“Have you lost your mind, little brother?” she whispered. “You said you were bringing a woman. To marry. Who is this boy?”
“This is Deborah Samson, my aide-de-camp, and my wife-to-be.”
I took off my tricorn hat and tugged the tie from my hair, but it wasn’t enough. Like everyone else, Anne Paterson Holmes simply saw a lean-cheeked, square-jawed boy in army dress. That I was anything else was too impossible to believe.
She actually moaned, poor woman. “John. I don’t understand. Am I to dress your aide as a woman . . . or is your aide dressed as a man?”
I did not flinch. I’d learned not to, but for the first time since I’d begun my quest, I mourned that she could not tell.
“I am Deborah Samson, Mrs. Holmes,” I said quietly. “It is a pleasure to meet you. I may be out of practice, but I am indeed a woman. I would appreciate all the assistance you can give me. It has been a while since I wore a dress, and I’ve never been especially skilled with my hair.”
Her mouth formed an incredulous O, and she looked from me to her brother and back. “What are you up to, John Paterson? This is not at all like you.”
“No. It isn’t like me. So I would ask, darling Anne, that you trust me. I don’t have much time, and very little of it is my own. I would like to wed Deborah before the day is done. And the Reverend Stephen Holmes, bless his righteous heart, will not perform the marriage if my wife-to-be is wearing breeches.”
She moaned again. “Stephen! What will Stephen say?”
“Anne.” The general’s voice was sharp, and he leaned forward on the settee, demanding her attention. “Help us. I came to you for a reason. There is little you haven’t seen and no one I trust more. You have been a patriot, through and through. From the beginning.”
She exhaled slowly, her eyes clinging to her brother’s face and then to mine.
“Do you trust her?” she asked.
“I have known her since she was a child.”
“That is not an answer, John,” she contended. “You know what many of us went through in this city with Benedict Arnold and that terrible Miss Shippen. I had known her since she was a child. That means nothing.”
When the British had withdrawn from Philadelphia in ’78, Benedict Arnold had been assigned military command of the city. Not long after, he’d married Peggy Shippen, a young socialite from a wealthy, loyalist family who was thought to have encouraged and even arranged his defection.
“Arnold was ambitious, arrogant, and selfish, but she was a spoiled snake,” Anne Holmes continued, vehement. “They bankrupted the city and sold us out. So I will ask again. Do you trust this woman?”
“Yes. I trust her,” John said. “And I need you to trust me.”
“What is this?” Anne Holmes asked me, frowning with distaste. She picked up the band I’d fashioned to wear around my breasts. It was fraying and soiled on the edges and almost unrecognizable in its current condition.
“It is a corset,” I said. I was in a tub filled with all manner of salts and scents, every inch of me scrubbed and pink and naked. Once Mrs. Holmes had decided she was on board, she’d set her jaw and thrown herself into my transformation with a vigor that rivaled my own.
“Half of one?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She had demanded that I talk, and talk I had, sputtering as water was poured over my head and blushing from head to toe as she examined the scars on my leg and the long, puckered line on my arm. She’d allowed nothing to go unexamined, and I endured it all. John had been sent to ready himself, and he could not save me.
The trunk had arrived from the dressmaker as well, and Anne had investigated every last piece, muttering to herself.
“These will have to be redesigned. They do not suit at all. Perhaps if we remove the ruffles and bows and remake the sleeves,” she mused. “You are angular and your features are bold. You need solid color and simple lines. Nothing that will compete. You do not need to be dressed up or disguised. You need to be . . .” She wrinkled her brow, looking for the word. “You need to be . . . displayed. But this will do nicely.”
The dress she held up was a brilliant colonial blue, not unlike the blue of my uniform. It even had gold buttons marching in parallel rows down the front, all the way to the ground.
“You will have to wear an underskirt. It is not long enough, but with white fichus at the neck and in the opening of the sleeves, it will work.”
I had nothing to add and simply rose from the water, toweled myself dry, and let the preparations begin. Anne summoned two maids, and I was bundled and pinched and tortured and teased from head to toe for what felt like hours.