Girl who wets her dress to make it cling
I read this more than 20 years ago and I don’t know how old it was then.
There was a girl, either late teens or early twenties, who was narrating in first person. I remember she had a crush on a man and wet her dress to make it cling to her body so he’d notice her.
The only other thing I remember is that she ended up in an unusual place for her to be (I want to say something like a dockyard but I can’t be truly sure), was very sick, and her friend/maid went and got the man. Then the narrative switched to his point of view and he was surprised to find her with her dress wet because she wet it while the friend/maid was gone. I do remember her thinking she should have asked her friend/maid to wet her back before she left, so only the front was done.
I’m pretty sure she died but again my memory is fuzzy.
The setting, I think, was more horse and cart than modern. I also think there might have been a future character who found her diary and was reading it, but I could be mixing that part up with another book so take it with a grain of salt.