Catherine Raines
April 01, 2008 6:37 PM
Well, there go all my summer plans out the window... by Catherine Raines
Catherine rubbed the tips of her fingers against the edges of the sealed parchment, biting her lip a little anxiously as she studied the family crest so carefully centered in a pool of red wax. That painful precision was almost as much her father's hallmark as the cramped, slanting handwriting of the address, and as ominous. Everyone knew that Charles hated writing, which made any documents written in his own hand either for a very important person or concerning some very important matter. She wasn't someone important, so it had to be something important.That had the potential to be bad.
Very bad.
She wished now that she had abandoned her habit of waiting to be alone to read letters. If she had just opened it the moment it arrived at breakfast, she wouldn't have had time to look at and think about it and become afraid of lifting the seal. It was too late for that now, thought, and she'd done this enough to know she couldn't count on more than a few minutes more to herself. She had to open the thing and get it over with.
The letter itself, like the address, was in Charles Raines' handwriting, but with uniformly smaller characters. It was, she thought, a little strange, as he'd had enough of a page left after his signature to scrawl a series of larger lines in what she thought was Latin, though she could not read it or write it or speak it. Thinking about it further was made impossible as she began taking in the parts that had been meant for her and the matters of Latin and handwriting left her mind without leaving a trace.
Catherine Elizabeth, it read.
After you leave Sonora this year, Lorenzo will take you to Spain to stay with my sister, Margaret. I shall come to collect you later. I expect you to show M. all the respect you would
I shall be in Scotland, doing business. Do not contact for less than an emergency. Do not contact Bradleys, Robinond-or-Raines relations, or Mrs. R.
Charles Raines
That was it. Instructions to stay with her least-favorite aunt without contact with the rest of her family and some scribbles in a language she didn't even understand. That, that, and nothing else. Both sides of the letter began to cave in on themselves as she fought the urge to wad it up and throw it.
She was turning sixteen this summer. She was supposed to be at the center of attention, dancing and getting jewels from her parents and having a ball held especially in her honor. She was supposed to be courted, even if she and the boys in question knew perfectly well that their fathers didn't mean to marry them. She was not supposed to be packed off to the stupidest corner of the stupidest country in the world with the second-worst woman in the world. It wasn't fair!
She felt flushed and strained, as if she were about to cry. The summer she turned sixteen was going to be the worst one of her life, she just knew it. Margaret hated her. Margaret always had, and Margaret always would. Even Daddy knew that much, and he liked to think the best of the old hag. If she couldn't go home, why couldn't she go with him to Scotland, or to wherever her mother was, or to Aunt Ellie's? At least they liked her and wouldn't try to make her more miserable. Margaret would. Spending an entire summer with Margaret was the worst thing she could -
Her eyes moved, seemingly of their own accord, to the beds of her friends. No, spending a summer with her awful aunt, no matter how belittled she was during it, wasn't the very worst thing she could think of. That honor went to getting a letter from Charles saying she was no longer a member of his family, closely followed by that family losing all its money and by being like Gwen, hovering at the edges, never quite in or quite out. At least she had money and a double handful of relatives who liked her. None of the others had that much left.
Which meant she couldn't even complain about her lot to any of them.
She threw herself down onto her own bed, kicking hard at the velvet bedskirt in a childish display of temper.
It still wasn't fair.
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Catherine Raines
Well, there go all my summer plans out the window...
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