The bookcase in the schoolroom held texts on geometry and algebra, geography and the use of globes, a battered collection of lexicons—English, French, Latin, Greek—and all six volumes of Swiffen’s Cyclopaedia.
Charlotte chose a volume of the Cyclopaedia at random and returned to her bedchamber. She turned the pages hastily, looking at the illustrations. “Too old,” she muttered under her breath, at a sketch of a bearded Menelaus. “Too young,” to a youthful Narcissus. “Too fat.” Nero.
She found the ideal illustration in the Os.
Orpheus, the sketch was titled, and the man depicted was young without being boyish, fair of face, and appeared to be in good physical shape beneath his toga. He stared from the page, his gaze steady and direct. He looked personable and intelligent, and most of all, dependable.
“Perfect,” Charlotte said. Who wouldn’t hire a man who looked like that?
She latched her door and undressed, neatly folding her clothes. Her palms were damp, her breath short, her pulse gathering speed.
Charlotte laid the Cyclopaedia on her dresser and studied the sketch again.
She inhaled a shallow breath, blew it out, rubbed her sweaty hands together, glanced at herself in the mirror—brown hair, brown eyes, bare breasts—and fixed her gaze on the sketch and said, “I wish to look like this man, Orpheus.”
An itching sensation crawled over her skin, as if a thousand millipedes marched there. The itching intensified, digging into her bones—Charlotte felt a flicker of panic—and then the itching stopped as abruptly as it had started.
She lifted her gaze from the Cyclopaedia to the mirror.
A bare-chested man stared back at her.
Shock almost made her recoil a step. Charlotte caught herself, made herself stand still, made herself meet the man’s eyes. My eyes. She touched her face in wonder, poked her cheek, felt that square chin—and saw the man in the mirror imitate her movements.
This is real. This is me.
Incredulity swelled in her chest. Incredulity, disbelief—and mounting excitement. She stepped as close as she could to the mirror and peered intently at herself. Hazel eyes. Blond hair curling back from her brow. White, even teeth. Strong throat. Adam’s apple.
Charlotte rubbed her chest. How odd to have no breasts. How odd to have blond hair growing there.
Blond hair grew at her groin, too.
Charlotte tentatively touched the unfamiliar appendage dangling there. It was soft and warm and spongy, like a finger without any bones in it. She searched for a name for the appendage, and came up with a word she’d once overheard: pego.
Charlotte turned the pego this way and that, looked underneath it and examined the plump testicles. How did one urinate?
I guess I shall find out, she thought, and sudden laughter climbed her throat.
She released the pego and surveyed herself in the mirror again, hands on hips. A fine fellow, Mister Orpheus. Taller than Miss Appleby, broad in the shoulder and chest. A strong, robust man.
This is my body now. My face.
And with the alteration to her face and body, the world had altered, too. Charlotte had a strange, unsettling sense that her boundaries had expanded a thousandfold. She felt almost dizzy, as if the floorboards had moved beneath her feet and the walls of her room pushed outwards.
No, the world hasn’t changed; I have.
She could do things she’d never been able to do, go places that had been forbidden, grab opportunities no one would ever offer a woman. How large the world was! How full of possibility.
But first, I need clothes. Breeches and shirts, waistcoats, tailcoat, boots.
Those were things she could purchase as a woman—provided she had the correct measurements.
Charlotte turned away from the dresser and rummaged in her darning basket for the tape measure.
And she didn’t just need clothes; she needed a name.
What shall I call myself?
She pondered that question while she unraveled the tape measure. Charlotte Christina Albinia Appleby becomes . . .
She glanced at the mirror, met the hazel eyes there.
Hello, Christopher Albin.