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“I doubt you’ll have much luck getting me to do it,” Jo said, looking dubiously at the array of supplies she’d pinched from Meg.
Laurie was watching her from his cross-legged perch on the arm of the settee, eyes as bright as they always were when he was getting into mischief. “Well, you’ve certainly more experience than I have,” he said reasonably. “And it’s not as though there’s anyone else I can tell.”
“That’s true, I suppose,” she said. “Though I can’t say I understand why you’d be at all interested in this nonsense. I have to give it a try, because I’m a girl, but you’re free to go in the world as you please, without all these affectations.”
Laurie laughed. “If you think me without affectations, Jo March, you haven’t been paying attention.” He paused. “Let’s say that, just for today, I’ll be the girl and you can be the boy. We don’t even need to change our names.”
“I like that,” Jo, who had always fancied she would have been better off as a boy, replied. “Let me have your jacket, then.”
He passed it over, and she tried out a more masculine manner of putting it on, for once not forcing herself to be ladylike. Laurie smiled but didn’t laugh.
Then they were back to the matter at hand: the pilfered makeup, gloves, and ribbons.
“I expect your hands will be rather too big,” Jo commented.
“We’ll proceed with the utmost caution,” Laurie said, taking the first glove between his fingers. It did look a flimsy thing, white and pink, but it also seemed to sit naturally in the cradle of Laurie’s pale fingers. Slowly, eyes locked with Jo’s, he slid it on.
It was hardly the most transgressive attire he’d ever worn in her presence: his roles in various plays had necessitated wearing skirts and wigs by the dozen. And yet this was different—this was Laurie, looking down at his own hand, encased in lace, with a small, private smile.
“It suits you well,” Jo said.
Laurie’s smiled widened. “You think so? It feels like it fits. Can I try the other?”
Once he’d completed the set, Jo studied him critically. In recent years his clothes had tended toward the dandyish, and the soft white cuffs of his sleeves fell quite nicely against the gloves. Still—
“We’ll have to be rid of your waistcoat,” Jo said. “It doesn’t match.”
“Alright,” Laurie said, letting it slide from his shoulders. “You can wear it. Keep it, if you want.”
“Maybe I will,” Jo responded. She’d always coveted his waistcoats, with their bright patterns and expensive fabrics. She quickly shed the jacket and slipped the waistcoat underneath, wondering if she might ask for his trousers next.
“I doubt my hair’s long enough for those pretty ribbons,” Laurie said, sounding a bit wistful.
“Not really,” Jo replied. “You’d look like Amy—silly. I’d much rather you be elegant.”
“Oh, would you?”
Jo felt herself flush, the way she always did when Laurie pushed things. “Well, that’s what this is about,” she said. “And to that end, you mustn’t use too much of the makeup. It’s not becoming.”
“It isn’t?”
“Not for a lady of standing. If you wanted to look like a harlot, you’d paint your lips bright red and line your eyes in black.”
Laurie laughed. “Perhaps another day. I think I’d rather suit the role of harlot.”
“Yes, maybe you would,” Jo said, a tiny bit mocking. “But today I just brought rouge for your cheeks, and we can do your lips too if you insist.”
“That doesn’t sound so difficult,” Laurie said, reaching curiously for one of the cosmetic pots. Jo had taken everything she could find in Meg’s drawer: powders and pastes in pink, red, and amber.
“We should pick pink,” she said. “To match the gloves.”
“I concur,” Laurie said, with a little ironic doff of an imaginary cap. Jo huffed and shoved him into a more reasonable position on the sofa, and then knelt unselfconsciously between his knees.
“Hold still,” she said. “I’m really not very good at this, and if you laugh you’ll throw me off entirely.”
“Never,” Laurie replied solemnly, and then ruined it by smiling.
“At least keep on smiling, then,” Jo said crossly. She dipped her fingers into the pot. Meg always used brushes or powder puffs, but Jo never went in for that nonsense. Meg had ten perfectly good fingers, and she’d do well to use them instead of spending her money on useless ladylike things.
Laurie’s face made for an easy enough canvas, with all its sharp lines and angles. She followed the dip of his cheekbone, dabbing the color there with a frown. It seemed too bright at first, as garish as Amy’s very first attempts had been, but as Jo smoothed over it with her fingers the pigment dispersed until it was nothing more than a pleasing flush. She grinned, proud of her accomplishment. Then it was on to the second cheek, and all the while Laurie’s breath puffed, lightly ticklish, against her wrist.
“There,” she announced when finished, fishing around for the hand mirror. “You look very pretty, Laurie.”
He blushed, which made the whole endeavor a little pointless, but the look in his eyes when he studied his face in the mirror was worth any effort on Jo’s part.
“I really do,” he said.
Jo took a deep breath. “Relax your lips for me.”
This time, she rather wished she had thought to bring a brush. But there was no sense in getting timid now, and besides, there was nothing romantic about applying lip color to a boy.
She used her index finger to apply it, and then her thumb to smudge it out. She herself never wore lip color, and Meg only applied the barest amount for big social events. If Laurie really were a girl, she’d be shunned for wearing so much, so bright. And yet Jo rather thought it suited him. She glanced up.
In the fading light, Laurie almost did pass for a girl. Perhaps it was merely that the thought had been planted, but Jo found herself filling in the rest of the gaps with her imagination—lengthening Laurie’s hair, and imagining him as the lady she had never, herself, managed to be: graceful and sophisticated. Of course, in reality Laurie would no more suit being a refined lady than she did, but he would at least look the part.
For some bizarre reason, those imaginings made her heart thump up to her throat.
Her hand was still cupping his cheek, smoothing her thumb over the few remaining harsh lines of the lip cream.
“There,” she finally announced, voice a tad rough. “I do believe that’s as good as we’ll get you.”
Laurie picked up the hand mirror. His breath caught. “An improvement, wouldn’t you say?”
“It suits you well,” Jo said. She leaned against his leg, looking up at the long shadow his lashes were casting over his cheeks. She wished she could draw the way Amy did, to capture him right now. There weren’t any words that felt big enough to encompass it.
Laurie looked down at her, something indefinable in his eyes. He smoothed a gloved hand over her hair as he spoke. “You like me better this way, don’t you.”
It wasn’t a question, so Jo didn’t answer.
"It's okay," Laurie continued softly. "I do, too."