Chapter Four
“Why aren’t you in the hothouse?”
I jumped and turned away from the bookshelf I’d been perusing. My ankle pulsed with renewed vigor. Wincing, I groped blindly for the bookshelf and leaned against it for support. The wood groaned in protest, but it held me steady.
Mary pushed her spectacles higher on her nose. I shut my eyes tightly, hoping to eradicate the image, but when I opened them, Mary stood with her hands on her hips, clad in men’s clothes. The waistcoat, jacket, shirt, and breeches fit her snugly. An intricate cravat was tied around her neck, and she wore her hair in a neat braid down her back. Whatever she had planned for today, I doubted I would approve. Neither would her sponsor if she caught wind.
Because Mary’s mother was dead, her godmother, the esteemed Countess of Gladstone, had taken it upon herself to unleash Mary upon Society, a decision I suspected she regretted, given the sort of controversy Mary cultivated at every turn. Unfortunately for the men of the ton, it would take a lot more than gossip to prompt Lady Gladstone to remove her support. For all her moaning over the trouble Mary caused, she loved her goddaughter greatly.
“You scared the daylights out of me.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Why? I wasn’t being particularly quiet.”
I decided not to inform her of the dense worries consuming my thoughts. After clearing my throat, I changed the subject. “You look…dashing today.”
She smirked. That didn’t bode well for the fate of my morning.
“Yes, that brings me to my point. Don some men’s clothes. We’re going out.”
“Mary, I have no men’s clothes. And in any case, I can’t accompany you.”
“Why not?” She lifted one eyebrow in a way that uncomfortably reminded me of Julian.
My heart pounded three times too fast as I grappled for an answer. “Because…I can’t walk.” Finally, the injury turned to my advantage! “I twisted my ankle.”
Mary’s sharp gaze staked the appendage in question. “I noticed you limp. I thought you were pretending, like Rose often does.”
I stifled a laugh. I could only imagine the kind of schemes Mary tried to convince Rose to participate in.
Mary shouldered her way beneath my arm and bore the brunt of my weight as I hobbled to one of the armchairs in front of the library’s unlit hearth. For a scrubby woman, she was strong. I perched on the arm, reluctant to sink into the plush cushions. If I did, I might never resurface without aid.
I might be injured, but I was far from an invalid.
Mary rooted herself squarely in front of me, arms crossed. “When did this happen?”
Good thing I wasn’t lying. She’d sniff it out in a second.
“Last night during a dance.”
Instead of sympathy, Mary’s expression evolved to one of condescension. “Tell me you didn’t succumb to Rose’s chosen suitor.”
I shook my head. “I danced with an old friend.”
She still didn’t seem convinced. “So he didn’t ask to dance to objectify you.”
The Lord only knew what she qualified as “objectification.” Nevertheless, I answered, “Hardly. He likened me to his sister.”
She brightened. “Good.”
When she wasn’t scowling while brooding over men’s intentions, she was actually quite pretty. Certainly prettier than me, as evidenced by the fact gentlemen asked her to dance much more often, despite the sting of her tongue. The poor sods of the ton must like the abuse, or they hosted an ongoing wager as to which of them could entice her into pairing with them.
I’d stake my money on the latter.
She waved her hand in the air in a gesture of dismissal. “In any case, you won’t be walking much. We’ll ride. Astride, like men.”
My stomach lurched, threatening to reject my breakfast. I was deathly afraid of horses. “We’ll ride in a carriage,” I said firmly.
She beamed, knowing she’d trapped me.
“Very well,” she said with a falsely gracious incline of her head, as though making some kind of compromise. “We’ll ride in a carriage, but you will need to don men’s clothing.”
I shook my head. “I’ve already told you I don’t own any.”
“Find some. You’re not likely to get into the Society without any.”
Against my better judgment, curiosity sprouted. “The Society?”
“The Royal Botanic Society of London. A guest lecturer has arrived from the Americas to talk about flora native to the deserts of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. He’ll only be speaking at midday today.” Mary raised her eyebrows in silent challenge. “I assumed you would want to attend.”
I released a sigh of longing. “I do, but they don’t allow women.”
“Precisely why you will locate some men’s clothes. We’ll masquerade as boys.”
When she said it so steadfast and confidently, I almost believed her. Unfortunately, sneaking into men’s abodes posed more of a problem than she thought. Otherwise, why didn’t women do it all the time?
“We look nothing like men.”
“Nonsense.” She pulled a cap from her pocket and tucked her hair carefully beneath it as she donned it. She grinned broadly, eyes twinkling behind her spectacles. “See? I’ve already bound my breasts flat. Once you do the same, I imagine we’ll prove passable men. The doormen don’t examine too closely once you’ve paid the entrance fee.”
She spoke as though she’d done this dozens of times. I was afraid to ask if she had. The lure to attend was almost too strong to ignore. However, my father’s ultimatum filled my thoughts. If anyone recognized me in men’s clothing, what little chance I had of marrying would evaporate. My options were thin enough as it was.
I pushed myself to my feet and limped past her into the hall. I shook my head. “Mary, I don’t think—”
“What is wrong with you?”
Her cutting words stopped me short. I turned to face her. Her incredulous expression was framed by the sunlight streaming through the library’s open windows. It spilled out into the corridor, over my feet. The ache in my ankle mounted the longer I settled weight on it.
“I just told you. My ankle—”
“Would not stop the Francine I know from attending a lecture that might, even remotely, pertain to botany.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “So tell me. What ails you?”
I knew Mary wouldn’t react positively to news of the ultimatum. I hesitated. For too long, it seemed. Doubt crept into Mary’s gaze, blossoming into hurt. I squared my shoulders. She would find out eventually, anyway.
“Papa has informed me that I must marry. If I do not, he’s threatened to send me to a convent at the end of the Season.”
Her expression darkened, turning thunderous. I feared what she might do. Knowing her, she might confront my father. Mary was fearless, and her ire made his pale like dappled shadows.
I grabbed her by the hand. “There might be some of my father’s old clothing in the attic.”
Her hand tightened around mine. “Then you’ll come?”
“I’ll come,” I said. I had to distract her somehow. I climbed the stairs, using the wall for support as I towed Mary behind me. We followed the staircase to the top, the third floor and attic.
At this time of day the servants each attended their duties. No one lingered in the twin rooms with the low, slanted ceilings, housing the cots on which they slept. I led Mary to the farthest corner, where a closed door led to a storage space crammed with old crates. I used to hide in here as a child when Papa tried to take away my botany books. It had been a good deal cleaner then.
Dust frosted the floor and sprinkled the crates. I coughed as my shuffling footsteps roused the particles from their slumber. Mary vanished from the doorway. She returned moments later with the wavering light of a lit candle. Sometimes I wondered at her. Give her a few moments and she could ferret out anything. In this case, at least, the talent proved helpful.
The light blossomed over the old crates. No markings distinguished one from another, but the crates had been placed in here in the order accumulated. The oldest artifacts would be in the back. If I wanted to find Papa’s old clothing, I would start looking there.
Mary followed in my footsteps as we navigated the crammed chests, old paintings, and forgotten furniture. Here and there, she paused out of curiosity, but I continued with single-minded intent to the very back of the room. The roof sloped steeply, to the point where I had to stoop and then kneel as I approached the boxes presumably from the right year. I tested the lid from one of the crates. It creaked but proved immovable.
“Mary, help me.”
She set the candle down carefully and crawled to my side. Together, we dug our fingernails beneath the wooden lid and heaved. The lid shifted, but not enough to come loose.
“It must have been nailed shut,” Mary said. “Wait a second.”
She scampered into the labyrinth of boxes, returning moments later with a tarnished candlestick holder. “Let’s use this.”
We shoved it beneath the lid and bore down on it with our combined weight. The lid popped free with a groan. Sweat beaded on my upper lip. The air in the attic tasted as old and stale as the crates, as though it hadn’t stirred in decades. I coughed into my fist.
“Is this the right one?” Mary asked. She fetched the candle to light the contents.
Something resembling fabric was wadded below several carelessly tossed-in books. I hefted one slim tome. It was unmarked. I opened it.
The first few lines described an organic specimen’s measurements, size, and rarity the way Mother often catalogued her plants. Horror dawned as I realized the account described a person—a man—and not a plant. I hurled the book away.
“My eyes!”
Mary leaned closer. “Francine, what was that?” She tugged the cloth from beneath the other volumes.
“I think it was my mother’s diary.” If I had to say anything more on the subject, I would toss the contents of my last meal.
Mary made a curious sound and reached past me in search for the book. I stilled her with a hand on her arm.
“You don’t want to read it. Trust me.” As it was, I would have nightmares.
Judging from the sidelong glance she gave the book, she wasn’t convinced. No doubt she would sneak up here another day to fetch it. As long as she didn’t disclose the contents, I didn’t care. That diary, to me, did not exist.
“These look like your father’s wedding day clothes.”
Mary’s expression was hard to make out in the flickering candlelight, but she didn’t sound as jubilant over finding the clothes as I expected.
“Is that a problem?”
“Too formal for a lecture, wouldn’t you say?”
“No, I would not say.” I yanked the clothes from her hands. I refused to spend my morning sifting through these crates until I discovered something more suitable. “Keep looking if you want. I’m going to my room to put these on.”
Mary sighed but didn’t rise to the challenge. She followed me as I left the attic behind and descended to the second floor. I quickened my step on the landing in order to reach my chamber unimpeded. Once inside, I checked the dressing room for Pauline. Thankfully, she wasn’t within. If she had been, she would have some words of discouragement for what I planned.
A second bandage like the one Pauline had used to wrap my ankle rested atop the vanity in a neat roll, ready in case my ankle pained me further. I grabbed the roll and dragged Mary into the dressing room. She still held the candle she’d purloined above. A lucky thing, since the dressing room sported no windows. I shut the door in case someone peeked into the bedchamber.
Enclosed in the small room barely big enough to contain us both, I directed Mary to set the candle on the floor in one corner. “I’ll need your help binding my breasts flat.”
And, as it turned out, unlacing my dress and stays. I stripped to the skin, shedding my clothing on the ground. I squirmed as I exposed myself to Mary instead of Pauline. My stalwart friend didn’t seem to mind. She directed me to hold my arms over my head as she wrapped the bandage altogether too snugly over my breasts.
“Can you breathe?”
“Not really.”
She must have sensed the sarcasm in my voice, though the bandage bound me uncomfortably tight. She huffed. “There’s nothing to be done about it. Your breasts are rather large and ungainly.”
It didn’t sound like a compliment, so I wisely buried my reply. She must have had a much easier time binding her small breasts flat, or else the jacket covered them nicely. The bandage didn’t conceal the swell of my womanly form entirely, just confined it. Hopefully the shirt and jacket would camouflage my silhouette to my advantage.
The shirt, which Mary helped to pull over my head, indeed camouflaged my figure as it swamped me. Papa was a good deal taller than me, but I hadn’t thought his shirt would come to my knees. Mary’s mouth puckered in a frown as she beheld me.
“We’ll clinch it with a belt.”
I doubted that would help. I donned the breeches under her measuring stare.
An outdated style; I suspected the hem would rise to the knees of a man Papa’s height. They ended above my ankle, in the middle of my leg. He’d sported a slimmer figure for his wedding, so the breeches weren’t too terribly loose around my legs and hips.
Mary rasped for breath. She bit her knuckle, no doubt to keep from laughing. I looked a sight.
She cleared her throat. “Boots should cover the gap,” she said, waving her hand to indicate the bare strip of my legs where the breeches ended.
“Where will I find men’s boots?” They differed a good deal from the boots I owned.
Mary bit her bottom lip. Hard if the lunate indentation and white rim was any indication. “I’ll pilfer some from one of the servants. Wait here.”
I didn’t want to, but she quickly slipped out the door before I could protest. I sighed. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
The lecture lured me to continue. How long would it be before I had access to the same information through a publication? I dearly wanted to soak in the information imparted by the botanist regarding the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Or of anywhere outside of England, really. And if it occupied Mary in the meantime, all the better.
I tugged on the overlarge coat, completing Papa’s wedding outfit. The coattails were so long, they brushed my ankles. No, this would never do.
Mary slipped back into the dressing room with a pair of men’s boots. How had she managed to find some so quickly? She must have dashed upstairs to the servants’ quarters and back. She thrust them into my hands and snapped, “Take off that ridiculous coat. You look a fool to begin with.”
I was all too eager to comply. I let her strip it off and discard it onto the floor with my other clothes. I used her arm for balance while I slipped my feet into the boots.
“Mary, they’re still warm!”
She shrugged. “I told him we’d give them back later today.”
I didn’t want to know what had been said in that conversation.
When the boots dwarfed my feet, Mary wadded my discarded stockings to cushion the toes. Even then, they would be far from comfortable. However, I could walk.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “What are you going to do with your hair?”
A valid question. I didn’t have a cap like Mary did.
“Maybe I can tie it back and slip the tail under the shirt. It has a high collar.”
After minutes of brainstorming, we concocted no better solution. Mary tied my hair back with the plainest ribbon we discovered in my vanity. I stuffed the excess down the neck of my shirt. My shoulder blades itched from the frizzy strands.
Mary pronounced, “You’ll do.”
I doubted I resembled a man in any way. Not to mention, I had never felt more uncomfortable in my life. I winced as I peeked at my reflection.
As suspected, I looked dreadful. The breeches bunched around my legs and the high top of the overlarge boots. The waist, stuffed with the shirttail, bulged a bit. The shirt itself billowed around my waist, chest, shoulders, and arms. Mary rolled up the sleeves so they didn’t fall over my wrists. I didn’t have a fashionable cravat to wear over the shirt, but laced it to my chin.
“This will never work,” I protested weakly. My skin was paler than milk, my freckles standing out like some kind of disease.
We would be turned away the moment we arrived. At least no one would recognize me while so atrociously attired.
“Nonsense,” Mary said. She ushered me toward the door. “I told you the doorman cares little as long as you appear to be male and have the money to pay your entrance.”
That, I believed not at all. Why would the Royal Botanic Society put so much effort into barring women from their ranks if one could simply don men’s clothing and attend anyway? But even if our excursion ended with a rejection, I wanted to try. It would remove us from the house in case Mary decided to confront my father. Plus, if we were let in, I would attend the lecture, a reward in itself.
I grabbed a small leather-bound journal and a slim stick of charcoal I kept by my bed in case I had an idea during the night. I bowed to Mary’s considerable expertise in sneaking out of the house. We didn’t resort to climbing out the window; she knew all the servants’ entrances. She entered by them more often than not. She led me through an entrance deserted at this time of day, and we slipped onto the street unimpeded.
We hired a hack to take us to the Inner Circle of Regent’s Park. I clutched the journal to my chest, trembling with excitement. Either the driver was accustomed to driving young women garbed as men, or our disguises passed cursory inspections. For the first time since donning this blasted outfit, the faint hope of attending the lecture flourished in my chest.
The hackney deposited us in front of a three-story sprawling edifice. Neat rows of windows glared down from the brown stone walls. A steeply sloped roof only added to the structure’s forbidding facade. I gulped as I craned my neck.
Mary tugged me up the neat steps to the door. I peered at the potted specimens in full bloom, but she pulled me onward before I discerned whether rare blossoms mingled with the common blooms.
At the door, she shoved me behind her. A wrinkled man stared down his nose at us. His steely gray hair was pulled back into a queue. “Are you members of the Society?”
“No.” Mary fished a handful of silver shillings from her pocket and counted out the door fee. “We’re here for the lecture.”
The man coughed into his fist and plucked a monocle from his shirt pocket. When he raised it to his eye, the heavy lines around his nose and mouth deepened.
It was Mary’s voice. It had to be. With or without the monocle, the old man squinted to see the person in front of him. I stepped in front of Mary, planting myself in full line of sight of the doorman.
Papa’s threat to truncate my freedom in ten days made me a little bit brazen. My pulse jumped in my throat. I swallowed twice before speaking in a low register. “We’ve been here before.”
The man’s eyebrows climbed toward the crown of his head. “I’ve been a member of the Society for nigh on forty years. I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
Nervous laughter bubbled in my throat. This was it. We would be exposed as women for the ridicule of the whole of London. That was if we weren’t imprisoned for impersonating men.
The thought petrified me. Why hadn’t I thought of that? If I didn’t want to spend my life in a convent, I certainly didn’t want to spend it in a jail cell alongside criminals.
I grappled for Mary’s arm as my vocal chords froze beneath the doorman’s withering stare. My bare fingers trembled.
“Frank, my good man!”
Someone clapped me on the shoulder. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I bit down on my tongue by accident. It throbbed. A man spun me around, gripping me firmly by the forearm the way men do in greeting. I gasped at the intimate contact and almost recoiled free. I realized the man in question was Julian. His friendly smile turned forced. He urged me with his eyes to play along.
I pumped his muscled arm. After a moment, he drew back. I plunged my hand to my side. My entire forearm tingled. Heat encroached on my cheeks, but I forged on, hoping to disperse the reaction.
“Beckwith,” I said with a nod. Men usually referred to each other by their surnames, didn’t they?
His eyebrow twitched, but to his credit, he didn’t raise it. He projected a friendly, relaxed demeanor as he slung his arm around my neck. The one-armed embrace settled more weight onto my injured leg. I bit the inside of my cheek to stifle a yelp. I’m sure the color leached from my cheeks until I turned as white as the clouds speckling the sky.
Julian leaned closer to me. “I told you to wait for me, you rascal. Is old Rudy giving you a hard time?”
My mouth flapped open. I hazarded a glance toward the doorman, who raised a supercilious eyebrow in my direction. Could all men do that? Was it some sort of male rite I should have learned?
Julian saved me from trying the maneuver by reaching forward and clasping Mary’s shoulder. His attention was toward the doorman and not Mary’s glower, fortunately.
“My young friends here have just finished their first year at Cambridge. First time in London and what do the gents want to do? Attend a bloody lecture.” Julian offered the doorman a lopsided grin.
The man harrumphed but dropped his monocle into his shirt pocket once more. “Forgive me, sir. My eyesight isn’t what it once was.”
“Think nothing of it, Rudy,” Julian said. He released me to tuck his hand into his purse and retrieve the doorman’s fee. The coins clinked as he dropped them into the man’s palm atop Mary’s. He ushered Mary and me through the wide open doors to the man’s left.
“Sir, you’ve given me too much,” the doorman called.
Julian winked. “You know I’m terrible at math.”
The old man chuckled. “Very well, sir.”
My head reeled as I stepped into a vaulting corridor. Should Mary and I have “miscalculated” the fee as well?
Julian latched onto my elbow. He guided me to the right, along the ruby runner leading to a set of magnificent carved, closed wooden doors. When he judged we had traveled a sufficient distance, he spun me around. Sunlight streamed through the glass windows and into my face.
Julian’s eyebrows lowered in a heavy scowl. “What the blazes are you doing here?”