Pinnacle (ONGOING)

Chapter Nineteen - The Damsel Very Much in Distress

     'If they knew they had been bested by a woman, how much more furious would they be?' I thought as my laughter began to dissipate. I knew they were still out there, of course. Waiting for a man with bifocals and a dusting of kol that served visually as the beginnings of a teenager's scruff, how would they miss him?

     But would they know that I was that man? I thought to myself as I regarded my reflection in the mirror. I looked like an entirely different person, one that was unmistakably female.

     I was plotting down the rickety wooden staircase in the back entrance when I came to the door and flung it open. It was a moment of bliss, that I had well and truly gotten away with it, and I imagine I had a look on my face of the cat that got the cream. All of this came crumbling, however, when I heard a man clear his throat at my side.

     I screamed.

     "I am sure you are quite pleased with yourself, Cardew." Mr. Turner remarked.

     "I have no idear who you're bleedin' thinkin' I am sir, but I'm just on me way to the hoose, if you'll step aside." I recoiled, cringing at my own horrible attempt at a lower-class prostitute accent. 

     "Really?" His eyes narrowed. "Then you would not mind earning a little extra change before you leave, hm?" He backed me up against the wall, and my hasty admittance was stuck in my throat as the gang of misfits who had been pursuing me, came around the corner that exact moment.

     "Oh." Eldridge echoed. Bushy brow knitting in confusion.

     "Begging your pardon, sir." He blurted, embarrassed to have walked in on such a scene.

     "We were just looking for Cardew, would you happen to have seen him?"

     Turner looked at me, and I him. There was a look of teasing in his eyes, and mine echoed nothing but fear I imagined.

     "No gentlemen. Now if you will oblige me, I would like to take this woman to my quarters."

     I felt like I was being constricted by my corset, the breathing came so much easier even in my chest binding. Men often thought it feminine nature to swoon, but the truth of it was, that the clothing they forced on us was beating our bodies to a pulp.

     Eldridge and the boys let out some good-natured hoops and hollers of appreciation.

     "And here I was, thinking he was a bloomin' Mary." One of them muttered as they left.

     My breath came out in a whoosh and I gripped my chest as if it would burst any moment.

     "You knew they were coming around the corner." I surmised.

     "What are you doing here?" He exploded, intense for one usually so timid.

     "I was going home-"

     "No. I mean, why are you risking your neck for _this_?" He emphasized, gesturing around him.

     "Because!" I began with fire in my tone, and it immediately melted as I felt my lip quiver, and my knees gave out from under me. Never one to show much emotion, I felt humiliated at the sudden urge to weep.

     "I do not know anymore." Great heaving sobs wracked my body. The adrenaline of the fight had faded, and reality set in with a vengeance.

     "Please do not tell anyone. Please do not tell my family, we will be ruined."

     "Ruined? Who exactly are you?" He paled.

"Sophie Windle of the Newmarket Windles... I am to marry Lord Rhodes this month." I said through hiccups.