The Secretary (25 page)

Before they could consider little a little Viscount Landridge, however, they had to get through the ball this evening.

“You look positively radiant, Clarissa,” Eleanor pronounced as she made her curtsey. Then she added more quietly, “Marriage agrees with you.”

Clarissa smiled. “I think it does.”

As Eleanor moved on, Clarissa looked down the long line of people waiting to be received. She had had no idea Anders knew this many people.
Silly
, she said to herself.
Of course he doesn’t
know
them.
They were
ton
, and anyone who was good
ton
had been invited to celebrate her marriage.

She was glad Mrs. Coleridge had arranged the whole affair. She had been far too busy over the last few days enjoying her marriage to plan a celebration of it. But her new mother-in-law had taken charge and planned the event masterfully. The house looked divine, and everyone seemed delighted to be there.

Everyone except Clarissa. She would much rather have forgone the ball and continued with the far more agreeable business of settling into her marriage.

They had spent two blissful days in each other’s company, telling stories from their childhoods and planning for their future. And making love, of course. There had been plenty of that. Clarissa was rather astonished at how much marriage seemed to, as Eleanor put it, agree with her. She had always imagined that if she ever married, it would be out of necessity. Her father had seen to it that she looked upon marriage with a rather jaundiced eye. She would never have expected to be so happy. But she was. She had slept every night in Anders’s bed—she had her own chamber, but she had barely been in it except to dress and have her hair arranged by Nora. Then her maid had wisely absented herself, leaving Clarissa to her own devices.

Tonight, her new maid had outdone herself. Clarissa wore the blue gown she had worn to the Middlebury’s ball—no one would remember it, she had told herself—and the pearls Anders had given her. When Nora had finished with her hair she had looked every inch the
ton
wife. She even had a new pair of slippers, a gift from Mrs. Simms, delivered to Stowe House the morning after the wedding. Clarissa had shed a sentimental tear over the sweet gesture. Indeed, since her marriage she seemed to be far more emotional than she had ever been. She had blushed a little at her tears, wondering what her father would say if he could see her foolishness.

But she was also trying to forget the fear she had felt over what her father would or would not have said if he could see her now. He had raised her to be independent, to be liberated, to choose for herself. He had done the best he could, and she had made her choice.

She felt even more pleased with her decision when, just after supper, Anders pulled her down the hall into a darkened corner beyond the parlor and kissed her as though there were not two hundred people in the ballroom.

“I’m taking you back to Ramsay tomorrow,” he said when they came up for air. “The Lords won’t be in session again until the end of next week. I want to present you to everyone as my countess.”

“Very good, My Lord,” she said in mock seriousness.

“Wench,” he muttered, and then he kissed her again. Faint strains of music reached them from the ballroom. Anders swore. “I’ve promised to dance this one with mother,” he said. He looked down at her rumpled dress.

“Go,” she said. “I’ll put myself back in order and join you in a moment.”

She stood in the darkened hall, fixing her gown. Then she turned to go back into the ballroom, laughing at herself as she did so. Where had the careful girl she had once been gone?

“Clarissa,” a voice said behind her. She turned.

“Cynthia!” she exclaimed when she saw her friend. “I’m so sorry I never came to tea. You can see there’s been a great deal happening—” she broke off when she saw how wan her old friend looked. “What’s the matter?”

“Could we speak? In...in private?”

Clarissa looked around. “Of course. The parlor is over here,” she said, and she led Cynthia through a set of double doors. The room beyond was mercifully empty. Cynthia crossed to a sofa covered in deep blue fabric and dropped onto it as if her legs could no longer hold her upright. Clarissa went to sit beside her. “Whatever is the matter?”

Cynthia looked up at her and swallowed hard before she spoke. “I must tell you something...something terrible. You will hate me once I have told you, but it cannot be helped.”

She and Anders had been lovers, Clarissa thought. Or he had an illegitimate child. What could be worse than that? “Is it something about Anders?” she managed.

Cynthia shook her head. “No. It’s something about you. You and me. Oh, Clarissa, it’s so terrible. I should have found a way to tell you before you married the earl. I thought I would never have to tell you, that your father would be the one, but then—” she broke off, looking as though she might weep, but then she seemed to steel herself. “You are not your father’s daughter.”

Clarissa felt as though she might faint. “What?”

“You are not your father’s daughter. And the reason I know is because I am not my father’s daughter either. We are, both of us, orphans.”

“How...how did you discover this?”

“My father told me two years ago. But, oh, Clarissa, that’s not the worst of it. I should start at the very beginning.”

“Please,” Clarissa murmured. She was not wearing a corset, so why did it feel as though all the air was being crushed out of her lungs?

“Thirty years ago, your father married my father’s sister, Lydia Endersby.” Clarissa stared at Cynthia. She had never heard that her mother had been sister to Roger Endersby. But then, her father had told her almost nothing about her mother. She had always believed it was too painful for him to speak of her. “She fell ill soon after the wedding and never recovered. Consumption. After four years, she died. I do think your father mourned her, but he was comforted, you see...by my father.”

“What?” Clarissa almost leaped up from the sofa.

“They weren’t lovers or anything like that. They were more like brothers. I believe they had a very strong bond. They shared a great love of academia, as you know. My father took a great interest in social positivism. He thought that every social theory needed real evidence to give it merit.”

“Yes,” Clarissa said, trying hard to remember to breathe. “Yes, I’ve read some of his writings.”

“So you understand. And he also took a great interest in the equal rights of all people, especially women. He knew Mary Wollstonecraft, before she died—did you know that?” Clarissa shook her head. “Anyway, he had this...idea. He thought that if there were women, strong, independent women who were educated and graceful and accomplished, who could show the world that women were not merely decorative, it would provide positive proof that women deserved rights equal to those of men. So he came up with an experiment.” Here she paused, glancing at the door.

There was no sound from the corridor. “An experiment?” Clarissa asked, her mouth dry.

“Well, not exactly an experiment, really. An exercise. He thought that perhaps he could try raising a little girl, teaching her everything she would need to know and molding her into what he considered the perfect woman: independent and free-spirited, but accomplished and lovely as well. And he had an idea of where he could find such an infant, a child who no one wanted, whom he could pay to take away and raise as his own.”

“Oh, no,” Clarissa said.

“Yes. He went to a brothel.”

“Oh, Cynthia, I don’t think I can stand to hear any more.” Indeed, Clarissa thought she might scream at any moment.

“But you must,” Cynthia said, taking hold of her hands. “You must listen, Clarissa, because when my father went to that brothel in York, he found not one but two female infants. And as clinical as he meant to be, he still could not leave one and take the other. So he paid the madam to give him both babies. Then he convinced your father to take one and pass it off as his own child, while he kept and raised the other.”

“Oh, God,” Clarissa whimpered. She could not bear to hear any more, and yet she was riveted.

“Then they moved to Oxford and took up teaching positions, both pretending to be widowers with infant daughters. And the experiment began. You never once had a governess, did you?” Clarissa shook her head again. “Neither did I. We were brought up to be little philosophers, reading Chatterton and Locke and Hobbes and Bentham. Do you ever recall your father encouraging you to be more feminine and ladylike?”

“No,” Clarissa said. “I was treated as though being female did not matter.”

“That’s exactly what they wanted. But then, as we grew up, my father began trying to teach me to be a cultured young lady. He had decided, he told your father, that it was no good cultivating a genius when she would have no position or influence in society. He wanted your father to do the same, to find you a dancing instructor and start buying you pretty dresses. They had a terrific row about it.”

“Yes, yes, I remember that they argued.” Was it just a few days ago that she had told Anders about that fight, on the way to Somerset?

“Their friendship died, Clarissa. My father never again spoke to your father, though you and I were protected from their feud. I think that they had each come to love us, in their ways, as their own children. But the experiment had gone too far to be abandoned, my father thought. So he kept on with it, although I think when your father decided to stand for Parliament he forgot many of the principles of the thing. Then he was gone to London, and things were...well, they weren’t ever the same.”

Clarissa sat in silence for a moment after Cynthia had finished telling her story. “Why didn’t you tell me this when you found out, two years ago?” she asked at last.

Cynthia blushed and looked away. “I was so ashamed. When my father told me, I knew I could never marry. I could never lie to a man about my past, and no man who knew what I was would want me. A whore’s daughter who had been raised as a philosopher? My heart was broken, I think. And I could not bear to hurt you. I thought your father would tell you. I thought they had agreed to do it. But he never did.”

“No he did not.”

Cynthia took a small book from her reticule and laid it down on the sofa. “These are your father’s notes on the experiment. He gave them to my father after they argued. I can also show you the treatise my father wrote. It’s never been published, but it might offer you some more proof.”

“No, it’s all right,” Clarissa said. How could anyone make up such a far-fetched story? And there were other things, too—the irrational anger her father had shown any time she appeared interested in fairies or princesses or anything he considered overtly feminine, his insistence that they discuss only political and philosophical matters over supper. He had done it because of his loyalty to his friend, but it was more than that. Her father had believed that women truly were equal to men, and he had raised her to be the equal of any man she met. She had always been grateful for that. Had it all been done for a terrible experiment?

“You are horrified, now, Clarissa,” Cynthia said. “But in time you will see that it isn’t so bad. We were fortunate to have the upbringing we did. I see that now.”

“But I am the wife of an earl and my mother was a...was...”

“A whore.”

“Yes.”

“This is why I wish I could have told you before your marriage. But it isn’t so bad. Just because I have decided never to take a husband does not mean you can’t have one. The whole purpose of the experiment was to see if a human being could rise above their birth. But not everyone has had the benefit of such a liberal upbringing, Clarissa. It might be wise not to tell Lord Stowe about your history.”

Clarissa nodded. Her whole body felt numb.

“I will go now,” Cynthia said, her voice still very grave. “I am sorry you had to find out this way, Clarissa, but I did not think it was fair for you not to know the truth.”

Then she was gone, the doors closing behind her. Clarissa ran her fingers over the embossed leather cover of the journal on the seat beside her. Then she rose and went to the mirror that hung above the sideboard. She stared at her reflection. It felt as though she were not in her body, as if she were looking at someone else, at
something
else, something disgusting and unworthy.

She did not doubt Cynthia’s story. In fact, the more her old friend had said, the more right the whole thing had felt to Clarissa. Never once had she met anyone who had known her mother, or seen anything that had belonged to her. There was one miniature of her in the house where Clarissa had been raised, a portrait that now sat on her bedside table. But there was no proof that the woman in that painting had ever borne a child. Clarissa had never been taken to visit her grave, and had only her father’s word that the woman had even died when her father had said.

If she had been adopted by loving parents who had longed for a child, she might have been able to reconcile the fact that she had not truly been her father’s daughter. But could she really accept the premise of the great experiment, as Cynthia had said, that one could rise above their birth?

It certainly could not be done with lies and deceit. There had already been enough of that between her and Anders. But could she truly tell him such a horrible thing? Clarissa tried to imagine his face when she explained that his wife was nothing more than a laboratory animal, an experiment that had been abandoned.

She felt dirty and worthless. She could not face him now. She found a piece of paper and wrote a short note. Then she picked up the journal and went silently out into the hall. Beyond the doors in the ballroom she could hear laughter and the tinkling of glasses and the orchestra warming up their instruments. She went through the doors into the street. She found a hackney and rode to Trevor Street. She did not allow herself to cry or even think.

She had the flat until the end of the month—until midnight. She fitted her key into the lock and opened the door. She had taken almost nothing with her to Stowe House, only her clothing and her few possessions. The sitting room was much as it had been, dingy and dark.