Clarissa looked down at her gloved hands. “Yes, aunt.”
Snapping her fan out, Aunt Sophia flapped irritably at her purple cheeks. “Many a female at your age would feel grateful for any offer, much less one to be so highly desired.”
Clarissa said, “I would feel grateful if I was wishful to marry. But I am not.”
“So say you now. But trust me, when you are my age, or even the age of poor Miss Frease, forced to accept Sir Pericles Denby, and who is to say that he will be any better on his third marriage? She will be forced to turn a deaf eye to his . . . his tendencies toward unmarital felicity. There is nothing humorous in this.”
Clarissa tried to smother her guilty laughter. “I beg your pardon, aunt. I agree about Sir Pericles, it was just Miss Frease’s unhearing eyes that—”
Aunt Sophia said impatiently, “I have always sincerely pitied Olivia Frease, though she is not biddable, and indeed has said she never wished to be married. But when the old baronet died, there she was, a burden that her brother’s wife declared they would do well without. So there she was.”
There she was without the means to set up her own establishment, Clarissa thought. But it would be indelicate to remind her aunt that this was not her own case; though she did not know precisely the extent of the fortune she was to inherit, she did know that to mention it would vex Aunt Sophia, whose widowhood had found her left with nothing..
Aunt Sophia was already vexed. “You are nearly five-and-twenty, and you do not have the looks of your sweet sisters. It was no mistake that Hetty went off in her first year last spring, and it shall be the same for Amelia this year. And when you stand by her, even the immensity of your dowry, which I always told your Papa the amount of which would only cause you to set yourself up unbecomingly, and it is just as I foretold…” Aunt Sophia paused, trying in vain to recover the thread of her discourse. “Well,” she finished with a twitch of her shoulders. “I have done with you. I believe I’d be better employed trying to compose myself a little before we are sunk, or attacked by howling Thermidorians.”
“Then I shall remove myself, and permit you to rest in comfort.”
Clarissa smiled gently on her fuming aunt, and slipped into the smaller cabin outside the large one. Her maids, waiting there, were sorry to observe the familiar faint line between their mistress’s brows, but when Clarissa turned their way, it was with her ready smile.
“Mr. Bede says we’ll sail at once, Miss,” Rosina said. “Becky has your wrap right here, should you be wishful to take a turn in the air.” Rosina indicated the deck.
Clarissa smiled gratefully. “That is exactly what I was about to do, and I didn’t think of a wrap. Thank you.”
In comparison to her four half-sisters’ beauty, no one but her fondest relatives could find anything to compliment outside of her classic nose and forehead, and her elegant posture. Her eyes were well spaced, but not cornflower blue, and as for her hair, her grandmother had stated firmly that tresses a quiet shade of chestnut were not as showy as her sisters’ guinea-colored curls, one of many hints that her grace did not find Lord Chadwick’s second wife as highly-bred as his first.
Clarissa, very aware that her step-mother’s pedigree was perfectly respectable, had grown up regarding these matters with a sense of humor. How else could one regard such absurdities? It was either that or descend into a fretful and futile temper against the vagaries of fate, as demonstrated (for instance) by her aunt.
It was also true that Clarissa took little interest in her own appearance—there were days when she did not glance in the mirror once from the moment she woke up until she was ready for bed.
It galled Rosina, once her mother’s maid and now hers, that to keep the peace Clarissa permitted her aunt to have the ordering of her clothes. The dresses that Aunt Sophia chose were meant to make Clarissa look as young as her sisters, but the whites and pinks that looked well on the younger girls turned Clarissa sallow, and aged her unmercifully.
When Clarissa peered into the mirror and noticed how limp were the short side-curls dangling next to her long face, she sighed and went out.
Her heart full, Rosina muttered to Becky, the young lady’s maid in training, “It breaks my heart, it does, to see her head dressed so ill-suited.”
Becky agreed. Dressing mutton for lamb just makes the ewe look the older next or nigh a real lamb, Becky’s mother had stated bluntly, as she gave the butter churn a hard wring.
“At least this blue kerseymere looks well, and not a word could the old tabby gainsay, when the lengths were sent by her grace the Duchess-grandma herself,” Rosina said with satisfaction to Becky, who—the perfect assistant—always agreed with her senior.
o0o
Clarissa stood on the deck, watching the last of Folkestone Harbour vanish. She loved the swell and sinking of the billows, the salty bite of brine, the ever-changing patterns of the sea in motion. So this was why men left their warm homes for the sea! She turned around once, looking up in admiration at the complication of ropes and spars and curving sails. How glorious!
Mr. Bede, Lord Chadwick’s steward, saw her looking about, and recognized in his lord’s quiet daughter one who had fallen instantly in love with the sea. No stranger to this spectacle (Mr. Bede’s brother had run away from a print shop at fourteen, and was even now a master aboard a tea wagon on the far side of the world), he pointed out several sights to her and chatted genially about travels he’d made before the French ruined such jaunts, until the weather turned foul. As the swell began to increase, he recommended she step back into the cabin.
Clarissa found her aunt in a stertorous sleep. Grateful for the respite, she cast aside her bonnet and muff, and picked up the new edition of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads. She read and dreamed over the poetry until the light began to fade. How I wish it were possible for a lady to own and sail a ship, she thought wistfully.
The sun was setting, and wisps of fog drifted across the dark grey water, bringing the enclosing gloom of gray sky meeting grey sea even closer. The prospect of two months of travel cheered her immensely, in spite of the fact that Aunt Beaumarchais’s letters had made plain her old-fashioned respect for fathers ordaining suitable marriages for their daughters.
But as the fog thickened and the sun set somewhere behind them, she tucked herself up more firmly, finally nodding off over the book.
She woke abruptly when she heard a loud cry from somewhere outside the cabin.
“HO! LIGHTS AHEAD, LIGHTS—”
The shouter was interrupted as the yacht lurched, viciously. There was a terrible sound of splintering wood and groaning metal. Aunt Sophia woke screaming. Clarissa, trying to stand, was entangled in blankets and shawls and lost her balance. As the ship rolled, she pitched forward toward the door, hit her head on a low bulkhead, and slid into darkness.
______________
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Free Sample Chapter: Danse de la Folie
Sherwood Smith, R
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