March 18, 2013

They brought stays. Morag stood in the shift they'd given her after she finished the bath, scratching her head, holding them and trying to figure out how to put them on. She'd last worn petticoats when she was a girl, damn near a score of years ago, and it'd been ragged petticoats and shabby gowns then, cut down from the trollops' clothes. She'd worn breeches since she was thirteen. She didn't know how to wear gowns and dresses and such.

She wanted to go hunting for someone to help her wear the damn things, but they'd stolen her breeches and shirts while she was scrubbing herself clean. She couldn't go out wandering the halls in nobbut a shift. Damn thing didn't reach past her knees, anyway. “Damnit.” She sat on the bench they'd left clothes for her, probably wrinkling them.

And she'd told the maid, Mary Hawkin, to get gone when the dell kept gawking at her. Probably back below stairs gossiping on the freakish man-woman what'd been a groom in the stable until two days gone.

“Stupid damn clothes.” She jammed her arms through the armholes of the stays, tugging it closed across her front and poking the laces through the holes and pulling them tight. It came up almost to her collarbones in the front and gaped in the back and she couldn't get it to close at the top. She cursed some more and tied the lace on itself so it'd stay put, picked up the petticoats and dropped them over her head, tying the tapes around her waist. Like the shift, they ended too soon for decency, at the middle of her calf. Shouldn't they be longer? Or maybe she was just such she-giant, there weren't clothes ready made for her. She picked up the gown and tugged it on.

The sleeves were so damned tight she couldn't lift her arms to settle them better, the front stopped half a foot short of closing, and the damn stays rose a handspan above the neckline.

“Damnit, damnit, damnit.” She tried to pull the gown off, failed, the brocade splitting open down her spine and the sleeves splitting away at her armpits. “Damned freak o' nature.” She tore at the gown, but it was too well made to let itself be defeated so easily. “Why won't you come off?” She tried to step on the hem, pulling it off that way, but like the petticoats, like the shift, the skirts were too short for her to get a grip. She tried to dig her fingers beneath the shoulders so she could work it off that way, but the stays wouldn't let her reach across her body. “Damned bitch of a dress.” She stumbled into the bench and half fell over it, knocking it over and landing on her arse on the thick carpet.

She weren't no woman, half-man, half-woman, all freak. She burst into tears, and she hadn't done that in five years, when a horse trod on her foot and tried to squash her 'gainst a stable wall. She blubbered like a baby deprived of its treat, tugging at the gown and trying, with no great success to get it off. “Damn freak.”

“Good God, what's amiss.”

She looked up, saw Lord Pendleton bending over her and broke out into fresh tears. “How the hell'm I supposed to be a woman if I can't even put on clothes right.”

He took hold of her arms, pulling her to her feet without much effort. “Well, to begin with, you've put on the stays back to front. Where's the girl who was set to help you?”

Morag tried to fold her arms, but the damn stays and gown wouldn't even let her do that much. She tugged on the front edges of the gown, face getting hot that she couldn't even do that much. “Told her to shove off, she kept tittering at me.”

Lord Pendleton let go her arm and stalked to the bell pull, tugging on it. “She was supposed to help you dress. Mrs. Hatchett thought the clothes my sister left when she wed were the most likely to fit you, and they're a lady's clothes. They're meant to need a maid's help.”

A maid, a stranger to Morag, appeared at the open doorway, looking wide eyed and scandalized at the sight of Lord Pendleton and Morag. She dipped a curtsey at his lordship, still gawking. “Y'r Lordship?”

“Go tell Mrs. Hatchett we need more clothes, and send – “ he looked at Morag. “Who was assigned to you?”

“Mary Hawkins.” Morag tugged on the gown.

The maid giggled, curtseyed again, fled.