Trapped in Time Read online

  It occurred to her that between powdering her face with lead, eating arsenic tablets, and squirting poison plant juice in her eyes, it was a wonder that the other Caroline had lived long enough to get struck by lightning.

  Her beauty regime was deadly.

  “Do you know how long my eyes will stay, er, big and bright as stars?” she asked Mary Ann, who was still staring at her with an uncertain expression on her rather blurry face.

  “Long enough to catch a new husband, it is to be hoped, Miss,” the maid said brightly and Caroline realized that was all the answer she was going to get. She would just have to blunder through the ball as best she could and hope she could see where she was going well enough not to trip or fall.

  “Great,” she muttered. “Thanks, Mary Ann.”

  “You’re welcome, Miss,” the maid said blandly. “Here—let me put up your hair as best I can and then we’ll get you dressed.”

  With a couple of quick twists and some bobby pins, she put Caroline’s hair up into what looked like a very pretty chignon, as far as she could tell, by leaning forward and looking directly into the oval mirror.

  There were even a few curls hanging free to frame her face—and her puffy red earlobe which had been burned by the straightening tongs, Caroline saw with some dismay. She did her best to bring the curls around to cover it while Mary Ann busied herself with something else on the other side of the room. After a moment, she called to Caroline.

  “All right, Miss—I’ve got your chemise and pantalets all ready. Come over by the fire so I can help you into them.”

  Caroline came over obediently, and allowed the lady’s maid to whip the filmy peignoir over her head, leaving her shivering and nude—but only for a moment. Quickly, she presented Caroline with a pair of what looked like long, loose, white linen trousers.

  These must be the pantalets, Caroline thought, eyeing them dubiously.

  There was only one problem—they were crotchless.

  And she didn’t see just a hole in the crotch, like a pair of naughty panties back home. No, these had absolutely no crotch at all. The two legs of the trousers were sewn separately to the drawstring waistband and there was only empty air between—meaning her lady bits were going to be blowing in the breeze in these things.

  “Well, come on, Miss Caroline—step into your pantalets.” Mary Ann sounded impatient as she held them out for her. “We have a lot to get on so please hurry.”

  “But…but…” Caroline wanted to protest that the trousers were crotchless but it was clear her maid already knew that. Was she playing some kind of elaborate joke on Caroline? Or were they supposed to be this way?

  “But what, Miss?” Mary Ann sounded more impatient than ever.

  “Don’t you have any that have material in the middle of them?” Caroline asked. “These are…indecent!”

  “Indecent?” Mary Ann actually broke out laughing. “They’re as fine a pair of pantalets as any young lady could hope to wear, my lamb!” she exclaimed. “And anyway, if there was material in the middle covering your Venus mound, how would you squat over the privy in the necessary room if you need to answer Nature’s call during the ball?”

  So that was the reason for the crotchless pantalets!

  Finally Caroline understood. But she couldn’t help thinking that none of the historical dramas she watched on the BBC went into this kind of detail. She wished they would have! Despite having watched dozens of her beloved dramas, none of them had prepared her for actually living in this era.

  “All right,” she said, and stepped into the white linen pantalets, which framed her sex indecently.

  “Good—now for your stockings and shoes and then the chemise.” Mary Ann helped her into some thick black stockings that came up over her knees and tied at mid thigh and then brought out a pair of little black boots with dainty heels and buttons up the sides.

  They looked like something you would buy on Etsy for a Steampunk themed costume party, Caroline thought, as the maid bent in front of her and fastened the tiny buttons carefully all the way up to her ankles. The leather they were made of was as soft as butter but they had hard, ungiving, wooden soles that made her feet start to hurt almost immediately.

  With shoes and stockings tended to, the maid threw another loose linen shift over Carline’s head. It had very short sleeves that fell around her shoulders and the hem came to around mid-thigh. The top of it was pretty low, probably so it wouldn’t show beneath the dress, Caroline speculated. This must be the chemise.

  “All right—and now for your corset,” Mary Ann declared and began fitting the garment—which stretched from mid-breast down to the tops of her buttocks—around Caroline’s waist. There were a row of silver hooks and eyes down the front of it and the maid hooked her in quickly and professionally, making certain the corset was closed all the way down.

  When she was done, Caroline found it a little snug, but not too uncomfortable.

  This isn’t so bad, she told herself, looking down at the pronounced hourglass figure the corset gave her. Not as bad as wearing SPANX, anyway. She had worn those for her cousin’s wedding, to fit into the ridiculous brides’-maid dress, which was two sizes too small. That had been torture but this wasn’t bad at all. It was—

  “All right now, Miss Caroline—you’d best hold onto the bedpost and suck in your breath,” Mary Ann commanded.

  “What?” Caroline asked but her maid was already pushing her over to the bed and she grabbed one of the carved wooden bedposts by instinct. She started to ask another question but just then Mary Ann gave a tremendous yank on the corset which seemed to squeeze the breath right out of her.

  “Oh!” she gasped in a breathless voice as her waist contracted what felt like a full two inches. “Oh, God—I can’t breathe! Please stop!”

  But it was clear Mary Ann wasn’t done with her.

  “Suck in hard, Miss Caroline!” she exclaimed. “We need to lace you tighter if you’re to wear the green taffeta your Ma-ma wants you in tonight.”

  “No, please—” Caroline started to protest but just then the maid gave another mighty heave on the corset strings and she felt her waist grow even smaller.

  Now I understand why women fainted all the time in the past, she thought dizzily. I literally cannot get a deep breath—or almost any kind of breath at all!

  “Please!” she wheezed at Mary Ann. “Please, I’m dying!”

  At last the maid stopped squeezing her—but only because the desired effect had been achieved.

  “All right, I think that will do.” Mary Ann stepped back, dusting her hands together as though finishing a hard job. “You should fit into the taffeta now.”

  “But I can’t breathe!” Caroline protested. “Can’t you loosen it a little?”

  “Afraid not Miss—you wouldn’t fit if I did,” Mary Ann said matter-of-factly. “But aren’t you glad I didn’t let you have that muffin you wanted?”

  “I…guess so,” Caroline panted, looking down at herself. She had always been shaped like an over-full hourglass but now her shape was even more pronounced. She hadn’t had a waist this small since middle school and as for her breasts—the corset pushed them up and out so that the tops of them jiggled alarmingly, like flesh-colored Jell-O.

  “Now let’s get you into the cage,” Mary Ann said, drawing her attention away from her own wobbling mammaries.

  “The cage?” This sounded ominous to Caroline but the device that Mary Ann brought over to her looked even worse than it sounded.

  A rounded cage with a drawstring waist and ten or twelve ivory colored hoops depending from it hung from the maid’s hands. There were cloth panels running vertically like stripes down the cage and holding the hoops in place, Caroline saw, but it didn’t look very giving or flexible at all. Unlike the hoopskirt crinoline her best friend had worn under her wedding dress, the hoops looked stiff and Mary Ann hefted the “cage” around as though it was heavy.

  “Here you go, Miss—step in and I’ll draw it up