Page 240 of The Ladies Least Likely
“Leg Square is a stone’s throw from here,” Ren whispered, taking Harriette’s hand as much to hold himself upright as to support her. “We’ll go to the Manor.” How they would get in, he hadn’t yet a notion.
Harriette didn’t argue. She didn’t demur or doubt him, nor even give him a skeptical look, not that the night shadows allowed him to properly see her face. She put her hand in his with complete trust and followed him through the narrow twisting alley, between a set of buildings, dark and shuttered and quiet, and into Leg Square. The short street, not a proper square at all, was equally dark and quiet, the eerie quiet of living things holding their breath.
A short distance away the mob swarmed the prison, and at any moment a group could break away and enter the square, where the grand houses stood awaiting the wrath of the disaffected. The Manor House would be safe behind the Blinder Wall, Ren hoped. But they would only be safe if they could get inside.
“The key?” Harriette panted as they stumbled and slithered along the Blinder Wall to the back side, where the wooden door on its iron hinges sat firmly shut with its iron lock.
“Er, that. The key is hanging near the kitchen entrance, I understand. Usual place. On the other—other side,” he clarified, as Harriette gave him a blank look.
“Then how are we to get in?”
“Well, you see, I haven’t thought that through.”
His marvelous Harriette gave him a calm, level look. He comprehended in that instant how utterly unique she was. Most genteel ladies of his acquaintance would have collapsed sobbing against the Blinder Wall at this point. They would have gone into hysterics, blaming him not just for misplacing the key but for the riot, the general state of affairs in Shepton Mallet, and everything else that was wrong with the world. They would have thrown themselves on the mercy of any passing stranger just to be shot of him, and he would be obliged to follow like an idiot, and above that, he would be forced to endure the silent treatment for days, if not longer.
Harriette looked about with thoughtful deliberation. She tipped back her head, and he formed the wordNojust as she said, quite matter-of-factly, “I suppose I will climb the tree.”
“No,” he said anyway.
“Oh, you intend to climb it instead? Very well, I shall hold your cane.”
She said this without heat, as if the argument were merely an exercise. The wall was half again as high as she was, but the bird cherry in the back corner of the lot, growing wild and untended, had stretched its branches over the wall. She could reach them if she had a leg up.
“You could h-h-hurt yourself,” Ren said.
“I did all right at Renwick House, didn’t I? Here, help me move this wheelbarrow.”
By some cursed luck there was indeed an unused wheelbarrow leaning against the wall. Harriette helped him position it against the tree, then she fell to the business ofdisrobing. First she looped her long black veil around her arm, unpinned her hat, and handed it to Ren. When she started untying the strings of her cape, he found his voice.
“Wh-what are you doing?”
“Well, I can’t climb a tree in full dress, can I?” she answered. “Learned that last time. Here, hold this.”
She handed him the black velvet cape, neatly folded, and then, to his astonishment, started working at the front of her gown. “Now what?” he asked, his voice strangled.
He wasn’t concerned about impropriety. It was nearly pitch black where they stood in the shadows. The only light came from a lamp lit in an upper room across the way and the orange glow of the fire in Market Square. Every so often, from the direction of the prison, where there emanated shouts, clanging noises, and the sound of walls being beat upon, a flare of torchlight leapt into the sky like some macabre spirit.
This night, Ren thought in a daze, was so far the strangest night of his existence. Every sense seemed heightened, every image sharp and clear. He would never forget it, not least because Harriette was undressing, just as he had fantasized her doing all the times in her studio that she had undressed him.
“This is a sight harder to do in the dark.” She moved her hands over the front of her gown, pulling out pins, and in a short while she’d freed her black open robe from her stomacher. Carefully she folded the gleaming black bombazine and arranged it on top of the cape. “The stomacher must go too, I think.”
As she pulled out the pins that held the decorative front panel in place, Ren found his voice. “Where did you find mourning garments?”
“My mother had costumes made when I sent her word that my grandfather the duke had died.” Her voice sounded muffled as she tucked her chin, searching with her fingers in the dark forthe last precious pins. “She had two gowns made up, it seems. Mrs. Demant laid her out in one, and I fortunately fit in the other.”
Onto the pile went the flat black stomacher with its rows of black silk ribbons. “Hold a moment, I’ll take my top petticoat off as well. Black silk isn’t very sturdy. Something about the dying process weakens the fabric, I think.”
“Is that why you smell metallic. Like iron.” He focused on the shape of Harriette emerging in the gloom as she untied the thick silk petticoat, lined with more silk ribbons, from around her waist.
“I use ground bone ash for my black pigments, and sometimes lamp black,” she said, folding the petticoat efficiently. “But I think for this fabric they used gall nuts and tannins, with iron as the mordant to help it hold fast.” She placed the petticoat atop the pile in his arms. “When this is all over and we have a moment, I ought to visit the dyer’s to see how he does it. I might learn something.”
Ren couldn’t speak. He simply gazed at her over the pile of clothing he held, struck dumb. Harriette stood before him in shift and stays and underpetticoat, her pockets a fanciful patchwork tied about her waist. Only her black silk stockings and heeled black shoes hinted at the luxury she’d just shed. And the shape of her in those scanty garments—it defied his meager powers of description. He wished he had her gift of drawing so he might capture this image and carry it with him always.
“Now put those somewhere, and be prepared to catch me if I go arsey varsey,” she said.
He grinned and found a nearby overgrown flowerbed, the cleanest place he could discern in the dark. Harriette hiked up her petticoat and climbed into the wheelbarrow, placing a hand on his shoulder for balance as she studied the branches of the bird cherry, charting her path.
“You don’t have to do this, Rhette,” he murmured. “We can take shelter in the churchyard, or with the Demants, or?—”
