Now there remained only the problem of her hair.
On Mars Arabella had never paid much attention to her hair, wearing it short enough to keep out of her eyes and combing it only when her mother insisted. But since arriving in England, the formerly occasional demands of fashion had become constant, and Arabella had been subjected to interminable rounds of combing, brushing, braiding, and fussing that left her extremely vexed. Thus it was with great satisfaction that she pulled back her hair and cut the majority of it away with her cuticle-knife, leaving the discarded strands in the hedgerow for birds to make their nests of.
The result was, even she had to acknowledge, extremely untidy, being executed with an instrument only middling sharp and without the aid of a looking-glass, but as she pulled the cap low on her brow she reflected that it was not much worse than the rest of her outfit.
But still … worn, ill-fitting, and stolen though her clothing might be, what a relief it was to have her legs properly covered again! No more would she suffer the indignity of a skirt catching on a protruding branch, nor be forced to concern herself with the prying eyes of the public upon her exposed flesh.
Her outfit was no thukhong—how she missed that warm, comfortable leather garment!—but in it she nonetheless felt ready for any eventuality.
*
Half an hour later, Arabella swaggered along, hands in her pockets and arms a-kimbo, aping her brother’s confident stride as best she could. Ahead on the path lay an inn, where she hoped she might obtain something to eat and perhaps directions to a mail-coach or stage-coach. To cover her anxiety, she whistled loudly in what she intended as a manly fashion. She hoped she had made no dreadfully obvious mistakes with her unaccustomed garments.
The inn still lay some five hundred yards distant when she heard, and then saw, a black-and-scarlet mail-coach approaching along the road. She burst into a run, holding on to her breeches at the waist to keep them from sliding down to her ankles and hoping the wad of fabric that filled out the front did not fall too badly out of place.
As she rushed along, her brains rattling in her head from each blow of her heels on the path in Earth’s heavy gravity, she saw the coach come to the inn, draw to a halt, and the guard at the rear of the carriage hand down a packet of mail to the innkeeper. The coach seemed to be just on the brink of departing.
But finally, stumbling, panting, and catching at her falling breeches, she leaned heavily against the side of the coach before it left. “I should like,” she gasped, pitching her voice as low as she could, “to take passage, to London.”
“You are in luck, my lad,” the driver said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “There’s one seat open inside.”
“Bless you, sir.” But as she reached for the door handle, the driver blocked the door with his hand.
“Seventeen shillings sixpence, sir.”
“Sev—!” Arabella’s mouth hung open at the shocking fare.
“Outside’s cheaper, but there’s none left.” The four dusty and miserable-looking men seated on the coach’s roof regarded Arabella with red-eyed indifference. “Or you could take the stage tomorrow for half the price. But this here’s the Royal Mail, and we waits for no man. So what’s it to be, lad, stay or go?”
Seventeen shillings sixpence was nearly all the money that remained in her pocket. But one day’s delay could make the difference between intercepting her cousin in London and watching in helpless despair as his ship sailed away into the interplanetary atmosphere. “I shall go,” she said, and counted out the coins.
Before she had even properly seated herself, the coach jolted into motion, slamming her into the wall on one side and her neighbor on the other in irregular alternation. She felt rather like a hat being rattled about in a hat-box, and the noise precluded all conversation.
It was not until the coach was halfway to Tetsworth that she realized she had successfully posed as a boy without being questioned.
*
The day passed as though in a fever. She slept fitfully as the coach jolted along, often waking with a fellow traveler’s elbow in her ribs or coat-button in her eye. She had no idea where they were; from where she sat she had only a sliver of a view through the tiny window. In the darkness and noise of the lurching coach, conversation was impossible even if she had desired it.
Her stolen clothing itched at her conscience as badly as the worn and rustic fabric itched at her body. For the hundredth time she told herself that she had had no choice—that, despite the great hardship she knew her theft would cause some unknown farmer, the risk to her brother’s life was greater still. Yet she knew her beloved Khema would be terribly disappointed in her.