ONE

 

Clara was sleeping. Her body, splayed out beneath the sheets, twitched like a knee reacting to the doctor’s reflex hammer.

“Still not up, I see.” Her maid, Jaconda, stood at the door watching her mistress’ dream progress. “Your mother will be annoyed. Best do something about it.” Jaconda shook her head and went to the wide swath of curtain on the other side of Clara’s bed. Yanking back first on one side, then on the other, letting in the late morning sunlight, she smiled as behind her Clara groaned.

“You hate me.”

“No, Miss Clara,” said Jaconda, turning around. “I hate being yelled at by your mother. You’ve missed breakfast.”

Sitting up and squinting into the light of day, Clara swallowed a yawn. “Why must I get up, then?”

“So she can yell at you instead of me.” The maid shrugged and went to the closet. “Any particular color frock?”

“Frock. I can’t think about frocks. I can’t think. I’m not even sure what my name is right now. Why am I up?”

“Because I awoke you, Miss Clara. How about blue? Maybe the one with the lacy sleeves?”

“Honestly, Jac, I wouldn’t care if you dressed me in an oversized teapot at this point. I’m tired, and I was having such a lovely dream, too.”

“About what?” Jaconda took a simple blue dress from the closet, shook it out, and smoothed the lace-paneled sleeves.

“I can’t remember.” Clara was pouting. She knew it and didn’t care. As far as she was concerned, being awakened from a great dream was a pout-worthy event, and she didn’t care that her mother considered all pouting childish.

“The cream slippers, I think,” Jaconda muttered. She had hung the dress on a wardrobe stand beside the oval freestanding mirror and was back at the closet.

“Of course. And be sure to lay out my stockings so I can hang myself with them when you aren’t looking.” The pout deepened.

“Oh, Miss Clara! You are so funny!”

Clara suppressed a growl. She wasn’t feeling humorous. Rebellious, irritated, maybe even desperate, but mostly tired. “What you and my exalted mater fail to realize, dear Jac, is that I couldn’t sleep a wink last night. I’d only just fallen asleep when the sky began to lighten.”

“How would you know about the sky when your curtains were closed?”

“I could see it sneaking around the edges, that’s how. Don’t play logic games with me, please. Besides, I could hear the clock chiming downstairs and knew it was six o’clock. That’s when the sun starts to come up at this time of year. So there.”

Jaconda put a pair of soft, cream-colored kid slippers on the floor by Clara’s dress and went to a dresser on the opposite wall. “Thank you for correcting me, Miss Clara. Your lighter corset would probably be a good choice for that dress, don’t you think?”

“Corsets. I hate them, Jac. I do indeed. If I had any excess weight around my ribs and midsection, I might appreciate them, but no. As you often mention – and apparently do so with great relish – I’m thin as a weed. Why on earth should I be wearing corsets? I’ve nothing to hold in!”

“No, Miss Clara, you don’t. But they do help you stand straight.”

Clara glared and got out of bed. “Are you saying I slouch?”

“Not…not often. Sometimes when you’re doing needlework, or reading.” She draped a pair of stockings over one arm, slipped a matching pair of garters over her wrist, and removed a pale blue corset from its drawer. “This should do. Now…” Bending lower, Jaconda opened the bottom drawer and took out a pair of ribboned bloomers and a stiff net crinoline.

Clara watched her, stretching, and sat on the edge of the windowsill.

“So that’s my outfit for the day, eh?”

“If you like it. I can find you a different frock if you wish.”

“What if I told you I wanted to wear knee pants?”

Jaconda whirled to face her. “Miss Clara! That’s – that’s outrageous! Scandalous!”

“Yes, it is.” Clara grinned and got up. “Wonder what mother would say if I showed up in the parlour dressed like a boy?”

“You mean after they revived her with smelling salts and hand-fans?”

“Now that I would like to see! I don’t think mother has ever fainted in her life. Oh, she pretends to now and then when it looks like the only way to get attention, but she’s never actually done it.” Giggling, Clara removed her nightgown and poured water from a lovely ceramic pitcher into its matching bowl on the washstand.

“Would you like me to draw you a bath?”

“Um-mm.” She was rubbing a washcloth over her face, muffling her speech.

“Was that a yes or a no, Miss Clara?”

The young lady straightened and shook her head. “No, Jac. I’ll just do a quick hand-bath. Looks like it’s going to be another humid day, and I expect I’ll need a bath later. No point in wasting so much water twice in one day.”

“How would you know if it’s humid or not? The windows are shut.”

“I’ll tell you how, my personal Doubting Thomas. While I was suffering from an inability to sleep, I went to the windows a short while before dawn and opened one of them, hoping some fresh air would help me relax. Instead, I got a faceful of warm, sticky humidity. And that’s how I would know.” She dipped the cloth in the bowl. “Where’s the lavender soap?”

Putting Clara’s underthings on the bed, Jaconda joined her at the washstand. “Where it always is, Miss Clara.” She bent down and removed a cake of fragrant soap from one of the stand’s two shelves. “Here you go. Would you like some help?”

“Thank you. No, but maybe you could hand me a few bath sheets so I can dry off when I’m done.”

Eventually, Clara was clean and dressed, her light brown hair in something resembling a neat coif – the natural curls were a constant cause for despair, and neither she nor her maid enjoyed working with it. Brushing it out was difficult enough, while making it conform to any specific style was nearly impossible.

“Let me know when wearing hats indoors becomes fashionable, will you, Jac?” With a final glower at her reflection, Clara got up from the vanity, shoved her stockinged feet into the slippers, and went out, leaving Jaconda to clean up the aftermath of her toilet.

Downstairs, she headed for the kitchen. The last place she wanted to go was the drawing room or the front parlour, both being likely locations for her mother to be lurking. Besides, she was hungry, and didn’t want to argue with anyone about the time, and how breakfast was an inappropriate meal at this hour, blah-bleh-blah.

The cook was nowhere in sight, but three of her helpers were busy at various tasks – Charmaine was polishing the glasses, Eugenia was sorting through the silver, Jenna scrubbing something off the front of one of the cabinets. Clara watched them for a moment or two, and when no one acknowledged her presence, she went to the larder and began scanning the shelves.

“Oh! Would Miss like some food to bring to the hungry?”

Clara frowned and looked sideways at Eugenia. “Since right now ‘the hungry’ is me, yes. Besides, I thought Mr. Charles brought baskets of food around after breakfast.”

Mr. Charles was the family butler, who had been tasked with providing sustenance to the less fortunate residents of the town.

“Oh, he does, Miss. He did. I wasn’t thinking.” The girl blushed. “I should go fetch Miss Tavish, should I?”

Miss Tavish was the current cook – the one who had worked for Clara’s family for what felt like centuries had finally retired a month earlier.

This new one was doing well so far, and Clara thought she had more imagination in the kitchen than her predecessor. “Very well. I have no notion how to prepare anything, so I admit that would be a better plan. Thank you, Eugenia.”

The girl curtsied and fled.

Twenty minutes later, Clara was sitting under a tree, a picnic blanket making a soft, dry barrier between her frock and the grass, the basket beside her stuffed with an assortment of fruits, bread made fresh that morning, a few strips of tender lamb sprinkled with chopped mint and vinegar and sitting on covered plate. A decanter of thick glass with a cork stopper had been filled with summer cider, and damp towels for cleaning her mouth and fingers folded into waxed paper had been placed carefully on top of everything. “Lovely,” Clara said aloud, removing items and placing them in a row beside her.

The tree’s shade was making the humidity tolerable, and the sunlight was making everything around her glow in a most pleasant manner. Nothing was going to spoil her breakfast, nothing was –

“What on earth are you doing, sitting out here like an unmannered bumpkin?”

Well, except one thing: her mother.

TWO

 “It’s a good thing I told him not to come by until this afternoon,” Lady Cynthia Wentham added to a long, annoying tirade about her daughter’s “wild” behavior, during which she informed Clara that a suitor was supposed to visit her.

Daring to sneak in a bite of pear, Clara nodded, chewing in a less-than-obvious manner as she used all of her self-control not to throw the decanter at her mother’s head. A suitor? What? When had she asked to be courted? And who was this vile fellow? No doubt, if her parents had chosen him, he would be something that looked like it lived under a mushroom.

“…better not be stained!”

Oops. Clara refocused her hearing and cleared her throat. “Stained?”

“Yes, you silly nincompoop, stained! You’re sitting on the wet grass!”

“Mother, the grass is barely damp and I’m sitting on a blanket. Grass is never plaid, at least not here. Maybe in Scotland.”

“That is not amusing!” The woman was bellowing now.

Clara wondered for a moment if strips of lamb would match her mother’s hair – had the meat not smelled so delectable, she might have tried to find out. “My apologies, Mother. Who is this person?”

“I just told you! Were you not listening? Do you ever listen to your poor, beleaguered mother?”

If she puts the back of her hand to her forehead, I will toss the lamb at her hair, Clara decided. But for once, the formidable wife of Lord Crandall Wentham refrained from her usual histrionics. It must have been too humid for that, Clara reasoned. “Yes, mother, but I’m afraid I forgot what you said.”

“Did you? You never forget anything Clara. But I’ll give you the proverbial benefit of the doubt and repeat myself: Sir Herbert Chinbottom.”

Clara had once heard that if a person sneezed with his eyes open, they would pop out of his head. At that moment, and without the benefit of a sneeze, Clara’s orbs were a mere breath away from doing that very thing. Several interesting images skidded across the stage of her mind’s eye, each of them more bizarre than the one before.

“Don’t give me that look, young lady,” her mother said. She was a smart woman and Clara had no doubt she’d realized what the would-be suitor’s name was doing to her daughter’s overactive thinking processes.

Clara Chinbottom. Baby Chinbottom. A house full of little Chinbottoms scooting about on their…it was too much. She doubled over with silent laughter, and was soon in hysterical tears. For once, however, they were equal parts hilarity and despair.

“Clara! Are you ill?” Her mother manifested her alarm by crouching down beside the girl and putting a hand on her shaking shoulder. Lady Wentham never crouched. She hardly ever touched Clara, either.

Looking up at the woman through swimming eyes, Clara managed to shake her head “no,” even though she was tempted to nod “yes” instead.

“Why are you crying? Is the thought of having a suitor so terrifying to you?”

No, you overweight squid – it’s the thought of multiple human beings with that awful name living under my roof…Clara uncorked the cider and ignoring the crystal tumbler, took a long, careful swig as she got her emotions under control. After the final gulp, she leaned back against the tree, licking excess cider from her upper lip, and cleared her throat.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 03.10.2015

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