A Transgender Regency Romance - Constantine has been raised as a boy, can she adapt to her new status?

After Connie’s tears were dealt with, including being offered a large cup of cool water, a new phase of her education began. Genevieve moved herself, Connie, Alexandra, Miss Vivian and Nurse Betty to one of the upstairs drawing rooms and had a small luncheon set up for practice.

The room had excellent light with wide windows overlooking one of the numerous small gardens tucked into the angles of the building. A balconette of sorts protruded from two of the windows which in the fashion of the south of France, also served as doors. With both doors fully open, the room itself partook of the openness of the air.

Outside, it was that sort of fall day which England is not famed for but should be. The sky was blue and fluffy clouds decorated it the way a proud homeowner displays their household treasures in the finest room in the house. The larger garden on this, the southeast corner of the manor, stretched away to where a small herd of mild-mannered sheep decorated a parkland in much the same way that the clouds accomplished for the sky.

Inside the room, the walls alternated panels of light wood with linen wallpaper in a lemony hue, figured with tiny leaflets and minuscule fruit. Upholstered chairs surrounded the luncheon table which had a good assortment of cold meats and cheeses, breads and fruit and decanters of lemonade and cool water. A pot of tea brewed over a brazier on a side table.

Two maids stood ready to serve or fetch any item that might have been forgotten. It wasn’t a close imitation of a formal family dinner such as was planned for the dining hall downstairs in the evening, but it would serve nicely to begin Connie’s instruction in how to eat like a proper young lady.

Genevieve certainly knew there wasn’t time to instruct Connie in everything she needed to know about how to be a lady at the dinner table. But she had to try to give the girl the basics. Still, it was easier to tell her what not to do.

“Don’t sprawl,” she said, sitting at the head of the table where the Marquess would sit at dinner. “Keep your elbows close to your side, and one hand in your lap unless you are passing a dish that requires two hands, or you are cutting up your meat.”

She paused a moment for thought. “In fact, I think we’ll have your meat cut up in the kitchen before being served, at least until you can get more practice.”

Connie sent her stepmother a brief glare but did not protest this arrangement. She already sat in the front half of her chair, feet together under the table, hands folded in her lap. She gave the impression of being intent on learning what she must but that didn’t mean she would sit meekly at all times. She pouted, convinced, perhaps, that she was scowling.

Genevieve was unperturbed by the girl’s expression. “Can’t have you sawing away like a carpenter at the dinner table, can we?” she observed. “We’ll have more lessons, perhaps everyday until you’re picture perfect. Don’t take it too hard, dear,” she added, unable to keep a smile out of her own voice.

Miss Vivian, sitting on one side of the erstwhile boy, joined in. “You mustn’t reach for things; your elbows never need to be above the edge of the table. If you need something you cannot reach without extending your arm, ask the person nearest it, or a servant, to pass or fetch the item.”

Alexandra, sitting on Connie’s other side, was not going to be left out of instructing her sister. “It’s important not to interrupt the grown-up conversation; I always have trouble with that.” She giggled. “But watch me when you can, and if you doubt what would be the right thing to do, I’ll be sitting beside you—just ask.”

“And I’ll be on your other side,” agreed Miss V. “It’s not going to be as difficult as it may seem. After all,” she said with a bit of humor in her eyes, “if Alex can do it, so can you.”

Alex pretended to mild outrage. “Hmph,” she said and was pleased to see the tiniest of smiles on her sister’s face. Her eyes were so pretty when she smiled. “But it is hours still to dinner and Mama has said that we will be sharing the Rose Suite. After our luncheon, would you like to come and see it?”

Connie’s nod was almost imperceptible but she also spoke. “I would like to see the room. With you, Alex.” Her smile grew a bit. “I shared a room for the first years at Harrow, with three of the other boys. Um.” She seemed to stop to consider what she had said but then plunged on. “But you have had a room to yourself now for a long time?”

Alex agreed. “Oh, for ages, sometimes it feels lonely. But then, we did share a room before Father sent you off to school. We were small but I remember it. I cried horribly for days when they took you away. Didn’t I, Nurse?” she asked Nurse Betty who was sitting across the table as stand-in for everyone else who would be at dinner.

“Aye, you did, chick, and it wasn’t for days, it was for weeks.” Something like a shadow passed over Nurse’s expression. She looked at Connie. “I could hardly console either of ye, loves, for my heart was breaking, too.” Tears welled up in the older woman’s eyes. “It were like…like to when my own babes died when I were young.”

Everyone at the table looked at Nurse. “I never thought I’d see you again, my wee Bonnie.” She sniffed. “That’s what I called you when it were just you and I—Bonnie, not Connie—because you were the loveliest child. As pretty as your sister,” she nodded toward Alex, “and better-natured.” She smiled. “Always willing to give your nurse a toofy baby-grin…”

Everyone laughed except Nurse and Connie who stared at each other with matching tear tracks on their cheeks.

*

Astonished, Constantine realized he did remember Nurse Betty from when he was quite small. She’d been the one who held him and played with him and his sister. She made faces and funny noises and got down in the floor and nuzzled his tummy with her chin. He smiled though tears.

His sister reached out to put an arm around his middle, pulling him against her. Their gowns rustled together and she linked her other hand with his. “Nursie loves us as no one else does,” whispered Alex, and Connie felt forced to nod in agreement.

The two Deschambeaux children got up from the table and walked around to their old nurse, pulling the woman up and into an embrace, all of them smiling and shedding tears. “I never wanted nothing but that ye be kind to one another,” said Nurse Betty, wiping her tears away with the end of her apron.

“We know,” said Alex, and Connie nodded his agreement, sure that if he tried to speak his voice would come out in the piping tones he had spoken in when sent away from home as a four-year-old.

Alex had been six then, he remembered, and she had railed at their father that if anyone was to be sent away it should be her, because she was disobedient to Nurse and mean to her dollies. Then Alex had fallen asleep after sipping from a cup of milk Mama Genevieve had given her.

In the present, he stared at his stepmother, wondering what had been in that cup. Ten years ago, Genevieve had been the newest member of the family and probably pregnant with Thomas, her own eldest child. But it appeared she had co-operated then with Malvoir’s plan for Connie.

At the time, he’d felt betrayed by his sister’s abandonment. But Father had taken him aside and told him that he must be brave because he was a boy, and that it was his duty to go off to school and eventually learn to be a man. That Nursie and Alex loved him, but were holding him back, and that Father was sending him away to keep him from being weakened by them.

And he’d dried his childish tears, put back his shoulders and marched out with his father to be taken away in a coach with the old groom, Bobbitch, for a traveling companion. The trip had not been long, they left from the London house in the middle of Spring, the term at First School starting in May but he hadn’t know that at the time.

His memories were very confused after that but eventually he had met his sprig brothers at First School…. They had all started as tender boys, four and five years old, Connie the youngest. They had missed their mothers and nurses and cried in each others’ arms, though the House Fathers and resident maids had tried to comfort them.

His memories were bittersweet but precious, he realized. But he was out of tears now, and desperately thirsty again.

*

Nurse hugged and caressed Alex and Connie. “I’ll always be your Nursie, and ye’ll always be my wee ones. But I have to tend to my other charges now, your brothers. I’ll be losing them in the next year, too. They’ll be sent away to school next fall.” She hiccoughed.

“They don’t love you like we do,” Alex protested, nuzzling against Nurse’s shoulder. She was taller than Nurse now and it seemed strange to both of them. Connie was barely shorter. “Thomas and Little Gus don’t deserve you,” Alex told Nurse.

“Well, they are boys,” said Nurse. “And boys have to protect their hearts from being wounded by love. Us girls,” and she pointedly included Connie in a glance, “have much stronger hearts. We must because we have to care even for those that are hard to love.” She whispered then, smiling, “Like your father.”

The sisters said goodbye to Nurse—though they would see her later the same day and nearly everyday—the parting felt more significant than most. They clung to each other, Connie in her white gown and Alex in her yellow, arms around each other’s waist.

“Don’t they make a pair,” commented Miss Vivian to Genevieve as they all left the luncheon table. “So alike and yet so different.”

“I daresay,” agreed the girls’ stepmother. “Let us hope they can become more alike in the future.”

“Very true,” said Miss V. “It wouldn’t hurt Alex any if she learned some of Connie’s study habits. Getting more similar to each other need not be all one direction.” She chuckled and Genevieve smiled.

*

“May we go look at the Rose Suite, Mama?” asked Alex, still holding her sister’s hand. She looked visibly excited by the idea but Connie appeared to be more resigned to her fate.

“Certainly, dears,” Genevieve told her. “You may want to choose who gets which side of the bed and such. I’ll have the carpenters in there tomorrow to make alterations, but there’s no reason you can’t sleep there tonight if you wish.”

Both sisters attitudes changed once out of sight of the adults. Beaming, Alex grabbed Connie’s hand and started off, babbling. “You’re glad to get out of there, I bet, and so am I! Mama is so bossy, and Miss V is a know-it-all!”

Connie nodded agreement. “I think they were going to spray me with perfume next,” she complained. “Thanks for coming up with a reason for us to leave.”

Alex laughed. She seemed unreasonably happy to be going from having a room of her own to sharing a suite with her sister, who she towed behind her down the hallway, saying, “You haven’t seen this suite, it’s an amazing amount of room! With a beautiful view and lovely furniture, too.”

Connie rolled her eyes and quickened her step to keep up. “Slow down, Lexie, I’m going to trip in these skirts,” she complained.

Alex did slow down, looking back at Connie. “No one else calls me Lexie,” she noted. “I haven’t been called that since we were babies.”

“Bossy-boots!” said Connie with half a smile.

“Booger-lips!” Alex retorted with a grin.

“Honey-butt!”

Alex laughed, but admitted, “I never understood that one.”

“You wouldn’t,” said Connie. “It was because you were so sweet, you had Father convinced that honey came out of your butt.”

“Oh,” said the older girl. “Still, it doesn’t exactly sound like an insult….”

“I meant it as one.”

Alex grinned. ”When you were really small, I called you Doggie-bottom cause you would sit and pull yourself along with your hands like a puppy trying to clean itself on the rug. Now that’s an insult!”

“Yuck!” said Connie. “I don’t remember that!”

“It was before you learned to walk,” Alex explained. She laughed and Connie managed a strangled-sounding noise that might have been made by a boy trying not to giggle.

They paused in front of the door to the Rose Suite. “I’m glad you’re home and back to being you,” Alex told her sister.

“Me!?” Connie looked down at her gown and slippers. “I don’t think this is me.” She sighed. “I don’t really feel like I’m a girl.”

“You will,” Alex assured her. “You know you are, and the feeling will come.” She pulled the oaken door open. “You look amazing and I’m jealous, you know.”

“I—what?” Connie appeared flabbergasted.

Alex went through the door, calling her sister to follow. “Come on in, these are our rooms now.” Connie followed more timidly.

First was a private drawing room, smaller than the one in which they’d had luncheon but still spacious. A high dormer window that must open above on the third floor gave light, with another window at one end and a fireplace at the other. There were three doors and Alex opened the middle one.

“This is our bedroom,” she said, dragging the younger girl inside. A huge four-poster canopied bed sat in the middle of the room and two large windows gave lots of light. Rose-colored linen covered the walls except where blond wood shelving held books, vases, a chess set, a lute, a miniature harp, and other lovely things.

There were four doors and another fireplace, this one decorated with a frieze of cherubs and woodland animals carved in cloudy pink crystal. The andirons were in the shape of fanciful stoats, or possibly, elongated cats. The fire tools were polished brass and adorned with kittens and puppies.

The bed was covered in a fuzzy-loooking pink duvet, with massive pillows in yellow and pale green striped fabric. The canopy was maroon with a dark rose fringe and the posts were carved to look like slender tree trunks with climbing sweetpea vines.

There were tables, a settee and two brocaded chairs scattered around. Four massive trunks were under the bed and two slightly smaller but brightly painted ones sat at the end nearest the door. There were steps built into the side of the bed on each side, since the sleeping platform was almost shoulder height off the floor.

Lamps and candlesticks sat on various surfaces, though none of them were currently lit. All of them were gracefully decorative and richly crafted of silver, brass or pewter.

“This room alone is bigger than both our bedrooms put together. And it’s beautiful,” gushed Alex. “Don’t you think so, Connie?”

Connie stared at her. “It’s pretty,” she admitted after a pause.

It seemed obviously designed for feminine occupants, a fact Connie could hardly fail to notice.