Chapter 3
“Hold still.”
”I am still!”
Edward sighed as Tabby wiggled before him, turning this way and that to evade his lice comb.
“You’re wilier than these here lice!”
“You would be too if someone was ripping yer hairs out!”
He kicked the leg of the chair, which proved surprisingly stable. At least one aspect of his life was improving.
Upon returning to Mrs. Chaffinch’s, he discovered Tabby had packed up his few belongings, as he’d requested.
After getting her outfitted in his older clothes, they set off from the lodging house, heading to rooms he’d found in the last weeks, when he’d sorted out the problem of how to keep his friend with him once he got her back.
The rooms he let were more spacious and furnished with the basics: bed, rugs, washstand, screen, and desk.
“How are you going to pay for all this?” Tabby had asked, looking around in wonder as if he’d brought her to St. James’s Palace.
It was then that he’d explained who had Tencendor. With the cost of the horse set in something other than blunt, he could use some of the sale price to cover rent on the new lodgings.
“Got a nit,” muttered Edward, smashing the egg against the rag he’d been using to collect dirt and vermin.
“That has to be the last of them,” moaned Tabby.
“Most young ladies your age are far more stoic about the comb,” sniffed Edward, himself tired of their third round of washing and combing.
“Ya, but they’ve had people to do this for ’em and toughen up their scalps,” said Tabby.
“Be that as it may, no gentleman is going to want to share a pillow with a courtesan crawling with lice. Tends to set the cock at half mast, the prospect of itching.”
“You sound like a toff,” she huffed.
”I am a toff,” he retorted. “A toff who is cleaning you up, and don’t you forget it.”
Tabby slumped in her chair but uncomplainingly endured the rest of Edward’s labors.
***
When Edward deemed Tabby free of lice and all dirt, he rubbed her hair with a clean rag while she yelled again in protest.
But it was nothing compared to the look on her face when he drew forth the blade he used to shave his face.
“I didn’t mean to be bad,” she whispered.
“Gesù, Tabby, I’m not gonna hurt you!”
“But you’re holding that thing like Mr. Rymer does!”
“The barber? I should hope so! You need a shave.”
She touched her face, eyes wide.
“Not there,” said Edward. “Lower.”
Tabby glanced down, clearly confused.
“Can’t have lice in the fleece,” said Edward gruffly.
“In the what?”
“Nothing darting about the merkin.”
Tabby gasped.
“Now, see here!” exclaimed Edward when she made to run. “No gentleman wants lice of the lower sort either! I’m just preparing you for your new profession!”
“Does it have to be with a blade?” she asked, eyeing the thing with considerable fear.
“Just once to make sure there aren’t crabs nesting in there,” he reasoned. “I can’t sit betwixt your legs and comb for hours.”
“You labor between other women’s legs!” she cried, her eyes still stuck to the shining blade.
He laughed and ran his hand through her wet hair, fluffing it. She was clean at last, even behind the ears, and had the air of a very put-out cat. It was adorable, and the band about his chest that had snapped into place when he’d last seen Tencendor eased.
“I’ll show you how to shave using my face. Then you can go behind that screen and work on your fleece.”
He sat afore the cracked mirror they’d packed just that morning and beat some soap into a lather.
“What’s that?” she asked, standing before him and sticking a finger into the foam.
“Just soap,” he said, using the brush to dot some on the end of her nose.
She wiped it off in a huff.
“So you didn’t bathe much, on account of the whole…” said Edward, waving one hand to signify the fact that she’d spent years in lads’ clothes, all the while using his other hand to apply lather to his face.
“How often d’you wash up?” she asked, clearly huffy.
“A stud can’t go to a lady in want of breeding, caked with dirt and wearing filthy smalls,” said Edward, raising an eyebrow. “Same applies to courtesans.”
“Seems like an awful lot of work.”
“Well, it’s the line of work you picked!” he exclaimed in a fit of mirth.
“I’d rather not work at all! I told you!”
“You planning on becoming our queen? The position is vacant,” he said thoughtfully.
“And marry the mad German king?” she hooted.
“Sounds like a bother,” he said, working on his sideburns. “The robes are heavy. My cousin once felt them.”
“What a burden it must be, to be drowning in furs and jewels,” she said drily.
“If you refuse the suit of the king, what does that leave you? An aristocrat?”
“I suppose I could marry a toff,” she said with equanimity. “Or a cit, no difference to me.”
Edward leveled her a look over his blade. “You’d be happy drinking chocolate in bed and getting dresses made up and, well, setting menus?”
“So many eels,” she sighed. “And I could have pie every meal. I’d never be hungry, not even a minute.”
“And what about your greatest task?”
“What’s that?” she asked, stars still in her eyes.
“Making babies.”
She grew silent.
“An aristocrat and even a banker will want heirs from you,” said Edward, poking her flat belly with a finger before taking the blade to his remaining stubble. “Watch me. Pull the skin taut and glide the razor over the hair. Do not press into the skin.”
“I don’t know nothing about making heirs,” she said, watching as he shaved.
“Yet you protested that you’re aware of the mechanics of sex on many occasions!”
“Well, I’ve seen people doin’ it, but I couldn’t exactly do it myself on account of—” She gestured to her breeches.
Edward turned to her slowly, his eyebrow raised. “You mean to tell me that when you entered that virgin auction, you were…?”
“Of course! A doctor checked and everything.”
Edward waved that away. “Those things can be faked.”
“But I’m telling you,” she said, “I’m not fake.”
“I trust you,” Edward said, placating his huffy friend.
Tabby came closer and carefully reached her hand out for Edward’s blade. He let her take it and patiently sat while she grew accustomed to the feel in her hand. And then he realized that her revelation had brought to light something far more concerning than lice.
“So this means that you not only do not understand dancing, the language of fans, and how to wear ladies’ clothing,” he said, eyeing her. “You’re unfamiliar with how to perform The Act.”
His distress must have shown on his half-lathered face because she grimaced in response.
“It’s not so hard, is it?” she said. “The girl just stands there or lies down like a gutted eel and lets the man work away?”
Edward sensed a headache coming on. What had he gotten himself into? She was an innocent in every way other than pick-pocketing and collecting information on the streets. Turning her into a courtesan would be a monumental undertaking!
“Hold still,” she said, advancing on him with the blade.
Edward held his breath when he felt her run the razor up his neck, each scratch of the knife making his scalp crawl with fear. He placed his hands at Tabby’s waist to steady her, and the progress of the blade paused.
“What’s that for?” she asked, looking down at him.
“I want to make sure you don’t fall and take my neck with you.”
She grabbed his hair at the crown and directed his head back so she could keep practicing. Edward struggled to contain a laugh, not wanting his cheeks cut to ribbons by his amateur barber.
“What’s got you laughing, Dick Stone?” she asked, her voice muffled by the tongue clenched between her teeth as she concentrated on shaving him.
“I’m happy to have you back, Tabby,” he said, not in the mood to dissemble.
“I think you’re done,” she said, squinting as she turned his head this way and that before releasing his hair.
“In that case,” he said, leaning forward to rub the stray lines of lather on her shirtsleeves, right into her belly. Really, it was his shirt, and he had another one she could wear. He could dirty her up.
She squirmed and fought him, then descended into giggles when he pretended to bite her through the linen. How he found his arms about her waist and she set hers around his neck, he didn’t know.
***
Following a most trying conclusion to their cleaning efforts, Edward wished he had something to drink.
Tabby had marched behind the screen with the dignity of one heading to the execution block unjustly, and he waited on the other side in terror as she sighed, gasped, and shrieked through her task.
When she emerged, looking worse for wear, she’d shoved the shaving supplies at him and gone to the vestibule of his rooms to lick her wounds. Metaphorical wounds, he hoped.
Edward left some cheese and bread out for her supper and assumed that she’d find some place to nest for the night. She’d been an urchin accustomed to sleeping where she could safely close her eyes, after all.
Thus, he was surprised to discover her next to his bed that night, wearing her nightgown with the burn hole.
“Budge over,” she said, lifting the bedclothes.
Edward was aghast. Did she really propose to sleep here? In his own bedstead?
“Don’t look at me like that, Dick Stone,” she said. “I know this isn’t the first time you’ve shared a bed.”
“But we’ve plenty of places for you to bunk down,” he said, looking around the sparsely furnished rooms.
“We have one bed,” she said, gesturing to the place he was now lounging with a book.
“We have a bed?”
“Yes, one bed,” she repeated, ignoring his pointed questioning of their mutual ownership.
Ever the gracious host, Edward wiggled over towards the wall to make room for Tabby. It wasn’t unheard of to share beds with family, and as a soldier, he’d certainly bunked down wherever sleep could be found. Yet Tabby needed to know that what she was expecting was most unusual.
“I know good manners are new to you, but in fine households, men do not occupy a bed with an unmarried young woman,” he sniffed.