for it. Wait till you get out and see what the duchesses and grande dames are wearing. Next to nothing, that’s what. You won’t be able to tell the titled ladies from the…the…”
“The fashionably impure? I’m not such a green gudgeon, you know. Such things are talked about, even in Bath.” She didn’t mention that such women were only mentioned in whispers, behind schoolmistresses’ backs. Neither did she see the need to boast that she would recognize a fast woman instantly. Hadn’t she just seen that rouged redhead at Harwood House? That entire sequence was too embarrassing to discuss with gentle Marie, who, for all her London sophistication—town bronze, Fanny called it—was too polite to utter the words. It was the whole terrible memory, furthermore, which was most likely causing Cristabel’s nightmares!
Marie was just as eager to change the subject. “In the meantime, why don’t you let me and Fanny do something about your hair?”
“My hair?” Cristabel had pulled her hair back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck ever since she stopped wearing it loose. The style was one of dignity, maturity—and boredom, now that she thought about it. A new life, new clothes, new friends. Why not a new hairstyle?
The two girls primped and pulled. They washed her hair with lemon juice and ale, eggs and honey, and made her sit by the fireplace to dry it. Then they started snipping and crimping. Having friends was maybe the best part, Cristabel mused, while she drowsed in the chair.
For all her years at the academy, Cristabel had no friends, not one single soul to care if she even reached London, or to miss her. Oh, the young girls in her room might weep over her leaving—for a day. They were past the age when anyone who was kind to them became a substitute mother, and Cristabel was too young for that role anyway, but they had liked her, she knew. Of course they did, she bought them things! It was one of her discoveries in her first months at Miss Meadow’s, that given enough to play with, youngsters would leave her own things alone. Just like puppies. So she brought them the lending library novels and colored chalk and jackstraws, and in return they gave her a modicum of privacy, along with some affection.
If she was being harsh, considering their fondness a shallow, store-bought commodity, it was from experience. She recalled their tender parting gifts, just as she remembered her reign by terror, threatening to cut their eyelashes off while they slept, if they ever dared to blacken them with boot polish again. She also thought back to all the other years of young girls who, once out of her room and her care, found likelier objects of respect, idolizing the older girls and barely acknowledging the music teacher.
Some of the less haughty senior girls could have been her friends, especially when she first came and was near to them in age. To Cristabel, coming from a small country vicarage, however, they seemed to speak a different language. When the girls reviewed the evening lesson with Miss Meadow, memorizing the London patronesses to whom they must be polite, Cristabel could only wonder. “How peculiar,” she chided them. “I was taught to be polite to everyone,” which earned her a reputation for quixotic notions and fusty opinions. There was nothing she could teach them about drawing room behavior except an etude, so they ignored her.
The other instructors were older, harried, living for their holidays and a nod of approval from the headmistress. Like Miss Meadow, their satisfaction seemed to come with creating another paradigm of British debutante, ready to take her place on the marriage mart for auction to the highest bidder. The voice teacher would be the only one missing Cristabel, she’d bet, if only for all the extra work that would fall on Miss Macklin’s shoulders. As for Miss Meadow—
“There, now you can look,” Marie told her, interrupting Cristabel’s reverie before she could
“The fashionably impure? I’m not such a green gudgeon, you know. Such things are talked about, even in Bath.” She didn’t mention that such women were only mentioned in whispers, behind schoolmistresses’ backs. Neither did she see the need to boast that she would recognize a fast woman instantly. Hadn’t she just seen that rouged redhead at Harwood House? That entire sequence was too embarrassing to discuss with gentle Marie, who, for all her London sophistication—town bronze, Fanny called it—was too polite to utter the words. It was the whole terrible memory, furthermore, which was most likely causing Cristabel’s nightmares!
Marie was just as eager to change the subject. “In the meantime, why don’t you let me and Fanny do something about your hair?”
“My hair?” Cristabel had pulled her hair back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck ever since she stopped wearing it loose. The style was one of dignity, maturity—and boredom, now that she thought about it. A new life, new clothes, new friends. Why not a new hairstyle?
The two girls primped and pulled. They washed her hair with lemon juice and ale, eggs and honey, and made her sit by the fireplace to dry it. Then they started snipping and crimping. Having friends was maybe the best part, Cristabel mused, while she drowsed in the chair.
For all her years at the academy, Cristabel had no friends, not one single soul to care if she even reached London, or to miss her. Oh, the young girls in her room might weep over her leaving—for a day. They were past the age when anyone who was kind to them became a substitute mother, and Cristabel was too young for that role anyway, but they had liked her, she knew. Of course they did, she bought them things! It was one of her discoveries in her first months at Miss Meadow’s, that given enough to play with, youngsters would leave her own things alone. Just like puppies. So she brought them the lending library novels and colored chalk and jackstraws, and in return they gave her a modicum of privacy, along with some affection.
If she was being harsh, considering their fondness a shallow, store-bought commodity, it was from experience. She recalled their tender parting gifts, just as she remembered her reign by terror, threatening to cut their eyelashes off while they slept, if they ever dared to blacken them with boot polish again. She also thought back to all the other years of young girls who, once out of her room and her care, found likelier objects of respect, idolizing the older girls and barely acknowledging the music teacher.
Some of the less haughty senior girls could have been her friends, especially when she first came and was near to them in age. To Cristabel, coming from a small country vicarage, however, they seemed to speak a different language. When the girls reviewed the evening lesson with Miss Meadow, memorizing the London patronesses to whom they must be polite, Cristabel could only wonder. “How peculiar,” she chided them. “I was taught to be polite to everyone,” which earned her a reputation for quixotic notions and fusty opinions. There was nothing she could teach them about drawing room behavior except an etude, so they ignored her.
The other instructors were older, harried, living for their holidays and a nod of approval from the headmistress. Like Miss Meadow, their satisfaction seemed to come with creating another paradigm of British debutante, ready to take her place on the marriage mart for auction to the highest bidder. The voice teacher would be the only one missing Cristabel, she’d bet, if only for all the extra work that would fall on Miss Macklin’s shoulders. As for Miss Meadow—
“There, now you can look,” Marie told her, interrupting Cristabel’s reverie before she could
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