CHAPTER 2
There were, Clara Whitfield reflected as she trudged through her fourth mile of sleet, more dignified ways to die than freezing to death while wearing one's former landlady's stolen boots.
But dignity, much like food, warmth, and basic human kindness, had become something of a luxury she could no longer afford.
A truly appalling pair of brown leather boots that had perhaps been deemed stylish when His Majesty King George still enjoyed the full measure of his faculties.
They were also two sizes too large, which meant Clara's feet slid about inside them like fish in a bucket, acquiring new blisters with admirable efficiency.
But they were boots nonetheless, and when one was choosing between inappropriate footwear and frostbitten toes, fashion seemed rather beside the point.
She could not afford the liberty of creating a fuss for her footwear as she had borrowed them…without asking… from Mrs. Grimstead whilst she was sleeping off the third bottle of Gin.
The sleet had started as snow with pretty, delicate flakes that had made the world look like one of those sugar-work confections in the bakery windows she could no longer afford to look at.
But the attractive snow soon changed into ugly sleet, which had turned to whatever this was, a vicious combination of ice and rain that seemed personally offended by her continued existence.
Only another mile, she told herself, the same lie she'd been telling herself for the past three miles. Only another mile to Ashbourne.
Ashbourne Hall.
The name sat in her throat like a stone, heavy with memories she'd spent eight years trying to forget everything that it was before, the garden with its roses…
and the boy….the one who had shared his friendship with her.
The boy who'd taught her about grafting and then grafted himself so thoroughly onto her heart that even now, even after everything, she could still feel the scar tissue where he'd been torn away.
No! I shall not ponder on that. Such gloomy observation led inevitably to an indulgence of feeling an urge to shed tears.
Shedding tears in the bitter cold air would only invite further calamity as they would only congeal upon her very countenance.
She soldiered on, defying the cold as she left Bath behind her.
Gabriel Hale, was now the Duke of Ashbourne, according to those very gazettes she had used to warm herself at the posting-houses. His Grace's father had been called to his final rest three years prior, a circumstance that rendered Gabriel one of the youngest Dukes in all England.
The papers had been brimming with the matter of his distinguished military service, his celebrated bravery at the battle of Waterloo, and the terrible wound that had so nearly claimed his life.
This wound which now adorned his countenance had brought the end to his military career causing him to now become a recluse at Ashbourne, refusing all visitors whilst dismissing most of his staff.
Clara's foot caught on a hidden stone, sending her sprawling onto the icy ground.
The impact knocked what little breath she had left from her lungs, and for a moment she just lay there, cheek pressed to the frozen mud, wondering if this was the end for her.
If this was how she'd be found, face down on the road to Ashbourne, wearing stolen boots and a dress that had been mended so many times it was more thread than fabric.
Rouse yourself! Commanded a voice in her mind, a tone suspiciously similar to her younger self, the spirited girl who once mended fallen benches and coaxed the wild rose to bloom.
"Pray, rise, you most pitiful creature! You have progressed to this point…you shall not expire within sight of the gates to Ashbourne Hall. You have survived so much and now at the ripe age of 20 you cannot…you will not give in to cruel fate….Rise!”
The very same formidable iron gates were exactly as she remembered them…except for one difference…they were secured with heavy chains.
Clara dragged herself upright, using a combination of determination and words her aunt would have fainted to hear, and stumbled toward the gates. A thick chain had been wrapped around the bars, secured with a padlock the size of her fist.
A sign, weather-beaten but still legible, proclaimed: “The Grounds are Private Property.”
“Private property?” Clara muttered, testing the chain with hands that could barely feel the metal. "How terribly ducal of you, Gabriel."
The heavy chain could not be undone. The gates were unmovable too….However, the wall…
The wall was exactly as she remembered it. Eight feet of worn stone, with convenient footholds where the mortar had crumbled, and…yes, there it was, the same apple tree, older and larger now, with branches that reached over the wall like helping hands.
Clara looked at the tree. The tree looked back, or seemed to, in that way inanimate objects had of judging one's life choices.
“Please refrain from commenting as I am fully aware this is undignified."
Climbing a tree in stolen boots, a sodden dress, and petticoats that had given up any pretense of propriety somewhere around mile two was exactly as difficult as it sounded.
Possibly more so. Clara's first attempt resulted in her hanging upside down from a branch while her skirts tried to suffocate her.
Her second attempt was more successful if one defined successful as surviving an untimely demise amidst her undergarments.
By the third attempt, she'd managed to reach the top of the wall, though her dress had caught on approximately every available surface and was now more suggestion than garment. She perched there, straddling the stone like the world's least graceful gargoyle, and looked down at Ashbourne Hall.
It was... different.
The grand house still stood, all golden limestone and elegant windows, but there was something amiss. Half the windows were in complete darkness, and the once immaculate grounds had grown wild and were in complete disarray. The grounds, once immaculate, had grown wild. As for the gardens…..
Oh, the gardens.
Even from here, even in the dying light, she could see they had long been abandoned. Dead. The once neatly trimmed hedges had burst forth into ruinous confusion whilst the roses were nothing but skeletal thickets with their stems tangled and bare.
On further inspection she could barely discern the fountain that they had both tried to mend was now a shadow hidden in the overgrowth. The once neatly trimmed hedges had burst forth into ruinous confusion whilst the roses were nothing but skeletal thickets with their stems tangled and bare.
On further inspection she could barely discern the fountain that they had both tried to mend was now a shadow hidden in the overgrowth. The fountain she and Gabriel had tried to fix was just a shadow in the overgrowth.
Something twisted in Clara's chest, sharp and unexpected. She'd prepared herself for seeing Gabriel again but again, she hadn't prepared herself for seeing their childhood haven in total ruin.
No time for sentiment, she told herself firmly, and attempted to descend the wall with some degree of grace and thus failed spectacularly.
The branch that had seemed so sturdy on the way up proved to have opinions about supporting her weight on the way down. It expressed these opinions by breaking with a crack louder than thunder, sending Clara tumbling into what had once been a herbaceous border and was now mostly mud.
She came down with a dreadful shock, the wind entirely knocked from her, and leaving her vision beset by exploding, fiery constellations.
As she lay there face first in the mud, Clara tried to gather her thoughts wondering with genuine distress by what unfortunate turn of fortune she had been brought to such an appalling plight.
At this point death seemed to be a preferable option but her traitorous body refused to admit defeat as her stomach he emitted a low, formidable roar which could have awoken the dearly departed.
“Very well then,” Clara announced to the mud.
“Upon the bench we shall go, yet again.”
She dragged herself upright, a process that involved several brazen words that would have made a seafaring man to colour, and oriented herself toward the house.
Her dress was now more mud than fabric. Her hair, which she'd so carefully pinned that morning, hung around her face in wet strings.
Her appearance, she strongly suspected, was quite akin to some wretched creature that had crept forth from a dismal swamp that had been roused only to inflict dire retribution upon mankind.
Pure beauty. This is exactly how one wanted to appear when seeing one's former best friend who'd grown up to be a duke. A scarred, reclusive duke who'd forgotten she existed to be exact.
The distance to the front door seemed to increase with every uncertain step. The magnificent flight of steps, though perfectly proportioned, presented a terrifying ascent before Clara. Upon reaching the threshold, she paused, and forced a composure she did not feel.
She raised her hand to knock, then paused in midair.
What was this folly that had overtaken her? What indeed was the purpose of this desperate measure?
She had travelled six exhausting hours through the unrelenting sleet merely to present herself at the door of a man who had not acknowledged her existence the past eight years.
He had merely cast off their friendship without the slightest pretext or explanation as he transformed himself into precisely the heir his father had intended him to become, cold, proper, and altogether unapproachable.
But where else could she go?
Her aunt had been claimed by the same fever that had taken half of Bath last winter. Her situation as a governess was lost immediately once she declined to accept the improper advances of the master of the house.
Soon she was forced t forfeit her lodgings as she could no longer afford to pay.