“You are thin but so beautifully shaped, and so magnificently tall. We will make you even taller still. They are powdering their faces in France, but I find the look revolting. You have beautiful skin and astonishing eyes. We will rouge your cheeks and your lips, just a touch, and dress your hair high.”
I didn’t argue and she did not ask permission, but when she declared me ready, dismissed her servants, and led me in front of the looking glass, I was stunned at the result.
“I cannot breathe,” I said.
“Nor can I. You are breathtaking.”
“No. I cannot breathe. This corset is too tight.”
“You’re not supposed to breathe. You’re supposed to sip.”
“Sip?”
“Yes, dear. Sip at the air. Don’t you remember? You have worn a tourniquet around your lungs for a year and a half. This should be easy in comparison.”
“I might be a better soldier than I am a woman,” I said, striving to do as she advised.
“A woman is not a corset or a gown or a pile of curls. You’ve always been a woman. And a remarkable one, it seems.”
Her pronouncement stunned me, given our rocky introduction. She met my gaze in the mirror and gave me a small smile.
“My brother does not do anything without considerable forethought. He thinks things through and around and over and back. And then he decides, and that is that. But he does not resolve to do anything that he has not settled in his mind. If he does not doubt you, I cannot doubt you either.”
“He is extraordinary,” I whispered. “And I don’t know why he wants me. But he does.” I shook my head. “So here I am.”
She laughed and turned me around.
“So here you are. And here we go.”
“I cannot make her blend in, brother. She is too tall,” Anne declared as we descended the stairs. John awaited us at the bottom, his dress uniform brushed, his epaulets gleaming.
He gaped at me, his lips parted and his head cocked, and I would have wilted if I’d had a choice in the matter. My posture was dictated by the cinch at my waist and the twin rods up my back.
“She is a beauty,” Anne said. “She just needed a wee bit of grooming.”
“‘Beauty’ is too tame a word,” John breathed. “I don’t know where to put my gaze.”
“What if we are seen?” I worried. “What if someone recognizes me?”
Anne laughed and John shook his head.
“Tonight you will be by my side as Deborah Samson. That is how I will introduce you. That is who you are.”
“And why would you be with the likes of Deborah Samson? What business have I here?”
“You are an old family friend. Close to my late wife. A descendant of one of our founding fathers. And in an hour’s time, you will be my wife. That is your business here.”
“But . . . what if someone recognizes me?” I insisted again.
“Recognizes you?”
“As your aide. As Robert Shurtliff!”
Anne spoke up, reassuring me. “They won’t. To be a beautiful woman and disguise oneself as a sixteen-year-old boy, that is the difficult part. This will be easy.”
“This is not a disguise.” John touched my cheek and pulled away again, very aware that his sister was observing us. “This is real. No one will look at you and see anything but Deborah Samson.”
“You keep saying that. It isn’t true,” I whispered.
“What part?” Anne interjected.
“I am not beautiful. That is why Robert Shurtliff was so believable.”
“He was believable because it was madness to believe anything else!” Anne exclaimed, but the general was shaking his head.
“Your beauty, even as a boy, was noted. Why do you think they all call you Bonny?” John asked.
“Because I didn’t grow a beard. It was said with mockery.”
“It is because you were—you are—comely. And not even a Continental uniform and a bold gaze could hide it. But no one will look at you tonight and see Robert Shurtliff. No one but me. And I quite adore the fellow.”
I needn’t have worried. We saw no one at all in our brief walk to the church on Pine Street, mere minutes from the Holmeses’ residence, and no one was inside save the reverend. The church was a pillared, brick edifice that had been built before the war and gutted during the British occupation. First a hospital and then a stable, the structure had been reborn and rebaptized, according to Anne, though it was empty now but for the candles that flickered and danced. Reverend Holmes, a middle-aged man with deep brown eyes and a sonorous voice, met us with a smile for his wife and a clasp for John’s hands. I don’t know what he’d been told, but I was keenly aware of what he hadn’t been told.