A Substitute Wife for the Prizefighter: A Victorian Romance

by Alice Coldbreath

  Lizzie’s spine stiffened, but at that instant, Benedict stepped back.

  “Pastry crumbs, my dear,” Connie said. “Someone ate his breakfast on the move.”

  Benedict smiled perfunctorily and extended his hand to Lizzie. “Walk me out.” She accompanied him outside the tent. “You’re sure you want to try this?” he asked, turning to her as soon as they were out in the cold morning air. “You could just come with me. If you don’t like taking the entrance fee, you could do something else,” he said vaguely.

  “Such as?” Lizzie asked, feeling strangely touched by his inclination to keep her with him.

  He shrugged. “Hold my shirt while I box,” he suggested with a glint in his eye.

  “A chair could do that,” Lizzie pointed out.

  He glanced quickly round, then caught her about the waist. “Give me a kiss, then, to be going on with,” he demanded gruffly.

  Lizzie squeaked as his hand cupped the back of her neck, bringing her face close to his. She scarcely had time to utter his name before his lips were upon hers, hot and demanding. Lizzie’s head reeled. This was not a goodbye kiss in her opinion. When he abruptly released her, she would have stumbled if the tent pole had not been conveniently close.

  “I’ll fetch you for lunch,” he said. “About one.”

  Lizzie nodded, striving to catch her breath. She watched him stride away in the direction of the boxing tent, feeing all of a flutter.

  “He’s knocked your bonnet crooked,” said Connie dryly. Lizzie whipped around and found the older woman watching her from just inside the tent. “You set yourself straight before anyone turns up. Run a respectable establishment, I do.” She sniffed. “You needn’t think you can stand around mooning after that fine husband of yours neither! If you’re here, you’re here to work. I got no time for idlers.”

  Lizzie reached up and adjusted her bonnet. “Of course, Mrs. Brown,” she answered, wondering where Mr. Brown might be.

  “You’d best call me Connie,” the other replied without enthusiasm. “And I’ll warn you now, little lady. If you don’t work out, I shall tell your husband so and you needn’t think my fondness for a handsome face will prevent it.”

  Lizzie felt herself suddenly in the grip of the oddest sensation. For the verist instant, she pictured herself snatching Connie’s ridiculous hat off her head, flinging it on the floor, and jumping up and down on it until it was flat as a pancake. When she regained control of her riotous thoughts once more, she breathed in deeply. “I am sure we will both of us give the other a fair trial,” she answered coolly.

  Connie gave a mirthless laugh. “Look lively. Here’s Niamh and the twins,” she said briskly as a tall redhead ducked into the tent followed by two slender dark maidens of identical appearance.

  “Good mornin’ to you,” the redhead started heartily. “But who’s this?” she asked looking Lizzie up and down in surprise.

  “The new girl,” Connie answered briskly. “She’s Alfred’s replacement.”

  “Alfred?” Niamh echoed and gave a hearty laugh. “You’re joking!”

  “Not at all, she’s going to keep our paying visitors in check, ain’t that right, Lizzie my girl?”

  “Certainly,” Lizzie answered, inclining her head. “I am happy to make your acquaintance.”

  Niamh blinked. “Fairly got the grand manner, hasn’t she?” she said addressing Connie. “Looks like she could freeze a duke at ten paces.”

  Connie looked much struck by this observation. “She has,” she said slowly. “Indeed, she has got something of the governess about her,” she admitted tapping a finger against her chin. “Perhaps we could use that to our advantage?”

  The twins approached Lizzie, catching her hands and holding them extended out by her sides. “She needs props,” one of them said eagerly.

  The other nodded, turning to Connie “Where is Zuleika’s parasol?”

  “That old thing?” Niamh cried. “She’d look a regular ratbag carrying that tatty thing about!”

  One of the twins released Lizzie’s hand to scurry over to a large trunk. Flinging open the lid, she delved inside until she retrieved a rather battered looking parasol of black lace and silk with a fringe hanging down. “Here!” she said brandishing it with a triumphant flourish before hurrying back to offer it to Lizzie.

  Lizzie took it hesitantly, though to be honest she privately agreed with Niamh’s scathing pronouncement. The parasol had indeed seen better days. Hefting it in her hand, she had to admit it was a good substantial weight.

  “I ‘spose if anyone was to get handsy she could whack ‘em on the wrists wiv it,” Niamh said doubtfully.

  One of the twins shook her head so her glossy black braids flew. “Ankles,” she corrected the redhead. “If she struck their hand, she would surely break their wrist!”

  Connie snapped her fingers. “Agatha’s bonnet!” she said. “Would be the very thing to complete the look!”

  “What? That ugly old poke bonnet?” Niamh gasped. “Why, she’d look a fright in it!”

  Lizzie stirred uneasily as the other twin flew to the trunk and drew out a misshapen black bonnet, trimmed fussily with velvet and tulle.

  “It is very ugly, is it not?” the girl said as she turned it over in her hands and cast a sympathetic look at Lizzie.

  Indeed, Lizzie thought taking it from her hands, it must have been exceedingly ugly even when it was new, let alone now it was past its prime. She was used to plain things, but she hoped she’d never had such lamentable taste as to choose a hat such as this one.

  “Just the thing,” Connie pronounced with satisfaction. “Here, let me take yours, and you can wear this one. I’ll put yours safely in the trunk.”

  Lizzie watched her own bonnet, sensibly trimmed with a navy ribbon, disappear into the box of junk. Suppressing a shudder of distaste, she drew the bonnet over her head.

  “I dunno,” said Niamh. “You can hardly see her face in that dark cave!”

  “Gives her a slightly sinister air,” Connie said approvingly. “Which will stand her in good stead when dealing with the cheeky blighters we get in here.”

  “You look much better than Agatha did in it, though,” one of the twins said, giving Lizzie’s hand a consoling pat.

  Niamh went off into choking laughter. At Lizzie’s quizzical look, she pointed wordlessly to a nearby poster which boasted “The Living Skeleton. She has a skull for a head”.

  Lizzie’s eyes widened, and she wrenched the bonnet off her head. “You mean this bonnet belonged – ”

  “She wasn’t really a skeleton!” the other twin assured her hastily.

  “Course she wasn’t!” Connie burst in, sending Niamh an irritated look. “Just a little gaunt was Agatha, with hollowed cheeks and sunken eyes. We played it up with a bit of greasepaint, that’s all.”

  “What happened to her?” Lizzie demanded.

  “Her sister opened a boarding house,” Niamh said with a shrug. “Aggie went to live with her there and help her run the place.”

  Assured that the bonnet’s previous owner did not have some fatal wasting disease, Lizzie set the hat back on her head.

  “Shame we ain’t got a fancy black cloak for you,” Connie lamented. “That navy one of yours doesn’t match.”

  “Ma Toomes has a black cloak she lent me,” Lizzie volunteered, thinking of the cloak she had not yet returned to Benedict’s grandmother.

  Connie brightened. “Maybe you could bring that one with you tomorrow,” she said optimistically. “If you work out, that is,” she added with a frown as though annoyed she had been swept away with the tide of enthusiasm the twins had bought with them. Connie clapped her hands. “Alright now, girls. Let’s get this place set to rights.”

  Lizzie fell back as the twins and Niamh busied themselves drawing out screens and diving behind them to disrobe and don their costumes.

  “Lizzie, you can help me ready Salome’s grotto,” Connie said gesturing to a basket full of rolled up canvases and art
ificial roses pinned to streamers. She led the way to the raised platform with the pink velvet fainting couch.

  They spent the next five minutes pinning the streamers to the gauzy curtains and unfurling reproductions on canvas of fleshy Venuses surrounded by clouds and cupids and not wearing much by way of clothing.

  Lizzie bit her lip. “Whose couch is this?” she asked. The twins had reappeared from behind their screen, their skin painted gold and wearing the most extraordinary garments of voluminous red which contrived to both expose and cover them at the same time. They wore rubies in their exposed bellybuttons, beaded slippers with turned up toes, and pointed headdresses which looked like exotic tiaras about which their braids were woven.

  “It’s Salome’s, didn’t I say so?” Connie responded briskly.

  “And who, pray, is Salome?”

  Connie pursed her lips. “She’s our regular star turn this season, that’s who,” she said standing back and setting her hands on her hips as she surveyed the effect they had achieved. “Good enough, though I declare a pair of plaster of paris cherubs would set it right off.” She clicked her tongue and sighed. “Lizzie, drape that bit of curtain over the back of the couch. That’ll do,” she said with a quick nod.

  Niamh emerged from behind her screen, and Lizzie was astonished to see she now wore only her chemise and stays and a pair of lace trimmed bloomers which extended down no further than her knees. More astonishing than this was the fact that the skin of her exposed arms, décolletage, and legs were heavily decorated with intricate designs that looked at first to be black lace, but on closer inspection appeared to be ink drawings of butterflies and birds and flowers.

  “They’re tattoos,” Niamh said by way of explanation.

  Lizzie flushed. “I shouldn’t stare,” she stammered. “I apologize.”

  Niamh laughed. “Lord bless you. If I minded, I wouldn’t be displaying them to all and sundry, now would I? I’m a contortionist too, as well as a tattooed lady.”

  At that moment, the entrance to the tent swept open and a very dapper little man in a green tweed suit with a little pointed beard appeared. “She comes!” he announced dramatically in heavily accented English. Lizzie thought he must be Swiss, like a visiting pastor she had once met, though she was not sure. “My sister, she arrives!”

  Turning back, he held the entrance open as a tall, substantial figure came sailing into the tent in an extremely expensive outfit of yellow silk trimmed lavishly with swansdown. She had a simply breathtaking face, rather like a Botticelli painting.

  “I am come!” the radiant vision announced, sweeping a white muff wide as she beamed on everyone present. “Indeed, have no fear for I am now come, dear Mrs. Brown!”

  “About time too,” Connie muttered under her breath. “How was your night at the inn, Salome?” she asked aloud, coming down the steps to exchange greetings. The little man frowned to hear his sister addressed thus, but the amiable smile on the newcomer’s face did not waver. The two women kissed the air in the vicinity of each other’s cheeks.

  “Oh, such a quaint little inn!” Salome responded delightedly, clasping her hands to her bosom. “They could not do enough for me. The landlord, how he fussed to have a guest from the continent! Is that not so, Jakob?”

  Jakob grimaced. “The chimney smoked in our rooms,” he said fretfully.

  “Ah, nonsense!” his sister boomed. “Always you must make some complaint, Jakob!” she regarded him fondly. “It is a most charming inn. Most quaint and we will enjoy our stay there very much. The way they serve the roast mutton with the mustard and the roasted potatoes is most delicious and to be commended.” She broke off her ruminations as she noticed Lizzie in her sober garb. “But who is this?” she asked turning reproachfully to Connie. “You are allowing in my public already? I am not yet ready!”

  “No, no,” Connie assured her. “This is Mrs. Toomes who is to be our new chaperone,” she said with emphasis on the word. “I could not help but be aware the crowds were not respectful of the rope barrier yesterday and pressed rather close. I could not have my star attraction being breathed on by the common masses.”

  Salome’s eyes grew wide as her brother interrupted. “This is good, very good. Yes, my dear Mrs. Brown, I am most glad to hear you take my dear Ada’s safety to heart.”

  Salome, or should it be Ada, Lizzie wondered, gave a gusty laugh. “And how will this little female hold back my public?” she asked genially. “She looks as though a gust of wind would blow her away – poof!”

  “I assure you, I am not so insubstantial,” Lizzie piped up.

  Salome’s pale blue gaze passed over her, and she gave an expressive shrug, effectively dismissing the subject. “And now I must undress,” she proclaimed. “Ah, you have anticipated me, I see, my good Mrs., Brown.”

  Lizzie turned and saw that Niamh and the twins – she really must learn their given names, had combined their screens to cordon off an area substantial enough for Salome’s ample figure to undress.

  “Jakob,” she said turning to him and passed him the large white muff and her delicate gloves. “Mrs. Brown, you will help me now to disrobe.”

  Connie’s eyes rolled but she followed Salome’s lead and disappeared behind the screens.

  “It will be too draughty,” Jakob fussed. “My poor sister will be taking the chill.”

  “Fat chance of that,” Niamh said sotto voce. The twins giggled.

  Jakob glared at them and turned to Lizzie. “You, woman,” he said. “You will be most assiduous to your duties, I trust. My sister must be protected at all costs. She is not used to such … ” he broke off, his lip curling, “surroundings.”

  Lizzie gazed back at him impassively. “My name is Mrs. Toomes,” she replied coolly. “And you may rest assured that I always do my duty, Mr. … ?”

  He drew himself up to his full height. “Wurtzel,” he rapped out.

  Lizzie nodded. “Mr. Wurtzel.” She walked past him and stalked over to where Niamh and the twins stood. It seemed to her that there was an invisible line drawn between the inhabitants of the tent. Those that the Wurtzels knew the names of and those they did not.

  “Good for you,” Niamh whispered, nudging her in the waist.

  11

  Benedict felt unaccountably annoyed. He regarded Lizzie over the top of his teacup and decided he should have elected to go for a beer. God alone knew why he had felt the need to please her by returning to a bloody tea tent. His selfless action was wholly unappreciated, he thought listening to her rattle on about her new blasted job.

  “ – and only fancy,” she leaned forward confidingly. “Niamh said she does not believe that Mr. Wurtzel is Salome’s brother at all!” She sat back in her seat, her face flushed. She really did look surprisingly pretty with a bit of color to her face. For the first time he noticed that the bonnet framing it was not her own. “In point of fact, her name is not really Salome either. That’s just her stage name. Apparently, Connie has had three Salome’s in the past twelve months, but none of them have drawn a crowd like Miss Wurtzel.”

  “What’s that on your head?” he grunted, cutting through her excited chatter.

  “Oh,” she reached up and touched the faded trim. “I quite forgot to change it. It’s awful isn’t it? But you see,” her eyes gleamed, “it’s part of my costume. I have a parasol too, but I left that in the tent. No one would steal it for it’s simply the ugliest old thing.”

  Benedict eyed her moodily. It seemed to him that she ought to have given her appearance a second thought, when she knew she was meeting up with him. Hadn’t he fully buttoned his shirt and even combed his hair before leaving the ring?

  Jack had seemed highly amused to see Benedict tidying himself for his own wife. ‘You’re surely past the courtship stage,’ he had joked. ‘You’ll be taking her a bunch of flowers next.’ Benedict had glowered at him, but in truth, Jack wasn’t to know that Lizzie had never been wooed.

  “I’m a sort of old-fashioned duenna, you see,” Lizz
ie explained setting down her cheese sandwich. “My role is protectress of the girls, ensuring the spectators do not encroach on their private space.”

  I know, thought Benedict sourly as he clattered his cup back into his saucer and added a second sugar lump to his tea. I was the one who thought of it. Bloody fool that I am. Aloud he simply said, “So, you’re thinking you’ll stick with it for now?”

  “Oh yes!” She regarded him with some surprise before giving him a reassuring smile. “I’m perfectly content with my lot.”

  Perfectly content. He should be reassured by that, but strangely, he was not. He didn’t want her to be contented. He wasn’t content, he realized with a frown, watching her take a bite of scone. He felt edgy and restless, like he’d neglected some duty or overlooked some detail. What was it niggling away at the back of his mind?

  Lizzie dabbed her mouth with a napkin and took a sip of tea, wholly oblivious to his inner turmoil. “How about you?” she asked politely. “You said your morning went well. How did you find your brothers?”

  “They’re fine,” he said shortly and seeing her frown, forced himself to elaborate. “Though Frank looked a little rough first thing. Maybe he’s missing Maggie setting his clothes out for him of a morning.”

  Lizzie fiddled with her napkin, clearly unsure of her footing when it came to commenting on his brother’s broken marriage. “And your bouts this morning?” she ventured. “They went well?”

  “Fine.”

  “You won them all?”

  He felt a spasm of irritation. “Of course.”

  Lizzie shot him a look. “Only you seem a little …”

  “What?”

  She shook her head a little. “How was Daphne?” she asked instead brightly, and Benedict scowled.

  She made polite conversation as he walked her back to Connie’s tent, and it was as much as he could do to mutter ill-natured replies. It wasn’t until he was headed back to the Toomes Boxing Saloon that he realized why he was in a sulk. He wanted her attention on him, not anyone else, unreasonable brute that he was. The problem was, Lizzie didn’t get it. She’d never walked out with a man before, so she had no clue how to make up to one.