Chapter 15

In February, during a welcome thaw in what had been a very hard, snowy winter, Anne's Aunt Amelia slipped on a curbstone as she got out of her carriage in front of Christ Church and landed heavily on the brick sidewalk, breaking her wrist, bruising a knee and perhaps cracking her pelvis. She was bedridden for almost a month, and Anne did her best to comfort her by reading newspapers and novels aloud and telling her stories gathered from the many parties she attended that winter. She received new invitations almost every day, much to her aunt's amusement, and hardly a week went by without her being corseted and preened, her wild red hair combed and piled high on her head. Her aunt bought her two more fancy dresses and several lacy shifts and shoes with square heels about two-inches high as well as some fancy mules and numerous combs, scents and sachets. She even lent peacock feathers for one of the girl's hair-dos.

André's rather effeminate aide, Ensign Hart, had become her worshipful escort to many of the local affairs and proved to be a fine dancer and terrible conversationalist, afflicted as he was with a very embarrassing stutter and, as far as Anne could tell, an interest in nothing but John André. The young man was tall, thin, and effetely handsome despite a hawk-like nose and was wonderfully uniformed, his gorget and buttons gleaming silver and hanger's hilt chased with gold. He often appeared with his hair or small wig powdered and, Anne was sure, his cheeks rouged.

His family, he told her several times, was old and wealthy, with a huge home in Sussex and had purchased his commission when he failed in an effort to become a Church of England minister as had his older brother who now was serving, so he told her proudly, two benefices and had married well. His own preaching, he told her, had been labeled foul, atrocious and incomprehensible. He snorted when he finally got that word out, laughing at himself. Anne filed it away for later use, a jewel she decided, six or seven syllables.

He had even rescued her once when an amorous German grenadier officer in his cups seemed about ready to rip off her gown after forcing her out on a balcony. Hart had pulled the man away, cursed him in several languages, put his hand on the hilt of his sword and then brought Anne a glass of pale wine to calm her frazzled nerves and kept her in sight for the rest of the evening after she pulled her dress together despite a parted seam. She was never aware of Hart's deep and urgent desire for her, or the local courtesans he called by her name when he used them. If he could not find a red-headed whore, he often made the woman wear a wig.

On this bright and sunny day she was expecting a visit from Captain André himself so that he could discover whether or not the velvet dress he had designed for Anne fit properly. She was wearing the dark green gown with its sleek front and gathered back when the maid came and said that the captain and his aide had arrived. Anne put down the Richardson novel which was her aunt's favorite, and went down to meet her guests, wearing the pair of new stays her aunt had provided and the polonaise-style dress that had arrived the previous morning in a huge, pasteboard box along with silk and satin undergarments.

The dress was very low cut and fully displayed the upper half of the young woman's swelling breasts, a most fashionable look she was sure, but one that took a good bit of care and poise as well as strenuously erect posture and tightly laced stays. It barely clung to her shoulders, and she had to wear a sleeveless shift with tiny, ribbon straps.

Ensign Hart gawked at her, and André took her hand and led her into the front parlor. He brought her to the bow window and had her turn about several times and curtsey once, an act that amused him and embarrassed her. "What do you think, Hart? Will it do?" He hoisted up the shoulders an inch and pulled at her trim waist, frowning, gathering pleated material in his hand.

The boy nodded, licked his lips and stammered out, "Lovely, sir, fah, fah, first rate indeed." As usual, the lithe redhead had thoroughly engorged him, a real problem in his tight breeches.

"She has a fine back, remarkably straight, deeply trenched, eh? Never seen the like. Hidden, of course, beneath this incredible bale of hair, and a bit freckled I fear." The captain, grasping her hair and holding it aside, eyed the girl as though she were made of marble, squinting. "And an admirable chest, eh, eh? What a tiny waist and the deltoids, the pectorals, wonderful."

He fluffed back her hair and tried to circle her waist with his hands and almost did, squeezing her stays. André cocked his head to the side, closed one eye briefly and used both hands to adjust the very low bodice, pulling it down another inch, noting her pale freckles and smiling. Hart groaned and turned away. Anne involuntarily shivered, afraid to look down.

"Please, sir," she said rather loudly, pushing him away, her hand in his lacy neckcloth. "I feel like a prize heifer at the county fair." She yanked her dress a bit higher and glanced downward, grimacing at her cleavage, blanching and blushing.

Hart nodded and swallowed, trying to control his breathing. He held his befeathered hat over his groin and looked for a chair, wondering about his dwindling supply of sheep gut cumdums and hoping his favorite frisker would serve him quickly. He sat and quickly adjusted the pins holding his tightly curled earlocks.

"You don't think these confounded ruffles are a bit much, eh, too busy? I just sketched them in." The captain flapped at the draped back of Anne's dress. "Makes her look fat, wot, wide in the beam?"

"Oh no sir. I have noticed such, ah, such adornment, attachments, such, such..." He sputtered and stopped, gasping and backed away, almost tripping over a chair. He sat.

"Yes, yes." Amused, André turned Anne around with his hands at her elbows where garlands of Belgian lace dangled, smiled at her face, pursed his lips, and cocked his head. "I see you have freckles, Miss Conroy. I had not noticed that before. Odd. Perhaps you would prefer a dress with a high collar, a lacy stomacher as it were. What do they call it, fichu?" He touched her sternum with the tip of his forefinger, just below her mother's rope of pearls. "To here perhaps, wide lapels are quite popular, or bows, lace to tuck in." He stuck both forefingers down into the valley between her quivering breasts and pulled her closer.

"Oh no," said Anne with a small smile as she pushed his arm aside. "This is fine, very stylish, but I must stand very straight and the gown is quite heavy." The front of her new dress had a folded cuff over the square-cut bodice that followed the contours of her young body and, with the help of her new corset, provided a rich frame for her developing breasts that appeared like pale moons rising from the dark green velvet sea when she inhaled. Perhaps, Anne thought, I will need to powder my chest as well as my nose.

André put his hand on her waist and then patted her corset. "You don't have much choice. Couldn't bend in that, eh? Feels like a cooper made it."

Anne nodded and bit back a smile, seeking a word for her predicament and not finding one. That was frustrating. Her vocabulary search was one of her prime and very private pleasures. She loved to produce exactly the right word. "At bay" was close she decided after discarding "treed" with a smile.

"Now," said the captain peremptorily, "if you will sit here, please, before this curtain, and be very still, I will make a shadow for you. I'm really quite good at it." He chuckled. "So they tell me." He smacked his lips, arched his brows and grinned at her, cocking his head to the side, closing one eye and holding up his thumb. Then he dug both hands into her hair and jostled it about, making her scarlet crown even larger, dragging out huge curls, coaxing the tumultuous mop atop her shoulders and then tumbling down her back.

He reached without looking and his ensign produced several sheets of heavy, black paper and then a pair of small, pointed scissors. Anne sat, inhaled, squared her shoulders in the ladder-backed chair and lifted her chin as she was instructed. Her aunt had several small silhouettes framed on her bedroom wall including a pair of the lady herself as a young woman facing her equally young and periwigged husband, a man with a bulging forehead and bulbous nose.

The squinting Englishman sat ten feet away, ankles crossed, and snipped rapidly, looking up and then back at his work several times. He held up the finished product, compared the profiles, said "Fah!" loudly, cut it into slivers and started over as shards of black fluttered to the floor covering.

Anne turned and he growled so she froze again, quite still, facing the wall, chin up as instructed, trying to watch from the corner of her eye and keeping her breathing shallow and regular, refusing the urge to smile.

Andre« snipped, clamped his mouth tightly, breathed loudly, snorted and then cursed. "His bones and blood! Damnable hair. It's like the bleeding ocean; goes on forever, undulating, waves and waves, tides, currents. You could lose a battalion in there, a fleet." He cut his effort in half, dropped the pieces to the floor and began again.

"Hold still, woman," he snorted. "I am planning a great event, my lovely, flame-headed rustic, an extravagance you might call it, a tournament of pleasure and celebration." André carefully cut the stiff paper and somehow produced a tiny eyelash, his mouth a thin line, one eye closed.

"Really?" said Anne, thinking of a word for the officer and deciding on haughty after discarding saturnine, one she had been saving. She promised herself to look up both when she had a chance and tried to decide if he had somehow curled his hair or if this was a new wig. It had several odd tails. She wondered why he had no wife, not even a Continental wife as many English officers did.