Every piece as he donned it sent a thrill shivering over his skin. And when he finally found the courage to tear away the sheet covering the long looking-glass stand in the corner of his room, what he beheld in its reflection made all his suffering worthwhile.
For the first time in all his life, he saw his true self.
There stood a youth with a strong jaw and ice-blue eyes brimming with confidence. There stood everything Tolhurst and Felix and Mrs Bailiwick and all the rest of the world refused to see within him. There stood the gentleman imprisoned in his heart, set free at last.
He’d kept his hair pinned up. Now, he found if he held his head at the correct angle to the glass, he could almost imagine what he would look like when he finally had it cut like other gentlemen. The top hat, when he left off staring at himself long enough to snatch it up, hid his hair from view altogether, rendering the transformation complete. The top hat had proved one of Sukie’s most difficult finds and had cost a pretty penny in the end, but to see it now, Daniel knew it’d proved its worth.
Vindication flew through his veins with a tingling burn. He could stare at himself all evening. He could stare at himself ‘til dawn. He could stare at himself for the next fortnight and never feel satisfied. He might never leave off, and Mrs Bailiwick would find him a withered corpse still smiling at the mirror, a modern-day Narcissus.
The door creaked opened. Daniel’s heart shot into his throat. He whirled.
Sukie stood on the threshold. And to see his joy reflected in her face warmed his heart thrice-over.
“Goodness!” she said softly as she shut the door behind her. “Aren’t you a beau?”
For that, he could do no less than kiss her.
Yet as they parted, he couldn’t keep from asking, “Do I look like a gentleman?”
“You always do,” she replied—which was sweet, if not exactly helpful. Then she added, “But yes, in this garb even a dullard would know you for the gentleman you are.”
Shaving proved a particular predicament. Daniel knew the tools required—razor, brush, soap, and strop—but didn’t know how to employ them without slitting his own throat. Still, Daniel felt determined to make the attempt, and so when next Sukie went into London to gather surreptitious supplies for their escape, he added razor, brush, soap, and strop to her list. She returned that evening with a bundle of the promised goods and a beaming smile besides.
“I went to a barber’s,” she said by way of explanation as Daniel, bewildered, watched her set it all out on his wash-stand. “And I told him my cousin had an accident in the mill what left him unable to do for himself and asked him if he’d be so kind as to show me how a man ought to be shaved, or at least let me sit and watch while he went about his work so I might learn through observation, promising as I’d be very quiet andnot at all a bother. It took some doing but I finally convinced him to let me stay, and I saw him shave a half-dozen fellows at least. And by the end of it he liked me well enough to give me a special demonstration on a particular sailor who’d just come off a merchant vessel and was in sore need of a trim. So this is how you begin,” she said, plying the brush in the soap dish to whip up a great deal of foam.
She handed the loaded brush off to him. Under her instruction, he brushed a white beard of lather onto his face. Then she showed him how to hold the razor by laying its blade against his throat. His heart beat rather faster at that, but not in fear. His fingers entwined with hers along the ivory handle. With slow swipes and careful strokes, they scraped away the lather together. By the end, she withdrew entirely, and he alone revealed his fresh new face to himself in the looking-glass.
Though he bore no beard before he’d begun, still he fancied he saw a difference in his reflection. The blade had scraped something away after all. No longer did the soft downy face of a child look back at him, but rather the smooth sleek cheeks and jaw of a gentleman.
He didn’t get out of it entirely without nicks. These he passed off as mere blemishes, daring without words for anyone, fellow pupil or otherwise, to comment upon them. None did, though Tolhurst looked somewhat baffled, as if he had detected some difference in Daniel’s countenance but couldn’t quite define it. It would be rather ironical, Daniel thought, for this of all things to finally prove his truth to Tolhurst. But Tolhurst said nothing aloud, and his obsession with Daniel faded not a whit.
“Where are we going?” Sukie asked the following evening.
Daniel blinked. “Anywhere, I suppose.”
Sukie screwed her mouth up to one side of her face. “I don’t think we’ll get very far wandering off at random.”
Daniel conceded they would probably not succeed in that venture. “Far enough that Tolhurst won’t bother following.”
Privately, he didn’t know if such a place existed, but the horror felt too enormous to voice.
Sukie bit her lip. “My aunt’s settled in Canada.”
Daniel shot her a startled glance.
“There’d be a whole ocean between us and him,” she continued. “And we’d already have a relation there. Unless you think it’s too far?”
“Not at all,” Daniel replied. “I’m only surprised you’re willing to go so far away from all you know.”
She gave him a look that said as well as words she thought him rather dull for that. “The one I know best is coming with me. So really I’m not going very far at all.”
Daniel knew no better reward for her cleverness than a kiss.
“We ought to travel as cousins,” Daniel said when they parted. “I don’t think we could pass for siblings. But cousins may likewise keep company together regardless of their sex without attracting any undue notice.”
Sukie agreed.
Daniel wondered if he imagined the hesitance in her voice—a hesitance he himself had felt when he’d concocted the plan. And one he felt again when his heart bid him make another bold addition to an already wild scheme.
