Sweet Agony

Like the uniform he has hung up in the bathroom for me, swaddled in plastic and so ominous-looking that I take a step back when I see it. For a second I think someone is standing in there waiting for me, and want to scream. Then I realise the someone waiting for me is the person I am supposed to be, and almost do it anyway. Somehow, I suspect I’m going to fail very badly at this. The stockings are silk, which I am almost certainly going to snag, and the shoes have the sort of heels I can never walk in.

Plus, he has to know that the whole thing is never going to fit me. The skirt portion of the dress is way too narrow around the hips, and that bodice will never contain my enormous bust. All those buttons down the front are going to pop open the moment I move – but maybe that was his intention. He wants to see me thoroughly humiliated, after failing to put me in my place yesterday. I was much too amused by him and far too talkative, and this is the lesson I get in return.

Or at least it would be usually, I think.

But then I forget that he is not usual at all. I judge him by the standard my family set, instead of the alien one he actually operates under. I think of my mum telling me to stop wearing short sleeves and my brothers jeering at my jiggly parts, rather than understanding that this is never going to be like that.

For a start, I have to speak to him through the parlour door. I knock on it and he tells me to stay where I am, rather than do anything normal like asking me in. Then, once I tell him that the uniform is never going to fit me, he lets out the most derisive little snort. I can practically see the eye-roll that goes with it, shortly followed by a sentence I could never have expected in a million years.

Though he seems to think I should have.

‘Of course it will fit you. I had it made to your exact measurements,’ he says, as though there could be no other explanation. He even seems somewhat offended that I could imagine anything else, despite how insane that is. He only met me yesterday. He must have seen me for all of two minutes. There is no way he could have done what he claims.

And I make the mistake of telling him so.

‘How could you possibly know what my measurements are?’ I ask, and receive an answer that damn near makes my hair stand on end. As he goes on, my eyes almost roll out of my head, but I cannot blame them. Who could, in light of this?

‘If you recall, I observed you walking up to my front door. It was not exactly difficult to extrapolate based on the variables at hand. You only managed to step over my gate by standing on tiptoe, which tells me that you are no more than five foot three, and once you had traversed it I could clearly see the distance in inches between each of your hips and the edges of said gate. As I know the exact width it was fairly easy from there to surmise your lower measurements, and only a little more difficult to ascertain what sort of bodice you might require. As you quite clearly wear a bra two sizes too small for you, it took me a little longer to absolutely be sure, but, judging by your relative self-consciousness, the way you hold your arms when you walk and the other parameters of your body, I believe I have the right of it,’ he says, after which I want to be appalled, I do. I probably should be, all things considered. He examined me so minutely I am surprised my skin isn’t trying to walk off my body.

But I understand why it stays on. Everything he says is so lacking in sexual intention that even my keen senses cannot detect it. No part of me suspects he is lying in order to cover up some transgression. I don’t imagine he secretly snuck into a room and measured me with a ruler, and even if I did I am not sure I would mind much. There is something so calm and clinical and clever about everything he just said that all I feel is awe.

And the awe makes me do some frantic and ill-advised things. It just builds inside me to the point where I can no longer contain it, and suddenly I seem to be tearing at the plastic around the dress. I have to see for myself if he is right, but the problem is that seeing is apparently not enough. Once I have the material in my hands – that liquid silk all lined and smartly stitched just for me – I go one step further. I start pulling off my clothes right there in the hall, so eager to have it against my skin that I barely stop to think about being naked ten feet from where he is. I do not care that he is calling through the door at me. ‘Ms Parker, I insist you answer me at once,’ he says, but I just keep going.

I even take my bra off – though, in my defence, I sort of have to. The dress has this whole support structure actually built into it, and oh, my sainted aunts, when I put it on…how can I regret stripping to nothing when I put that thing on? He was absolutely right about the ‘two sizes too small’, because after I do up some of the buttons I want to break down and cry.

I think my body breathes out for the first time. Everything feels gently held rather than squeezed, yet when I move nothing wobbles or jiggles or tries to escape. There are no unsightly lumps or bumps, and every part of it ends exactly where it’s supposed to. Even the sleeves are the right length. Even the flare of the skirt is perfect, to the point where I want to ask again how he did this.

Though I appreciate that part of it is just a desire to hear him say so. To hear him tell me all those tiny details a second time, in that voice of his like liquid intelligence. Just the thought of it makes my heart beat long and slow in my chest, in a way that seems insane. No one should feel like this over something so small. People need more than cleverness to start breathing hard and having illicit thoughts. At the very least you should have seen a face or a body or even a hand or two.

None of which is the case here.

He could be hideous, I think.

He probably is hideous, all things considered. What other reason can there be for him to keep himself hidden from me? None, I think, none, and even if there is one, his manner suggests something grotesque. He is still barking orders at me through the door. I tell him I’m just trying on the shoes and he keeps on going. He has to be an eight-hundred-year-old hobgoblin – an idea that should probably calm me down somewhat.

It should, yet somehow that is not the case at all.

Partly because I think the missing key to my excitement might be a brilliant mind.

But also because at that moment he decides to march to the door and fling it open, and when he does I think my insides plummet around seventeen floors. They wind up somewhere just north of hell, thanks to a face he should not have. No one should have a face like that. It has to be a crime against womankind for someone to walk around wearing that weapon of mass destruction, and anyone doing so needs to be immediately jailed. Someone call the police, I think.

Though I have no idea how they might help me. I suppose they could close my mouth or maybe stop me gasping, but even if they did there are still my eyes to contend with – my enormous and no doubt wild-looking eyes that will not stop staring at him. For a second I actually consider poking them out, to spare me further embarrassment.

But I fear it may be too late. He is quite possibly the cleverest person I have ever met. There is no doubt he already knows why I am gawping at him like a drowned fish. No one could look like that and not understand – though oddly he does an excellent job of pretending. The longer this agonising moment goes on, the more disconcerted he seems, until finally I want to glance away, just to erase that hint of a frown between his elegant eyebrows.

It only makes him more beautiful.

God, I had no idea a man could be beautiful. I thought that was just something people said in stories, yet here it is in a thousand different ways. His eyes are lovelier than a lonely ocean in winter, so cold and still and pale I can feel them freezing me where I stand. I want to check my fingers for frostbite, until I realise that the idea is mad. I’m not actually cold.

In fact I’m blazing hot. I thank God I only did up three of the buttons, because the air on my back is a glorious blessing. I think it saves me from sweating, and for that I am very grateful. He already knows my eyes have been hypnotised. I would rather he stayed in the dark about my over-heating body – though somehow I doubt he will for much longer. I mean, most of his face is bad.

But his mouth is worse.

His lips have almost no outline at all, as though they were made when someone kissed against the glass of his face. Give it a moment and they would probably disappear altogether – though most of me hopes they will stay a little longer. I haven’t quite finished looking at them yet. I need a second to marvel over the middle of his upper lip, which seems to be unlike every other lip on the planet. Most people have those soft hills, one after the other. They have a bow.

He has two sharp peaks, barely visible but still definitely there.

It makes his lips seem both cruel and at the same time so utterly soft that I would give almost anything to feel them against my skin. I consider smacking my face into his, as if by accident, despite how intrusive that would be. Most likely he would fire me.

But I think it might be worth it.

Christ, am I really thinking that? I have to pull myself together – and not just because I seem to be having ludicrous thoughts. He is looking at me now as if he would probably murder me where I stood if he thought he could get away with it. His hands are twitching a little, in a way that suggests his preferred method would be strangulation.

And to my horror the only response I can come up with is: what a way to go. He has long but fine fingers, and I find myself wondering what they would feel like around my throat. Probably heaven until you began to run out of air, I reckon, and then I really have to change the subject in my head.

Though it’s a shame I do it by blurting out:

‘Sorry, I just wanted to see.’

It sounds so feeble he flinches.

Or is it more the content that makes him mad?

‘You wanted to see if I was lying.’

‘Well, not lying exactly.’

‘Then what?’

‘Maybe making things up.’

‘There is no appreciable difference between that and telling a falsehood, Ms Parker – a fact I am sure you are aware of, considering that almost keen mind of yours.’

‘Could be the “almost”part that stops me short,’ I say, then wish I hadn’t.

Now does not seem like the best time to get funny with him, no matter how much it makes my heart sing to do it. At the very least I should probably wait for him to forget I ogled him – though somehow I doubt that will ever happen. He still looks disgusted about it, halfway through this conversation about something else altogether. Or, at least, I think he does.

His expressions are nearly impossible to read.

He could be offended by my suspicions.

He might wonder how I dare to be amused.

All seems possible, when he speaks.

‘Well, as you can see, it does indeed fit, despite your every effort at putting it on incorrectly. It may come as a surprise to you, but buttons are supposed to go in their corresponding holes rather than bizarre diagonals of your choosing. Honestly it seems a wonder to me that you ever manage to get dressed at all.’

‘There are a million of them and you only gave me a minute.’