Arabella of Mars(13)
A hand joined the eye at the window, gesturing unequivocally: Go away.
Arabella spat at her—or tried to, her mouth being so dry that only a tiny drop of spittle escaped her lips to fall ineffectively on the dirt before the door—turned, and walked away.
She cursed herself for her naiveté. A filthy, disheveled, bloodied young woman, in a scandalous state of undress, with a mad story of imprisonment, betrayal, and murder? She should never have expected to be believed. And even if she should somehow find someone who accepted her outlandish tale, it might be hours or days before they took any action. In that time Simon could easily take passage to Mars, and once the ship had launched he would be beyond the power of any one to stop him.
Arabella gritted her teeth and turned her steps toward the rising sun.
Toward London.
*
She could not walk all the way to London, of course—not if she wished to catch up with her cousin in time. Simon had taken the mail-coach, but no such option was open to Arabella. Even though she had what she hoped was sufficient money for the fare, for a woman of quality to travel on a public conveyance without male accompaniment was completely inconceivable.
If only she had not been born a woman.…
Arabella stopped dead in the path, appalled at the notion which had just occurred to her.
She shook her head and walked on.
As she proceeded, she debated with herself whether theft and deception could truly be justified by necessity. At the same time, she kept a sharp eye out for an opportunity to commit those very sins.
Finally, as she topped a rise, she came upon a small but prosperous farm. Wheat waved in the fields, chickens scratched in the yard, cattle grazed contentedly.…
And clean clothes hung on a fence, apparently having been left to dry overnight.
Arabella looked all around. There was no one in sight.
To steal was a sin. But at this very moment Michael might be rising from his bed, yawning and stretching, unaware of the doom that approached him.…
“I have no choice,” she whispered to herself, touching the locket.
Moving as quickly and as quietly as she could, she descended from the rise and scrambled over the low stone wall marking the edge of the property. From the wall it was only a few steps to the fence on which the clothing hung.
There were several complete sets of clothes here, men’s and women’s both.
After only a moment’s hesitation, she selected breeches, hose, a shirt, a coat, and a soft cap which seemed to be about the right size for her. She attempted to assuage her guilt by taking only those articles which seemed the most worn, which she hoped would be missed the least and might also provoke the least suspicion. Finally, from her reticule she drew a single shilling, leaving it where the clothing had been—a token payment to be sure, but she knew not what other expenses might come her way.
Gathering up the clothes into a compact packet, she took one last guilty look back at the farmer’s cottage before running away across the field.
*
Secreting herself behind a hedgerow which blocked the view from the farmhouse and the nearby road, Arabella clothed herself in her stolen garments. The coat was too broad across the shoulders, she had neglected to obtain a neck-cloth, and there seemed to be several other minor articles missing, at least to judge by the buttons in the breeches which attached to nothing she could find. The space in the front of the breeches she filled with a wad of fabric torn from her tattered shift.
She left the rest of her ruined garments rolled up in the hedgerow, along with the reticule, whose contents she distributed among her pockets. From her previous clothing she retained only the shoes, sturdy Mars-made half-boots which she hoped would not appear too girlish.
Now there remained only the problem of her hair.
On Mars Arabella had never paid much attention to her hair, wearing it short enough to keep out of her eyes and combing it only when her mother insisted. But since arriving in England, the formerly occasional demands of fashion had become constant, and Arabella had been subjected to interminable rounds of combing, brushing, braiding, and fussing that left her extremely vexed. Thus it was with great satisfaction that she pulled back her hair and cut the majority of it away with her cuticle-knife, leaving the discarded strands in the hedgerow for birds to make their nests of.
The result was, even she had to acknowledge, extremely untidy, being executed with an instrument only middling sharp and without the aid of a looking-glass, but as she pulled the cap low on her brow she reflected that it was not much worse than the rest of her outfit.
But still … worn, ill-fitting, and stolen though her clothing might be, what a relief it was to have her legs properly covered again! No more would she suffer the indignity of a skirt catching on a protruding branch, nor be forced to concern herself with the prying eyes of the public upon her exposed flesh.
Her outfit was no thukhong—how she missed that warm, comfortable leather garment!—but in it she nonetheless felt ready for any eventuality.
*
Half an hour later, Arabella swaggered along, hands in her pockets and arms a-kimbo, aping her brother’s confident stride as best she could. Ahead on the path lay an inn, where she hoped she might obtain something to eat and perhaps directions to a mail-coach or stage-coach. To cover her anxiety, she whistled loudly in what she intended as a manly fashion. She hoped she had made no dreadfully obvious mistakes with her unaccustomed garments.
The inn still lay some five hundred yards distant when she heard, and then saw, a black-and-scarlet mail-coach approaching along the road. She burst into a run, holding on to her breeches at the waist to keep them from sliding down to her ankles and hoping the wad of fabric that filled out the front did not fall too badly out of place.