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So that was it then. Like a little fish caught in her bare hands, no sooner had Clara found love then it had wriggled through

her fingers to return to the sea, lost to her forever. She had thought that she had wanted a diversion, a little adventure

before her marriage, but now it had veered into something deeper, something urgent.

As soon as the carriage came to a halt, Clara threw the door open and stumbled out before the coachman could come and assist

her down. All she wanted to do was run upstairs to her bedchamber, close up the curtains around her bed, and fall into a deep,

dark sleep and never wake up. She didn’t want to think about her trousseau or the lifestyle she would soon be living that

was made possible by her husband’s violent profession. All she felt was a hopeless sort of anger: Maurits had lied to her,

but worse, he had made her feel something that she had no hope of ever feeling again.

She had barely made it through the front hall when a voice stopped her.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Hands on hips, her mother stood blocking the stairs.

“I... Just up to my chamber. Helma and I just returned from town and I’m tired.” She forced a light smile, but the look

in her mother’s hard eyes said she was not fooled.

“Liar,” Katrina hissed. “Piet told me that he saw you with a young man the other night, so I sent a rider to follow you today. Did you really think that I wouldn’t discover the truth? Did you think that I am stupid?”

Clara’s blood turned cold, the black and white tiles beneath her feet swimming. “Mama, you don’t understand. It wasn’t—”

“You are a whore,” she said, interrupting her. “My daughter is an ungrateful whore.”

The words stung Clara as hard as if her mother had slapped her across the face. Why was she still surprised by the depth of

her mother’s cruelty?

Katrina stopped Atty, who was passing by, and snapped at her to fetch Theodor. “You are to be married to a good man in less

than a month’s time,” she continued in icy tones. “Your father and I have been indulgent parents, and this is the thanks that

you return to us.”

Clara cast her eyes down. It wasn’t that her mother spoke the truth—very much the opposite, for if they indulged her, it was

in the way that a farmer indulged a cow by fattening it before the slaughter—but she felt the driving nail in her coffin that

she was to be married in such a short time. Before it would have been enough to be mistress of her own household, the respected

wife of a good, albeit it somewhat dull, man. But she had felt the winds of freedom beneath her newly feathered wings, and

now she was being plucked and lamed.

“And you,” Katrina said, swinging her frigid gaze to Helma who was just coming in the door behind Clara.

“I must be lax in my attentions indeed if I failed to see that the woman who nursed my own child, who cared for her and watched her throughout her girlhood, could now betray me in such a wretched fashion.” Her mother put a bony hand to her throat as if overcome by grief.

But of course, her mother was never overcome by any emotion, let alone one which she was so familiar with as anger.

Somehow she was even able to squeeze a tear out of her dry eyes.

It had its intended effect. Helma looked as if Katrina had accused her of murder. “Oh, mistress, no! I never meant to betray—”

The tear vanished and Katrina held up her hand to silence Helma. “Pack your belongings and leave. You have until the end of

the day. Inka will see that you receive your wages.”

Theodor strode in, wiping his handkerchief at his lips as if he had just been enjoying a glass of wine. He took one look at

Helma’s tear-stained face and Clara’s downcast lashes and came to a stop. “What’s this?” he asked warily.

Without taking her eyes off Helma, Katrina answered, “Helma has been orchestrating rendezvouses between Clara and a young

man. I am dismissing her from this house.”

“Oh, but mistress, you can’t! Please!” Clara watched as if far away as Helma sank to her knees, her hands clasped before Katrina

in pleading supplication. Only hours ago she had cursed Helma as a ball and chain, but at the prospect of losing her, Clara

realized just how alone she would be without her lifelong friend. Who would sit beside her as she muddled through her needlework?

Who would comfort her after her mother struck her? Losing Maurits had been a blow, was she to lose the only other person in

the world who cared a fig for her too?

Finally, Clara found her tongue just as her father was about to speak. “Don’t blame Helma. It was all my idea and she never

wanted to go along with it. I told her we were going shopping. Mama, please, it is all my fault.”

“I agree—it is all your fault,” Katrina cut in. “You are a spiteful, wicked girl. Which is all the more reason you need a competent and godly chaperone to keep you out of trouble. Helma has proved herself to be incapable of this. As such, you will not leave this house again.”

“But I’m to be married in a month! You can’t think to keep me prisoner!” Then, glancing at Helma who was indignantly struggling

up from her knees, added, “Besides, Helma will be coming with me when I marry.”

“What you do as mistress of your own house is your business,” her mother said with a sniff of conceit. “But bear this in mind,

your new husband will expect complete obedience from you. I will not inform poor Mr. Edema of your conduct, as I want you

out of this house and married. But nor will I protect you any more than you deserve—servants talk, gossip spreads, and it

may reach him all the same.”

Coldness spread down Clara’s neck. “You would see me fail in my marriage?” she whispered.

Her mother scowled. “Of course not. I would see you humble and obedient. Neither of which you ever were while you lived here.”

Helma, who had been crying piteously to herself, looked up hopefully at this. “Mistress, please, I will watch her like a hawk.

Like my own babe, she is. I nursed her from my own teat. Both her and—”

Whatever she was about to say was lost as color rose to Katrina’s gaunt cheeks. “Collect your things,” she hissed between

gritted teeth. “Now!”

The last word reverberated off the tile floor and sucked the air right out of the hall. Even Theodor looked shaken.

But Helma didn’t move. She was biting her lower lip, looking at Clara as if battling with herself.

“Well? Do you want me to call Piet and have you thrown out with only the clothes on your back?”

Helma flinched at Katrina’s tone but otherwise ignored her words. “Clara,” Helma said, speaking quickly, “there’s something

you ought to know. When you were a baby—”

Red in the face, teeth clenched to shattering, Katrina swept over and before Helma could utter another word, slapped her clean across the face.

Clara let out a yelp as if the blow had hit her. Helma took a stumbling step backward. “Get out! Get out!” Katrina shrieked,

Theodor at her elbow, trying in vain to gain control of the situation. Helma stood there for a moment, dazed and tentatively

touching her face, and then turned and fled upstairs to pack her belongings.

Spinning to face her mother, Clara fisted her hands into tight balls at her side. “How could you? Helma did nothing wrong!”

“How dare you speak to your mother in such a fashion,” her father interjected, all ice and disapproval.

They hated her. Clara could see it in her parents’ eyes, feel it in the bite of their words. The realization had been simmering

for years, but it still left her cold. “Why?” she asked “Why do you always treat me thus? I may have been headstrong as a

child, but I always was loving. Yet you treat me as if the very sight of me sickens you.”

Katrina’s color was slowly returning to her face, but she still stood there breathing hard through her nose, the lace collar

of her dress rising and falling in great heaves. “How little you understand. Go to your bedchamber and meditate on just what

it means to honor one’s parents.”

Upstairs it was quiet. Clara poked her head into Helma’s antechamber, but it was empty. The little trunk at the end of Helma’s

bed was gone, and the cross that hung on the wall had been removed, leaving a t-shaped stain on the wall where the sun had

shone around it for nearly twenty years.

Leaning against the door frame, Clara closed her eyes and let out a long sigh.

Helma had once told her a story about a maiden, who when she touched things, turned them to gold.

Clara seemed to have the opposite ability; everything she touched crumbled and turned to dirt.

Besides Maurits, she didn’t have another soul who she considered a friend.

And Helma had been so much more than just a nurse, a companion.

She had been a constant in her life, a mother sometimes and a confidante.

How she missed Fenna. Clara flung herself down on her bed, fully clothed on top of the counterpane, tears freely flowing.

And now she would have neither. It was better that they were all gone from her now, for she could no longer harm them with

her rotten touch. She would dutifully go off to her new life with the kind and eager Hendrik, never to see Maurits again,

or Helma. She made a little noise of self-reproach amidst her tears. Even now she could not help being selfish. She was only

sorry because she had lost them, not because of her reckless behavior.

Maurits. Her tears dried and she rolled over onto her back. What torture it was to discover that she felt anything more for

him than passing fancy, that he was more than a diversion from her quiet life. What torture to know what it was to wrap her

arms around his solid body, to know the comfort of resting her head against his chest and not being able to again. What torture

not knowing what it would feel like to lie with him as man and wife lie, and that some other girl would know, and not her.

The thought of lying with Hendrik made her stomach plummet. It had all been so simple before her feelings ruined everything.

She sat up. Perhaps there was another option. She couldn’t stop her marriage, but Hendrik could. What if he were to change

his mind about her? What if he heard of her behavior with Maurits? Or something else entirely, something fabricated. What

if she made herself so unpleasant that he couldn’t stand the thought of going through with the marriage?

There was still her dowry to consider, which she knew was generous. Would a man, especially a business man such as Hendrik Edema, care enough about his wife’s comportment to forgo a beneficial alliance and sizable dowry?

And then there was her mother. If life under the same roof with Katrina was strained now, what would her mother do when she

found out that the brilliant match they had made for her had been broken? Clara threw herself back down on the bed with a

sigh. Even the prospect of running her own household now held little appeal if the man of the house was anyone other than

Maurits.

Clara allowed herself a few more tears before wiping her nose and sitting up. Perhaps there was no getting Helma back, but

Clara owed it to her to at least try to make up for what had happened. She would start there. Then she could worry about Maurits

and Hendrik, and the black ball of tangled twine that seemed to be her future.

Carefully opening the window casement, she leaned out and whistled softly into the dusky evening. Would the creature come

to her? Holding her breath, she strained to hear the sound of wings. She didn’t have to wait long; a moment later a fan of

black and white feathers came to land on the sill.

“Clara?”

Her mother’s voice sounded from the doorway. She narrowed her eyes as Clara hastily closed the window and clasped her hands

at her waist. “What are you doing?”

Clara shrugged. “I’m still allowed to sit and think, aren’t I?”

Katrina’s expression suggested that she wished Clara wouldn’t. “Get dressed. Mr. Edema is coming for dinner and he will want

to see you. You might as well at least try to look the part of eager bride.”

Clara bit back a groan. An evening with Hendrik, enduring his clumsy attempts at conversation, was the last thing of which she felt capable. And how was she supposed to find Helma if she was expected to sit through an endless dinner? “I can’t dress my hair. Helma always did it for me.”

Katrina pressed her lips, looking as if she wanted to argue. But Clara was right and she knew it. “I’ll send in Nela. She

will have to attend to the both of us in the month before you leave.”

Suddenly it all came to Clara. Her mother wanted to be under the same roof with Clara just as little as Clara wanted to share

a roof with her. Yes, Katrina might shriek and rail at her for allowing Hendrik to slip through her fingers, but would she

really punish Clara by keeping her under lock and key here? There would be other marriage offers, surely there would be with

her dowry. And while none of them would be Maurits, they would buy her time to think. To plan.

Clara put on her brightest smile, then immediately moderated it, lest her mother become suspicious. “Yes, Mama,” she said

obediently.

Katrina gave her a lingering look, and then swept out, calling for her maid.