The Secretary (27 page)

Clarissa has become a rather capable assistant in my endeavors. If I am fortunate, she will stay by my side when I turn down a new path.

It has become too cold to swim. Clarissa’s mania for the water will have to be put aside until spring.

Anders scarcely looked away from the pages of the journal as he read. He felt nauseous, thinking of what had been done to Clarissa and her friend in the name of science. All the respect he had once had for Jonah Martin faded away. The man was a monster.

Once he glanced up to find Clarissa watching him, her face a stony mask. When he had finally read the last entry, he closed the book and set it down. He looked out the window. It was growing dark. They would be stopping soon.

Clarissa had been watching the trees and fields go by, but she turned to him now. “So,” she said. “You know everything now.”

“I do not,” he said. “I know your father’s side of the story. How did you come to find this out?”

“Cynthia came to see me last night. At the ball. She found me in the hall after we...were together. And she told me everything. She had thought my father would tell me. But he did not.”

“I gathered as much.”

She looked down at her hands. “I am so ashamed, Anders. I have embarrassed you. If I had known, I never would have—”

“You are the same woman to me that you were yesterday, and the day before that. This,” he said, throwing the book onto the floor of the carriage, “changes nothing.”

“But it changes
everything
,” she protested. “How can I possibly be the same woman I was before I knew the horrible things in that book? I am...I am an experiment,” she said, spitting the last word out as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.

“You are Clarissa Rennick, Countess of Stowe, and I love you. This...disgusting thing that was done to you does not change who you are.”

She looked away. “Perhaps,” she said.

They stopped soon after at a small coaching inn. Anders led Clarissa up the stairs to their room and ordered supper, but when the meal arrived she ate nothing. There were dark circles under her eyes. When they had changed into their nightclothes, he climbed into bed and lay uncomfortably beside her. After a few moments he turned and reached out for her. “Please, not tonight,” she said.

“Just let me hold you,” he begged. She came into his arms, laying her head on his shoulder. He blew out the candle, and after a few moments he felt her body begin to shake. He held her as she wept, and when she had cried herself to sleep he lay awake in the darkness for a long time.

Clarissa awoke in Anders’s arms, but she felt numb, as though she were made of stone. They did not speak as they dressed. She watched him eat his breakfast, but the sight of the food made her feel nauseous.

They had gone only a mile or so when she said, “Stop the carriage, please.” He rapped on the roof and the vehicle rolled to a stop. She burst out and ran into the grass, retching. He followed her, a gentle hand on her back. “I’m sorry,” she said when she had caught her breath.

“No,” he said, and she did not have to see his face to read his concern. “You are ill.”

“I think,” she said as he helped her back to the carriage, “I think I may be with child.”

He said nothing. She wondered how he felt about having fathered a child on the daughter of a whore. But when she would have taken a seat across from him, he pulled her down on the seat beside him instead. He put his arm around her and rubbed her back until she laid her head on his shoulder and drifted into a fitful sleep.

She slept for much of the day. A bone-deep weariness had come over her, and she could not fight it. If she was pregnant, she needed to keep up her strength. By the time she woke, they were coming into Amesbury. But they did not stop at the inn. Instead, the carriage rolled through the town and on, climbing up the hill. In the twilight, Clarissa recognized the terrain.

“We are going to Stonehenge?” she asked.

Anders nodded. The carriage stopped at the base of the hill. “Can you walk?” he asked. “I will gladly carry you if you cannot.”

“No,” she said, “I am feeling much better.” And it was true. The nausea had faded.

He took her hand as they went up the hill. That morning she might have pulled away, but now his fingers felt good laced through hers. When they came to the stones, he guided her to the center of the circle. She could just see the sun setting away to the west. All around them the air was alive with sounds, the cacophony of birds settling for the night, the rustling of the wind in the grass.

“Do you remember what you said to me, when we first came here?”

She shook her head.

“You said that this place was proof that we weren’t alone. That we were connected to everyone else, and that it was magic.”

She smiled. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

He took her other hand. “I didn’t believe you. I thought you were crazy. Really, I did. But you were right. There is magic in the world, and that magic is this: no matter who we are, or how we were born, we are not alone. You are not alone, Clarissa. I will always be by your side. I will always love you. You made me believe in magic.”

She could think of nothing to say to that. She felt tears spring to her eyes. “I don’t think I have cried so much in my whole life as I have in the last week,” she said, feeling rather foolish. “I think I
must
be with child.”

He looked down at her, his face serious. “I didn’t say anything this morning, Clarissa, because it seemed wrong to feel as happy as I am when you are so sad. But there is nothing in the world I would like more than a child of yours to love. And if it is a girl, we will raise her to be
exactly
what she wants to be.”

She sniffled and wiped away a tear. “And if it is a boy?”

He sighed. “I suppose he can be what he wants, too.”

She laughed, even though there were tears still running down her face.

“Do you know,” he said, “that our thirty days are up today?”

She considered that for a moment. “I suppose they are,” she said.

“I promised to ask you again when we had come to the end whether you would stay with me.”

“Anders, you don’t have to—I mean, after what we’ve learned, I wouldn’t blame you a bit if—”

“Oh, no you don’t!” he cried. “I’m not letting you back out on me now, not when I’ve admitted to believing in magic. No, My Lady, you’re stuck with me.”

She sighed and leaned her head on his shoulder. “When I first read that journal, I felt worthless, as though everything I had ever valued about myself was a lie. But it wasn’t. My father may have made a terrible decision, but he taught me something, too. I think it will take me a while before I really understand, but as long as we’re together, I know who I am.”

“I don’t think you need me for that,” he said.

“And that’s what’s so beautiful about it. I was always me. But with you, I’m more.”

“Is that a yes, then?”

She nodded. “I love you, Anders,” she said.

“I love you, too.” And then he kissed her under the stars.

***

They spent a quiet week at Ramsay. At the end of it, Clarissa knew for certain she expected a child. She wrote to Mrs. Coleridge the morning of their return to London with the news, though she and Anders had agreed to tell no one else until she was further along. Anders had explained that he had been promising his mother a grandchild every birthday since he was twenty-five. “Then we shall give her the present she has longed for,” Clarissa said. If they were lucky, the letter would arrive in Kent on Mrs. Coleridge’s birthday itself.

Anders had whooped with joy when the village doctor had given them the news. But then he had become nervous and skittish around her until she had assured him she would not break. Still, she had had to hold him down in their bed and demonstrate her lack of fragility before he would believe her.

The days at Ramsay had done more than heal their relationship—they had also healed Clarissa’s spirit. They had roamed the grounds and made love in the summerhouse, started plans for improvements to the house and village and visited every tenant and villager. Everyone had been delighted to meet Clarissa, and Anders saw that she took a secret delight at knowing it was the second time she had met most of them.

Even Mr. Jensen had been suitably impressed. After Clarissa had spent a morning with him going over the accounts, he said to Anders, “You know, My Lord, I don’t think we’ll miss Mr. Ford at all. That’s a rare gem you’ve found.”

Anders had fought the urge to chuckle. “Indeed,” he had agreed.

They had gone to the churchyard and laid flowers on the graves of the Laphams. Clarissa had invited the two girls to go along with them, and had cried over the headstones right along with them. But after they had all stopped crying, she had sat with them on the new grass and told them about Stonehenge, and Anders had watched as they stared up at her with rapt attention. Later, when they had returned to Ramsay, he had found a book about the ancient people of Britain and had it sent to the Rutledge cottage.

At last the time had come to return to London. As they rode out of the park, Clarissa said, “I have been thinking about the nature of the human soul.”

“You have?” Anders asked.

“Yes. You see, I think that we are all born to be a unique person, special and perfect in our own way, and that nothing can change that.” Anders raised an eyebrow, wondering where this speech was leading. Clarissa smiled. “I will always be hurt by what my father did, but I have forgiven him. He taught me a great deal, but he did not
make
me. And he cannot unmake me, either.”

Anders took her hand. “I will do great things with you by my side,” he said.

“No,” she said, “we will do them together.”

***

On a sweltering day in late August, Clarissa stood in the gallery and watched as the Lords passed the Slavery Abolition Act. When her husband stood to give his vote, she felt their child kick inside her. She put her hand to her belly, not caring that the others of the public who had come to witness the momentous occasion saw her.

Beside her, Eleanor smiled. “He hears his papa,” she said.

“She does,” Clarissa agreed. She knew Anders would have rather had her stay home and rest, for she expected to be confined any day now—indeed, she probably should have entered her confinement a week ago, and she had grown rather large. But she had insisted on being present to see her father’s dream achieved. And to Anders’s credit, he had not even suggested that she not attend the session that day. After all, she had done almost as much work as he had to bring this moment about.

They had settled into his study nicely after returning from Ramsay. He had had another desk moved in and placed back to back with his before the windows so that they could work facing each other. They spend many pleasant mornings discussing the events in the Lords.

Clarissa had become quite well known to the peers. Her Friday afternoons were attended by just as many men as women, many of them hoping to discuss philosophy and politics with the famous Countess of Stowe.

But now that the bill had passed and would go on for its Royal Assent, Clarissa and Anders would be going back to Ramsay, where they would welcome their child. She fervently hoped for a girl, and for all Anders’s bluster about an heir to the earldom, she knew he did, too.

When the voting had finished, cheers echoed through the chamber. Anders rushed to find her, and she embraced him. “Well done,” she said.

“Well done, you,” he countered. They shared their private smile.

“Oh, stop it, you two,” Leo said, coming up beside them.

“Leo,” Eleanor scolded. “This is a happy moment.”

Anders looked tenderly at Clarissa, ignoring his friend. “And there will be many more.”

EPILOGUE

September 22, 1839

“I don’t understand,” Eloise said to her father. “Why don’t the king and queen just let the princess learn to do something else instead of spinning? She could play chess or conduct experiments. Then she would never have pricked her finger at all. The whole thing seems rather silly.”

Anders laughed. “I don’t think that’s the way it worked back then,” he explained.

Eloise frowned. From the carpet where he had been assembling a little catapult, her brother Henry said, “Well, then I’m glad we live in an enlightened era.”

Anders smiled at his son, and then took his daughter’s hand, dropping the book on the sofa as they stood. “We’ll read something more sensible next time,” he promised.

“Yes, some more John Locke, please,” Eloise said. “Although Mama reads it better,” she added, looking thoughtful.

“I like that!” Anders exclaimed.

“You do the fairy stories quite well, Papa,” Eloise comforted him. “But there’s no one like Mama when it comes to philosophy.”

“That is true,” Anders agreed. “Now, come along, or we’ll be late, and we can’t have you both missing your birthday party.”

“But Papa,” Henry protested as they left the library and went downstairs. “It’s not really her birthday. I was born today, but Eloise wasn’t born until
tomorrow
.” Anders smiled. His son never allowed his sister to forget that she was younger by forty-four minutes.

“And it’s a good thing, too,” Eloise said, “or I would fight you to be Viscount Landridge. Really, Papa, it’s not fair that Henry gets to go to Eton and Cambridge and sit in the Lords someday and I have to stay here.”

“I agree,” Anders said. “Perhaps you will be the one to change the rules, Elly.”

“Oh, I do hope so.”

“Why do I have to go to Cambridge, Papa?” Henry asked as they went out into the garden. Clarissa was already seated beneath the trees with Anders’s mother and stepfather. Leo and his wife stood nearby, their two-year-old son running circles around them in the grass. “Mama says Oxford is much more interesting.”

“Oh, does she?” Anders asked as the twins broke away and rushed to kiss their mother. Clarissa got up, holding on to the table to balance her belly. She expected their third child in December.