The Secretary

by Brooke, Meg

  Even Mr. Jensen had been suitably impressed. After Clarissa had spent a morning with him going over the accounts, he said to Anders, “You know, My Lord, I don’t think we’ll miss Mr. Ford at all. That’s a rare gem you’ve found.”

  Anders had fought the urge to chuckle. “Indeed,” he had agreed.

  They had gone to the churchyard and laid flowers on the graves of the Laphams. Clarissa had invited the two girls to go along with them, and had cried over the headstones right along with them. But after they had all stopped crying, she had sat with them on the new grass and told them about Stonehenge, and Anders had watched as they stared up at her with rapt attention. Later, when they had returned to Ramsay, he had found a book about the ancient people of Britain and had it sent to the Rutledge cottage.

  At last the time had come to return to London. As they rode out of the park, Clarissa said, “I have been thinking about the nature of the human soul.”

  “You have?” Anders asked.

  “Yes. You see, I think that we are all born to be a unique person, special and perfect in our own way, and that nothing can change that.” Anders raised an eyebrow, wondering where this speech was leading. Clarissa smiled. “I will always be hurt by what my father did, but I have forgiven him. He taught me a great deal, but he did not make me. And he cannot unmake me, either.”

  Anders took her hand. “I will do great things with you by my side,” he said.

  “No,” she said, “we will do them together.”

  ***

  On a sweltering day in late August, Clarissa stood in the gallery and watched as the Lords passed the Slavery Abolition Act. When her husband stood to give his vote, she felt their child kick inside her. She put her hand to her belly, not caring that the others of the public who had come to witness the momentous occasion saw her.

  Beside her, Eleanor smiled. “He hears his papa,” she said.

  “She does,” Clarissa agreed. She knew Anders would have rather had her stay home and rest, for she expected to be confined any day now—indeed, she probably should have entered her confinement a week ago, and she had grown rather large. But she had insisted on being present to see her father’s dream achieved. And to Anders’s credit, he had not even suggested that she not attend the session that day. After all, she had done almost as much work as he had to bring this moment about.

  They had settled into his study nicely after returning from Ramsay. He had had another desk moved in and placed back to back with his before the windows so that they could work facing each other. They spend many pleasant mornings discussing the events in the Lords.

  Clarissa had become quite well known to the peers. Her Friday afternoons were attended by just as many men as women, many of them hoping to discuss philosophy and politics with the famous Countess of Stowe.

  But now that the bill had passed and would go on for its Royal Assent, Clarissa and Anders would be going back to Ramsay, where they would welcome their child. She fervently hoped for a girl, and for all Anders’s bluster about an heir to the earldom, she knew he did, too.

  When the voting had finished, cheers echoed through the chamber. Anders rushed to find her, and she embraced him. “Well done,” she said.

  “Well done, you,” he countered. They shared their private smile.

  “Oh, stop it, you two,” Leo said, coming up beside them.

  “Leo,” Eleanor scolded. “This is a happy moment.”

  Anders looked tenderly at Clarissa, ignoring his friend. “And there will be many more.”

  EPILOGUE

  September 22, 1839

  “I don’t understand,” Eloise said to her father. “Why don’t the king and queen just let the princess learn to do something else instead of spinning? She could play chess or conduct experiments. Then she would never have pricked her finger at all. The whole thing seems rather silly.”

  Anders laughed. “I don’t think that’s the way it worked back then,” he explained.

  Eloise frowned. From the carpet where he had been assembling a little catapult, her brother Henry said, “Well, then I’m glad we live in an enlightened era.”

  Anders smiled at his son, and then took his daughter’s hand, dropping the book on the sofa as they stood. “We’ll read something more sensible next time,” he promised.

  “Yes, some more John Locke, please,” Eloise said. “Although Mama reads it better,” she added, looking thoughtful.

  “I like that!” Anders exclaimed.

  “You do the fairy stories quite well, Papa,” Eloise comforted him. “But there’s no one like Mama when it comes to philosophy.”

  “That is true,” Anders agreed. “Now, come along, or we’ll be late, and we can’t have you both missing your birthday party.”

  “But Papa,” Henry protested as they left the library and went downstairs. “It’s not really her birthday. I was born today, but Eloise wasn’t born until tomorrow.” Anders smiled. His son never allowed his sister to forget that she was younger by forty-four minutes.

  “And it’s a good thing, too,” Eloise said, “or I would fight you to be Viscount Landridge. Really, Papa, it’s not fair that Henry gets to go to Eton and Cambridge and sit in the Lords someday and I have to stay here.”

  “I agree,” Anders said. “Perhaps you will be the one to change the rules, Elly.”

  “Oh, I do hope so.”

  “Why do I have to go to Cambridge, Papa?” Henry asked as they went out into the garden. Clarissa was already seated beneath the trees with Anders’s mother and stepfather. Leo and his wife stood nearby, their two-year-old son running circles around them in the grass. “Mama says Oxford is much more interesting.”

  “Oh, does she?” Anders asked as the twins broke away and rushed to kiss their mother. Clarissa got up, holding on to the table to balance her belly. She expected their third child in December.

  “And how are my Michaelmas babies?” she asked, embracing the twins. “How does it feel to be six?”

  “The same as it did yesterday,” Henry said.

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow,” Eloise joked.

  “You know, Henry,” Anders said, “You can go wherever you choose. Both of you. As long as you do what makes you happy, your mother and I will always be proud of you.”

  “What would make me happy right now is a piece of that cake!” Henry cried.

  Clarissa came to stand beside Anders as Nora gave the twins each a slice of the birthday cake. “Well,” she said, “I think we’ve succeeded.”

  “Oh, no,” Anders said, pressing a kiss to her temple, “We’re only getting started.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Natural law and the exploration of the rights of man enjoyed a heyday in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Great thinkers such as James and John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, and Richard Cumberland influenced the debate about what was right and wrong, and they did so through discussions about the natural state into which man was born. Science and philosophy went hand-in-hand, with many people conducting experiments to discover the nature of man’s soul and mind. But many of the legal constraints that govern the scientific world today did not yet exist. Many authors have explored the murky corners of experimentation and scientific exploration, and while this story only touches the edges of that realm, it is not outside the bounds of possibility that what happened to Clarissa might have happened to a real child.

  The slave trade was officially abolished in England in 1807. However, the Slave Trade Act of that year did not do enough to entirely curb the buying and selling of human beings. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 did a great deal more, but still did not completely end the practice of slavery in England and its colonies. Two more laws (the Trade Acts of 1843 and 1873) were passed before slavery was finally ended in the British Empire. The Slavery Abolition Act was repealed more than a hundred and fifty years later, replaced by broader conventions protecting all human rights.

  Many of the characters in this story were real people who helped to bring abo
ut the end of slavery. They were also human beings with real foibles and idiosyncrasies, which I do not pretend to have captured with accuracy. They help to make up the backdrop of a fictional story about two people who were involved in the struggle to defend the rights of all people.

  Clarissa’s other beau, Richard Whibley, the Clerk of the Works, was a real person. In 1834, he was a central figure in the Burning of Parliament, which was caused by the overloading of the Westminster incinerators with tally sticks leftover from the days when the clerks of the Exchequer were illiterate. Much of the Palace of Westminster was destroyed and the building we know today erected in it place.

  I have attempted to depict the world of the British Parliament as realistically as possible. I had a great deal of help in accomplishing this from the excellent online record of the Official Report of the debates in Parliament, the Hansard, which is available at hansard.millbanksystems.com.