Sometimes a Lady

By Iris Forester

In 1810 England, twenty-five year old Justina is in danger of becoming an impoverished spinster. Her parents decide to marry her off to a 45-year-old wealthy widower (James) with a large nearby estate. Justina, unable to endure this prospect, disguises herself as a boy, and runs away from her quiet village.

There, as "Justin," she finds employment as the assistant to an artist, Richard, mixing his paints and stretching his canvases and doing errands for him in the teeming streets of London. Richard is dashing, funny, and irreverent, and Justina finds herself falling in love with him. Richard speaks to "Justin" about how he'd like to find a wife who would match his own sense of adventure, and be free of some of the teatable trappings of polite society.

One day, his model cancels at a key moment, and Richard is nearly frantic with the need to complete a vital commission. He asks "Justin" to stand in for the missing model. Justin" agrees, and Richard recognizes, in the shape and proportion of his limbs, that "Justin" is actually female. The two fall in love, Justina enjoying this divergence of identities. All goes well, until, after a few months, she becomes pregnant. What’s more, her brother has been searching for her, and manages to track her down in London. What will happen when Justina’s parents attempt to marry her off to James? Can she get back to life with her real husband in London?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Shorts
• Release date: Dec 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094427737

Iris Forester

Iris Forester is never happier than when she’s tossed everything aside to follow one of the story threads that cross her path. She shares her home place with eagles, ravens and owls — but also makes time every year to spend in New York City. When she’s not writing, Iris works with paint, clay, and various difficult creatures.

Book preview

Chapter One

Miss? Excuse me, Miss.

Justina pretended not to hear the voice and stood on tiptoe to clip a high spray of the intensely fragrant roses. The foliage near her rustled, and Eliza’s reproachful face emerged from between the leaves.

Miss Clapham? Your mother would like you to join her now.

Justina wrinkled her nose, provoking the maid’s inevitable sniff of disapproval.

I’ll be there presently, Eliza.

Miss, your mother was quite insistent that you come just at this moment. She says your French lesson should be starting in five minutes, and you’ll need to freshen yourself.

Justina pushed past Eliza in the scented arbor, and peered through the greenery to the house. There was her mother, standing demurely in the shade by the front door of Brookfield, their family home. The fact that her mother had sent Eliza the short distance to fetch her rather than simply calling to her was exasperating.

Justina drew a breath and shouted past Eliza, Mama, I need to finish gathering these petals before the sun hits them.

Eliza’s expression grew even more pinched. She had been in service to the Clapham family for more than the twenty-four years of Justina’s life, and her disapproval was all too familiar. Ladies did not shout. Justina’s mother could be standing less than a stone’s throw away, but she would always send a servant rather than raise her voice even a fraction above the level appropriate for the drawing room.

Justina turned her back and continued stripping petals off the dense clusters of roses. This bush, called the Queen of Roses, or the apothecary’s rose, made the finest rose water — but the red blossoms had to be taken while they were still damp and cool from the nighttime. Justina knew she was being defiant, but lately, defiance was all she possessed. If she were facing a later life of constriction and servitude as a spinster, then at the very least she would control her own daily activities while she still had freedom.

Eliza, for her part, could easily read her young lady’s moods. When Miss Clapham became resistant like this, she knew there was nothing to be done about it. Giving up, the maid returned to her mistress, then went inside to see to the morning’s duties.

Mrs. Clapham stood for a few more minutes, then sighed and followed the maid back indoors. It wasn’t easy running a household with only five servants, and she would have to speak with Mrs. Harris, the housekeeper, about the day’s affairs. Trying to make Justina behave was time-consuming as well as thankless.

Even after her basket of rose petals was full, Justina lingered in the garden. The early summer had been grey and dreary, but now it was July, and the skies had finally cleared. The greenery was lush, and the day’s warming sunlight was causing an aromatic mist to rise from the dew-damp blossoms. Justina felt pity for the tutor and the servants, for her family — indeed, for all the people who had to be indoors right now. A few minutes later, however, her mother emerged purposefully from the house and strode in her direction. Justina sighed and went to meet her. Resistance was futile when her mother walked like that.

Justina, it is unkind to waste the time of someone who wishes to help you, her mother chided, as Justina reached her. They met near the front door, and Justina could see the tutor’s coat hanging on the rack inside.

He doesn’t care if he helps me or not, she told her mother. Lady Easton will pay him just the same.

It is also ungrateful to Lady Easton to ignore a tutor whom she has sent to you.

I’m too old for a tutor. And there’s no point to my learning French when it doesn’t look as if I’ll ever have the opportunity to travel to France!

Mrs. Clapham didn’t bother arguing with Justina. Now that she had corralled her daughter, she spent a few moments brushing the stray leaves out of Justina’s red hair and smoothing out her dress. Justina submitted to the grooming, then went in to meet Mr. Edgerton, the tutor.

He was a slight, distant young man of very proper bearing, and Justina perceived that he didn’t like her much. Mrs. Clapham settled herself in a corner of the room and took up some needlework, while Justina sat down at a small table across from the seat from which he’d risen when she’d entered the room. Sighing, she opened her book and began to read from it in a halting voice, often interrupted by Mr. Edgerton’s corrections.

Mrs. Clapham had little faith in Justina absorbing much of the instruction Mr. Edgerton was delivering in his dry, precise syllables. Justina had always been headstrong and a bit wild, more interested in finding bird’s nests and trying to ride the carriage horses than in acquiring ladylike skills. Mrs. Clapham knew that she and her husband had been too indulgent, letting Justina have her way for too many years. Now they were paying the price, because no gentleman had sought her hand in marriage. In despair, Mr. and Mrs. Clapham had watched as young ladies of far less beauty and intelligence were claimed by neighborhood swains and ushered from the wedding chapel in a snowfall of rice and flower petals. Meanwhile, Justina had come through her prime marriageable years painfully unwooed, and apparently undisturbed by the lack of attention she’d received.

I don’t want to become the decoration on some gentleman’s arm, she had said when she was fifteen, and seventeen, and nineteen. However, those protests had lessened as she passed the dangerous age of twenty and fully realized how precarious her future would be if she remained unmarried.

Now at twenty-four, she rarely said anything at all about her situation, and seemed rather to want to lose herself in odd pursuits and preoccupations.

Mrs. Clapham looked up from her embroidery hoop and gazed across the room at her daughter, now meekly copying out a French text into her copybook. It was true she was too old for a tutor, but it seemed like a good form of discipline for her. Lady Easton, the warmhearted and assertive widow of a local baron, had always liked Justina. It was she who had hired the young man to tutor Justina in French, in a sweet but unavailing effort to render her more marriageable.

Justina had pointed out that suitors didn’t administer language tests to the objects of their affection, and that no young man would care how well she spoke French. However, her parents had insisted she accept the gift of the tutor, because it would demonstrate a seriousness of purpose. They thought perhaps a clergyman, someone with a meager living, might turn his eyes to a capable young lady who seemed to have an interest in bettering her mind.

However, the only clergyman in their vicinity was a red-faced married man with five small children, so that was only a fantasy.

Justina stood abruptly, having completed her final exercise. Mr. Edgerton, mindful of courtesy, also quickly stood up and nodded to Justina in his stiff manner.

Miss Clapham, it has been a pleasure, as always. Next Tuesday, then, at ten o’clock.

Yes, sir. Thank you. She managed a pleasant nod of the head, then summoned Wilson, the butler, to see him out. Once the tutor was safely out of the room, Justina made a face, stuck out her tongue, and collapsed in disgust on the window seat.

Chapter Two

Caroline, what am I going to do?

It was two weeks later. Justina sat in her friend’s drawing room and leaned her forehead into both her hands. Last night, I heard my mother and father talking about coming to some kind of marriage agreement! And I know who they’re talking about. Mr. Whitely is an associate of my father. They have business interests together.

Caroline reached over and grasped her friend’s hands, very gently pulling them from her face. Listen. At least if you married Mr. Whitely, you could stop worrying. I know his property. He has a good enough living, and you’d be the mistress of your own home.

Caroline, he’s my father’s age! I can’t do it. Justina lifted a furious face to Caroline. "I won’t do it!"

Does my life seem so terrible to you? You know Mr. Tobias and I were not madly in love when I accepted his proposal. And he’s… not well-favored, in many people’s eyes. But now… and Caroline looked down at herself.

Justina took a deep breath, let it out, and managed to step outside her own anguish for a minute. She looked at her friend, and smiled. Sweet Caroline, sitting there in her voluminous pink frock, her belly as large as a ripe watermelon, expecting her confinement any day now. Of course Caroline was happy. She’d go on to have a brood of healthy babies with her unattractive husband, and she’d tend her garden and raise her children and honor her marital vows.

Your life is lovely, Justina told her. "You have the glow of a madonna, and I’m sure you couldn’t wish for anything more. But we’re — I mean to say I’m — I don’t know. Different."

Caroline gave her a sharp look. Couldn’t wish for anything more? Justina, I’m blessed, but every woman could wish for something more. It’s a man’s world. We learn to do as well as we can, within it.

A man’s world. That phrase echoed in Justina’s head as she made her way home along the hedgerows in the lengthening afternoon shadows. A man’s world. If she had been born male, she wouldn’t now be facing a penurious old age at the mercy of her pompous brother. She would be empowered — even expected — to go out in the world and seek a way of life. She could have asked Lady Easton for the funds to attend the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth and left home for that training at the age of twelve. Or, failing that, she could have volunteered at the same age as a cabin boy aboard a naval ship. Her father could have spoken up for her; he had friends in the Navy. By now, at the age of twenty-four, she would have been a respected naval lieutenant, traveling under foreign suns to the West Indies, the China Sea, the South Atlantic.

But no. She was here in the same gardens and hedgerows she had seen all her life and her only adventures had been to walk to town for ribbons with which to make over an old bonnet.

A man’s world. Justina looked down at her own body as she walked. Her shoulders, as her mother was forever lamenting, were broad and square. Really, if she cut off her hair and

Reviews for Sometimes a Lady

[benn9314 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A sweet story that has trials that had the main characters learning to overcome