Ridiculous (3 page)

At last Mildred led the way downstairs and halted just inside the drawing room where Felicity waited with the closed coffin.

“May I present Mr. North of Yorkshire,” declared Mildred waving her hand toward the door; Millicent entered, swinging Mr. North's cane, then made an elegant leg toward her mother.

Felicity came to her feet with an astonished cry.

“Dear God,” cried Felicity. “I never realized how masculine your features are, Millicent!”

“Why, thank you, Mother,” replied Millicent dryly, straightening up from her bow.

 “No, my dearest.” Felicity fluttered her hands in the air. “I do not mean to say that you are not handsome as a girl, but you quite surprise me as a man.”

Felicity cast her eyes over Millicent's form as the girl bowed her acknowledgment of the compliment, then turned to bow to her sister.

“Millicent, you should be more careful. Do not bow so deeply,” cried Felicity. “It pulls the fabric too tight across your … sitting area. Perhaps you would do better in knee breeches. Or with a longer frock coat.”

“With knee breeches she would have only silk stockings from knee to ankles,” replied Mildred with a laugh.

“Something must be done.” Felicity blushed for her daughter. “No. No, I cannot permit it, Millicent. You must go upstairs and dress properly at once. We shall write and take our chances with Cousin Perceval.”

“Mother.” Millicent paused, coughed, and continued in a lower tone. Only she of her sisters did not possess a soprano voice and had been content with contralto. Now she concentrated on speaking from the bottom of her vocal range. “Cousin Felicity. This will never work if you are forever fussing about my limbs being exposed, or my way of walking and talking. You should begin now, and forever after, to address me as Mr. North.”

“Millicent…” began Felicity.

“Cousin Felicity, please remember your daughter Millicent died today. There is her coffin,” said Millicent, pointing at the sad pine box. “I am Mr. North.”

“This will never work,” moaned Felicity.

“Say it,” cried Millicent. “Say ‘Good morning, Mr. North.’”

“Oh, dear. I cannot.”

“Say it,” shouted both her daughters.

“Millicent…”

“Millicent is dead,” cried Mildred. “I grieve for her, but it is for the best. Mother, I do not wish to go to the work house. I do not wish to get a job as a maid, or a governess or heaven spare us, sell myself on the street for bread. You saw it, did you not, while we were there in the workhouse. Those poor women giving themselves to strangers in the back alley for a few pennies. Is that what you want for yourself? For me? For Millicent and Maude?”

Felicity rocked back and forth with both hands pressed to her face.

“Say it,” said Millicent in a gentler voice, resting one hand on her mother's bent shoulder. “Call me Mr. North and I promise you, you will have servants tending you for the rest of your life. Hot chocolate in bed. Beautiful clothes. You will never have to worry again. I shall put Mr. North's wealth to work providing you with a good and safe home!”

After a long pause, Felicity raised a pale face and regarded her daughters. She glanced upstairs toward the place where her youngest lay sleeping off a fever, her body weakened by the ravages of three years of hard work and privation. Then she looked Millicent directly in the eye, rose to her feet, and gave a curtsy worthy of the Queen’s drawing room.

“Mr. North, how good to see you looking so well.”

* * *

Later as the women took supper at the kitchen table, Felicity returned, reluctantly, to practical matters.

“I suppose if you stay indoors and avoid society no one will see you and find you out,” said Felicity, staring at her eldest daughter as if she had never seen her before. “Be honest, Millicent. You are tall for a woman, but you are not manly. Your form is thin, not muscular. You have no aggression in your features. No one who meets you will believe you are any sort of man at all!”

“Muscles would matter if I were doing manual labor,” said Millicent, “but I'm not replacing the blacksmith. I am a man of property. Of leisure. Of money. I may be as weak as I wish.”

Felicity shook her head. “If you were attempting to be a lad of sixteen or so, perhaps. But Mr. North is what? Thirty?”

“Mother, please,” said Mildred. “There are as many types of men as there are flowers in the garden. Only compare in your mind the figure of the vicar to that of Father, for example. Or that fellow we saw in church last summer who was on repairing lease visiting his family. You know, the one who wore green pantaloons, a red and blue-striped waistcoat, and those silly buttons! Stockings with padded calves? Would you say he was the same type of man as Mr. North? What do you think, Millicent? Perhaps you should dress like him.”

“Good God, no,” said Millicent. “I do not think I could be that sort of man. Can you truly see me as a fop?”

“You will make mistakes; I know you will,” cried Felicity.

“Your faith in my acting abilities is touching,” said Millicent dryly. “The more I think on it the easier I expect it to be.'”

“What do you mean?” asked Felicity.

“I mean that trying to be a Corinthian would be a waste of time and I could never carry it off. Neither could I mince about like that fop! Mildred's point is a good one. There are many types of men in society. If I set out to be deliberately silly, inconsequential, and foolish, then if I should do something odd, people will say, ‘Oh, that is just that odd Mr. North. Think nothing of it.’”

“But not a fop?” Mildred frowned. “That sounds like a fop.”

“No, dear. A fop dresses in the extreme of fashion. I shall be a fribble! A rattle. A fool.”

Felicity groaned and dropped her face into her hands. Over her head her daughters continued the debate.

“Even if we stay in Bath for a year's mourning, it will not be long enough for people hereabouts to forget what Mr. North looks like,” said Mildred.

“Yes, exactly,” said Felicity.

“Why would we return?” asked Millicent. “Are you so very fond of this county? This house? Personally, I find both rather dull. You forget, both of you, that this is not Mr. North's only property. It is merely the one in which he chose to live. While we are in Bath, I shall write to all his, that is to say
my
tenants and look over the list of available properties. Then we shall choose someplace where Mr. N … where I am not previously known. I believe you will be surprised by the range of choice available to us. Or we could stay in Bath. I have read that a respectable number of the
ton
visit there and the entertainment is on par with London.”

Mildred rose and spooned broth into a dish and arranged it on a tea tray.

“We shall have to wait for Maude to be well enough to travel,” she said.

“Agreed,” said Millicent. “Although, we shall tell everyone that it is Mr. North's comfort we wait upon. If anyone calls before we leave we shall tell them that Mr. North is still indisposed and unwilling to leave his room while contagion is about in the neighborhood. Tomorrow, Mildred will follow the coffin to make sure it is buried without incident.”

“You told the vicar you would keep her at home,” said Felicity.

“Would anyone be surprised that the girl disobeyed me and slipped out, since she loved her sister so much?” asked Millicent. “You may be assured I shall punish her appropriately upon her return. After the internment she can visit the baker’s and such and start spreading the story that we will need servants to watch the house while we are in Bath. We will give the impression that Mr. N … that I will be coming back. But, so what if I chose to go elsewhere? I am the master of the house, after all. I may go where I will.”

 “Where shall we go?” asked Felicity. “Where will we live?”

“Cousin Felicity, we shall have the whole winter to decide.”

* * *

It took three weeks for the removal to Bath to be arranged. Felicity spent every waking moment of those weeks expecting the next knock on the door, the next letter delivered would be the one that revealed the deception, but all went well.

Mildred followed the cart containing Mr. North's earthly remains to the cemetery. Felicity went back every morning for the next week to put flowers on the grave. This far from London there were no grave robbers so the body was permitted to rest undisturbed. Since it also gave the impression that a mother was grieving deeply for a lost daughter, no one attempted to prevent Felicity’s visits.

The servants who had been supplanted by the arrival of the Boarder family were contacted and persuaded to return. The old housekeeper expressed relief that Mr. North would be absent “for some time.”

Mr. North's old carriage was hauled out and cleaned, horses rented, driver and outriders hired, and on the arranged day, an ailing Mr. North cursed and grumbled his way downstairs – a blanket over his head as shelter from the elements. A still weak Maude was aided into the carriage by her devoted mother and remaining sister and all four quit the neighborhood.

Chapter Two

Millicent did not even glance up from her luncheon when the knock came on the door of their rented Bath house. There was a shuffle of footsteps as their housekeeper, Mrs. Hall, emerged from the rear of the building to answer the door. Their residence in Bath, so far of three months duration, had been an inspired idea. At Maude's suggestion, they put around the story that they had already spent six months mourning their departed sister back in Yorkshire, which permitted them to appear in public in half mourning and participate in some social events.

Aside from joking once how sad she was at being so quickly forgotten, Millicent made no other comment since she was delighted to see how well her family had settled into their new lives. Back in Yorkshire, under the influence of the late Mr. North, all four of them had withered. Not so much in their physical forms, since Maude had grown inches and gained curves and now was a well-favored girl of eighteen. No, it was a starvation of the mind and spirit they had suffered from most. Mr. North had permitted no calls to be paid upon him, and as they were used as servants in his house, the women were reluctant to encourage the ladies of Yorkshire society to visit.

But once they had settled into a rented house on a good, fashionable street in Bath and Millicent had arranged for subscriptions to the local assemblies, memberships to lending libraries, and had sent the others out shopping for new, fashionable clothing, she had the pleasure of seeing the light return to her sisters’ and mother's eyes. Instead of creeping around a dull and empty house in fear of Mr. North's blows and shouts, they walked, heads held high, confident and happy.

No one questioned her appearance as Mr. North, either. Although she made a thin figure of a young man, Millicent successfully appeared at public locations in masculine clothing and introduced herself about as Mr. North without raising a single eyebrow. She presented herself at the local branch of the Mercantile Bank, and as she was in possession of the account numbers and evidences she had taken from the late Mr. North's lockbox, money was issued to her and notes of hand honored without the slightest comment.

Everything went so well and so easily that she was not worried when the housekeeper brought a bundle of mail to the table. As the “man” of the house, it fell to Millicent to review all correspondence before passing it on to the ladies.

“An invitation to an evening of dinner and cards,” read Felicity, opening the first letter Millicent passed to her. “From a Lady Whenthistle. Do we know her?”

“We met at the assembly,” replied Mildred. “The widow of Sir Richard Whenthistle with the purple turban and astonishingly black hair for her age.”

“And six flounces at the hem,” added Maude with a shudder.

“We shall go,” declared Felicity.

A discussion of who would be there occupied the ladies while Millicent opened and set aside mail from her various tenants. One letter written in haste and in a clumsy hand had Millicent putting down her knife and fork to read it a second time with greater attention. Maude noticed Millicent's frown first.

“Is it bad news?” asked Maude.

“From Yorkshire?” added Felicity in panicked tones.

Millicent shook her head as Mildred rolled her eyes and grinned.

“As it happens, the letter is from Wales,” said Millicent. “I have interests in several farms there. The tenant of the largest, a Mr. Prichart, informs me that this year’s spring floods are worse than usual and several of his fields have been inundated by rising waters. He wishes to discuss the situation with me as he suspects that it will reduce the amount of acreage he can bring under cultivation this year. There have also been drownings amongst his stock.”

“Are any people hurt?” asked Mildred.

“Strangely, there is nothing in this letter about people.” Millicent dropped the letter beside her plate. “Perhaps he believes Mr. North is not interested. He shall discover otherwise. Mildred, dear, please ring for Mrs. Hall. I need her to find out the mail coach schedule while I pack.”

“Pack?” demanded Felicity, as Mildred complied. “Why? Where are you going?”

“I want to meet with Mr. Prichart. I find it curious that he can already calculate the amount of acreage he can plow this early in the spring.”

“But you cannot!” cried Felicity. “To travel alone, so very far. My dear Millicent, it is impossible.”

“She's dead!” hissed Mildred as she rose and shut the dining room door. “As you well remember, Mother. Millicent is dead!”

“But. But.” Felicity glanced back and forth helplessly between her two elder daughters.

Millicent sighed when she realized the problem. While they were living in Bath, there was no real difference from the lives they had lived with their father. Millicent continued to obey her mother in most things, leaving the ordering of the household to Felicity. Millicent's task, as her mother saw it, was to go to the bank and fetch money and if she insisted on doing so while wearing trousers, well, Felicity pretended not to see.

Millicent continued the correspondence with Mr. North's many tenants and business interests; Felicity was not involved in this activity and was unaware of the extent and amount of work it entailed. She was also unaware of the other masculine activities Millicent pursued.