Library

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Berkshire, England, Summer, 1811

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… no, that doesn't sound right. What about… in the beginning they weren't friends… oh, no, that's not right, either. She should say something… I was by the river when it happened.

But why would she be by the river? She doesn't have to be by the river. Actually, I don't know where she is… oh, why is the first line always the hardest?" Charlotte Davidson asked herself, putting down her quill and sighing as she looked at the blank page in front of her.

She was sitting in her father's library, surrounded by thousands of books, and yet inspiration was lacking. It had been lacking all morning. The desk was piled high with discarded pieces of paper.

They were all attempts at starting the novel she desperately was trying to write. It was her dream to launch a book she had written out into the world, like a ship into the ocean. Her mind was brimming with ideas, but translating those ideas onto the page was proving difficult - impossible, even.

"I'll never be able to do it," Charlotte thought to herself, looking around her at the shelves of books, and wondering why so many other authors managed to do what she found impossible.

The idea was there. She could see her heroine, Isabella Stuart, in her mind's eye, as clear as though she was standing in front of her. She was tall and slim, with long blonde hair and bright green eyes, just like Charlotte herself. But Isabella's life was very different from her own.

She lived in the Highlands of Scotland, where towering mountains and crystal-clear lochs provided the setting for an adventure. An epic tale where Isabella Stuart would fall in love with the laird of Dunloch Castle.

It might be an impossible dream; a lowly shepherdess marrying a laird. Charlotte had all the characters for her book mapped out. She knew what they looked like, how they sounded, and their story.

She had thought out every detail on her walks across the meadow to the church across the brook, and while sitting in the garden under the shade of an ancient oak tree. Some of it she had even dreamed, finding herself a character in the story, as Isabella herself.

Then why am I finding it so difficult to make her speak on the page? I can see her, I can hear her, but writing the first words… Charlotte thought to herself, despairing at the thought of ever writing the novel she had so long dreamed of.

Charlotte knew what her parents thought of her attempts at writing a novel - her mother in particular.

"Why don't you concentrate on writing your own story, Charlotte? You fill your head with dreams of other people's stories and neglect your own? What have you done in your own life?" her mother had asked, when Charlotte had tried to tell her something of Isabella's story.

Charlotte's father had a similar view on the matter, and both her parents had made it clear it was high time Charlotte considered marriage for herself, over that of imagined heroines who always got their happily ever after. But Charlotte was not interested in her own story. It was dull, just like her life. That was why she lived in a dream world of her own creation.

It was not that she was ungrateful for her life - she had a great deal to be grateful for, not least loving parents, and a comfortable home in which to live. She knew her good fortune, but despite being far luckier than most, Charlotte still wanted more.

Her mind was filled with the adventures of her heroines, and now she wanted to share those adventures by writing them down in the novel she intended to write - the novel she was finding it impossible to begin.

I just don't know where to start. She has to be doing something, but I don't know what. I know what I want her to do, but I don't know how to get her to the point of doing it, Charlotte thought to herself. She took a deep breath and furrowing her brow.

She took up her quill again. The nib hovered over the page, and Charlotte pictured Isabella appearing above a heather clad hill with the mountains and lochs of the Scottish Highlands stretching out before her in a tapestry of greens and sparkling blues.

"I wandered, lonely as a cloud… oh, no, that's Mr. Wordsworth. Think… why can't I think? I know… the loch was unusually blue that day. Oh, nonsense. What does that even mean? Unusually blue? No… I want to tell you a secret…" Charlotte wrote, imagining the novel as a confession, the confession of a woman who has fallen in love with a man who was forbidden to her.

She smiled at the thought of it - of Isabella sharing her most intimate thoughts with the reader. The story might already have occurred, and Isabella, now happily married, would tell it while sitting on a ridge of heather, looking out over the mountains and lochs of that most romantic of landscapes.

Her quill worked quickly, scratching across the page as Charlotte's picture of Isabella found form and voice. It excited her to think she was creating something - telling a story others would gain pleasure from.

"I was born in the shepherd's hut at the foot of the mountain, on a winter's night when the snow lay thick. My father was out tending the sheep, and it was my aunt who held my mother's hand as the baby arrived…" Charlotte wrote.

But all of a sudden, doubt crept in - Charlotte could hear her mother's voice telling her she was being ridiculous, obscene, even.

"Writing about a woman giving birth - how awful," she would say, forgetting the story of the virgin and child she so rapturously listened to in church on Christmas Day. The stories of the Bible, with all their grizzly details, were perfectly acceptable, but for a woman of Charlotte's rank and class to even dream of writing something so… outrageous, was tantamount to scandal.

"Marriage, Charlotte. That's what's missing in your life. You need a husband - or you at least need to show some interest in acquiring one," Charlotte's mother had said.

Her mother came from aspirational stock. Her own father had been a wealthy merchant, and there was a vague connection to royalty through a distant cousin twice removed - a story that always managed to be told whenever the family entertained someone new.

Charlotte's father was a self-made man, who had begun with nothing but a good education - having been educated at Eton due to a family connection. Now, he, too, was a wealthy merchant, and was one of the leading importers of tea from China and the Orient.

Charlotte had grown up surrounded by wealth, though she knew the family was somewhat looked down on by those of inherited, rather than self-made, fortune. The lack of title meant they had to work harder for those things they had achieved, and Charlotte knew she was something of a disappointment to her parents, more interested in her education than securing a match …

"I wish I could be Isabella," Charlotte thought to herself, sighing, as she looked down at what she had written.

Reading it back to herself, the thought of Isabella telling her one story seemed foolish - it meant there was the guarantee of a happily ever after, rather than the prospect of discovering whether Isabella succeeded in finding happiness or not. The page was discarded, joining the others in a pile on the desk, as Charlotte sat back and sighed.

"I'll never be able to do it. I'll never be able to write a novel," she said out loud, just as a gentle tap came at the library door.

It opened slowly, and the face of Charlotte's maid, Sara, appeared. She was wearing an anxious expression, and now she breathed a sigh of relief as she closed the door behind her.

"Oh, thank goodness I've found you, Miss Davidson. Your mother's looking for you. I thought you'd want to know. She's upstairs now, calling for you. I was just bringing some linens down the back stairs and I heard her voice. If you're quick, you could slip out into the garden before she starts looking down here," Sara said, and Charlotte smiled.

The two were the same age - twenty-three - and Sara had been Charlotte's maid since they were both sixteen. They were more like friends than mistress and servant, and this would not be the first time Sara had warned Charlotte her mother was searching for her.

"Oh, what does she want now? I thought I was safe in here for the rest of the day," Charlotte said, shaking her head as she hurried to clear away her writing things.

"Did you manage to start on your book, Miss Davidson?" Sara asked, and Charlotte shook her head.

"I made a dozen starts - all of them were terrible," Charlotte replied, looking dejectedly at the piles of paper.

She knew why her mother was looking for her - she had been out that morning, paying a visit to her friend, Lady Wilton, the Dowager Duchess of Pendelbury. Lady Wilton always made suggestions as to who might be a suitable match for Charlotte, and whenever Charlotte's mother returned from visiting the ageing aristocrat, she would declare she had arranged the perfect introduction.

It had happened three times already this season, and all the matches had been ghastly. There had been Rupert Lloyd, a clergyman of Lady Wilton's acquaintance, and a man who spoke only about himself and his achievements - a trait Charlotte found distasteful.

Next had come Dominic Cadwell, Captain Dominic Cadwell, a military man who, though handsome, had proved more interested in a fleeting affair than longevity. Even Charlotte's mother had agreed he was unsuitable.

Finally, Lady Wilton had introduced Marcus Fothergill, the son of a baron. He had been charming, and the two of them had gotten along well until the point when a disagreement over politics had sparked a heated argument, one Charlotte had easily won, much to Marcus's annoyance.

"Women shouldn't have opinions on such things," he had told her, and that was the end of that.

Now, Charlotte dreaded the thought of yet another failed introduction, and though she knew she would have to face her mother eventually, she decided to hide, rather than do so immediately.

"The garden, Sara. I can hide under the weeping willow. She won't come outside to look. It's here she'll look next. I need to hurry. I can use the back stairs, can't I? Come along, help with my things. I'll write outside instead," Charlotte said, and the two of them laughed as they scooped up the ink and quill, the discarded pieces of paper, and Charlotte's precious notebook, in which she wrote everything that came to mind about her plots and characters.

Opening the door cautiously, Charlotte found the corridor deserted, and now she stepped out of the library, turning to Sara and beckoning her to follow.

"Is it safe, Miss Davidson?" Sara asked, and Charlotte nodded.

"I think so. I can't hear anything. Come along," Charlotte whispered, and they made their way along the corridor in the direction of the backstairs.

The house was large and rambling, spread over three floors, but Charlotte knew every hiding place, and she listened for any sound of footsteps up ahead, ready to dart into one of the empty bedrooms they passed as they made their way towards the backstairs.

The library was on the second floor, facing south, to benefit from the morning sun. It was Charlotte's favorite place in the house, but it was also the next most likely place her mother would look for her, and now she paused to listen again for footsteps. It was the landing where they were most likely to be caught.

It had a gallery that looked over the hallway below, where a wide staircase led down to the marbled floor, across which lay the door to the drawing room. Should her mother appear from upstairs, or from the drawing room at the wrong moment, they would be caught.

"I don't hear anything," Sara whispered, and Charlotte nodded to her and smiled.

"If she asks, tell her you haven't seen me all day - say you think I've gone out. I'll get into trouble either way, so it hardly matters.

At least this way I can have some peace and quiet. I just need to start writing, that's all - it's the first line, and…" Charlotte began, but the sound of the drawing-room door opening caused her heart to skip a beat, and snatching the ink well from Sara, she hurried across the landing and through the door to the backstairs, breathing a sigh of relief when she knew she was safe.

It made Charlotte smile to think of her mother searching all over the house for her. But knowing the reason was less of a cause for amusement. In truth, Charlotte did not feel ready to marry, and her lack of confidence in talking to men meant she was always the last one on the wall at the many balls her mother insisted on taking her to.

Charlotte preferred her own company, or that of those friends she had known since childhood. She loved to read and write, to play the pianoforte, and to paint. Horses were her favorite subject, and the house was filled with the equestrian portraits she had painted.

But all of this was a disappointment to her mother, who made no secret of having desired a boy, rather than a girl. Illness following childbirth had prevented a second child, and Charlotte had grown up knowing herself to be a disappointment.

"I know they love me. I just wish they'd let me walk my own path," Charlotte thought to herself, as she made her way down the backstairs to the door leading out into the garden.

But Charlotte knew she was not like the heroines she conjured in her mind - not like Isabella, who had the freedom to choose whatever she wanted. The course of Charlotte's life was decided for her, and if her parents were to choose who she married, her husband would continue to decide things for her. That was the order of things, and there could be no escaping it.

As she closed the door behind her, the gardens presented a sense of freedom, albeit limited to the shrubbery at the far end and the red brick wall surrounding the formal beds. There was a weeping willow in the far corner, by the gate that led into the vegetable garden, and beneath the drooping branches, Charlotte knew she could hide herself away.

This was her intention, and glancing up at the drawing-room windows to check her mother was not looking out, Charlotte hurried across the grass, making her escape.

But he had no choice but to carry on - the meeting was arranged, and looking at his pocket watch, he realized he was already late.

"What's he going to think of me now?" he asked himself, as with trepidation, he approached the house, his shirt reminding him of the unexpected encounter he had had with Thomas Davidson's daughter.

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