The Secretary

by Brooke, Meg

December 9, 1809

  I received word today that I have been granted a teaching position at Oxford for the Hilary Term. Roger was already planning on taking the position they have been offering since last year. We will go together.

  I took Clarissa to see my parents this week. They accepted the story about her birth easily—I write to them so infrequently, and it had completely escaped my mind that I had not told them of Lydia’s death. They readily believed Clarissa was her daughter. Mother disapproved of me speaking French to her, but I will persevere.

  I have decided to take Clarissa with me when I go to Oxford. If I cannot care for her, I will find a family in the countryside who can. But more and more I feel my resolve to abandon the plan weakening.

  There was a knock at the door. Clarissa clutched the book to her chest, too frightened and bewildered to move. Then she heard Anders’s voice. He knocked again. Then there was silence.

  Perhaps he had given up. Perhaps not. Either way, she could not see him until she knew what on earth she would say, and before that she had to finish reading the journal. She turned her attention back to her father’s cramped hand.

  April 14, 1810

  Clarissa took her first steps today after three months of crawling. She has been crying frequently as her newest teeth have come in, but today when I went into the study she smiled at me, stood up, and walked across the room. Nanny Bab was astonished. In addition to “dada”, she has learned to say “Bab” and “Wissa”. Not once has she said the word “mama”. It is a relief. Roger says it is a good sign that there are no residual memories of her mother lurking in her mind.

  October 21, 1810

  Nanny Bab threatened to hand in her notice today. Clarissa has taken to running all over the house, up and down the stairs, and poor Bab has been forced to chase her. I laughed all morning at the commotion and was finally forced to promise Bab a raise and escape to my office.

  I notice that I have become rather less analytical in my recording. I will make an effort to curtail such sentimental comments in the future.

  July 7, 1812

  This morning Clarissa looked up from her book and said, “Papa, what is magic?”

  “Magic?” I asked. “Why do you want to know that?” She looked at me in a way that seemed far too serious for a three-year-old and said, “Because I have just read that word, and I do not know what it means.”

  I took the book away from her. It was a collection of fairy stories. I burned it. What would Roger say if he knew I had allowed her to read such tripe? I don’t know where they came from. Since she finished the last of the primers, it has been more difficult to find reading material that is not fanciful. She is nearly ready to begin reading some of the simpler philosophical texts. Perhaps until then, a little Shakespeare might not be too detrimental? Not Midsummer Night’s Dream or any of the other fanciful comedies, but perhaps Richard III?

  August 30, 1814

  We have begun conducting some simple engineering experiments. Clarissa is currently constructing an elevator to carry a ball from the foyer to the landing above. Perhaps after she had completed that, we will move on to some natural philosophy. She shows a great inclination towards mathematics. I will have to ask Roger to give her some private tutoring.

  I saw Cynthia today as she came in to play. She and Clarissa spent a few moments studying the elevator and making observations and then went upstairs to Clarissa’s room. Clarissa has told me they are writing a play. I will have to ask her for the draft—if it is not a serious drama, Roger may want it taken away.

  February 6, 1819

  Clarissa has asked me for a new dress. When I asked her why, she said that all the other little girls she knew had pretty dresses. I explained that she was different from other little girls, and when she asked how, I could not give her an answer. “Cynthia does not have pretty dresses,” I said. “But Cynthia is pretty,” she replied, “and I am plain.”

  Has all my work been for nothing? Will she reach the trying years and turn into a vapid young woman, obsessed with beauty and other superficial concerns?

  We will begin reading Hume tomorrow. Perhaps that will bring her back.

  June 17, 1819

  Roger and I have had a falling out. I do not know what else to call it. He wants to take the experiment to the next phase. I cannot bear to. Clarissa is so happy, so free. How can I burden her with the cares of the world, of women, when she is so young? If she wishes to sew and embroider, then of course I will find someone to teach her. But I cannot support, have never supported forcing her to learn something she does not enjoy.

  Enough.

  Roger, when you read this, you will see that I have done my best. I will continue to do so, but I cannot force my beautiful, perfect Clarissa to become something she is not. I only hope that one day, when I tell her the whole truth, she does not hate me for the monster that I am.

  It was the last entry. Clarissa looked up from the pages of the journal and saw that the sky was beginning to grow light. She was still wearing her ball gown and pearls. She clambered off the bed and splashed some cool water on her face.

  He had broken ties with his best friend for her. He had been terrified that she would hate him. But had he loved her, as she had loved him? Had he ever told her that he loved her? Now that Clarissa thought about it, she wondered if she had ever told her father that she loved him.

  When she had been eleven or twelve or thirteen, her childhood had not seemed very strange to her, especially because her best friend had had almost the exact same experience. Now she understood why, of course. And there had been moments, when she had been older, when she had wondered at her father’s reluctance to discuss anything even remotely romantic or fantastical with her. She had sometimes felt hurt by his seeming inability to understand that she was a woman.

  But she did not hate him. She could not. He had been weak-willed, she saw now, but he had learned to fight back. And he had wanted her.

  That would have to be enough.

  But what about Anders? Cynthia had advised Clarissa not to tell him, but she had promised herself there would be no more lies between them. And he was her husband. She had sworn to stay beside him all the days of her life. Her father had not taught her to love, but he had taught her to do her duty.

  She could not stay in the flat, anyway. It was morning, and it no longer belonged to her. She left the key on the tea table and opened the door.

  Anders was sitting on the landing, still in his evening clothes. He stood and looked her up and down. She did not meet his eyes. “Take me home, please,” she said.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  March 1, 1833

  Anders handed Clarissa into the carriage. She took a seat across from him. She had not spoken another word to him since they had left Trevor Street except to tell him that she still wished to leave for Ramsay that morning as they had agreed. She had disappeared into her chamber and he had not seen her again until they had met in the foyer a few hours later.

  Now, as they neared the outskirts of London, his lost his patience. “Clarissa,” he said, “I promised myself I would not push you. But clearly something has happened. I wish you would tell me.”

  From the bench beside her Clarissa produced a small leather-bound book. “I wanted to wait to give this to you until I could see your face as you read it,” she said softly. Then she handed the book across the small space and turned her gaze out the window again.

  Anders stared down at the book. If this was what had caused the sudden disappearance of the woman he loved—for truly, it seemed as though the Clarissa he knew had disappeared—he was not sure he wanted to read it. He had to force himself to open the cover and begin to read.

  January 21, 1810

  Clarissa began crawling today. She has put on a significant amount of weight. Yesterday I began reading Plato to her. I have an idea to act out the parable of The Cave and see how she reacts. She is, after all, in the state of innocence Plato described.

  In many ways, Roger�
�s experiment appeals to me immensely. Here is an opportunity to create the ideal woman, without any of my frailties, since she is not really mine. I know that she can rise above her birth, that even though she was born in a whorehouse, she can become a liberated, strong female. She will not need a man to care for her or to provide her with income. She will be free.

  March 10, 1813

  We have finished Jefferson’s journals. When I had closed the book, Clarissa said, “But if men must be forced to do what is in the interest of the greater good, how can it really be good? How is that liberty?”

  She is a genius. And I have made her so. In that moment I saw myself as Pygmalion, molding my statue into perfect form. It was both satisfying and terrifying, for in that moment I also realized that someday I will have to tell her what I have done. What will she think when I explain that she was no more than an exercise in liberty?

  But she is more than that to me. God forgive me, she has become my daughter. How can I, who has railed against all forms of human bondage, continue to exploit and manipulate this innocent creature?

  October 1, 1816

  Roger wishes to present our findings thus far to the Society of Natural Philosophy. But I cannot support such a scheme. I told him that he could do as he wished, but that I wanted my name left out. I have begun to consider leaving Oxford and pursuing another career. I see now that my hope that I might bring about social change by influencing the realm’s great minds was foolish. I must go where I can make a difference.

  Clarissa has become a rather capable assistant in my endeavors. If I am fortunate, she will stay by my side when I turn down a new path.

  It has become too cold to swim. Clarissa’s mania for the water will have to be put aside until spring.

  Anders scarcely looked away from the pages of the journal as he read. He felt nauseous, thinking of what had been done to Clarissa and her friend in the name of science. All the respect he had once had for Jonah Martin faded away. The man was a monster.

  Once he glanced up to find Clarissa watching him, her face a stony mask. When he had finally read the last entry, he closed the book and set it down. He looked out the window. It was growing dark. They would be stopping soon.

  Clarissa had been watching the trees and fields go by, but she turned to him now. “So,” she said. “You know everything now.”

  “I do not,” he said. “I know your father’s side of the story. How did you come to find this out?”

  “Cynthia came to see me last night. At the ball. She found me in the hall after we...were together. And she told me everything. She had thought my father would tell me. But he did not.”

  “I gathered as much.”

  She looked down at her hands. “I am so ashamed, Anders. I have embarrassed you. If I had known, I never would have—”

  “You are the same woman to me that you were yesterday, and the day before that. This,” he said, throwing the book onto the floor of the carriage, “changes nothing.”

  “But it changes everything,” she protested. “How can I possibly be the same woman I was before I knew the horrible things in that book? I am...I am an experiment,” she said, spitting the last word out as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.

  “You are Clarissa Rennick, Countess of Stowe, and I love you. This...disgusting thing that was done to you does not change who you are.”

  She looked away. “Perhaps,” she said.

  They stopped soon after at a small coaching inn. Anders led Clarissa up the stairs to their room and ordered supper, but when the meal arrived she ate nothing. There were dark circles under her eyes. When they had changed into their nightclothes, he climbed into bed and lay uncomfortably beside her. After a few moments he turned and reached out for her. “Please, not tonight,” she said.

  “Just let me hold you,” he begged. She came into his arms, laying her head on his shoulder. He blew out the candle, and after a few moments he felt her body begin to shake. He held her as she wept, and when she had cried herself to sleep he lay awake in the darkness for a long time.

  Clarissa awoke in Anders’s arms, but she felt numb, as though she were made of stone. They did not speak as they dressed. She watched him eat his breakfast, but the sight of the food made her feel nauseous.

  They had gone only a mile or so when she said, “Stop the carriage, please.” He rapped on the roof and the vehicle rolled to a stop. She burst out and ran into the grass, retching. He followed her, a gentle hand on her back. “I’m sorry,” she said when she had caught her breath.

  “No,” he said, and she did not have to see his face to read his concern. “You are ill.”

  “I think,” she said as he helped her back to the carriage, “I think I may be with child.”

  He said nothing. She wondered how he felt about having fathered a child on the daughter of a whore. But when she would have taken a seat across from him, he pulled her down on the seat beside him instead. He put his arm around her and rubbed her back until she laid her head on his shoulder and drifted into a fitful sleep.

  She slept for much of the day. A bone-deep weariness had come over her, and she could not fight it. If she was pregnant, she needed to keep up her strength. By the time she woke, they were coming into Amesbury. But they did not stop at the inn. Instead, the carriage rolled through the town and on, climbing up the hill. In the twilight, Clarissa recognized the terrain.

  “We are going to Stonehenge?” she asked.

  Anders nodded. The carriage stopped at the base of the hill. “Can you walk?” he asked. “I will gladly carry you if you cannot.”

  “No,” she said, “I am feeling much better.” And it was true. The nausea had faded.

  He took her hand as they went up the hill. That morning she might have pulled away, but now his fingers felt good laced through hers. When they came to the stones, he guided her to the center of the circle. She could just see the sun setting away to the west. All around them the air was alive with sounds, the cacophony of birds settling for the night, the rustling of the wind in the grass.

  “Do you remember what you said to me, when we first came here?”

  She shook her head.

  “You said that this place was proof that we weren’t alone. That we were connected to everyone else, and that it was magic.”

  She smiled. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

  He took her other hand. “I didn’t believe you. I thought you were crazy. Really, I did. But you were right. There is magic in the world, and that magic is this: no matter who we are, or how we were born, we are not alone. You are not alone, Clarissa. I will always be by your side. I will always love you. You made me believe in magic.”

  She could think of nothing to say to that. She felt tears spring to her eyes. “I don’t think I have cried so much in my whole life as I have in the last week,” she said, feeling rather foolish. “I think I must be with child.”

  He looked down at her, his face serious. “I didn’t say anything this morning, Clarissa, because it seemed wrong to feel as happy as I am when you are so sad. But there is nothing in the world I would like more than a child of yours to love. And if it is a girl, we will raise her to be exactly what she wants to be.”

  She sniffled and wiped away a tear. “And if it is a boy?”

  He sighed. “I suppose he can be what he wants, too.”

  She laughed, even though there were tears still running down her face.

  “Do you know,” he said, “that our thirty days are up today?”

  She considered that for a moment. “I suppose they are,” she said.

  “I promised to ask you again when we had come to the end whether you would stay with me.”

  “Anders, you don’t have to—I mean, after what we’ve learned, I wouldn’t blame you a bit if—”

  “Oh, no you don’t!” he cried. “I’m not letting you back out on me now, not when I’ve admitted to believing in magic. No, My Lady, you’re stuck with me.”

  She sighed and leaned her head o
n his shoulder. “When I first read that journal, I felt worthless, as though everything I had ever valued about myself was a lie. But it wasn’t. My father may have made a terrible decision, but he taught me something, too. I think it will take me a while before I really understand, but as long as we’re together, I know who I am.”

  “I don’t think you need me for that,” he said.

  “And that’s what’s so beautiful about it. I was always me. But with you, I’m more.”

  “Is that a yes, then?”

  She nodded. “I love you, Anders,” she said.

  “I love you, too.” And then he kissed her under the stars.

  ***

  They spent a quiet week at Ramsay. At the end of it, Clarissa knew for certain she expected a child. She wrote to Mrs. Coleridge the morning of their return to London with the news, though she and Anders had agreed to tell no one else until she was further along. Anders had explained that he had been promising his mother a grandchild every birthday since he was twenty-five. “Then we shall give her the present she has longed for,” Clarissa said. If they were lucky, the letter would arrive in Kent on Mrs. Coleridge’s birthday itself.

  Anders had whooped with joy when the village doctor had given them the news. But then he had become nervous and skittish around her until she had assured him she would not break. Still, she had had to hold him down in their bed and demonstrate her lack of fragility before he would believe her.

  The days at Ramsay had done more than heal their relationship—they had also healed Clarissa’s spirit. They had roamed the grounds and made love in the summerhouse, started plans for improvements to the house and village and visited every tenant and villager. Everyone had been delighted to meet Clarissa, and Anders saw that she took a secret delight at knowing it was the second time she had met most of them.