‘I’ll go and tell Lord Jonathan he can go in now. I’ve put some clothes for you behind the screen,’ she informed me.
She had laid out a complete change of clothes: a bright white shift, petticoats, and the emerald green dress I had refused the night before. This morning my rejection of her bounty evaporated like mist under the newly risen sun, and to honour my scrubbed state, I succumbed to temptation, putting each garment on with due reverence. But the greatest wonder were the silk stockings: they slid up my legs so that I hardly knew they were there, so different from the scratchy woollen stockings I normally wore.
‘Shall I help you do up the back of your dress?’
Lady Elizabeth had returned.
‘Please.’ I emerged from behind the screen and displayed my new finery for her approval, arms held wide.
‘I told you it would suit you,’ she said, guiding me to the dressing table. ‘As I have forced you to be my maid this morning, it is now my turn to do you the same service.’
I definitely got the better part of the bargain. Lady Elizabeth brushed and fastened up my damp hair to look like something out of a fashion plate. I had never seen myself so smart. I looked almost like a highborn lady.
‘Now I will need your help with Lord Jonathan,’ she said, giving my curls a final tweak. ‘He will be here in a moment.’
‘Help? What kind of help?’ My play time was over and I was businesslike once more, remembering we were far from safe.
‘With the disguise.’ Lady Elizabeth moved to the closet on the far side of the room and pulled out a pile of clothes she had prepared. ‘Frank has secured a berth for Lord Jonathan on a ship leaving for America. It will sail as soon as the wind is favourable. He’s arranging to bring round the carriage so that we can take Lord Jonathan to the docks this morning. He can hide on board until the packet sails. All that remains is to ensure that he is not recognised on the way there.’
She threw the clothes on to the bed. I could now see that they consisted of a large red velvet gown, stays, a shift and other items of female apparel. A black wig crouched amongst them like a cat curled up before the fire.
‘You’re going to dress him as a woman?’ I asked, wondering if I was allowed to giggle.
‘Of course,’ she said with a smile. ‘What better disguise could there be? I did promise to dress him so that even his own mother would not recognise him. Though my mother might, for it is one of her gowns I’ve borrowed.’
‘Does Johnny know yet?’
She shook her head.
At that moment, there was a tap on the dressing room door.
‘Come!’ said Lady Elizabeth.
Johnny stepped into the room wrapped in a dressing gown, admittedly looking far better than he had last night but nothing surely could disguise that puffy black eye and cut lip?
‘What are you smiling at?’ he asked, looking from one of us to the other.
‘Nothing,’ Lady Elizabeth said brightly. ‘Now, go behind the screen and put on the things I give you.’
Obediently, he did as he was bidden. I had never heard Johnny swear before a lady but that changed when the shift was handed over the top of the screen.
‘Dammit, what’s all this?’ he spluttered in outrage.
‘Your disguise,’ said Lady Elizabeth calmly. ‘Now stop making a fuss and get yourself dressed.’
‘I can’t wear this!’ he exclaimed, jiggling the stays over the top of the screen. ‘It’s bad enough that I’ve been beaten black and blue around my ribs without squeezing into this infernal contraption.’
‘Stop complaining,’ she told him in a firm, no-nonsense voice. ‘Half the population wear them all the time: I’m only asking you to put it on for a few hours.’
The grumbles ceased and Johnny finally emerged wearing the dress. In my opinion, the disguise was not convincing: he looked like a man in a gown. Anyone would see at a glance that he was an impostor.
Lady Elizabeth, however, was not down-hearted. She hadn’t finished with him yet.
‘Sit by the glass here,’ she ordered.
Johnny shuffled over, tripping on his skirts.
‘Pull the strings tighter, Cat,’ she said, gesturing to the laces dangling from the back of his dress. ‘Then do up the buttons.’
As instructed I began to pull.
‘Wait a moment,’ she said. Diving into a drawer in the tallboy by the screen she pulled out a pair of woollen stockings.
‘I think you can guess where to put these,’ she said, blushing scarlet as she handed them to Johnny. With a few furtive gropes down the front of his dress, he suddenly began to take on a much more womanly form.
‘Ow!’ Johnny cried as I resumed pulling on the strings. ‘I don’t know how you ladies stand for all this.’
‘Neither do I,’ agreed Lady Elizabeth, now approaching his face with a large powder puff. ‘Pure madness.’
As I buttoned Johnny’s dress up at the back, Lady Elizabeth placed the wig on his head, adorning it with a lace cap and bonnet.
‘There!’ She stepped back, hands on hips.
The transformation was uncanny. Gone was handsome Johnny; in his place was an ugly matron with her face plastered in white powder.
‘As long as he doesn’t move or speak, we might get away with this,’ I mused.
‘I’ll ring for some breakfast,’ said Lady Elizabeth enthusiastically. ‘We’ll try it out on one of the servants. I’ll tell them you are my dressmaker come for a fitting.’
In response to the summons, a maid appeared at the door.
‘Jenny, is Papa in the breakfast room?’
Jenny nodded.
‘Can you tell him that I can’t come down as the dressmaker has arrived. I’ll take my breakfast up here.’
Jenny’s eyes slid to Johnny, who was busying himself with a sewing bag Lady Elizabeth had thrust in his hands a moment before. Lady Elizabeth took her to the door and said in an undertone, ‘I would be most obliged if you would not stare at the lady’s eye, Jenny. Her husband is a nasty piece of work . . . he beats her. She has been in floods of tears this morning telling me about it.’
Jenny’s face now registered pity for the unfortunate seamstress.