Romance Novel (Untitled)

Chapter One (V2)

         The crystal shone on the table, sparkled as they hung in the chandelier. Fine linens of the well-bred and well-dressed rustled tastefully from the guests seated around the room. The tactfully restrained scent of dry wines hung above the table, mixed with the dusky scent of roses and perfumes. Lanterns blazed at the doorway, among the veranda, along the verge of the drive. All was in place for celebration, the stage set, and the curtain on the rise for the first act.

         The only element out of place was the lovely, trim young woman anxiously pacing the porch, wringing her hands. Her face was creased in a frown-- the frown itself an amusing mixture of concern and consternation: a frown a man could grow to both love and fear.

         "Susannah," a voice called behind her. "Your guests are not in the driveway, you know."

         The young woman turned to the voice, which, much like her frown, contained two sides: amusement and censure.

         "Well neither is Rupert, Daddy," Susannah replied somewhat sharply. "And without him, they might as well all go home!"

         Samuel Claverly inclined his head just slightly, merriment leaving his face. "Susannah."

         "Daddy...where-,"

         "Come inside," he continued gently. "your vigil will neither speed nor delay his arrival. Take comfort from our friends and family."

         "Comfort!" she sniffed.

         His reply was more stern this time, but simple as it ever had been: "Susannah."

         Susannah exhaled audibly, her narrow shoulders sinking, her head bowing. "I'm sorry, Daddy. Of course, I'll come in."

         She hugged him tightly, and he held her. Over her head, she could not see the pain in his face.

         He could bear no pain in his daughter, his only child. So much like her late mother, laid low by influenza almost before Susannah was old enough to remember her, she was worth all of the success and status and standing he had managed to build over the last decade and a half. No, he could bear her passion and anger, and would if necessary. But keeping the truth from her was so much harder.

         She pulled away suddenly, composing herself in an instant. Such was one of her special gifts: from distraught to disciplined in the blink of an eye. A heartbeat more slowly, Susannah’s father composed himself, also. She took his arm, and they re-entered the house.

         Catching the eye of a curious and concerned guest, her father offered a reassuring smile, and moved forward to make excuses for Susannah’s absence from table; and so he missed the sharp and suspicious look from his daughter. For she was not only quick of emotion, but sharp of eye and mind, as well. She had seen her father’s pained, knowing look, and understood instinctively that something was off this wonderful evening. Something her father knew about.

         And wasn't telling her.

         * * *

         The crystal shone brightly, still; the lanterns continued to blaze inside. But the guests had all left. The house was quiet, the lingering smell of the awkward dinner sweetly sickening, like too much honeysuckle left in a vase in the sun. There was an atmosphere of incompleteness in the walls of the dining room, the entryway, the music room.

         The lanterns along the porch and the drive had burned low, marking the late hour with their short, guttering flickers. But one feature remained unchanged: the young woman pacing the porch, wringing her hands, frowning in worry and wrath.

         We have seen it before, and will see it again, down and back through the ages: the young widow pacing the strand watching for her sailor-man, waiting, waiting; the young bride waving her soldier off to war, praying, praying; young love left forever to its own, pining, pining.

         Mr. Claverly would have given any amount of money not to have seen it tonight, as he stepped out from the doors of the house behind his child.

         "Susann--"

         "Daddy, where is he?"

         The question was not a plea, not a rhetorical whine of a broken heart. A demand this. A demand for information from a reluctant source. A tone, had she known it, she had come to use when staff became overly familiar, or lax at their tasks.

         He closed his eyes for a moment, then answered, painfully: “He’s not coming, child.”

         She turned to face him. She did not whirl with astonishment and anguish. Her back remained straight, and turned with cold control. When she faced him, her mouth’s tight set reflected this coldness while her eyes blazed out at him like lanterns themselves.

         “Where is he.”

         Quiet and forceful as death, it was not a question. It was a command with a subdued, inflexible strength that even her father would not ignore.

         “Not tonight,” he continued obliquely. “Not ever.”

         She waited, still as the wood pillars of the porch itself.

         Her father’s eyes blazed back at her. “Is that not enough? All else is beside the point! He has made this choice, this mistake, and broken your heart! Does the rest matter?!” His passion turned to pain as he spoke, pain for the heart that was breaking, pain for his own heart for watching.

         “Where?” she demanded with the tenacity and hotness of youth, the command of generations of strength.

         A half second of internal debate; then her father relented. “Very well, Susannah. Come inside, and I will tell you all I know.”

         “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND?!” she cried, declining the invitation, and surrendering to the petulance of youth.

         Her father’s own hot temper flared in return: “He is NOT your husband, and he’ll not step foot upon this drive, nor lay hand upon my daughter ever again— for he’s been with another!”

         He took a breath, realizing how badly he handled relaying this information. But what was done was done; what was heard was heard. He continued with somewhat more control: “Certain stories surfaced at the beginning of summer. Stories that reached my ears through business associates and family friends. Stories that raised eyebrows.”

         He sighed. Though she stood rod-straight, he sat, suddenly wearied by the late hour and the ill news. The stone planter on which he chose to perch shifted with his weight, settled. He made a strange picture: a smartly dressed man in middle age, staring disconsolately at his daughter’s feet from the haggard face of a suddenly-old man, half-sitting and half-leaning on a planting pot like a common laborer, the moon long-since down, the night air heavy and damp.

         “I made inquiries, visits. Ultimately, I confirmed my suspicions with my own observations. I— Susannah, please! It—“

         He waited through a few seconds of cold silence from his joy, his light, his wounded daughter, then sighed again in resignation.

         He finished his sad tale in a wooden monotone. “He has frequented the bawdy-houses in the lower town. He is a drunk. His expectations dwindle, and his finances choke on his vices: drink and women.”

         He added, finally, almost off-handedly: “A prostitute-turned-serving-wench named Lydia Sanchez bears a child of his, three months.”

         Mr. Claverly watched this information change his daughter, saw the transformation in her face, her posture. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could make a sound, Susannah’s stillness broke.

         “You LIAR!” she shouted. “How could you believe—how could you say such things about the man I love?! Have I been so ungrateful a daughter to you that you would hurt me so? Is my love for you not so large and full that you cannot bear to share it with another?”

         He was speechless to this accusation, this terrible misinterpretation that could be no further from the truth. “It—Susannah, no—you—“ he stammered.

         Susannah wept at him desperately. “I cannot forgive this. Even you, especially you.” Her voice sank to a weeping whisper. “I hate you, Daddy. As I have ever loved you all my life, so much so I hate you now!”

         She turned and fled down the dim drive, past the darkening lanterns.

         “Susannah!” he called, lurching forward from his makeshift seat. The planter shifted again under his weight, tipping past the balance point and spilling both plant and parent on the wooden porch.

         “Susannah!” He called to her again and again, long after her footsteps had retreated into the dark. He had regained his footing and followed her out to the end of the drive, but she was lithe, and fleet of foot. He found only her fancy, bejeweled shoes, one heel broken, cast away.

         “Susannah!” He sobbed her name until he was hoarse, stood longer still gazing out into the dark, then returned to the house to begin a search for his daughter that would have such an ending that it would have been kinder to his heart had he simply shut the door, laid down to bed, and forgot her name that night.