AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was surprisingly effective, making her giggle at the ingenuity of it all. She placed her hand over her mouth, clamping her lips together at the giggle that had escaped. She knew if she was going to make this work, she would have to stop such feminine things.
She hurried to dress before turning to the last matter at hand. Her hair. The wild tendrils could never be tamed before, but now they would have to be tamed a little, by being cut.
She headed to the toilette chamber that adjoined her brother’s bedroom, lifting the candle toward a small mirror set upon a toilette table to give her light with which to work. Then she turned the scissors on her hair. Biting her lip, she cut the copper-coloured curls away, until they sat around her ears, loose and springing up with much shorter curls. She still looked rather feminine, but with the clothes, the illusion was beginning to take place.
She adjusted her stance in the mirror, trying to impersonate Victor, finding that she could accomplish the move well enough. She had seen plenty of feminine men in her time, and her brother was no different, being so slight in stature with petite features. She would have to hope that those she met thought her a feminine-looking man.
Violette hurried back into her brother’s main chamber, searching for a short top hat that she found in his cupboard before placing it on her head. It completed the illusion perfectly.
“Good evening, Victor,” she muttered to herself, unable to restrain her smile at the transformation.
There was a sound in the corner of the room. She flicked her head toward it, seeing the clock hands turning in a grandfather clock just before a chime rang out quietly. It was two o’clock in the morning. It gave her some time still to make her escape, but she would have to be quick. A few more hours and the laundry maids would be rising in order to start their work for the day.
Violette turned back to the leather trunk and finished packing it, throwing in a few personal items for hygiene and a brush for her hair before slinging the trunk over her shoulder and heading for the door. Having always taken part in the same sports as her brother, she was strong enough to carry it alone without strain or worry.
Peering out into the corridor, she found it still empty. She blew the candle out, deciding not to risk taking the lit candle with her any further, and moved along the hallway, heading toward the staircase. She knew there was one challenge more she had to face. She had to find some money with which to live. She had some cash she had packed already in her breeches pockets, but it would only get her through a few days.
It posed a bit of a dilemma.
As she hurried down the stairs, she headed toward her father’s study, coming to a realisation with each step how much more freeing the breeches were to wear over the slim empire-line gowns she was so accustomed to wearing. The Hessian boots too, made striding around a lot easier, moving at great speed. Had she been wearing her usual attire, she would have lost her slip-on shoes by now!
Had it been any other time of day, she could have been caught by the staff. Once seen in the men’s clothes, her secret would have been out and she would have been stopped from leaving, but she knew at this time of night, no one was awake. It allowed her to walk around the house unseen.
When she reached the study door, she stepped inside and dropped the trunk to the floor, looking around the space. Cast in darkness, with just a slip of moonlight visible through the white curtains, she could barely trace the shelves of books and the desk in the middle of the floor, flanked by two armchairs with paintings on either wall, staring down at whoever sat at the desk.
“Well…I suppose this would be stealing,” she murmured to herself, not particularly liking the idea at all. It felt wrong. She was not just then running away but becoming a criminal, and the mere idea made her shift between her feat uncomfortably with sweat beading down the centre of her back, between the sheeting that bound her breasts and her bare skin.
She knew she had a dowry to her name. Arguably she could take that money if she never intended to return, so that she was stealing nothing from her father, but it still felt wrong. She circled the desk and started searching in drawers until she found a key in the bottom drawer that was for a safe set in the wall.
Turning to the safe, she unlocked it, finding her jaw falling open and the sheer amount of money locked away. “He might not even notice his money is gone.” She half laughed to herself. Still, she felt discomforted by it, resigning herself to the plan that she would someday pay her father back. If she could find some employment and a way to support herself, then she could send the money back to her father in the future, and there would be no need to feel guilty for it.
“It is a loan. It is not stealing,” she said to herself, though her hands still shook as she took the money.
Once all was in place, she closed the safe, returned the key to the drawer and left the room with her trunk under her arm, heading straight for the front door. In the doorway, she hovered for a few minutes, looking around the house that had been her home forever, realising that she was not feeling much sadness in leaving it. She would miss Rupert, but Victor was the main thing she would miss, and he wasn’t there anymore regardless. He was on the continent for his own travels. It was time she set out on her own adventure.
Smiling to herself, she stepped out of the door and headed round the house, where she planned to prepare her horse and ride into Oxford, where in the early hours of the morning she could catch a stagecoach to London. From there, her opportunities were endless. What was it Victor had always said after all? No man goes travelling who does not take his first steps in London.
