Glass Slippers [1st Draft]

7. Father (Part One)

Chapter Seven:

Father

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Everything seemed to pass by in a blur and Clara couldn't help but feel like a ship in the middle of a storm. She felt like any moment she would be pitched overboard into the choppy waves. Except she wasn't a ship, and the chaos around her wasn't waves. The chaos was the aftermath of the letter.

Moments after the messenger had told Clara of her father's accident, Linette came hurrying into the room, demanding to know what was going on. Soon those demands turned to arguments over whether or not Clara's father would be allowed to come back home until finally Linette and the messenger came to an agreement. Her father would be coming home, but he would be doing it in the presence of a doctor.

All the while, Clara kept quiet. She was past the point of panic or premature grief or even shock. The only thing she could feel was a strange sense of loss and hopelessness. If her father was as bad off as the messenger said he was, it could be possible that she would be losing yet another parent very, very soon.

"Clara, go get the room ready for your father's arrival," Linette said, bringing Clara out of her thoughts. Clara nodded without arguing. Linette seemed just as stressed and worried as Clara was and her words had been said without the normal bite.

Walking swiftly to her father's room, she quickly cleaned it up as quickly as possible, moving trunks and chairs out of the way so when the men came in carrying him they'd have a clear path to the bed. She fluffed the pillows and then dashed down to the kitchen pump to fill a bowl full of water and to grab some linens. Surely, they would be needed.

She had just returned to her father's room when she heard a loud commotion downstairs. Running to stand within the upstairs hallway, she looked over the banister to see two men coming in, each supporting one side of her father. She hurried back to the room and once the men had reached it, she kept the door open for them, taking a step out of the way so they could pass.

"Excellent, you already have the water and linens," one of the men said, as they stood up from lowering her unconscious father onto the bed. "He is running a high fever and will need to have a wet towel placed to his brow every other hour. It is also important he stays warm. Do you have any extra blankets?"

"Yes, I'll go get them now."

"Wonderful. Now, girl, I was told to deliver this to a Miss Clara? Can you tell me where your mistress is?" The man, presumably the doctor, said. Clara turned a slight pink in embarrassment.

"I am Clara."

"Oh, my apologies," the man said, looking puzzled. This caused Clara to turn even pinker. "Here, this is from the Duke. He sends his condolences to your family."

"Thank you."

"Right, well, now that everything is in order, good day Miss Corden." Both men tipped their hats at her and walked out of the room, leaving Clara and her father alone. His condolences? Clara couldn't help but give a silent scoff as she went over to a nearby closet to grab another blanket. Her father wasn't dead yet. Offering condolences when there wasn't even a death!

She tucked in the edges of the blanket around her father and pulled up a wooden stool next to his bedside. Clara took the bowl and linens in her lap and set to work drenching one of the cloths in the water, all the while feeling a number of different emotions. On the one hand, she was perturbed for the Duke's "condolences", and on the other, she was more than a little embarrassed. They really thought she was a serving girl.

She gently placed the dampened cloth onto her father's forehead, sweeping his pepper-grey hair out of the way. Looking down at him she felt a pang. He seemed so much older, even older than he was just that morning. His face was lined like the crumples in a pile of bedsheets and the laugh lines around his eyes were joined by even deeper frown lines around his mouth, frown lines he didn't even have three years ago.

She decided she didn't want to think too much into it, but as the night wore on, it seemed she didn't have a choice. Her mind wandered to places minds only wander when they have little to occupy them, or rather too much. Clara sat there, hunched over her father's bed, her mind lost in memories of the happier times that were only ever memories anymore.

Clara sat with her father for hours, keeping a careful watch and a gentle hand on his brow. She was watching his face again when Clara's eyes darted away from her father's face as a throat being cleared made her jump.

"Mrs. Landon?" Clara asked, turning around.

"Yes, dear. I'm here to remove you from your post."

"It can't have been more than an hour..."

"It's been three," Mrs. Landon responded softly as she took the cloths and bowl out of Clara's lap. Mrs. Landon helped Clara out of her seat, and for a moment they both stood there until Clara rushed into Mrs. Landon's open arms.

A hug from Mrs. Landon was everything a hug should be. Clara always felt warm and safe and incredibly loved when she hugged her, despite the fact they had only hugged two other times. Once on the night of her mother's death, once at her mother's funeral, and now, the eave of what many were seeing as one of the nights leading up to her father's demise.

They stood like that for what seemed like forever, Clara trying to stifle her sobs and Mrs. Landon muttering words of comfort in her ear until finally Clara's tears had dried and they both stepped back.

"Thank-"

"Miss Clara, don't thank me. If your father had married the right sort of woman, it wouldn't have been me who was comforting you. Your father is a good man, a good employer, but you deserve to have someone with you who feels for him in the same familial way that you do, and I don't mean your siblings."

Clara almost gasped in shock at Mrs. Landon's words. Mrs. Landon was always mindful to propriety and hardly ever spoke a bad word about anyone. It was one of the reasons this was the third time they'd hugged and that she didn't stand up for herself when Linette got angry in the tea parlor nine months ago.

"Mrs. Landon..." Clara trailed off not knowing what to say. The woman she had seen as almost a second mother looked at her with a certain kind of sadness in her eyes.

"Miss Clara, go to bed. You will need your rest come morning." Clara nodded in agreement and left the room, looking back only once to see Mrs. Landon wiping a hand under her own eye to ward off some unseen tear.

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What do you think so far? Will her father die?

Also, this is another chapter I've split into two as of 6/24/17. I wanted to add more to the second part and since there was a time jump, it seemed like a good place to split the two sections up.