Chapter Three Thursday at Winterbourne House #2
They went downstairs together. The dining room surprised Clara almost as much as the drawing room had.
Instead of the long formal arrangement she remembered, one end of the table had been left entirely unused and only eight places laid near the fire.
Candles burned low in silver branches, their light soft against dark wood and old portraits, while bowls of early roses and greenery ran down the center between dishes rather than forming the stiff architectural arrangements fashionable hostesses preferred.
No footmen stood behind every chair. Two servants attended quietly, then withdrew once the first dishes were served.
Augusta sat at the head.
“No ranks,” she said as Clara hesitated over places. “Sit wherever you please.”
Arabella dropped into the chair beside her.
“Lady Winterbourne says that because Cecily outranks nearly all of us and refuses to care.”
Cecily took the chair opposite.
“I have discovered rank is most useful when shopkeepers attempt to cheat me.”
“Or when footmen refuse to admit you.”
“That too.”
Clara sat between Eleanor and Beatrice. The supper was excellent but not ostentatious: roast chicken, asparagus, buttered potatoes, a dish of trout, warm bread and a raised pie Arabella immediately declared worth risking one’s reputation for.
Conversation moved with astonishing speed.
They discussed books, politics, bad sermons, good dressmakers, the expense of coal and whether a woman ought to be allowed to dismiss a physician who refused to explain her own illness to her.
“Obviously,” Clara said.
Beatrice pointed her fork.
“Exactly.”
“My last physician addressed every answer to my father,” Eleanor said.
“What did you do?” Sophia asked.
“I began answering his questions through Papa.”
Cecily smiled.
“How?”
“He asked me where the pain was. I told my father. My father told him. He asked whether it worsened at night. I answered Papa again.”
Arabella laughed so loudly Augusta looked delighted rather than disapproving.
“How long did he tolerate it?”
“Four minutes.”
“And then?”
“He spoke to me.”
“Victory,” Beatrice declared.
Clara found herself watching them. There was no desperation in the room.
That surprised her too. Society liked to imagine unmarried women spent every waking hour regretting the absence of men.
Yet Eleanor discussed a possible new governess position with obvious interest, Sophia had strong opinions on translations of Goethe, Arabella wanted to open some form of lending library that Augusta claimed would inevitably become a gambling establishment, and Cecily knew more about estate management than most gentlemen Clara had encountered.
Even quiet Eliza, when persuaded to speak, had a sharp understanding of accounts.
They were not women waiting for life to begin.
Life had simply begun differently than society preferred.
“So,” Beatrice said after the servants removed the second course, “are we allowed to ask Clara whether she likes the name?”
Augusta’s face hardened.
“No.”
Clara looked between them.
“What name?”
“The one Arabella has given us.”
“I object to being blamed,” Arabella said. “Beatrice encouraged me.”
“What is it?”
Augusta sighed. Beatrice leaned closer.
“The Last Chance Club.”
Clara stared at her. Then at Augusta. Lady Winterbourne looked deeply betrayed.
“You told them?”
“No.”
“You invented the same dreadful phrase independently?”
Arabella beamed.
“Proof of its excellence.”
Clara began laughing.
“I suggested precisely that to Lady Winterbourne last week.”
The table erupted. Even Sophia laughed. Augusta put down her wineglass with dignity.
“I am surrounded by idiots.”
“Completed idiots,” Cecily said.
That finished them. For a few minutes there was no maintaining composure.
Clara laughed until her eyes watered, and something inside her loosened with the laughter.
She had not realized how tiring it was to be careful until she entered a room where caution was unnecessary.
Later, after dessert, Augusta allowed the servants to withdraw entirely and produced a decanter of brandy that caused Beatrice’s eyes to widen.
“Surely not.”
“You may have one thimbleful,” Augusta said.
“My mother would faint.”
“Then do not tell her.”
“I am beginning to understand the appeal of this house.”
“You were invited because you are engaged to a fool,” Augusta said.
Beatrice’s smile faltered. Only slightly. But Clara noticed.
“So we are giving explanations after all?” Beatrice asked.
“No. I am giving warnings.”
“Mr. Lancing is not a fool.”
Arabella examined her glass.
“He wears a waistcoat embroidered with his own initials.”
“That does not prove anything.”
“It proves sufficient.”
Beatrice rolled her eyes, but there was strain beneath it.
Clara remembered seeing Beatrice’s fiancé once.
Mr. Rupert Lancing. Handsome, polished and charming in the manner of men who directed most of that charm toward people whose approval mattered.
Clara had not liked the way he interrupted Beatrice.
She had liked even less the way Beatrice stopped speaking when he did.
Still, Augusta’s rule was no unsolicited advice.
Clara said nothing. The conversation moved on.
By the time she left Winterbourne House, rain had begun again, fine and silver beneath the street lamps. Augusta followed her into the hall.
“You survived.”
“Barely.”
“Will you return?”
Clara allowed Hargreaves to settle her cloak around her shoulders.
“I believe I have been officially finished with. It would be rude not to.”
Augusta’s eyes warmed.
“Good.”
Clara hesitated.
“Thank you.”
“For supper?”
“For not making it charity.”
Augusta understood immediately.
“My dear, none of you are there because I pity you.”
“No?”
“No. I collect interesting women. London merely saves me the trouble of finding them.”
Clara smiled. Then Augusta’s gaze sharpened.
“How is your father?”
Clara should have expected that.
“Optimistic.”
“That badly?”
“Worse.”
Augusta did not press. Again Clara appreciated it.
“Thursday,” Augusta said.
“Thursday.”
Clara stepped into the carriage and took the warmth of Winterbourne House home with her.
The blue book waited until midnight. Clara had intended to search earlier, but Sir Edmund had returned from his banker with bad news disguised as uncertainty, Aunt Marianne had arrived to discuss Lucy’s next assembly, and Lucy herself had required assistance choosing between two ribbons of such nearly identical shades that Clara had briefly considered declaring bankruptcy a mercy.
Only after the house became quiet did she take a candle and climb to the small room above the back stairs where family trunks were stored.
Dust stirred beneath her slippers. The chamber smelled of old wood, linen and the faint dry scent of things shut away too long.
Clara knew which trunk she wanted. She had not opened it for years.
It stood beneath the eaves, dark leather cracked at the corners, her initials still visible on the brass plate.
C.W. For several seconds she simply looked at it.
Then she set down the candle and lifted the lid.
The first layer contained gowns. Not her wedding gown.
That had been cut down years ago and remade into something practical because her mother refused to allow several yards of excellent silk to become a monument to humiliation.
Clara had admired her for it. Beneath the folded dresses lay smaller things.
A fan. Two dance cards. A box containing ivory gloves.
Clara touched them. She remembered wearing them while being measured for the wedding gown.
The memory arrived without pain at first, merely detail: her mother fussing over the fit, Lucy—then a child—begging to touch the buttons, Clara believing with complete certainty that three weeks later her life would begin.
How young she had been. Not foolish. She would no longer call that girl foolish.
Trust was not stupidity simply because someone proved unworthy of it.
She lifted the gloves and found a length of faded blue ribbon beneath them.
Then a small paper packet. Inside lay a brittle sprig of orange blossom.
Clara sat back on her heels. She had no idea why she kept it.
Perhaps because destroying everything had once felt too much like admitting the whole period deserved destruction.
Perhaps because objects were innocent. The blossom had not abandoned her.
Neither had the gloves. They were simply evidence of a young woman who had expected one future and received another.
Clara replaced them carefully. The books were at the bottom.
There were four. A prayer book from her mother.
A volume of Shakespeare. A slim book of essays.
And one small blue-bound copy of Cowper.
Her pulse changed. Clara lifted it. The leather had faded almost gray along the spine.
She remembered it immediately now. Adrian had given it to her in the garden at Ashcombe Park after hearing her argue with Sebastian about poetry.
No. She stopped. Had Sebastian been there?
The memory blurred. Adrian laughing. Sebastian standing beneath a tree.
Someone saying Cowper was too melancholy for summer.
Clara shook her head. She opened the cover.