Page 34 of A Contracted Spouse for the Prizefighter

“It little matters. We can buy you a few necessities now.” Clem shrugged. “What do you need? Toothbrush? Nightgown?”

Dora swallowed and nodded weakly. “Yes,” she admitted looking utterly dejected.

“I booked Wardsfor tonight,” he said, in the hopes of cheering her up.

“Wards?” she gasped in shock, coming once again to a complete standstill. “For us to stay?” He nodded, a slow grin spreading over his face. “Oh Clem!” she uttered sounding quite choked and turning very pink.

Any qualms that might have lingered over the expense disappeared in an instant. “Of course,” he said lifting her gloved hand to kiss it. “I thought you might enjoy the experience.”

He shepherded her successfully into a likely-looking store to purchase what she needed, hanging discreetly back so she could make her selection. Up until the point of purchase that is, and then he took over, despite Dora’s protest. She could not have much left of the money he had given her all those weeks before.

The nightgown looked to be a depressingly sensible affair of white cotton, but he paid up all the same. Now that he thought about it, Clem had not brought an overnight bag either, not seeing the need as he slept in the nude.

Seeing Dora’s discomfiture, he reconsidered. Maybe he would keep his long underwear on, at least at the outset. He requested two toothbrushes and toothpowder, two wash cloths, some lotion, and some face cream, the plainest he could find so they could both use it. He also picked up a smart leather bag to put everything in. Perhaps turning up at Wards without any luggage might have looked a little singular. “What else do you need?” he asked.

“That should suffice if we are returning to Juniper Row tomorrow,” she responded quickly.

Clem frowned. “Really?” It did not seem a lot for a lady’s toilette in his opinion, but then again, Dora’s appearance was not exactly one of polished femininity. “What about a hairbrush?”

Her eyes gleamed at this, but she shook her head and he wondered at her sudden merriment. “I don’t need one,” she said seeming to enjoy some private joke. “Unless you do?”

He ordered a comb instead and left it at that. After this, it was plain sailing. They checked in to Wards;Dora exclaimed over the hotel suite, though she kept her eyes firmly averted from the large bed. He did his best to put her at her ease and Dora’s nervousness seemed to be abating by the minute.

Clem suffered a slight setback when she removed her coat to reveal a very strange striped garment underneath with tassels and embroidered medallions. It was not so much the fabric and decoration that was jarring, as the shape and cut of it.

There was not enough volume by way of skirts, he thought, which he was used to being a stiff domed shape. Dora’s skirts were long but fell to the floor in a softer incline, almost as if she only wore one petticoat instead of half a dozen stiffened ones.

The top half was not right either. Instead of a tight-fitting bodice trimmed with lace, hers was a modest high-necked affair with a fussy bow and oversized collar. Her waist was tidy but far from nipped in. If he did not know better, he would almost think she was not corseted at all.

This was nothing, however, to his reaction when she removed her bonnet, only for her ringlets to come away with it. Clem set down his hair comb with a clatter on the bedside table. “Your—er—hair, Dora,” he murmured.

“Oh!” She made a grab for the two long ringlets dangling down from her bonnet and reattached them to the back of her head. “Silly me!”

Was that a thing that normally happened? Clem wondered in stupefaction. He had been with women who had removed padding from their hair before bed, but he had never been with a woman with actually short hair before. To his surprise, he found himself faintly shocked by the notion.

As though picking up on his reaction, she turned about to face him fully. “I had it shorn off three weeks ago,” she confided. “After we formulated our plan. Albert took me to a barber he knows that doesn’t ask questions. Lil recommended a wigmaker in Cheapside, and I sent him my hair and he made it into a switch so I could still wear it for respectability’s sake. I only got it back two days ago, so I have had to wear caps at home for weeks. I told Felix I had an earache.” She ran a hand over her long dark ringlets, before tossing them back over her shoulder. “Rather good, isn’t it? I thought it turned out well.”

Clem stared at her head, trying to make it out. The front of her hair looked to be about jaw-length and was secured to her head at the sides with hair combs. The back, now that he really looked, was not twisted up as he had assumed into an up-do. Instead, it was cut into the back of her head and did not extend down her neck at all. The ringlets obscured this fact for the most part.

“That is your own hair?” he asked dazedly. “That you had cut off?”

She nodded. “I had the length cut off in a pigtail and then he curled one half into a ringlet and the other half he braided for me to wear in up-styles. He added loops and everything to them for attaching to my head.”

Clem shook his head. “There really are experts in every field,” he pronounced, not knowing what else to say.

Dora nodded. “He is a specialist wig maker and told me he vastly prefers working with human hair to horse or sheep’s hair.”

“Sheep’s hair?”

“Oh yes, and you know he makes pieces not only for theatrical folk but for fashionable society ladies too. Quite often their hairstyle needs some augmentation.”

Clem regarded her with reluctant fascination. “Good grief.”

Seemingly unoffended, she beamed back at him. “I knew you would not mind. For some reason, Albert seemed to think you would not like it.” She sounded faintly baffled by the notion.

“I had thought impersonators usually wear wigs,” he admitted.

“Oh, but I thought this seemed a good deal more practical, don’t you think?”