Susan Speers (9 page)

“What brings you back from Russia before time?” Father asked my first night at dinner.

“I missed my friends,” I replied. He knew exactly why I was here.

“Well you’ve missed Jeremy and Caroline,” he said. “They’re in Greece until September.”

I ignored the gleam in his eye. I knew the truth of Jeremy’s marriage. When he returned to England, he and I would defeat every obstacle to be together.

“Mrs. Pickety will have a new baby at Christmas,” I said. I planned a new layette for the little one.

My father hadn’t heard me. “We’ll have a guest at Hethering very soon. I trust you’ll be courteous.” That would depend, I thought, on whether I was twenty or twenty-one.

I was twenty when Henry Putnam arrived. This was the coincidence he had mentioned at dinner in Switzerland. He knew my father, he did not recognize dear Jeremy across the table.

Henry asked me to use his Christian name and was pleasant, undemanding company. He was not a businessman, but a solicitor, the youngest son of a prominent family in the North. I took him for walks through the gardens, pointed out the four nearest follies and showed him Willow’s cottage and jewel blue pond.

“A magical place,” he said with an admiring look at its gingerbread prettiness. “I think you loved the person who lived here.”

“My cousin Willow,” I told him. “She was a magical spirit.”

*****

Henry Putnam left Hethering and I began to count the hours until my birthday, still a fortnight away. Father was pleased with my kindness to our guest.

“I understand you’ve begun piano lessons,” he said one night, no disapproval in his voice or on his face. I played when he was away from the house, but the servants heard my practice sessions.

“Yes, Father.” I replied. “I don’t play unless —”

“I’m gone from our home. Most considerate. Still, there is something I want to give you for your birthday. You may find it useful now.” He placed a golden key beside my fruit plate.

“Jeremy is heir to Hethering, but you will have your mother’s things. This key is to her sitting room.”

“My mother had a sitting room?” This was the first I’d heard of it.

“She liked her privacy. There’s a piano there you can play. I shan’t hear it when you do.”

I took the key and in the morning our butler brought me to the east tower. The room was on the highest floor in a circular turret I’d seen a million times from the park but never could explore. Jeremy and I were denied the freedom of the house, we made up for it roaming the grounds.

The room itself was a circle with clever fitted bookcases and curved furniture. A painting of a young girl reading hung over the white marble mantelpiece. The hearth was freshly swept, there was no dust. It was evident the maids cleaned here every week. A white baby grand piano painted with blue flowers held pride of place. I ran my fingers over its keys and found it in tune. There was music on the rack, Beethoven’s
Für Elise
.

I sat down at the foot of a long chaise and looked around me. Here my mother found pleasure in solitude, this was no room for a man. Yet years of diligent care erased her presence. I inhaled the sterile air hoping to smell her lavender fragrance but it was long gone. I would have loved to come here as a girl. Did Father leave it too late?

I longed to see Nurse, to speak to her. She knew my mother, she could fill in details to help me find peace in this special room. Father had gifted Nurse with a cottage near the village. She’d been caring for a brother in Cornwall, but his recent death brought her back to us.

“You’ve grown so bonny, Miss Clarissa.” We drank tea in her little parlor and enjoyed the basket of baked goods from Cook.

“Do I look like my mother?”

“Around the eyes some and the same ginger gold hair.”

“Father gave me the key to her sitting room, but I don’t remember it,” I said.

“Now that’s a shame. She loved to have you with her there, you and Master Jeremy sometimes. She was kind to him, not like your father. He was allus jealous, he wanted his own heir.”

*****

My twenty-first birthday dawned bright and clear. I took a lengthy walk past every happy memory of Hethering’s parkland, the rose garden, the four follies, Marchgate Wood, Willow’s cottage and Mad Marchmont’s fifth folly. I sat on its cool marble floor and looked down over Hethering, so lovely in the distance,

After lunch, I saw an automobile parked on the gravel drive. Father hadn’t mentioned a visitor. He hadn’t mentioned my birthday. I was surprised by Henry Putnam’s appearance at dinner. He smiled and made a self conscious little bow. We enjoyed all my favorite foods. Cook knew them well.

It was still light after dinner.

“Clarissa, be so good as to show our guest the rose garden,” Father said.

“But Mr. Putnam has seen all our gardens,” I protested.

“I never tire of roses,” was Henry’s gallant reply, after a slight frown at his host.

We walked the paths in easy silence. Henry paused by a lichened bench. “Will you sit with me?”

We sat without speaking for several minutes.

“It’s no good, is it, Clarissa,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” I said while a terrible suspicion entered my mind.

“Your Father wants us to make a match of it. I would like that very much. Still, two must agree for a happy union.”

“Mr. Putnam, I find you perfectly amiable, but —”

“You love someone else. The young man at the Speck’s dinner table. Your cousin, Jeremy Marchmont.”

“Yes.” He was too kind to hear anything but the truth.

“Clarissa, Miss Marchmont. I fear you’ll find no peace in this attachment.”

“I love Jeremy,” I told him. “I always have, I always will. Our future looks uncertain now, but one day we’ll be free to love each other.”

“You’re very young.” His voice was sad. “Will you consider me your friend?” When I nodded, he gave me a small card with his London address. “Call on me if you need help. Promise me that at least.”

I did promise and he left soon after, not staying the night as expected. I was summoned to Father’s study.

“I’m not pleased with your obstinacy,” was his first salvo.

“I’m not pleased by your actions,” I replied, unafraid of his cold fury.

“Clarissa, there will be a war in Europe. Jeremy will fight. If he dies, you inherit Hethering. You’ll need a steady man like Henry Putnam by your side.”

“You don’t care about Jeremy.” The realization stunned me. “He’s only a means to an end.”

“I care about Hethering. More than the both of you combined. You’ll marry Henry Putnam because I wish it, Clarissa. Think very carefully of the consequences. I’ll have your answer in the morning.”

He did have my answer. I left our village on the midnight train to London. I took one light satchel, having shipped my possessions from St. Petersburg to the London address written on a scrap of paper I clutched in my hand throughout the dark journey.

I arrived at a second floor flat in a respectable neighborhood. A neat card by the door read: Eugenia Caleph. Genie had left the Brenthaven School two years before.

Genie welcomed me with a warm smile. “At last,” she said. “I’ve been counting the days.” She introduced her flatmate, Helen, and I then met their pampered cat, Alphonse.

Genie brought me to a neat bedroom decorated in every shade of blue. “It’s small, but all your own.” She showed me the things I’d shipped ahead folded neatly into a painted chest of drawers and stowed in the sea chest placed under the window that overlooked a tidy garden. A seascape hung over a lady’s writing desk.

“Helen’s father was a sea captain,” Genie told me. “He painted the ocean when he was on land.”

I took an hour to rest, then emerged to find Genie scribbling furiously away at a large pigeonhole desk in the parlor while Helen prepared lunch.

“You look much better now,” Genie smiled, putting her work aside. I’d shed my travelling clothes and the stress of defying my father with them.

She gave me two letters. “One is from my publisher.”

I opened a thick envelope from Chilton and Sons, reading its contents two or three times over before looking up.

“They want me to illustrate a children’s book about a fanciful garden,” I told Genie.

“They are conscientious men,” she said. “They pay a fair wage, though it won’t provide you with the life you’re used to.”

I was happy to add to my savings. “I want to support myself,” I said. “I don’t mind a modest life.”

The second envelope had been forwarded from Hethering to the Ledbetters in St. Petersburg and now to London. It contained a single typewritten sheet signed Percival Wickett, solicitor. Mr. Wickett asked me to contact him after my twenty-first birthday. His office was in London, I would send a note the next day.

Mr. Wickett replied by return post and I called on him several days later. His chambers were deceptively simple, heavy mahogany furnishings and thick carpets bespoke his clients’ wealth. His secretary accompanied me to a conference room, and I wondered if I should have brought Henry Putnam with me.

Two men stood when I entered the room. One man was in his late middle years, stooped and bespectacled. The other had a restless vigor, held in check, that prevented me from determining his true age. They sat when I seated myself at the small conference table. I pretended a confidence I did not feel.

“Thank you for coming, Miss Marchmont,” the older man said. “I am Percival Wickett and this is Mr. Rutherford Dane.”

“How may I help you, gentlemen?” I asked. I pointed my chin down to keep my voice from shaking. This was my first adult venture and I refused to betray my nerves.

“It’s a matter of how we will help you.” Rutherford Dane’s voice was deep and louder than his companion’s. He stared at my face for a full minute, then looked away.

“I don’t understand,” I said, staring at his face in return.

“Miss Marchmont, you are the sole heir to the estate of Edward Dane, Mr. Dane’s younger brother.”

Having made this pronouncement, Percival Wickett looked to his companion.

“My brother Edward died more than twenty years ago. He left his entire estate to you in trust until your twenty-first birthday,” Rutherford Dane said. “I was trustee. My services are at an end.”

A heavy silence fell between us. Clearly I was expected to speak, to say something, to say anything. I opened my mouth, but no sound came forth. I tried again.

“I know nothing of — Edward Dane.” I managed. “I have never so much as heard his name. Or yours, Mr. Dane, or yours, Mr. Wickett. Why should I be his heir?”

“All in good time,” Mr. Wickett said. “The estate itself is considerable, but may be described simply. There is a small holding near Penzance in Cornwall. A cottage, its contents and furnishings, all inventoried and in order.” He placed a document on the table in front of me.

“I see.” I took the document and turned the first page, but the neat lines of type blurred before my eyes. They might have been written in Chinese for all the sense they made to me.

“The greater part of the estate,” Mr. Wickett began, proffering another, thicker document, “is the sum of two hundred thousand pounds.”

“What?” The amount was beyond my comprehension.

“The original amount was approximately one hundred fifty thousand pounds. Under Mr. Rutherford Dane’s care, it has increased substantially.”

I turned to Rutherford Dane. His face was impassive save for an unexpected expression burning in his eyes. Was it anger? Was it scorn?

“You have attained your majority, Miss Marchmont,” he said. “My work is done. I did not approve of my brother’s actions while he lived, but I have been loyal to his charge since his death.”

“Do you know why I am his heir?” My voice sounded thin and reedy. Any lady’s voice would have suffered in comparison to his loud one.

He gave me the pasteboard box on the table before him. “You should find your answer in these documents.”

In the face of Mr. Wickett’s avid interest and Mr. Dane’s scorn, I opened the box.

There were handwritten letters on yellowing paper, perhaps ten, perhaps a dozen. There was a photograph. The letters were written in my mother’s hand. I knew it from the inscriptions in every flyleaf of my beloved picture books. I picked up the photograph.

I saw a young man in the uniform of a cavalry officer. He had thick russet hair.

“My brother served in India,” Mr. Dane said. “He made infrequent trips home. He was killed by bandits on patrol in the Lahore province.”

Those words are burned into my memory, but at the time of their utterance, I was scarce aware of hearing them. The room seemed filled with a buzzing sound. The furnishings and draperies had begun to spin around me. As I looked at the photograph, it was the same as looking into a mirror. Edward Dane and I shared a high forehead, a widow’s peak, well defined cheekbones and a long straight nose.

At once I knew the truth, though I could not say it, not even to myself. Terrible questions and terrible answers filled my head.

Why had I lived when the other babies died? Because Richard Marchmont was not my father. How had this happened? How had my mother done this thing?

I remember little of the journey back to Genie’s flat. Mr. Wickett’s secretary accompanied me in the hansom cab and carried a folder of documents and the box of mementos upstairs with me. I don’t remember bidding him goodbye or thanking him. Genie and Helen were not at home. I locked myself in my bedroom and flung myself face down on the bed.

Hours passed. When Genie knocked on my door to announce dinner, I replied. “I’m indisposed.”

Much later, when the flat was dark and quiet, I changed my clothes and washed my face. I was cold to the bone, and lit the fire in the parlor hearth. I sat in a faded velvet armchair, Alphonse curled in my lap. By the light of a single lamp, I read my mother’s letters to a man I never imagined existed, to a man I never knew, to my natural father.

I have since devoured every word on every page of my mother’s precious letters, but through that long night I could only seize upon certain phrases.