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“Your very presence as an illegitimate daughter will be sufficient cause. You will have a chaperone, of course—a distant cousin named Miss Forsythe, who was chaperone to your sisters before their marriages—but she will not be able to protect you from everything. Some people will be offended by you no matter what you do. And remember,” he added in an ominous tone, “you are inheriting a piece of the Duke’s fortune. A piece that might have gone to others had you not been recognized as His Grace’s daughter.”
A pall of silence fell over the carriage. The world outside the carriage window suddenly looked a much grimmer and less wondrous place to Clara. Her stomach grew restless once again.
“And…what about being sincere?” Clara asked in a small voice, remembering the last in Mr Finch’s list of her perceived traits.
An unfamiliar expression came to Finch’s pinched face. “In the ton? That may be your greatest weakness of all.”
Clara rose an inch in her seat as the carriage lurched violently to a stop. “What’s happening?” she asked, hearing the coachman descend from his bench above them.
Mr Finch gave a brief glance out the window, then donned his hat with a smooth movement of his gloved hand. “We have arrived.”
* * *
Clara had worked as a maid in the homes of a handful of London’s wealthy families and had always been stunned by the plenty within each house. But if the Fitzroys’ home was a palace compared to the tiny rooms where she had lived, the St. George estate was like a city unto itself.
The mammoth edifice was like a work of art on its own, with intricate stone decorations and ornaments that covered its façade down both wings, which stretched nearly as far as Clara could see in either direction. Looking around them, she saw that the grounds of the manor were dotted with carefully groomed flowers and hedges of all kinds, alight in the colours of springtime. Even the air itself felt better—cleaner, or richer in some strange way—and Clara felt herself drinking it into her lungs deeply.
Though she desperately wished to explore this remarkable house, her curiosity outweighing her fear, a thin man with wrinkled skin and an old-fashioned wig led them toward the doors of the vast house. Mr Finch gestured for her to follow, and she did so, fearing her feet would sully the beautiful rugs of the magnificent estate.
The interior of the manor was even grander than the grounds. Following the soft tap-tap-tap of the butler’s shoes across the polished marble, they passed at least a dozen salons and rooms, each large enough to contain an entire house and each decorated in gold, velvet, mahogany, and precious objects that she could not identify. Clara could scarcely imagine the difficulty involved in tending to such an enormous house—it must take an entire day just to dust all of the artefacts in one of these rooms!
No, Clara, stop it, she chided herself. You are not here to clean. This is your family’s house, and you will be living here, not working.
As difficult as this thought was to even contemplate, Clara hoped she would begin to believe it before too long.
“Oops,” she cried as she stumbled into Mr Finch, who had stopped alongside the butler at a closed set of double doors. “Excuse me, sir, I apologize,” she babbled.
The lawyer smoothed his suit jacket and murmured, “Quite all right.” Then, as he gave a nod, the butler opened the doors before them, revealing the grandest room yet.
“Mr James Finch and Miss Clara St. George,” called the butler in a loud voice, clear as a bell, before stepping aside gracefully.
Eyes cast downward, Clara shuffled into the room behind Mr Finch. At a quiet harrumph and a subtle motion of his head, she stepped forward so she was beside him, then lifted her skirts to curtsy as deeply as she dared.
Their entrance was greeted by a stony silence more complete and suffocating than any Clara had found in her life. No household noises, no sounds of the city street. She could not even hear anyone breathing, everything was so muffled by the plush red carpet beneath her feet.
“Your Grace,” Mr Finch said with a stiff, formal bow. “Lady Helena, Lady Judith. Mr Morton,” he added with progressively shallower bows to each of the other occupants of the opulent room.
With a smooth step to one side, Mr Finch reached an outstretched toward her. “This is Miss Clara, of whom we have spoken.”
When she felt she could remain in her curtsy no longer, Clara dared to lift her eyes into the room and was nearly thrown to the floor by the scene before her.
Whether the room was a sitting room, a salon, a lounge, or library or something grander than she had ever heard of Clara could not be sure, but it was a long, wide room filled with light streaming through the tall glass windows and twinkling from the two great crystal chandeliers that hung from the ceiling. All about the enormous Oriental rug that covered the floor were antique chairs and tables of all sorts, and the walls were bedecked with ancient-looking tapestries and enormous oil portraits.
But in truth, Clara paid barely any attention at all to the room itself—her eyes were fixed instead on the four people who stared back at her.
First, she saw the two women sitting on ornate armchairs by the fireside, which burned merrily though it was a warm spring day outside. One was tall and thin, with pale skin and dark brown hair much like Clara’s own, while the other was shorter and had ashy blonde hair worn in an extravagant style.
For a moment Clara was dazzled by the glamour of their dresses and the jewellery they wore, and by their striking hazel-coloured eyes so like hers, but then she detected the air of spite that emanated from both of them.
Both women turned their eyes elsewhere as soon as Clara’s vision fell upon them, but from the glares they fixed on the air in the room, she could tell how displeased they were with her presence.
That, or they are the sort of people who look so very displeased at all times and in all situations, Clara thought. Or perhaps both. I wonder which is Helena and which is Judith?
On the other side of the room, sitting in a chair too large for his gangly frame and wearing a jacket and vest of royal quality was a stripling boy with sandy-blonde hair. For all his finery, the boy—young man, really, for he looked to be only a handful of years of growth from adulthood—looked positively frightened, and had dark circles around his eyes that belied his apparently luxurious upbringing.
Standing beside the boy was a tall young man, perhaps only slightly older than Clara, with a mop of thick, curly black hair hanging over his face. The man was elegantly dressed and stood with a hand resting gently on the back of the boy’s chair. He was the only occupant of the room who did not look away when Clara looked to him, and though she thought she might be imagining it, he wore what could generously be called a smile on his thin lips.
What sort of place have I been brought to? Clara thought to herself with a sinking feeling in her stomach. And what manner of people are these?
