*A/N- Just a short Historical Fiction. Found an old piece I worked on years ago and decided to throw it out there. Comments? Questions? Leave me some reviews peeps! And Enjoy! Updates every day or two so stay tuned.
Clarissa's amber eyes shone out from the stark paleness of her face, apprehension and
restlessness causing them to be as much defined by the light crimson stain stealing up her cheekbones
as by the shadows from the flickering candlelight. Her disheveled hair had strayed from its pins some
time ago, and so she had let it fall out in its uncommonly long auburn curls that had caused so much
distraction among her mother and sisters. Upon viewing herself as quietly as possible in the mirror
hanging on the opposite wall, she resolved she looked much like a mad-woman, very much alone,
wandering desolate around the room as if she was looking for something yet without anything left she
dared for in the world. Clarissa's observation unsettled her, and she wandered back over to her
overstuffed, poorly patched couch that she had smuggled with some difficulty into the room, she had
been "missing" for only two days in her household, and she already she was wondering how long it
would be before she started resembling inside the woman whose appearance she bore on the outside.
This unknown space consisting of mysterious uncalculated area in between certain closed off rooms in
her house that had served her well before, but never for so serious a purpose. If she was to survive until
her seventeenth birthday unmarried to a certain pompous windbag named Sir Jeffery who was nearly
forty years her senior, she would have to stay in this space, until her family had given up all hope of her
ever returning, and upon her return would agree to her singleness, until she would be, and could be wed
on her own terms to the man of her choice. Clarissa amused herself, by musing, and resolving that had
Sir Jeffery been present to observant the current state of her fastidious appearance he might most
certainly decide to leave her be and all her current problems would be blissfully for naught.
Clarissa had only told one person of her whereabouts, and the place of her true concealment, a
servant girl Reya who was Clarissa's sisters personal servant, with whom she had an unlikely mutual
acquaintance through Reya's adopted big brother, who was Clarissa's best friend Jamie. The two
girls kept up an indifferent acquaintance except for when sympathy preyed upon the emotions of Reya,
such as in this situation, with a forced marriage, and Reya had consented to bring victuals to Clarissa
every night before she went to bed in the servants quarters. Clarissa was brought back to the present
not by the dying candles the way she usually was, when she had been thinking, but rather by the
uncharacteristic slamming of doors, and the detectable sounds of rushing and shouting. On the floor
below her she heard an alarming clatter, as if someone had been dragging their feet and had stumbled,
knocking over things in the process, and there was a scurrying to the room below her, she stood
impossibly still, hardly daring to breathe, not daring to even shift her weight to a different foot. Once
she heard the sounds below her subside, she dared breathe again, but not so freely as before. Feeling
faint she hastened to her couch, and lying there tried to resume her normal breathing in that stuffy
room. She had almost calmed herself down until she barely caught the sigh of the easing open of a door,
the sound of a person, overly cautious, trying not to make a sound, even a sound barely audible over a
whisper, at that her heart started racing again. It was not time for Reya to come, had she been found
out, had Reya told her brother, or someone else where Clarissa was hiding, had the people rushing
about in the room below her somehow heard her step ever so silently to her bed?
She exhaled as Reya emerged from the shadows of the deep corners of the room, with her basket of food, and a jug of water.
"Reya!" Clarissa exclaimed in an exasperated whisper, "Why on earth are you here so early? You nearly
gave me a fit thinking it was, well, someone else!" she blustered.
"I'm sorry miss," said Reya quietly in a subdued manner, "but your aunt just arrived here today, and I'm afraid I will not get as many chances to
come to you, so I stole away as quietly as I dared that I might be able to tell you."
"My aunt!" whispered Clarissa excitedly, "why is my aunt here?"
"She's here because of you miss," said Reya placidly.
" She's here because they all think you ran away, oh miss they are all so worried miss. But right now miss before I leave, I need you to drink this
coffee before I go, if your mother finds anything missing now, and in her current state with you, run away and all, she might break!"
Clarissa sighed, and then taking the coffee gulped it down, pausing halfway before she was through saying "This tastes sweeter
then it normally does, is there more sugar in this?"
"Yes miss,"Reya said, a undecipherable look flashing through her eyes before it was gone.
" I thought it might be a treat for you."
"Oh well, thank you Reya for everything." Clarissa stated, "but I think I'll take a nap now, I'm
suddenly feeling a bit tired."
"Yes miss, and your welcome, and I'm so sorry," she whispered as Clarissa succumbed to unconsciousness while Reya slipped the sleeping
sedative back into her apron pocket as she went back downstairs to attend to the quickly growing masses of sickening people.