An Innocent Affair

Prologue

"It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it." Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

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Prologue

November 1811

Cressida Martin couldn't remember much of what life was like before her father had left for France.

She sometimes liked to imagine that he had left their family home for a noble cause like other men did; to fight for King and Country. She liked to think of herself and her mother maintaining their home faithfully while they awaited his triumphant return.

But he never came back. Nor would he ever.

Cressie's mother, Mrs Anne Martin, knew it also.

Mrs Martin held herself remarkably well when in public. She had detested the narrative of the abandoned wife and preferred to think of herself as a widow. People always knew that she wasn't, but they were far too polite to mention the philandering Mr Martin to her face.

Cressie watched from her bed as her mother powdered her face with a concoction that she had made herself. Her collection of cosmetics and perfumes had long since run out, and she resorted to more economical ways of enhancing her natural beauty.

Mrs Martin had indeed been a stunning debutante, and still retained much of the beauty that had attracted the suitors to her doorstep many years earlier.

"The vicar has assured me that we will be introduced to the duke and duchess tonight, Cressie," Mrs Martin said in anxious anticipation. She pinched her own cheeks before she stood up from the small dressing table. She made her way over to the bed to stand before Cressie, appraising her with a critical brow and her narrowed grey green eyes.

"Don't you mean the vicar will be shopping me to the duke and duchess tonight?" Cressie replied, before she bit down on her tongue.

Mrs Martin arched one of her eyebrows. "Get out every one of the comments now," she instructed firmly, "for I do not want to hear a single word from you this evening that is not delicate, charming or lovely."

Cressie groaned before she threw her head back onto the bed, at which her mother scolded her for trying to ruin the hairstyle that she had just spent the last hour pinning.

Mrs Martin laughed facetiously. "It is almost as though she imagines we have fortune to spare so that she can run about like a child a little longer." Mrs Martin spoke to no one, and yet Cressie knew her mother's words were meant to plant guilt in her stomach.

Cressie was well aware of their dire financial situation. She had been since she was a child. Though, in truth, she still feltlike a child. She would not be seventeen until next April.

Cressie had not known a feeling of permanence in a very long time. She couldn't really remember it, similar to how she couldn't remember much of the time when her parents had lived together as a married couple.

She was used to uprooting herself and travelling with only a suitcase carrying every single one of her possessions. Cressie and her mother depended on the grace and generosity of friends, neighbours, and the few relatives who were still living. During the winter months they stayed in London in a flat belonging to a cousin of Mrs Martin. Cressie hated London in the winter. But she never complained.

The summer months were spent between the parishes of Brimley and Seabridge. Brimley was a small parish in Derbyshire, and it was near the estate where Cressie had been born and had spent most of her infancy and toddler years. The vicar was still good to Mrs Martin and helped her to rent a cottage that was vacated by its owners in favour of Scotland. Mrs Martin had similar arrangements in Seabridge.