The Other Side

“My lord! My lord! You must come. The countess is dying!” The maid burst into the earl’s dressing room without even a perfunctory knock.

“Freeba! Calm yourself.” Bettina ripped the towel from around her neck. The shave would have to wait. Before she could stand, the valet grabbed the cloth, wiping the soap from the earl’s chin. Bettina, clad in trousers and shirt, still only in stockings, dashed from the room in as much distress as Freeba.

Harry cannot be dying. She could not bear to live if he was lost to her. Life without Harry would be empty, dull. The horror of it made her heart beat so hard and fast that she raised a hand to her chest as if to keep it from bursting from her body. The gesture reminded her that she had another reason to fear losing him.

If he died in her body, she could well be trapped in his body forever. Twelve hours ago she would have thought nothing worse could happen than the two of them changing places. Now she could see her imagination was not nearly vivid enough.

Bettina tore into the suite of rooms that had been hers for the three years of their marriage. The curtains around the bed were still drawn tight, and the bedchamber was in unusual disarray. Clothes tossed on the chair, shoes left under it, and a stack of books opened, one atop another, on her writing desk. How like him, even in a woman’s body, to not give a thought to his clothes.

“The countess would not allow me to do anything to help her prepare for bed last night, except unlace her stays.” Freeba stepped in front of the earl to slow his progress. “I came in to bring her chocolate and found the room this way. She must be very ill, my lord. You know how careful she is with her clothes.”

“Never mind, Freeba. It hardly matters right now.” Bettina stepped around the maid and went straight to her bed, pushed aside the curtains. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

Harry was no more than a lump under the linen, but the groans as much as said, “I am in misery here.”

Freeba gasped at the unsympathetic tone of voice, and Bettina dismissed the maid from the room with a curt wave.

Alone with Harry, Bettina repeated the question, trying for a more sympathetic tone.

He spoke, though his face, which was actually her face, was buried in the pillow. Still, the words were quite intelligible. “I have the worst ache in my gut.”

She understood in an instant. With a roll of eyes and a relief most profound, Bettina expanded on her husband’s terse explanation. “Does it feel like some monster from hell is working its way through your stomach and below and the only relief will be when it explodes out of you? But before that can happen the pain fades, but only for a few moments.”

“It happens every month, my lady,” Bettina said with a sarcastic emphasis on the honorific. “Indeed, it will happen monthly right before your courses for the next twenty years.”

“I endure it every four weeks,” Bettina answered with a prosaic nonchalance. “Are you saying that I am able to tolerate pain better than you are?” If he had gone through childbirth as she had, he would not need prompting to answer.

“What else should I expect? Tell me,” he demanded as if facing a wasting disease. “Is this the worst of it?”

“The worst of your courses? Yes. Except for the bleeding. That usually lasts about four days for me.”

Exactly what was he going to do if there was worse to come? “This will pass, Harry,” she said again. “But you will still have to look in the mirror every day. For me, that is the worst part of this switch. Every time I see your face where mine should be, I’m shocked all over again. And your body feels strange.”

“Oh, that I understand completely. You have no idea how odd I feel.” Harry paused. “Or maybe you do.”

Bettina glanced back at Harry, his brain surrounded by her dark hair, green eyes, clear skin. She shut her eyes tight. If this went on much longer, she was going to have to find a way to rise above the upset it caused.

“I can’t take the pain, Bettina,” Harry said as another cramp struck. “Bring me some brandy. I’ll drink it away.”

“Because I never do that, and we have to preserve the façade that life is normal for as long as we can.”

“The façade being all there is.” He struggled into a sitting position. “At least you have something beautiful to look at.”

“How unfortunate. You know how disreputable I look with a day’s growth of beard. Go back and allow him to finish.”

“Believe me, Harry, the state of your beard is the least of our problems.”

Another cramp seemed to convince him that she was right. “God help me, we have to find a way to undo this damned curse.” He covered his face with the bed linen and groaned.

Bettina pulled the chair from in front of the secretary, amazed at how light it felt. With a firm grasp she tested her man’s strength and easily lifted it, moving the chair to the side of the bed so she could face Harry.

She straddled the chair with her arms folded on the back of it. Just because she could. Trousers were as comfortable as they looked, even if she did feel self-conscious showing off the turn of her ankle and leg. Or rather Harry’s ankle and leg.

“Harry,” she said and waited until he pulled the linen down and she could see her face. She stared at it, trying to see him somewhere inside her. “The thing is, Harry, I don’t think this is a curse.”

“Semantics, Bettina. You made a wish, and God help us, it came true. Now we have to undo it.” The last word was followed by a grunt of discomfort.

“Where is the coin?” Harry asked, apparently intending to ignore that fact.

“The one you threw at me after you made your wish?” Bettina insisted, but did not wait for an answer. “How should I know? Didn’t we look everywhere last night? Today, when you are up and dressed, you must order the staff to search again. Roll up the rugs, move the furniture. It must be in this room somewhere.”

Bettina stood up and pushed the window curtains open. Sun poured into the room, and she turned quickly, hoping to see the morning light glint off the coin. She circled the room, even looked under the bed. Nothing.

“It cannot have rolled out the door. The door was closed,” Harry said, pushing the covers back but not rising from the bed. “Where did it come from? Maybe there is another one like it.”

Until he was comfortable she would not be able to reason with him. Harry was such a bear when he was ill.

The countess strode to the door, doing her best to imitate a man’s stride. It was something she would have to practice. It felt forceful and aggressive, like she wanted to challenge someone to a shouting match.

Is that how men felt, or was it just that this sort of walk was not natural to a woman’s sensibilities?

“I offered it to her, my lord, and have it at the ready, but the countess used a very crude word when I suggested it.” Freeba paused but seemed to steel herself. “My lord, she is not herself. This must be more than her courses. She would never call on you for feminine woes as common as that.”

“I know, but she told me recently that her pains have been so much worse since Cameron was born.”

“Yes, she told me.” Bettina tried for the curt tone her husband used so well.

This time Bettina did not say a word, only looked at the maid with one raised brow. It was one of Harry’s most annoying tricks, fraught with disdain and annoyance.

“You do that rather well,” Harry said with surprise. “Walk like a man, that is.”

“As a child I followed them around as if they were gods and imitated them in everything.”

“Really? I didn’t know that, but that would explain why you are not at all missish, afraid of spiders and such.” He paused a moment and then added, “And why you are so tolerant of practical jokes.”

Bettina watched him grit his teeth, but he did not otherwise give in to the pain of the cramp.

“God, how I wish this was a joke or a bad dream I could wake up from. As it is, we must find a solution. And quickly.”

“Here, Harry, take this and lay it across your belly and lower. I find it very helpful.”

“What is it? It looks like a poor excuse for a pillow. One filled with very heavy feathers.”

“It’s a bag of soft wool filled with dried beans. You heat it inside a bed warmer and then lay it against what aches. Do you remember the time you wrenched your shoulder when you were thrown from your horse?”

Harry nodded, taking the bag from her hand. “Yes, I do. It worked wonders. Your mother invented it, did she not, and swears she could have made a fortune with it.”

Harry settled against the pillows and sighed with relief. He closed his eyes and yawned.

Bettina began to pace the room, still unsettled at the thought of looking into her own face. “Let’s take a moment to reconstruct what happened last night. We may find a clue to reclaiming our own bodies.”

“Yes. All right,” Harry agreed. “It may be more simple than we think.”