Centaur and sensibility, p.1
Centaur and Sensibility, page 1
Centaur and Sensibility
Quenby Olson
Centaur and Sensibility
Eustace Haverstick lacked three crucial things: Wit, charm, and a chin. The third of these was of the greatest importance to Mary, as she could never envision herself as the wife of someone who resembled a fatuous turtle. Of course, it was no good saying as much to her mother, when things like dull conversation and disappointing jaws paled in comparison to a fortune of four thousand pounds a year.
“Four thousand pounds a year!” Mrs. Clegg cried. Or muttered. Or whispered beneath her breath as one would a secret prayer. “Oh, it will be the salvation of us, my dear!”
Because the Cleggs needed saving. Mary was the eldest of four sisters. Her father was the grandson of an earl, and her mother the daughter of a baron (a Scottish baron, yes, but it still counted for something). In the beginning, there had been money and there had been comfort. But Mr. Clegg had never done well with things like budgets and fiscal responsibility. What fortune had been theirs was swiftly lost to gambling, favors, and ill-fated speculation, in that order. They needed money, and Mr. Haverstick desired a wife from a family with noble antecedents. Successful marriages had been built on less, Mrs. Clegg pointed out. But Mary had no desire to construct the rest of her life on so faulty a foundation.
Now, she had not gone so far as to accept Mr. Haverstick’s proposal. Despite her mother already planning trips for the purchase of wedding clothes, despite the plight of her younger, equally-dowryless sisters should she refuse him, Mary could not bring herself to do it.
She considered taking her concerns to her mother, to sit and explain that she did not love Mr. Haverstick, that she would never love Mr. Haverstick, that she could not even forage within herself for a modicum of esteem for him, and that if she did marry him she would no doubt either perish of boredom or hurl herself off the nearest cliff. Unfortunately, she knew that her mother would explain to her that most people of refined society did not marry for such silly, unpredictable things as love, that the most secure and advantageous matches were typically made from fortunes and bloodlines and a desire to conquer France. And so, since Mary knew that speaking to her mother on the matter would be a fruitless endeavor, she packed her bags and ran away.
Well, it was only the one bag. She didn’t believe she would need more than that, really. An extra pair of stockings, a spare chemise, a comb and a novel and a few coins she had saved from her meager allowance of pin money. The last would be enough to purchase a seat on the mail coach, to make her way to Bath where her Aunt Addison lived. Her Aunt Addison had been married once, her husband having gone and died only eight months into their marriage. When Aunt Addison was asked if she would marry again, seeing as how she was only twenty years old when her husband passed, she declared she wouldn’t take another walk down the aisle if Bonaparte himself was prodding her along with a bayonet at her back.
Surely she, of all people, would understand and sympathize with Mary’s reluctance to bind herself in holy matrimony. Especially to one Eustace Haverstick.
Mary set out early in the morning, because the coach left Leeds promptly at eight o’clock and she did not want to miss it. Her mother and younger sisters all had a tendency to sleep in well past ten o’clock, and her father paid little attention to any of the goings on beneath his roof beyond what occurred in the household accounts, so it was easy enough for her to slip out through the back door, her steps barely heavy enough to knock the dew off the grass as she raced down the path before Hettie, their maid, could glance out the kitchen window and spot her escape.
The sun had not even risen yet. Instead, the sky carried that odd greenish glow it did when it seemed it could not decide if it was going to be a beautiful day or an inclement one. Mary hoped for the former, as the last three days had been damp and the eight mile walk to Leeds would already be soggy.
The road was empty, which was expected. Mary kept to the edge of it, away from the ruts and puddles that decorated most of the lane. She had three hours until the coach left Leeds. Three hours to traverse eight miles. Which she could accomplish on her own two feet if she kept a steady pace. Though finding a seat on a farmer’s cart or the like for a portion of that distance would be a tremendous boon.
It would all be simple enough to accomplish, she imagined. She had never traveled much before, but she had read a large number of novels, and in those books, most people seemed to be capable of traveling from here to there without much difficulty. A ride on a cart, an inexpensive seat on a coach, a borrowed horse, a well-dressed lady or a boisterous family offering a place in their carriage. She would be in Bath before she knew it, and then it would be a simple matter of finding her Aunt Addison’s home, and from there…
Well, something, of course. She could take on a role as her aunt’s companion. Or perhaps seek work as a governess. She could speak French well enough, and she knew how to play both the harp and the pianoforte. She was also quite good with numbers — unfortunately enabling her with a clear knowledge of her father’s poor care with the family finances — and could no doubt do something with that, as well.
And so it was with these optimistic thoughts that she strode rapidly forward, putting the first mile behind her before she even began to breathe faster, the handle of her bag only beginning to make its weight known to her right arm. She did not worry about what her family would think when they woke and discovered her missing. She had left a note telling them where she intended to go (though not how she intended to arrive there) and that she would be well and that perhaps Mr. Haverstick could shift his interest towards Isabella, her younger sister and a girl of sixteen who did not mind the absence of either chins or intellect in a prospective husband.
Another half mile was gone before the top of the sun crested above the horizon. The fact that she could see the sun at all filled her with hope that the day would continue to be fine. The ground beneath her boots was still soft in places, but it would dry soon enough with a few hours of sunshine and perhaps a light breeze to hurry her along the way, like a puff of wind to fill her sails.
At the sound of a horse behind her, she startled. She doubted it was anyone from her own household already. It was still early, her mother and sisters most likely to remain in bed for several more hours. But what if Hettie had discovered her absence? What if her note had already been found? Would it be enough to galvanize them into giving chase, in an attempt to herd her back towards home and an impending marriage with Mr. Haverstick? Or at the very least a thorough scolding?
Mary looked at her surroundings. Open fields on one side of the road, broken only by low stone walls and the occasional grazing cow. On the other side, tall trees and underbrush, all of it giving off a very uncultivated and slightly unwelcoming appearance.
She considered the fields, perhaps vaulting over a stone wall and ducking behind it until the person and the horse rode past. But the fields were muddy and as she was not certain of her vaulting capabilities, she turned and rushed into the woods instead. She only went far enough in to crouch behind a bush — wild raspberries, not yet ripe — and hope it would be enough to hide her until the horse and its rider were gone again from sight. She held still, breathing slowly, feeling the edge of her skirt catching on the raspberry bush but unable to do anything about it for fear of bringing attention to herself.
“Well, then,” she said, once she could trust herself to speak, the rider having trotted along his merry way. She stood up, untangled her hem from the thorns of the raspberry bush, checked to make certain her bag was still clutched tight in her hand, and decided what to do next.
She considered stepping back out onto the road, but as the morning was progressing and people were stirring from their houses, there was more chance she would be noticed and recognized. Their village was not a bustling metropolis, and everyone was too well acquainted with everyone else. To avoid being seen, she decided it would be best to keep to the edge of the trees for at least another mile or so, until the village was well behind her.
The woods themselves were not as unwelcoming as they had appeared when she stood on the outside looking in. The morning sunlight had yet to penetrate the heavy canopy, instead threading its way through the small gaps and interstices, illuminating the moss covered roots and the rock-strewn ground in an orange glow. It reminded her of stepping into church, the way the daylight shone through the colored glass of the windows. Yet it somehow seemed holier here, more deserving of her awe and respect than a building made of brick and rising damp.
She trod carefully at first, trying to not squash any mushrooms or wildflowers underfoot. Her skirt kept getting caught on small twigs and thorny stems, so she gathered it up to the level of her knees, tucking her bag under her arm to allow her full use of both of her hands. It was awkward at first, but soon she was moving as quickly as she had along the side of the road, and without the fear that she would be overtaken by someone who would recognize her. She knew the road that would take her to Leeds, though she hadn’t traveled it very often before. There would be a turn once she arrived at the village, but the woods along with a river — barely a river — would take her onto the correct road and towards her destination. At least that was how she remembered it, though it was a bit different seeing everything up close rather than from the inside of a carriage.
The sun rose steadily upwards, streaming through the branches and into her eyes, forcing her to adjust the brim of her bonnet so she wasn’t rendered blind by the brilliancy of the light. And so sh
The village should be just ahead, if she had not mistaken how far she’d already walked. There would be Mrs. Bailiwick’s house first, with the rose arbor and the small gazebo in the back garden. The Folger’s cottage would be after that. Then the bridge, crossing over the barely-a-river, and then…
Mary stopped. Surely she should have reached the village by now. She had walked there before, but always with a chaperone of some sort, either her mother leading the way or Hettie tagging along in her wake. The woods followed the road — or vice versa — until Mrs. Bailiwick’s house, where they thinned and curved back behind an old stone wall. But there was no apparent thinning to the growth and vegetation around her. If anything, the trees were larger, their massive trunks criss-crossed and garroted by vines that dangled young grapes and other fruit from behind their leaves.
It was time to return to the road, she realized.
She could see where it was, how the light altered at the edge of the woods, clearly only a dozen or so yards away. Her hand on her skirt and her arm clutching her bag as though it was a vital organ she struggled to keep contained in her body, she tramped over rocks and pine cones, wincing as her stockings were snagged by the reaching fingers of something that may or may not have been a holly bush. Only a few more steps, a few more…
But the road came no closer, or she moved no nearer to it.
“Oh, now stop it.” Her voice cut through the ambient sounds of the forest. A bird squawked in complaint, and a squirrel or some other creature raced across the branches that arced over her head.
She would not give way to panic. She had simply got herself turned around. Her mother had always told her and her sisters to avoid the woods, voicing such vague cautions as it being dangerous and a place to likely see them twist an ankle without anyone round and about to help. It tended to be a thing that everyone acknowledged as existing, yet always as something to be journeyed around, never through. Like a large boulder made of trees and bracken.
A half-spin on her heel and she looked back at where she had come from. Which was fully indistinguishable from everything else around her.
“Oh, bloody hell,” she said, the swear bursting out of her on a tidal wave of twenty-one years of frustration at her lot. The first attempt she had ever made to assert herself, after an entire lifetime of doing everything asked of her, of studying her French and practicing her watercolors and shaping herself into the woman her mother intended her to be… and she managed to lose herself in the woods within the first hour of her escape.
She thought of the mail coach at Leeds, scheduled to leave promptly at eight o’clock. She doubted she would make it now, unless her next few steps managed to take her out of the woods and plunk her back onto the road not far from where she’d originally left it. So if she could not find her way back, she would have to continue forward. Either that, or remain where she was and wait for fate or a wandering plot device to rescue her.
Go forward it was, then.
Or at least what she assumed was forward. The woods could not go on forever, she reasoned. England was an island, so at some point she would have to reach the edge of it and tumble into the sea as well as freedom. As long as she kept herself moving in a straight line, she would find her way out of it eventually. She let her skirt fall, tired of holding it up and attempting to save her hem. It was already snagged and streaked with dirt, and her arms were tired from the chore of clamping her bag to her side as she walked. Picking a direction — towards the sun, as it was still rising in the eastern portion of the sky, and Leeds was east of Millcross — she ducked her head and plodded forward. Again.
A part of her wished to parse the quandary of how she had so thoroughly managed to lose herself in the woods in a matter of minutes. It could not be natural. She knew her directions. She knew how to orient herself with the sun and the stars, having become obsessed with charts of the night sky and the angle of the sun in all of its seasons when she was a child. She even knew how to start a fire with only the things she might have on hand, but somehow she doubted that sending up a conflagration large enough to rival the burning of Rome would draw anyone’s attention to her plight.
She walked for an hour, or what she supposed was an hour. As the sun rose, the day quickly became warm. There was the buzz of insects in the air, the constant twitter of birds she could never see but for their shadows streaking across the forest floor. And then there was a new sound, the burble of water rushing over rocks, a stream flowing somewhere ahead. The overgrowth of ferns drew her towards it, along with the steady downward slope of the uneven ground.
It was an enticing prospect, the sunlight sparkling on the clear water, turning it into tumbling glass. She perched on the side of a rock, dropping her bag at her feet and resisting the urge to kick the thing with her booted foot. She had brought food with her, a few buns and a packet of dried, spiced apple rings that were Hettie’s specialty, but she was reluctant to eat them right away, out of fear she’d be trapped in the woods for days and left to ration them out for her survival.
Well, then. She bent forward, pulling off her gloves and dipping her hand in the water. The cold water rushed over her fingers, a sensation that made her smile. Even this was better than the thought of being married to Eustace Haverstick. Perhaps the woods would never let her find her way out. She could fashion a shelter for herself, forage for mushrooms and roots and berries, maybe set a few traps for small game. Become a wizened old woman in the woods, the sort that serves as inspiration for fairy tales and children’s rhymes.
It did not sound at all terrible, if she was to be honest with herself.
She leaned forward enough to cup her hand and drink a few sips of water before it trickled through her fingers. She had not thought to bring something to drink, because she had believed she would find her way onto the mail coach where there would be regularly scheduled pauses at inns and various other beverage-laden establishments. She took another sip and another, the water dribbling down her chin and onto the front of her gown, joining the dirt and the snags already decorating the muslin.
“Well, don’t I look a fright,” she said out loud, and wiped her hand dry on her skirt.
“I wouldn’t say that.”
The fact that Mary did not fall off the rock at the sound of a voice that was not her own was an accomplishment. Instead of falling, she stayed in the same position — bent forward, hand buried in her skirt, a single droplet of water clinging to the underside of her chin — and willed her heart to remain fixed in her chest, rather than catapulting itself out of her throat as it threatened to do.
She looked up first. He stood about a dozen paces away from her, enough distance between them that she was able to take in a complete picture of his appearance without needing to shift her gaze up and down. He did not wear a hat, a fact that would have rendered him immediately disreputable upon meeting her mother. But Mary was not her mother, and so an absence of hats did not succeed in painting the man in a villainous light. It also allowed her to survey him more clearly.
It was an odd way of calming herself down, something she often did when faced with a surfeit of anxiety. She would take note of things, tangible things, things she could see and label and file away inside her mind like little anchors connecting her to the moment. His hair was brown, not particularly dark or light, but with a hint of red in there that caught the sun. She could not tell the color of his eyes from this distance, but they were wide-set and held a wariness in them, as though he might be afraid of her. His complexion was tan, days spent under the open sky displayed on his cheeks and forearms. He wore a shirt, open at the throat, sleeves rolled up. And as for the rest of him…
Well, he was a centaur.
Mary had seen centaurs before. They were not uncommon in England. But they were also not often received in polite society. In her mother’s estimation, they existed in the same realm as merchants and clerks and people who did things in order to acquire their living. Necessary, but only tolerated at the most.
