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“Something wrong with it?”
“On the contrary, it’s very convincing. It’s more the gait I’d associate with a horse than a man.”
“Oi!” she complained, to which Sherborne started lolloping around the room behind her in the mirror, pulling laughter from her. “Your point being?”
“The walk is plausible,” he said, stopping his act and coming back toward her. “My main worry is, Miss, the way you stand.”
Violette let her eyes rest on her current stance. Her feet were quite close together and her hands were bundled together in front of her.
“Is it bad?” she asked, peering out from under her top hat.
“Bad? You might as well wear a placard against your chest saying, ‘I am a woman, disguised as a man’!” he declared, far too loudly for her comfort.
“Shh!” she said with waved arms, glancing toward the door but it was closed, and the outside world couldn’t hear them.
“Men do not stand with their feet so close together.” He pointed down at her boots. She purposefully jumped and set them wide apart. “And they do not fiddle with their hands as though they can think of nothing better to do. My mother is always telling me off for putting my hands in my pockets all the time, though I’ve seen many other men do it, so it’s not a bad thing to do.”
She followed suit and placed her hands in the loose pockets of her tailcoat.
“A lot of men are more hunched than you are….”
“Fine gentlemen have good posture too,” she said, raising her eyebrows at him.
“Oh, I get it, I am no fine gentlemen?” he said, pretending to be offended.
“Seeing as I found you yesterday wearing rags and you ate everything at dinner as though you were starved, to the point that I thought you would eat the tablecloth too…yes, perhaps not a fine gentleman,” she said with a wry smile.
“Yes, your point is taken,” he said, nodding at her. “My last piece of advice is the laugh.”
“My laugh?” she asked, scrunching up her nose in discomfort. It wasn’t something she had even considered.
“Most men have deeper laughs. They chuckle, they do not giggle.”
“I do not giggle!”
“You giggled so much at dinner that at one point, our server was staring at your rather intently. I dropped my fork just to distract him,” Sherborne said, folding his arms.
“That was why you dropped it?” she asked, matching his stance, and trying to copy it perfectly.
“Yes,” he said with a smile.
“Huh, perhaps you will be useful to have round. Especially to distract people who are very suspicious.”
“That reminds me….” Sherborne paused then walked across the room, increasing the distance between them as he chewed his lip in thought.
“Reminds you of what?”
“How likely is it this ruse of yours will be discovered?” Sherborne’s words made Violette feign excessive interest in her reflection in the mirror. So far it had worked, but who knew for how long she could keep it up? “I take it there will be people looking for you?”
“There will be,” she said sombrely and cast her eyes down at the floor. She could just imagine the panic her mother and father had gone into. Her father was probably angry because he would deem it improper for a young lady to be out on her own. What her mother’s complaint would be, Violette wasn’t sure.
Would they be scared for her? Violette dismissed the idea quite fast. Her mother had had more than one opportunity of late to defend Violette against her father’s temper, and her mother had avoided doing anything at all costs.
“Maybe she does not really see me as a person at all, sometimes,” Violette whispered to herself, thinking long and hard about her mother.
“What was that?” Sherborne asked.
“Nothing,” Violette said as she looked to him. He had picked up one of the silver boxes she had brought with her, that usually had cufflinks in them. “As long as we don’t meet anyone I or my family know, I should remain undiscovered. You’re examining that cufflink box a little too much,” she said warningly, to which he smirked and put the box down again.
“I am not a thief anymore!” he said with laughter. “I am a valet.”
“Of sorts,” Violette pointed out, to which he nodded.
“The box was just making me think…what are you going to do for money?”
