Susan Speers Page 5

  “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?

  Chapter Ten

  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.

  We stood, clasped together in quicksilver starlight. At last I was warm.

  Then I felt hot tears on my face. “Clarry, my heart will break,” he said.

  My heart was already broken. I knew who had to be strong. “Go,” I said. “At least save Hethering. The rest will follow.”

  We walked back home across the parkland we loved. He kissed my lips, he kissed my hands, and then he disappeared into the night. He disappeared from my life.

  On Twelfth Night, I helped dismantle the Christmas tree. I held the precious glass tower in shaking hands, my eyes blind with tears. It slipped from my fingers and shattered at my feet on the cold stone floor. I sliced my thumb grasping at its shards. I bear the scar to this day.

  Brenthaven became my refuge for the next two years. I chose to stay there for holidays, and Father permitted it. I could not stop myself from embroidering my garden. Now there was a flower for every day I missed my Jemmy, for every day I mourned our love.

  I didn’t see him again until I graduated and returned home for the celebration of his engagement to Caroline Fforde.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hethering was abuzz with preparations for the festivities. I stayed in my room, embroidering an overskirt for my white silk gown. I didn’t want to look like a bride. Hundreds of blue and silver dragonflies gave the dress a changeable hue that would shimmer in candlelight.

  The day I finished, I went for a walk in the rose garden and there they were. Jeremy, even taller, stood protecting Caroline from the sun. Was he telling her about the flowers? I turned to go but Caroline hailed me. “Why, Clarry, how lovely to see you again.”

  I came forward, nodded to Jeremy, allowing the sun to blind me, and gave her my hand.

  “Jeremy has been showing me the property. It’s so vast.”

  “Yes, vast,” I repeated. I saw my future. I would be a guest at Hethering, Caroline its mistress.

  “Jerry has shown me each of the four follies,” she went on. “They are exquisite, if neglected.”

  ‘Neglected’. ‘Jerry’. Her words cut me. Wait, did she say the four follies? I looked up at him startled, but he wouldn’t meet my eye. Why did he crush my heart with one hand then offer a sliver of hope with the other?

  “I doubt we’ll repair them,” Jeremy said. “The time comes to put away childish things.”

  “Excuse me, the sun is warm…” I turned and tried hard not to run back to Hethering. I was one of the childish things he would put away. I’d imagined the hope. He wanted the fifth folly to himself. Let him have it and let him remember me in it.

  “Jeremy, you hurt her feelings.” Now she must defend me to him?

  Rage threatened to choke me. In my sitting room I found a tiny pair of very sharp scissors. I dug row after row of complicated blossoms from my embroidered garden until at last the tears came.

  The next day, Caroline came to call. I sat at the edge of my chair. I never poured the tea. She was nervous and said little. She twisted the pearl button on the wrist of her glove.

  “Jerry confided in me,” she said. “I know o
f your disappointment. I thought, that is, we thought it would be easier if he married someone you knew, someone you liked.”

  “Please leave me alone,” I said. Our friendship would not survive her stealing my love, my life, then patronizing me with false kindness. I would not watch them build a life together.

  I began to think of a life beyond Hethering. I’d planned to teach drawing at the village school, but decided instead to accept Evadne Ledbetter’s invitation to spend the summer in Italy with Marcie and Darsie. The Ledbetters had taken a villa in the hill country near Florence.

  I threw my ragged embroidery aside and wrote a letter of acceptance whose sentences would sustain me through the difficult week ahead. If Father refused me funds to escape my heartache, I would ask to be governess instead of guest.

  *****

  The next morning, I left Father’s study and heard a noise I associated with hazy memories and dreams. In our yellow salon, a young man sat at the grand piano. My mother was an accomplished pianist. After her death, Father couldn’t bear to hear the instrument and I’d had no music lessons.

  “You’ve got to be Clarissa,” the young man said with an American’s charm and informal manners. “Daisy described you to me.” He put his head to one side. “She didn’t do you justice.”

  I was hard put not to laugh at his droll voice and the cheerful impertinence in his eyes.

  “I’m Chase Gordon,” he said. “Your Father kindly allows me to practice here. This is a fine instrument.”

  “I wonder it’s in tune,” I said.

  “It’s been well cared for,” he contradicted me. He never stopped playing as we spoke. I found the smooth ripples of sound soothing after a difficult conversation with Father.

  “Chase Gordon,” I repeated. Then I remembered Daisy’s American friends were visiting the manse. Daisy teased until they were invited to Jeremy’s party.

  “Are you related to Ronald Gordon?” Ronald was the handsome young man in the photograph Daisy loved to flirt with. Now she flirted with the real thing.