into her endeavor with effortless ease. Before the hour was out she had transformed Carolina’s neat feminine hairstyle into a reasonable facsimile of the great periwigs that had come into fashion when Charles II was restored to the throne and had grown in popularity ever since—a mass of fat curls that crowned the head and framed the face, hung down the back and cascaded over the shoulders.
“We could powder it,” suggested Madge, standing back critically to view her work.
“Oh, bother powdering it,” said Carolina, who was so impressed with Madge’s work she had forgotten all about the burn. “What you’ve done is wonderful, Madge. I can’t thank you enough. Indeed I wouldn’t know myself!”
“And now the shirt!” Reba bit off the last thread, stood up and proffered a man’s shirt so changed that they all exclaimed over it.
“Reba, you’re a sempstress at heart!” laughed Madge. “Just as at heart I’m a hairdresser!”
Reba gave them a knowing smile. She’d have been a sempstress in fact if her father hadn’t succeeded beyond anyone’s expectation. As a small child Aunt Bella had actually been training her, drilling her in each stitch, for “You’ll have to make your living with your needle one day, Reba, make up your mind to it!” And now her father had set up Aunt Bella (his favorite sister) in style down in Hampshire and she was sending her oldest son George to study law at Gray’s Inn at the celebrated Inns of Court while Reba herself, who might have ended up a sempstress, now had London’s dressmakers, with endless sempstresses, at her beck and call. How things changed! With money, anything was possible! But she didn’t tell the girls that. She only smiled graciously and accepted their compliments.
Completely suited at last, Carolina studied her reflection in the mirror, turning about critically to view herself from different angles. She made, she decided, a very good lad. A trifle too pretty perhaps, too downy-faced, too delicately built, but that could seem to be extreme youth.
Reba’s emerald pin flashed in the waterfall of chemise lace at her throat and wrists, Cousin George’s cut-too-narrow ice green satin shoulders gleamed. And Madge’s magic with her hair—which now looked for all the world like an expensive silver-gilt periwig—had completed the transformation of a winsome girl into an elegant lad. The glittering silver braid which decorated the coat made her entire front—even the wide fashionable cuffs—resemble a greensward in first frost. She moved about, studying herself in the mirror, trying to move in a less feminine and more boyish fashion.
Ready at last!
But finding a secure place to tie the rope proved an insurmountable obstacle. It would not be long enough if they tied it to the door. Not a nail in the room would support it. The big oaken wardrobe would doubtless tip over with a crash that would wake the house.
“There’s nothing for it but to get some of the other girls,” said Reba sensibly. “For I doubt the three of us can hold you.”
By now Carolina was so eager to start her venture that she didn’t care who knew about it. And noise was not a problem, as it would have been under the last headmistress. Cook slept like the dead, Angie—who wasn’t here tonight anyway—didn’t care, Mistress Blanton was stone deaf, Jenny Chesterton drank herself insensible each night and passed out before the moon was high—and everybody else, instructors and servants alike, slept elsewhere and came in by day. Swiftly the dramatic word was spread by Geraldine that Carolina was going out the window, Carolina was going out on the town dressed as a man—and she needed to be let down to the street below on a rope!
Whispering and giggling, they gathered in the room shared by Carolina and Reba. Everybody had a suggestion as to how to do it. They had just decided that all the girls would hold onto the rope as if engaged in a tug of war when Lina Delford, a latecomer, danced into the room and held up a small vial. “Look what my brother has sent me from Europe,” she cried (thereby reminding everybody that her brother was enjoying the Grand Tour just li
ke the sons of tenth-generation aristocrats). “ ’Tis called ‘Bavarian red’ and he swears in his letter that ’tis better than either Spanish paper or Spanish wool to color the cheeks to a fair blush. Would you like some, Carol?”
“Carol’s cheeks are red enough,” snapped Reba. “She’s trying to look like a man, not like a prostitute!” And Lina subsided.
Nearby, Alice Lapham, who had trailed in with a book on cosmetics called The Queen’s Closet Opened, which all the girls revered, lifted her head from its pages with a glad cry. “It says here that Maydew and Oyl of Tartar when mixed will remove spots on the face!” she cried happily. “Oh, indeed I must get some!”
Madge Wentworth tossed aside her comb and gave that sunny freckled face an impatient look. “Oh, do leave your freckles alone, Alice,” she cried. “They don’t look bad at all and look what happened to Jane’s cousin in Surrey—she tried to remove a wart with boiled stone lyme and barrel soap—and she burned her face.”
“Yes, she said it was agony. She should have used salted radishes in a pewter dish,” murmured Jane Blackwell, letting the rope go slack in her hands as she spoke for she had just been gesturing as to how the descent should be made. Now her naturally animated face grew perfectly expressionless for she had just remembered that to change expressions was to invite premature wrinkles—her own mother had said so!
“Oh, I dare not ignore my freckles!” cried Alice. “For my mother says that I am so plain that I must at least have a skin like milk if I am to attract a proper suitor. She had a great aunt whose doctor cured her spots by hanging her until her face turned quite blue and then he cut a vein to let out the blood! And mother threatens to have the same thing done to me if I have not lost my freckles after a year in London!”
All the girls were big-eyed and silent at this drastic remedy. Tessa Grimes, who slumped and was therefore forced at home to walk about with books on her head to straighten her posture, shuddered and considered herself lucky. Even sophisticated Jane had changed her expression for a moment to horror before she recollected herself and went back to her masklike stare.
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