Page 21 of Miss Debenham's Secret
Clarissa sat at her desk, wondering why suddenly her world felt topsy turvy.Not just because she had been brought face to face with the man she loved all those years ago, but because there was something wrong.His evasiveness, his wary expression, the fact he had never married after all.
Clarissa closed her eyes and instead of trying to fend off the memories she let them sweep over her.
She was back in time; it was twenty years ago.
She had come into the cottage after school finished, hoping as always there would be a letter from Alistair, and ...
No, she must go back further.To a week before, and a morning as she was leaving for school.Her father was saying that there was someone coming to see him and not to come back to the cottage.He’d had such an odd look on his face but she’d thought nothing much of it.An old friend, he’d said, but as far as Clarissa was aware he had no old friends.
That was the day that Annie had come to Lyme for her lessons, and she said she’d seen Alistair on the Cobb—she was so sure it was him.She’d even mentioned his hair was sticking up in the wind and reminded her of that day they’d first met.He was injured, she’d said.
At first Annie had been so sure it was him but Clarissa had talked her out of it and in the end she was no longer sure.But the incident had worried her, and she’d even mentioned it to her father, and wondered why he suddenly looked so uncomfortable.He’d become angry with her and told her to let the subject be.Shortly afterwards Alistair’s letter had arrived and she forgot Annie’s words, too busy wallowing in her own misery.
And now she knew he wasn’t married.
He’d never married.
In a flash she saw it all laid out before her, the whole wicked plot her father had woven to keep her with him.Alistair had come back but her father had persuaded him that he would be a burden on her.Her father had persuaded him to write the letter so that she would not keep hoping.She could almost hear him saying it, “Better to give her a short swift shock than a long drawn out one.”
Alistair had come back because he loved her and he had allowed her father to persuade him to fob her off.All these years she had mourned him when she could have been his wife.
He had never married.
The significance of those words brought Clarissa back from the past.She heard the ormolu clock striking again.
She had to find him!
In a flash she was out of her chair and flinging open the door.Annie started up, mouth agape, but Clarissa was already out into the hallway and running in a most unladylike manner.Where was he?Was it too late yet again?Had he already left?
“Oh please,” she murmured to herself, “don’t let him be gone.”
But there he was!
Alistair was silhouetted in the doorway, a lonely figure, while about him the girls went about their business, incurious of this stranger.
“Alistair!”
Her voice was louder than she’d meant.He turned, startled, and had to catch his balance.She couldn’t see his face against the light, but a few steps more and she could.There was something in his eyes, almost ...could it be hope?But a moment later the wariness returned and he waited for her to reach him.
“It was my father, wasn’t it?”She hardly noticed the girls had all stopped and were staring at the two of them.“He persuaded you to write that wretched letter?”
He looked as if he might deny it, as if he might keep up the pretence, but then he sighed.His voice was matter of fact.“He didn’t have to persuade me, Clarissa.I knew it was the right thing to do.”
“Right for whom?”she retorted, and to her horror her voice cracked.
He lifted his arms and let them drop.“I’m crippled.What use would I be to you?I didn’t want a nurse, I wanted a wife, and I knew you would feel obliged to marry me just so that you could look after me.What sort of life would that have been for you?For me?We’d have ended up resenting each other.”
She shook her head and tears were dripping, running like rain, and she couldn’t seem to stop them.Pain lanced through his expression and suddenly he was the Alistair she remembered all those years ago.
“Oh my love,” he said in a hoarse voice.“My dear love.”
She was in his arms.Right there, in the middle of the Debenham Finishing School for Young Ladies.Alistair was holding her tight and she didn’t want him ever to stop.
They seemed to be incapable of doing more than clinging together.
Luckily that was when Annie came to order the girls back to their lessons, and suggested, with a twinkle and a tear in her eye that the two of them should go to the parlour where there was more privacy.Tea was brought, and some of the special cake Clarissa saved for important parents, like dukes.Alistair sat beside her and held her hand.
“I loved you with all my heart,” he said, “and that was why I did what I did.”
