The mantel clock chimed four times. “How the days do drag,” Clarissa sighed. Alice sympathized. Between mourning and her advanced state of pregnancy, Clarissa was forced to endure long days without either paying visits or receiving them. True, their cousins paid the occasional call, as did the vicar’s wife. But both were endlessly dour, both invariably were looking for money in one form or another, which annoyed Alice to no end. And despite the toadying and flattery that went with such visits, Clarissa was always happy to see the end of them, too.
The cousins, she commented, came to gloat over her rotund form. Mrs. DeVere came to gulp the expensive tea and devour the fine cakes, neither of which were to be found at the vicarage. Then she would launch into the need for new stained glass, new altar cloths. New prayer books, for heaven’s sake! Can you countenance it, Alice. Why on earth should I fund new prayer books when I have never read the old ones!
At the moment Clarissa was staring glumly at the copy of the novel Emma. It had been a present from Alice the year before. Sheer desperation had made Clarissa take it from the shelf in the last weeks. Perhaps in another year, Alice thought, she might actually open the cover.
Clarissa brightened. “I know. We’ll have a game of cassino! Fetch the cards and play with me, Alice.”
Play with me, Alice. Help me dress my doll. Push me in the swing, Alice. Alice had been dressing dolls and pushing swings for the last twenty-three years. The most recent demand for a push had been the week before, despite a thin sheen of frost on the wooden seat. Clarissa’s advanced state of pregnancy had ultimately put an end to the request, but not without a few sighs and pouts. And there would be a new little creature to dress soon enough. Alice smiled with that thought. Then shook her head sternly.
“I cannot. The linen should be sorted today for laundering.” Kilcullen House, with its fourteen bedrooms and countless cupboards, had a rather impressive collection of linens. “There are gift baskets to be filled for the tenants. And Cook needs to discuss the menus for the holidays. I’ve more than a full plate.” Alice gave her sister an even stare. “Unless, of course, you’d care to take on one of the tasks.”
“Don’t be silly!” Clarissa waved a delicate hand over her belly. “How could I possibly?”
“Of course.” Alice smiled wryly as she rose to her feet. True, the day-to-day managing of a house would be difficult for a woman in her sister’s present state. Which did not explain the previous twenty-three years of helplessness, but was a tidy excuse now. “Here.” She lifted a half-completed chair cover from the floor where Clarissa had tossed it. “If you’re diligent, you might have the set complete by the time the child departs for a grand tour . . . or sets up her own household.”
Alice nearly dropped the frame when Clarissa seized her wrist. “Oh, Alice, it must be a girl! It must. I could not bear . . . I cannot stay . . .”
It was a familiar refrain, becoming more so as the birth approached. “Clarie.” Alice gently pulled her arm free, clasped her sister’s hand in hers. “Of course a girl would be lovely. Just like you, all gold and cream. But just think: a little boy, a solid little fellow with a rolling bear on a string behind him. A boy like Arthur—”
“To tie me to this place! I could not bear it, Alice. I cannot bear another year. If I’d known—”
“Hush, dearest. You’ll only upset yourself.”
Alice squeezed Clarissa’s hand in understanding. Losing Arthur at Waterloo had been hard for her sister, but not perhaps for the expected reasons. Not that the marriage had been a bad one. The earl had been kind, if a bit dull and distant. Certainly distant. During the three years of his marriage he’d never been home for more than a fortnight or maybe two, at the most. He’d been compelled by his duty to his country and joined His Majesty’s army. He’d done his duty to his title and estate, marrying the beautiful, well-born neighbor and getting her with child on one of his leaves from his regiment. Then he’d made her a widow—a widow who’d done her best, really, to mourn a man she hadn’t quite known.
The Ashe girls had been acquainted with Arthur and his family since arriving in the neighborhood nearly twenty years earlier. No one had expected Clarissa to marry the young earl, no matter how beautiful she was, no matter how wealthy and eligible he was. Their characters had been so very different; their paths had so rarely crossed once he’d gone off to school. But eventually Arthur had come home to Kilcullen, Clarissa had decided that his title and fortune—and posh London town house—would suit her perfectly.