Susan Speers

by My Cousin Jeremy

  I stared and stared, forgetting my manners. I had little contact with other children and meeting another girl was a rare treat.

  The girl looked me over with cool blue eyes. “I am called Daisy,” she said. I realized then that she was petite and very near my own age.

  “Very well, Daisy, you may sit at the table beside Clarissa.” Miss Prinn produced a Bible, a blank tablet and a pen for Daisy, moving the inkwell between us. She gave Daisy her own copy of our history book.

  “Today we will continue reading about the Renaissance in France,” Miss Prinn began. Just like that, I had a new schoolmate.

  At elevenses, our teacher thoughtfully retreated to the anteroom to allow us private conversation.

  “I’m the vicar’s niece,” Daisy told me. “My father came to a sad end after he lost our money. My mother threw us all on the mercy of Uncle Felix.”

  “You have brothers and sisters?” I was eager for more new friends.

  “Two older brothers, ugh they’re horrid,” she told me. “They go to school, thank goodness.”

  “My cousin Jeremy is at the Darby School,” I said with pride. “I miss him something awful.”

  “How can you like a boy?” She knelt on the window seat to peer out at the landscape.

  “We’re good friends,” I answered.” One day we’ll marry and share Hethering.”

  She smiled. One front tooth overlapped the other. “You are too funny!”

  Did she think us too young to choose a mate for life? Jeremy and I were promised to each other.

  *****

  Daisy and I became friends of a sort, but I rarely mentioned Jeremy’s name to her. I didn’t like to see her mocking smile.

  Willow grew more fey and childlike as the years passed. White streaks turned her red hair to faded rose. She didn’t get on with Daisy. She looked afraid when I first brought her to the cottage. Daisy yawned when we sat by the fire with our embroidery. Her silks tangled and knotted, she pricked her fingers and stained the fine cotton. She did like the frosted cakes and shortbread served at tea, though, and often pleaded for more.

  Miss Prinn advised me to be kind, because Daisy had not had an easy life. She and Mr. Pickety invited my schoolmate to share their afternoon walks. If I carried home a bit of shortbread or a cake in my handkerchief for Daisy, she was more than content to let me go alone.

  Dickon Scard often walked me home from Willow’s cottage when the sun was setting. He and I met in passing on Hethering land, he travelling back and forth to the fields, I to find wildflowers or colored leaves to copy in my embroidery. Once he showed me a tiny hidden pool in the woods beyond Willow’s meadow. It was ringed with rare wood violets. Their colors inspired us to create new pinks and blues and purples by combining threads.

  Dickon and I became good friends, especially now I had no fear of Jeremy’s interference, but I could tell that he didn’t like Daisy. He was polite to her and far more deferent than he ever was with me, but his reserve hid disapproval. He always begged for Daisy’s wrapped treat, but I never gave in.

  “If I don’t bring this, she’ll come with me next time,” I teased.

  “That’s blackmail,” he said, but left me in peace. He and I and Willow, and to some extent, Miss Juniot, were a happy group, and that helped me cope with missing Jeremy.

  I still did miss him terribly. No dinner with Father or cozy cottage tea kept me from crying myself to sleep. I could not stop looking for him from the schoolroom window, desperate to see his slim, dark haired figure cross Hethering’s rain swept acres.

  One morning, Mr. Pickety came early for our Latin lesson. He smiled at my pinched face when I sat down with him at the anteroom’s small table.

  “I have an interesting bit of translation for you today.”

  Three sentences in a beloved spiky script.

  Ego sum puteus. Ego mos reverto domus nunc. Ego duco dies.

  [I am well. I will return home soon. I count the days.]

  I turned the slip of paper with shaking fingers.

  Vos es usquequaque in meus sentential.

  [You are always in my thoughts]

  My tears blurred the sight of Mr. Pickety’s kindly face. Jeremy had found his way to me.

  Chapter Five

  Days passed, each one warmed by Jeremy’s secret message. I held his words within me like a glowing coal in a hearth presumed cold. Each afternoon that followed, I looked at Mr. Pickety with hope and yearning, but he only shook his head. After measureless disappointed days, I decided to forgo my pleading looks, because I knew his part in the deception could lead to his dismissal.

  My dinners with Father continued. He spoke of my mother with great economy, as if each confidence diminished his hoarded riches of memory.

  “Your mother was an only child,” he said one night. “Her father died before we married.”

  “And my grandmother?” I asked.

  “She died just after your birth. Her name was Clara.” A connection! If only time had granted us acquaintance.

  One evening Father admired my blue silk sash. “Marissa loved the color blue.” Clara and Marissa combined made my name.

  From then on I looked at every blue, flower, object or fabric with new eyes. Blue was Jeremy’s favorite color. Did Father know that? I think not.

  During our next dinner, I asked “How did you meet her?”

  He answered so swiftly I could hardly understand his words. “There was a summer gathering at a family estate. We are — we were distant cousins.”

  I dropped my chin so that he would not see hope blaze across my face. Father cleared his throat, but instead of saying more, he nodded to Henry and I was excused. When I looked back, his head was turned away from me toward the fire.

  I could have skipped and sung my way upstairs, but my last sight of Father stopped me. I knew him to be stern, unyielding and difficult. I never before considered that he was an unhappy man.

  *****

  Daisy asked question after question about my dinners with Father.

  “What dishes were served?” She was unreservedly greedy for such a waif. “What was pudding?”

  Though I described in detail viands that had stuck in my anxious throat, Daisy did not let up.

  “Were there candles? Sweetmeats? An erpergne?”

  Her final question never varied. “How can you sit with him, Clarissa, week after week?” She too feared his forbidding manner, yet she watched my face with a shrewdness beyond her years.

  “Father wishes it.” I replied. Because it will bring Jeremy home to me, my heart cried within me. Because I will know my mother.

  Daisy never asked about my mother, despite her inquisitive nature. I’m glad she didn’t ask because I wouldn’t have given up even one of my precious pearls of knowledge.

  During our next dinner, while the wind whipped freezing rain through Hethering’s forests, Father paused in his measured consumption of a trifle runny with raspberry sauce and clotted cream.

  “You have honored our bargain, Clarissa,” he said. You have been decorous and obedient.”

  I held my breath.

  “Jeremy will return.”

  I willed all expression from my face and my voice. “Thank you, Father.”

  “For the holidays.”

  Chapter Six

  Jeremy’s school was a day’s journey south of Hethering. North bound trains arrived at our country station both morning and afternoon. I watched the clock and peered down from our school room windows as often as I dared.

  “Are your brothers home on holiday?” I asked Daisy.

  “Vicarage life interests you?” she drawled, scrubbing her brush on a cake of watercolor paint. Fine hairs detached and sank into the tinted mud. “Or is it school holidays in general?” her pointed face was sly.

  “Lessons are finished,” Miss Prinn interrupted. “Marguerite, I must ask you to take better care of your brushes.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Prinn.” Daisy’s pretty contrition meant little. She would
do it again.

  “Your brother Blaise will call for you.”

  I cleaned Daisy’s brushes with extra care. Blaise was home? Why hadn’t Daisy told me? Where was Jeremy? I put my forehead against the chilly windowpane. No sign of my Jem.

  One empty day followed another. Daisy introduced Blaise. He was a stocky, spotty boy, with a soft, spoiled mouth, but he was home with his family.

  Miss Prinn and I sat alone in the quiet schoolroom. The weather was too wild to visit Willow. Fat raindrops hissed on the hearth fire.

  I heard a knock at the door. “Come in,” I moved books and papers aside for the tea tray as the door swung open.

  It was Jeremy.

  We could only stare at each other. I drank in every detail too long denied. He’d grown tall as a sapling and very thin. His dark hair was wet from rain and his black eyes were brilliant with the tears I felt sting my own. His muddy coat and boots were obscured by a glow of pure happiness.

  Miss Prinn brushed her hand over her eyes. “Welcome home, Jeremy.” She went into the anteroom and shut the door.

  In the blink of an eye we were together, his head bent against mine, my heart too full to speak.

  “Clarry,” his voice was rougher, deeper. “I know your good behavior brought me here. I would thank you with all my heart, but I cannot. I gave it away.”

  I looked up at him. I didn’t understand.

  He smiled into my eyes. “You have it. You have my heart.”

  I found my voice, “You can thank me. Because I gave you mine.”

  He held my hands fast. “My train arrived early. I wanted my first sight of you — I wanted no prying eyes. If I run, I’ll be back at the station for the official welcome party.” He put my right hand against his heart, and then he kissed it. With a groan he pushed me away and ran from the room.

  I stumbled to the window, but he was gone in the darkening gloom. I touched my hand to my lips.

  “Be careful, Clarry.” When had Miss Prinn come back into the schoolroom? “Your father won’t want an early suitor,” she said softly. “Even Jeremy.”

  *****

  I greeted my cousin again in the great hall, Father by my side, and Uncle Paul beside Jeremy. We had to be circumspect. Miss Prinn’s warning rang in my ears.

  I wore my blue sash, which made Jemmy’s eyes gleam until a sharp look from Father made him look away. Uncle Paul’s face held no expression.

  At dinner I restricted myself to “please” and “thank you” and “yes, Father”. I only looked at Jemmy when Father announced he had won a mathematics prize and was honored for a brilliant piece of Greek translation.

  Uncle Paul said nothing, as reserved as ever, as if he denied the son that would inherit what he himself never could. How many resentments lay beneath his sepulchral calm?

  I felt fierce pity for my Jem who had never known his mother and would never have his father. I will be father and mother to you, I vowed. I smiled into his eyes with unadulterated pride, and his pale face flushed.

  Father was not pleased. “Perhaps, Clarissa, you think Jeremy should be honored for his Latin writings as well?” Father’s tone was bland but the look in his pale eyes lashed me. Did he know about our secret letter? I had hidden it in one of Belle’s tiny shoes.

  “The Greek translation was a minor writing, called πύργος.” Jeremy said.

  “Well done.” Father’s voice was icy, but he let Jem turn the subject. Father didn’t read Greek, I remembered. He had said so when he ended my lessons. Jeremy knew that, too. He had continued my lessons in secret. Πύργος meant ‘tower’. Jem wanted us to meet there.

  From my downcast eyes, I saw Jem place five bits of grape stem in a careful arrangement on his plate. We would meet at the tower folly at dawn.

  While Father pared an apple with meticulous motions of his very sharp knife, I used the screen of the table linen to undo the silk forget-me-not pinned to my sash.

  I left the dining room accompanied by my father, my uncle close behind us. Jeremy followed his father, but at the edge of my vision I saw him bend to find the token that fell unnoticed from my waist.

  The next morning, we sat together at the top of the rise that held the tower. Jemmy brought one of our ancient costume capes, and we huddled beneath it, his arm around my shoulder, his face buried in my unbound hair.

  “I dreamed of this happiness,” he murmured, “every night and every morning. I vowed I would hold you again, know your warmth and the wonderful smell of your hair.”

  “Here we are,” I said, “in spite of them all.”

  “You will always bring me home,” he said. “I love you, Clarry.”

  “I love you, too.” I was shy and could only whisper my pledge.

  A brilliant sun rose over Hethering’s mist shrouded fields and gardens and woodland. Jem and I began to dream together.

  *****

  For the short time he was home, Jemmy and I lived in a happy country. We took care not to be seen in each other’s company. Daisy stayed at home with her family and Miss Prinn excused me from lessons after luncheon. I would walk to Willow’s cottage for an hour of tutelage at our embroidery. Then Jem would call for me and we would spend happy hours walking the estate grounds, fortified by a picnic tea packed for us by dear Miss Juniot. Jem and Willow came to terms. She smiled on our happiness and he was gentle and mannerly with her.

  Christmas dinner was quiet. Jeremy and I exchanged unexceptional gifts: his to me was a slim volume of botanical drawings; I gave him a handkerchief embroidered with his initials. Later at our tower folly, he annotated each drawing in jade green ink and I embellished his handkerchief with a riotous border of forget-me-nots.

  We shared an uncomfortable holiday tea with Daisy and her brothers.

  Her elder brother, Clifton, had stiff manners and an unhappy face. “How many acres is this property?” he asked. Jeremy, offended, would not reply.

  “Are there any more cream cakes?” Blaise’s chin bore unattractive evidence of his gluttony.

  “Your gardens are lovely,” Daisy simpered to Jeremy.

  He left off his examination of a lithograph showing Hethering’s eighteenth century boundaries to examine the winter landscape through frost rimed windowpanes. “Which ones?” he demanded. “Which ones do you like?”

  “Well, ah, the ones with flowers, of course.” Her smile faltered, and he turned away.

  “A waste of precious time” Jem pronounced after the party. We spent the next hour chasing each other over frozen garden paths, clearing the fug of boredom from our spirits while the fresh air cleared our lungs of hearth smoke.

  Daisy returned to the classroom, bored with family life. “You will miss dear Jeremy,” she suggested, spinning the globe with careless swats.

  More than you miss your brothers, I thought, rescuing the wobbling orb. “Jeremy will return.”

  “If you behave,” she retorted, then took her seat as Miss Prinn looked up.

  Jeremy’s departure came too soon. We planned for it, but it held a wicked sting nonetheless.

  “I’ll be back, Clarry,” his voice was muffled against my shoulder as we sat together for the last time.

  “I will see to it.” My words had more confidence than I.

  Father was pleased with our restraint and relented to allow us monthly letters. We knew they would be read by him and by Jeremy’s school masters.

  “When I write ‘tower’, Jemmy told me, “know that I refer to the height of my regard for you.”

  “When I write ‘embroidery’ or ‘stitch’,” I improvised, “know that I miss you.”

  “Take care of my heart,” he begged. “and I’ll guard yours with my life.”

  Jemmy’s train left that night. We said our goodbyes on the tower hill, just after twilight dulled the bleak land around us.

  Chapter Seven

  I was quieter in my renewed grief, but suffered just as keenly. I grew thinner, despite my attention to my plate, and dark circles appeared under my eyes.<
br />
  Miss Prinn arrived early one morning. Daisy was always tardy and I was happy to have a private interlude with my dear teacher.

  “I have a project in mind for you, Clarissa,” she said. “Your painting has improved until I wonder I can guide you further. Your maps are exemplary in detail and illustration.” She paused by the window and looked out over the sleeping gardens. “You must begin a new series of maps of Hethering. Few know its acres as you do.”

  Jeremy knows them better, I thought. He feels their loss every day.

  Miss Prinn’s fine grey eyes studied my face. “Of course you will want to make at least two copies of each map,” she advised. “An official copy for your Father. Perhaps he will want them kept in the library.” I caught my breath. My work in our library? She did have a good opinion of my progress.

  Miss Prinn smiled. “Of course you will make copies.” I smiled too.

  I began to map our formal gardens, the first ones I walked with Jeremy. An official copy was submitted for Father’s review. He did not mention or return them.

  I made at least three copies of each map. I put one in the wooden box beneath Belle’s spreading silk skirts. The other provided stationery for my monthly letter to Jeremy, map on one side, confidences written on the other. His replies referenced church towers, clock towers and London’s Tower Bridge.

  Daisy observed my efforts with nonchalant indifference.

  “I wonder at your devotion to Hethering,” she said, nearly overturning the inkwell on one of my drawings. For a graceful girl, she was remarkably clumsy when one of my possessions could be damaged. “You won’t live here forever.”

  I said nothing, but she may have detected the smugness in my silence. “Everyone knows that.” Her dulcet tones turned petulant. “Everyone.”

  I ignored her. My chin rose.

  Daisy and I became companions of a sort, but we were never truly friends. I was fortunate to have Nurse and Miss Prinn, Willow and Miss Juniot. I came to know her brothers a little better every year. Clifton was never congenial, he wore his family’s disappointment like an invisible hand held to his brow, but he was a straightforward boy and tried to be pleasant. Blaise was a sneak, greedy and insincere.