my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur
"Have you seen my hairbrush?" Charlotte said to Betty, the Parker's nursery-maid.
"No, miss," Betty shrugged. Charlotte sighed, picking up the same handkerchief Alison had embroidered with her monogram and setting it back down again; the hairbrush had not miraculously appeared this time either, just as it hadn't the four times she'd already tried. Charlotte had thought the dainty vanity with its scalloped lace and curved looking-glass would prove a safe haven for the ivory-handled set her mother had sent her with but the table was not out of reach for either of the Parker girls and Charlotte was familiar how light-fingered young children could be. She peered in the glass and shook back her loose hair, tucking one long curl behind her ear. Mr. Tom Parker wasn't very particular and Mary would be generous enough to overlook Charlotte's unbound hair.
"Very well. Don't trouble yourself about it—I know I shan't," Charlotte said with a little laugh, getting a small smile in return from Betty. The Parkers seemed to be kind employers but it was still hard work and a long day ahead without having to search for the missing hairbrush.
"I'll keep an eye out, miss. Jenny had a sneakish look about her and the good Lord knows, her own hair needs tending, nothing but snarls and tangles," Betty offered.
"I wish her joy of it, then," Charlotte said. She checked that her ribbons were tied properly and shook out her hem, then walked out, ready for the day to begin.
"Drat! My hair-pins are nowhere to be found!" Charlotte fretted. She was meant to go out today with Mary, meant to wear the recently retrimmed bonnet and her freshly brushed spencer and there was no way on God's green earth she could put her hair up. Not without the hair-pins and even with a full set, it would have been a challenge, given her hair's irrepressible tendency to escape in flyaways and curls. Freshly washed last night, it resisted braids and ribbons; she could not help envying Mary who was always so perfectly turned out, not a hair out of place.
If she were at home, she would have ransacked Alison's chest for spare pins and begged her sister to assist her; she would have borrowed just a little of her mother's eau de cologne to smooth over the secured hair, pinching her cheeks for good measure. She was at Trafalgar House however and was too embarrassed to ask Mary, who'd already been wonderfully giving, for anything more, not one jot as her mother would have said. She didn't bother pinching her cheeks. They were already flushed with her embarrassment and she pulled her bonnet on snugly, hoping it would provide some restraint to her hopeless hair.
"Needs must," she muttered to herself, leaving off the ending when the devil drives. She thought it though and could not help the image of Mr. Sidney Parker which popped into her head, his dark eyes somehow wicked and the smoke from his cheroot curling up around his handsome face as if it had escaped from some hellish depth. She tied the bow of her bonnet smartly under her chin and squared her shoulders. If only she didn't feel the tickle of her hair as she did so!
"If this were Willingdon, I shouldn't be bothered, but it's Sanditon, Georgiana. And my hair looks a fright!" Charlotte exclaimed.
"Dull, miserable Sanditon, more like," Georgiana scowled. "You should wear your hair any way you like. Dye it green and call yourself the Fairy Queen—it would be more than this place deserves, the only interesting thing to happen in a month of tedious Sundays!"
"Oh, Georgiana!"
"Don't you, oh Georgiana me too! I miss London and I miss Antigua and Sidney's got me stuffed in a virtual cloister here while he goes anywhere he pleases and sneers at me when he's not scolding," Georgiana said.
"Is he still?" Charlotte asked, knowing she sounded a mealy-mouthed miss, a far cry from the woman who'd mocked Sidney Parker in the street and did her best to dismiss him at Lady Denham's groaning table. There had been something in the way Mary spoke of him when they took tea that made her question her assumptions, the way Sidney absorbed the blow of Henry rushing at his legs, his hand very gentle on the crown on Jenny's head.
"Perhaps he's the slightest bit less wretched, but what is that to me, locked away here with nothing to do, nobody to talk to," Georgiana said, gazing out the window at the busy street. "I beg your pardon, I do, Charlotte- I should have said, except for you, my only friend. I shouldn't like to become as churlish and rude as Sidney Parker!"
"Never mind," Charlotte said. She found herself twisting a curl around her finger, something she'd done as a young child when she was uneasy. Was it Georgiana's inadvertent slight, her deprecation of the town Charlotte had found so enthralling? Or the criticism of Sidney, criticism she once would have echoed enthusiastically and now found herself questioning, the way his brown eyes could be when she looked up and caught his gaze.
"We could borrow one of Mrs. Griffith's turbans, to cover your hair," Georgiana suggested.
"Borrow—or steal? One of those horrid things? I'd look ancient!"
"What a lark it would be!" Georgiana said, sounding as young as Alison.
"For you I suppose—I'd be a laughingstock," Charlotte said.
"Not if you laugh first," Georgiana replied with the confidence borne of long experience.
…And before you worry overmuch, you left Mother's tortoiseshell combs at home. I put them away in the blue velvet case, locked up tight, safely out of reach of Anne and Caroline. You know how they long to rifle through our things and dress up as young ladies out in society though I think they'd cause the collapse of the London ton if ever they are let loose upon it! Beware, beau monde! In that regard, they, like all of us here at Willingdon, are much the same, even if our adventurous Charlotte is not and also the same is our general fondness and my specific affection for my dearest sister. And now I must fly, for Mother is calling and there will be nothing left for tea but dull bread-and-butter—
Your ravenous sister,
Alison
"That's that, then," Charlotte murmured. It was the smallest consolation that she hadn't lost the combs. She could easily envision them tucked away in the worn velvet box with the few other trinkets her mother had passed down, ones she'd deemed too precious or too old-fashioned to bring to Sanditon. She missed them now, of course, with her hair a roiling mass of curls, a veritable Medusa, but it was best to know the combs were at home.
What would Lady Denham say? She was sure to say something. She nearly always did, something acerbic, the very words themselves puckered; it didn't seem her wealth had brought her any true happiness, nor did its prospect to Esther Denham or her brother. Esther was the picture of elegance but her eyes were full of a sort of strangled yearning and Charlotte knew if she tried to explain it to Alison, her sister would laugh and ask what color strangled yearning actually was—more turquoise or a grey-blue? Charlotte stood by her description, even in an imaginary argument with Alison. There was something like a canker on Esther Denham's heart and there were not winds enough on Sanditon's shores to blow it away.
At least Charlotte seemed to be beneath Esther's notice, which saved her more remarks about country girls and farmhands in day-dresses. Lady Denham would resume her refrain, scoring a point whenever she could as if Charlotte ever considered herself playing a game, and Sidney's eyes would rest on her with an expression she couldn't make out; since the day they'd met and he'd assumed she was Mary's maid, he'd confined his critiques to her mind and behavior, never her person, but she wondered whether he thought her a hoyden. The combs would have done much to dispel that opinion, but alas, their subtle and lovely restraint was not available to her. Charlotte was sure there was a Greek philosopher who'd said something wise and inarguable about artifice or the natural state of health, but she couldn't think of even one phrase to buoy herself with.
"Oh, well. Let Lady Denham have her sport," she said to herself, as Alison was not there to do it. She said nothing to herself, in Alison's voice or her own, about Mr. Sidney Parker's assessment of her unbound, unruly hair; what would she say when he only looked at her so long, with the faintest hint of a smile, one whose import she could not gauge.
"Do your worst, you old bat!" she cried. But all she saw were Sidney's dark eyes and the curve of his lips, his hand reaching out toward her, to an uncertain but utterly desirable end.