Susan Speers (6 page)

“Don’t be silly, we do love each other. I don’t care about vows. We’ll be together, no matter what.”

“We can’t. Why didn’t we see it? There’s madness in our family, in our blood, Clarry. Mad Madison Marchmont, Willow, it was all around us.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We’re cousins, Clarry, full blood cousins.”

“Jeremy, cousins marry all the time. My father and mother were cousins.”

 He groaned. “Our fathers are brothers. It’s Marchmont blood that carries the taint. Our babies will suffer, our children will die.”

“We won’t have children.”

“I won’t deny you babies. I know how you love them.”

“I don’t care, I swear it.” I would leave Belle behind.

He didn’t hear me. His breath grew ragged. “I’m going abroad, I can’t bear England without you.”

“But Hethering?” Surely that would hold him.

“I can’t think about it now.” He faced me in the unforgiving light of dawn. “God bless you, Clarry.” He turned and walked away.

As I ran after him, the rotten boards began to crumble beneath my feet and I had to retreat. Jeremy disappeared into the forest.

*****

I found Father in his study, a ledger open before him, but he stared at his father’s portrait on the wall opposite his desk.

“You are an evil, filthy minded old man.” I was shocked by the hateful words spewed straight from my broken heart. “When you are dead we’ll be together.”

Father did not even blink. “No, Clarissa, you will not.”

“You can’t bear to see us happy.”

“You won’t be happy for long. I won’t have you repeat my folly.”

“You won’t separate us. Not forever.”

“I failed in every way to keep you apart. The pair of you subverted my will, disobeyed in spirit what you pretended to obey in deed.” He covered his eyes with his hand, then with a downward motion wiped any vestige of emotion from his face. “I gave Jeremy some hard truths to see him off.”

“Your account of the truth.” I pushed away the chair he indicated and began to pace. “Madness in our blood won’t matter. It won’t part us. We won’t have children.”

“You’ll leave Hethering without a master? This new century already threatens estates like ours.”

“Hethering doesn’t —” I couldn’t say ‘matter’. “Hethering has no bearing on our decision.”

“Jeremy said that.” Father waited until I smiled with triumph. “I didn’t believe him.”

My smile faded. “We’ll wait you out.”

“No you won’t. I told Jeremy what went on before the two of you were born. That terrible history convinced him.”

“It won’t convince me.”

He sighed and closed his eyes. “Clarissa, I was warned of our family’s weakness. Your mother was warned. Yet we married and were briefly,” he swallowed, “we were happy.”

“You were happy,” I repeated.

“Briefly happy. She gave me sons, three boys, in as many years. Two born dead. The third lived a month in torment, his death was a blessing.” Father’s contorted face belied his words, but he pressed on. “A monstrous miscarriage followed.”

My lips were pressed so hard together I could barely speak. “You told Jeremy all of this.”

“It was enough for him. I’ll give you the whole of it. When Jeremy was born, a vigorous child, I told your mother no more. Hethering had its heir. I could not risk — I could not —” His voice faded beneath the crackle of the hearth fire.

“But —” How had I come into this world?

“Your mother was stubborn as you, an iron will cloaked in beauty. She wanted a baby. She enticed me and to my shame I was weak. When you were born healthy she left me in peace. We were happy in our way until she died.”

“I’m not my mother,” I said.

“You won’t be. You leave for school today to repair the reputation you blackened last night.”

“And Jeremy?” We would find each other again.

“Two years abroad if he wants Hethering. That was our agreement.”

Did I hear right? Jeremy chose Hethering? Not me?

When I arrived at Brenthaven School for Young Ladies, few pupils were in residence. The principal, Miss Quirke, gave me a measuring glance over her pince-nez. Father’s letter was open before her.

“Classes resume after the holidays,” she said. “Your finishing course will begin then, and your friend, Marguerite will join us.”

I sat before her imposing desk in silence. I was the sole occupant of a small attic room with a tiny pigeonhole desk. I would make a calendar and cross off each day completed until I heard from Jeremy.

“Until then,” Miss Quirke went on, “you will do a course of reading under my supervision. I expect my girls to leave my school capable of intelligent conversation in all circumstances.”

She opened another, smaller letter. “Your governess, Miss Prinn, describes your talents for watercolor paints, and map making. One of our mistresses would like to interview you.”

I climbed three flights of stairs in the academic wing to find Miss Caleph’s study, a cluttered aerie with three walls of windows open to darkening skies.

“Miss Marchmont?” Miss Caleph hadn’t opened her door but called ‘come in’ when I knocked. She knelt on a dusty tufted sofa, putting a pan of bird seed on the western window ledge. In the persimmon light of sunset she seemed as young as I, but when she turned I saw a fine web of lines across her face.

“Sit down.” She removed a stack of papers and a sleepy tortoiseshell cat from a faded wing chair near her desk.

Miss Caleph’s untidy puffs of silver shot hair tumbled from the top of her head. Her skirt pockets dragged, but her high collared blouse was immaculate.

“You’re a solemn thing,” she said, “and quite composed to be away from home for the first time.”

“I’m glad to be here,” I said, and she recognized the truth in my ferocity.

“Yes, I suspect that you are.” Her eyes were sympathetic. She gave me a small framed photograph. “I know a little of your history. This is a little of mine.”

A young soldier with a firm jaw and the hint of a smile in his young eyes stared into the future with confidence.

“John Wickersham,” Miss Caleph said. “My fiancé. Dead of fever in a camp outside of Capetown.”

“I’m sorry.”

“All the sorrys have been said.” The glint in her eyes belied her words. “I know what it is to have your future pulled from beneath your feet. I know how to rebuild. I can help you.”

An attic room? A cat? “I don’t know.”

“Perhaps you can help me. I need some maps. Painted ones to illustrate a book of fairy stories.”

I needed soup and tea and bed. The lump in my throat was choking me.

A maid brought a supper tray bearing a soup tureen and a pot of tea.

“You see I do know,” Miss Caleph said.

I exhaled. Perhaps the waiting could be managed.

*****

Heartache obscured my adjustment to Brenthaven’s pleasant confines, but day by day the school’s calm atmosphere eased my pain. Miss Caleph and I worked together in harmony. She reminded me of dear Miss Prinn and she was sensitive to my misery. I began to look forward to our time together in her study, as I painted maps for her modern versions of fairy tales.

I didn’t sleep well. Night after night I prowled the attic halls. One night I heard a wisp of sound travel up the far stairway. Was it sobbing? Were there ghosts? I don’t believe in ghosts and decided to follow the sound down the stairs and onto the almost deserted nursery wing.

I opened a door to one of the little rooms and discovered two little girls huddled together weeping.

“I didn’t know there were other pupils here,” I said to their frightened faces. “I’m Clarry. I live upstairs.”

“We shouldn’t be here at all,” said one. I looked closer. Their faces were identical in the moonlight.

“We’re twins,” the same girl said again. The other hid her face.

“How old are you?”

“Eight years old. I am Marcie and this is Darsie.”

“I’m seventeen. Why are you here? Where is your nurse?”

“Down the hall, deaf as a post.” Marcie’s scornful voice dismissed her.

“Mummy promised we could come to her in Paris,” Darsie’s little voice broke. “But she went to Mos-Moscow with Papa instead.”

“They’re with the Foreign thingummy.” Marcie produced a tearstained letter and they both began to wail again.

I peered at the much folded paper and made out the words ‘Foreign Office’.

“Maybe your Mummy didn’t break her promise. I’ve a friend who wants to join the Foreign Office. He says you can’t always choose your direction.”

“But she promised. She doesn’t truly love us.” Her words produced another wave of noisy grief.

“Sometimes people who truly love each other are parted against their will.” My own tears threatened.

“She won’t come back for us?” Darsie faltered.

“She will come back.” I would write their mother. “People who truly love each other find a way. We’ll bear up until they do.”

The school cook and their nurse allowed us picnic lunches every day. I chased the twins up and down the orchard paths and taught them to draw with thick stubby crayons on sheets of butcher’s paper. The exercise did not mend our sleep. I visited them at night to read or tell them stories.

“Once upon a time there was an enchanted lady named Willow…” I began.

“The Ledbetter girls.” Miss Quirke’s lips pursed. “I understand you’ve helped them.” She passed a thin slip of paper across her desk. “I know nothing about this, of course.”

“Of course.”

Her nod of approval warmed a little of the frost from my heart.

By month’s end, Evadne Ledbetter returned from Moscow, but I’d heard nothing from Jeremy. Wary of a paper calendar, each day I embroidered a flower on a fantastical garden canvas. One day it would belong to Jeremy, just as I.

*****

The new term began and Daisy arrived.

“Did you miss me, Clarry?”

I hadn’t given her a thought.

“Never mind,” she said. “I know who you pine for.”

I couldn’t speak.

“There’s been no word of him or from him,” Daisy said. “I can tell you that much.”

She looked at me and her eyes softened. “I’m sorry about what happened.” I had never known her to be kind. “It was badly done. You should have been told early on. Even I knew…” Her voice faltered.

“Let’s speak of something else.”

She turned toward me, half hesitant, half hopeful. “Let’s be different here. Perhaps we could be friends?”

I wanted to answer yes. I wanted us to be the companions we could always have been, but my words were as frozen as my feelings. Again I said nothing and watched a light flicker and die in Daisy’s blue eyes.

Looking back, I’m sorry we lost our chance to be more than acquaintances, more than girls who shared a schoolroom, malicious comments and little else.

Marcie and Darsie remained my special pets. I had the fun of little sisters and they had the comfort of my constant presence while their mother accompanied their father on his peripatetic journeys. Miss Quirke encouraged our friendship and she fostered my work with Miss Caleph.

I painted maps with seething forests and emerald clearings for Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and Hansel and Gretel. My take on the glittering candy cottage reflected a schoolgirl’s sharp appetite for sweets, but I grew misty eyed, remembering Willow and the magical day we met. Her cottage was shuttered now, its warmth dead in the cold of its deserted hearths. Miss Juniot taught babies in the village school.

Miss Prinn, now Mrs. Pickety, wrote to me every month, an occasional scrawl from Nurse enclosed within. “There is no real news” Mrs. Pickety would write from time to time. No news from Jeremy, I concluded. I would sigh and bury my feelings in stitching an intricate flower for my embroidered garden.

No publisher expressed an interest in Miss Caleph’s excellent work, but she remained cheerfully resolute and taught me the value of finding joy in creative endeavor despite the gatekeepers’ indifference.

Daisy was popular at Brenthaven. She cultivated a flock of wealthy American girls. Elsie Gordon had a photograph of her brother Ronald in pride of place on her bureau. He was a student at Harvard University in Boston, and his dark good looks captured the hearts of Brenthaven girls who yearned to meet him in the flesh. Daisy would hold his photograph aloft and practice flirting, spouting a stream of bright banter until all her newfound friends collapsed in giggles.

In less than a month, Daisy was chosen head girl, buoyed no doubt on a tide of American enthusiasm. I remained in my attic room, companioned by my books, my embroidery and my dreams of Jeremy.

*****

I was at Hethering for the Christmas holidays. Jeremy wasn’t there. His name was never spoken aloud, but the soughing boughs in our evergreen forest whispered it in my ears. I went about my usual duties, listless. I refused to raise my eyes to my father’s searching gaze. I didn’t care what he thought or felt. Our dinners together were silent.

“Is Jeremy on the continent?” I asked once, unable to stop my words.

“He is if he knows what’s good for him,” was the cold reply. Our silence resumed.

Christmas Eve found me in the great hall, reattaching silk bows blown from the tree by the wind when Hethering’s heavy double doors opened. I was waiting for Jeremy. It was Christmas, he had to come home. My fingers felt the sharp edges of a spun glass ornament before I had a good look at it. It was a model of the Eiffel Tower, near half a foot tall.

“Jenkins?” I called the maid who bustled about. “This is a new bauble, is it not?”

“It arrived from France, Miss, not two weeks ago. There was no card, Miss,” she said to my hopeful face, with sympathy that seeped through her formal manner. I believe all of Hethering waited with me.

That night I took the velvet cloak and crossed forest and field to sit on the marble floor of the fifth folly. After a numbing wait, Jeremy came to sit beside me. He put his head on my shoulder. We sat together until the cold became unbearable. I feared to turn my head, I feared he was a dream, but he took my hand and pulled me to my feet.