The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online

I draped a dress from my mother’s wardrobe over my hand to conceal it, and went out again.
    “Very well, Lane,” I told him blandly, and he once more locked the door.
     
    At dinner, Mycroft had the courtesy to say not a word about my borrowed dress, a loose, flowing Aesthetic gown, which bared my neck but hung upon the rest of me like a sheet upon a broomstick. Although I was as tall as Mum, I lacked her womanly figure, and in any event, I had chosen the dress for its colour—peach touched with cream, which I loved—not for any pretense of fit. It dragged on the floor, but very well, thus it concealed my little-girl boots. I had tied a sash around my straight-as-a-poker middle to resemble a waist; I wore a necklace; I had even tried to arrange my hair, although its indefinite brownish hue made it hardly a crowning beauty. Altogether, I am sure I looked like a child playing dress-up, and I knew it.
    Mycroft, although he said nothing, clearly was not pleased. As soon as the fish was served, he told me, “I have sent to London for a seamstress to provide you with proper clothing.”
    I nodded. Some new clothes would be nice, and if I didn’t like them, I could revert to my comfortable knickerbockers the moment his back was turned. But I said, “There is a seamstress right here in Kineford.”
    “Yes, I am aware of that. But the London seamstress will know exactly what you need for boarding school.”
    Whatever was he talking about? Quite patiently I said, “I am not going to boarding school.”
    Just as patiently he responded, “Of course you are, Enola. I have sent inquiries to several excellent establishments for young ladies.”
    Mother had told me about such establishments. Her Rational Dress journals were filled with warnings about their cultivation of the “hourglass” figure. At one such “school,” the headmistress tightened a corset upon each girl who entered, and on the girl’s waist the corset stayed, day and night, waking or sleeping, except for one hour a week when it was removed for “ablutions,” that is, so that the girl could bathe. Then it was replaced, tighter, depriving the wearer of the ability to breathe normally, so that the slightest shock would cause her to fall down in a faint. This was considered “charming.” It was also considered moral, the corset being “an ever-present monitor bidding its wearer to exercise self-restraint”—in other words, making it impossible for the hapless victim to bend or relax her posture. The modern corsets, unlike my mother’s old whalebone ones, were so long that they needed to be made of steel so as not to break, their rigidity displacing the internal organs and deforming the ribcage. One schoolgirl’s corseted ribs had actually punctured her lungs, causing her untimely demise. Her waist as she lay in her coffin had measured fifteen inches.
    All of this passed through my mind in an instant as my fork dropped to my plate with a clatter. I sat stunned, chilled by the horror of my situation, yet unable to state any of my objections to my brother. To speak of such intimate matters of the female form to a male was unthinkable. I was able only to gasp, “But, Mother—”
    “There is no assurance that your mother will come back anytime soon. I cannot stay here indefinitely.” Thank goodness, I thought. “And you can’t just vegetate here by yourself, now, can you, Enola?”
    “Are Lane and Mrs. Lane not to stay on?”
    He frowned, putting down the knife with which he had been buttering his bread. “Of course, but servants cannot possibly provide you with proper instruction and supervision.”
    “I was about to say, Mother would not like—”
    “Your mother has failed in her responsibility to you.” His tone had grown considerably sharper than the butter knife. “What is to become of you if you do not acquire some accomplishments, some social graces, some finish? You will never be able to move in polite society, and your prospects of