Cassandra's Sister Read Free Page A

flung down the bonnet which still hung around her neck, peeled off her gloves and unbuttoned the close-fitting jacket she wore over her dress. How she hated these inconveniently fashionable jackets, so hot in summer and too short to offer any warmth in winter. And where was her parasol? Abandoned in the kitchen, probably, to be tripped over by Mrs Travers, the cook, who would blame Kitty for leaving it there. Not for the first time the thought occurred to Jenny that it was little wonder that men scorned – or, worse still, were unaware of – women’s true mental abilities, when all they saw and heard of the lives of the female sex was concerned with tight clothes and trivial objects.
    She knelt on the tapestry cushion on her side of the window seat. She and Cass had each adopted “my side”, as children will, when this little sitting-room had first been presented to them, and they had never broken the habit. Jenny’s eyes felt hot. She rested her brow against the cool window pane, which faced away from the sun. The trees at the end of the garden looked black against the twilit sky.
    Her heart somersaulted. The trees – tall, still, silent – brought to her mind a vision of that symbol of man’s hatred and destruction, the guillotine. She could not make it disappear. Her brain was alive with questions she could neither ask aloud, nor expect to be answered. What had been Jean’s thoughts as he mounted the scaffold? Did he have the chance to write a last message to Eliza, or his family in France? Did he break down, or face the blade proudly?
    Jenny did not know when she had ever encountered a more distressing thought. She wished she could be calm about it. But the combination of an energetic imagination and a sympathetic nature made her agitated sometimes. And Cousin Eliza, so often the antidote to this woeful tendency, was now its cause.
Jenny, you are making Eliza’s bereavement into a drama of your own
, she scolded herself.
Your vanity knows no bounds
.
    â€œGod give Eliza strength!” she whispered. “And show me how to act in her presence!”
    As the daylight crept away Jenny went on sitting there on the window seat, her head bowed, her hands in her lap, as if she were at church. But she was not praying; neither was she aware of time passing. She was thinking, thinking…
    When Kitty came in to inform her that dinner was ready she had not even taken off her boots. “Oh, Miss Jane!” exclaimed the maid anxiously. “Do you not want your slippers? And you still have your jacket on. Let me get your shawl.”
    Jenny allowed Kitty to help her off with the boots and jacket. “Kitty…” she began.
    â€œYes, miss?”
    â€œYou went to school, did you not, here in the village? You know your letters?”
    â€œYes, miss.”
    â€œDo you ever read novels?”
    â€œNovels, miss?” Kitty, inspecting the soles of Jenny’s boots, sounded uncertain.
    â€œYes. Mrs Radcliffe’s, for instance.
The Romance of the Forest
?”
    â€œOh! Yes, miss, I’ve looked into that one. Not when I was supposed to be at my work, though, miss, ask Mrs Travers.”
    â€œOf course. Those boots are perfectly clean, you know. The lane is quite dry. Do you like romances, or stories which frighten you?”
    This time Kitty’s bewilderment at being questioned by her young mistress overcame her. She tidied away the boots, folded the jacket, bobbed a curtsey and fled.
    Jenny hugged her knees, wondering, wondering… Then she stirred herself, slipped her feet into her soft leather indoor shoes and went to the looking-glass on the wall. A round face regarded her, framed with curls crushed by her discarded bonnet.
You are here, in your room, safely surrounded by those you love
, she told her reflection silently.
But where does Jean Capot de Feuillide
lie now
?

Jenny
    J enny often considered how lucky she was. Unlike the orphaned Eliza,