SOJOURNER

Novella

by

Jo Lauer

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA ,1995

       Calle pulled into the crowded parking lot, switched off the ignition, and stared straight
ahead while the ancient Honda chugged a death rattle, shuddered, then lay still.
She sat, gathering her will, fully aware that she was delaying the moment of confrontation.
She noted the shiny, cherry red Alfa Spider to her left and the sleek silver Mercedes to her
right. How could people afford cars like that? she wondered.
     Calle reached for the door handle, then stopped. She checked her teeth in the rear view
mirror, ran a finger under each eye and caught remnants of eyeliner that had smeared out
of alignment in the heat. Okay. Door open.
     A trickle of sweat ran between her breasts, and her upper lip suddenly moistened as she
lifted her foot out of the car. The sun sliced her vision. She slipped her sunglasses on,
grabbed her rainbow-colored key chain, climbed out of the car and took a determined breath.
     The sight of Jesse leaning casually against the red brick entrance of Georgia O'Quiche,
where they'd agreed to meet for brunch, made Calle's heart jump. The white shirt with the top
two buttons undone, sunglasses casually hanging from the "V", hands stuck in pockets of
Levis that fit like a glove…it was enough to make a girl woozy.
     Just friends—yeah, right, she mused.
     "Hey, babe," the familiar greeting, accompanied by a light kiss on the cheek, fanned an ember
somewhere south of Calle's belly button and she smiled weakly. Her mouth felt full of cotton.
     Her ex-lover's hand was warm on the small of Calle's back as Jesse ushered her into the
one remaining booth by the window. The burgundy vinyl seat was toasty in the morning sun
that streamed through the plate glass. Wooden blades of an overhead fan whirred in
anticipation of the forecasted heat wave.
     "Sweetheart, I hope you don't mind—I invited Ande to meet us for brunch," Jesse said.
       "Your roommate is joining us?" Calle settled into the booth opposite Jesse.
     "She and Liz had another fight this morning, and she's feeling pretty shaky. I thought she
could use the company." Jesse leaned her elbows on the table and blinked her brown
doe eyes at Calle.
     "Uh, I was sort of hoping that…."
     The waitress, dressed in a wilted pink uniform with a white plastic badge that said,
"Hi, I'm Carol," didn't care about Calle's hope. She sauntered up to the table, raised a
penciled-in eyebrow over a smudge of blue shadow, and placed menus before them.
Calle recognized her from the community, where she went by the name of Blaze.
     Carol smiled broadly at Jesse and ignored Calle.
     "There will be someone joining us," Jesse said, flashing Carol a bedazzling smile. Carol,
suddenly flustered, dropped the extra menu on the ground. Her mauve acrylic nails fluttered
like spastic moths. Jesse had that effect on women.
     Calle groaned, reached over, picked up the menu, and slapped it gracelessly on the table.
She frowned at Carol. Jesse snorted, thoroughly enjoying the whole scene.
     Carol, batted artificially elongated eyelashes at Jesse, said, "I'll be right back with your
water," implying Calle could go get her own. Calle rolled her eyes.
     "So what happened between your roommates?" Calle asked. Carol was hovering over
the salt-and-pepper shakers at the next table, one ear slightly cocked like a Doberman.
Calle fixed her with a stare and the waitress retreated into the kitchen at the far end of the room.
     "The usual—arguing and yelling. Ande threw a cup of hot coffee at Liz," Jesse said
nonchalantly. Calle felt her jaw and neck muscles tighten like a turtle pulling into its shell.
     "Geez," she muttered.
     "Liz packed her bags, tossed her belongings in the car, and headed south. Left that
wretched parrot her sister gave them last Christmas," she gave a short chuckle.
     Jesse held the menu at arm's length, cocked her head to one side and squinted—
an unconscious gesture that touched Calle in a bittersweet way.
     Calle reached in her bag, withdrew a generic pair of reading glasses, and slid them across the table.
      "Actually, I was hoping to have some time alone with you," she tried again as she scanned
her menu. "I really miss you. I think we should reconsider this ‘just friends' thing," she said,
careful not to make eye contact. Her heart began to beat faster.
       "I miss you too, babe…" Jesse said without much conviction, "but…"
     Studiously attending to their menus, neither had noticed Ande's arrival at their table. She
stood a moment trying to read the level of tension before clearing her throat.
     "Bad timing?" she offered.
     "Hey, girl," Jesse grinned, offering her best butch-to-butch greeting, and motioned Ande
into the booth next to her.
     "You know Calle, right?" Jesse nodded across the table.
     Calle set her menu down, and looked up into an ocean of blue eyes smiling at her in
recognition. Calle blushed. Their first meeting had been in the middle of a downpour
after the last New Year's Eve dance. They had briefly shared an umbrella and an equally
brief but intense mutual attraction.
     "It was a dark and stormy night, if I remember?" Ande teased in a sexy melodramatic
voice that set Calle's stomach aquiver.
     Calle smiled weakly, and made a waving gesture with her hand as if to brush something
away. She fanned herself with her menu and glanced at Jesse. Jesse cocked her head
and raised her eyebrows in question.
     Calle shrugged. An odd sense of deja vu washed over her.
     Jesse excused herself and headed toward the restroom.
------------------------

ENGLAND, JULY 1870

       The two women finished their afternoon tea and left the gazebo. They walked arm in arm
across the manicured lawn, past the formal gardens back toward the main house. Lady Jessica,
the older of the two, a frumpish woman in her middle years, walked with a slight limp and leaned
heavily on Claire's arm. Her muslin morning dress hung limply in the heat. Jessica's short gray-streaked
hair, matted close to her scalp from the heat, gave the appearance of a toddler just awakened from
a long nap as she removed her sun hat to fan herself. Claire, tall and sturdy as a willow, as her
father used to say, cut her normal stride in half. She carried her body in an unselfconscious way
that caused others to regard her with a smile. Her father, deceased now, and for whom she felt
a childlike yearning, used to refer to her as his ‘little calf' through her awkward adolescence.
     The heat of the late summer sun had left damp patches on Claire's back and under her arms
that cooled as they walked. The scent of lilac lingered in the air.
       "Just an intimate gathering of the local gentry, dear, nothing elaborate, I promise," pleaded
Jessica, Claire's sister-in-law. "Leopold and I feel you've been cloistered far too long." She
returned her sun hat to her head and tilted it against the sun.
     "I do wish you wouldn't bother, Jessica. Really, I'm not at all interested in finding a husband,"
Claire responded,trying to keep the pique out of her voice.
     Jessica raised an eyebrow. She patted Claire's hand and gave her a ‘you're-trying-my-patience'
smile. They approached a fork in the path. To the left was the larger Longwell Estate; to the right
and farther down the path was Claire's cottage. Claire had moved into the small slate
groundskeeper's cottage on her brother's estate the winter before, to retreat after the painful
ending of a matter of the heart, details of which she carefully guarded.
     With a sigh, Jessica tried once more. "It would mean so much to your brother and me."
     Claire shook her head wearily. As she looked into her sister-in-law's soulful brown eyes,
her exasperation melted. "Oh, very well, then. It's the least I can do. You and Leopold have
been so good to me," she said. It was hard to say no to Jessica.
     "I'll send the girl over with a light meal early this evening then," Jessica said.
     They parted with kisses. Claire walked slowly with eyes downcast, deep in thought. A frown
pulled her lips and creased her brow. She kicked at sticks and small stones along the path to her
cottage. The magnificence of the panoramic view, open countryside and rolling hills, was lost on her.
       As she approached her cottage, nestled in the timberland at the back acreage of the estate,
she felt sad of heart. Tears of frustration formed and stung just behind her eyes for having given in
once more to social convention, even at the pleading of her dear friend. That it should be unthinkable
to be a twenty-five year old woman alone without a husband to watch over her was, to Claire,
a preposterous notion.
     She threw the wooden door to the cottage open with a bang. A large Calico cat jumped from
the table and retreated behind the wood-burning stove.
     "Sorry, Mouse, it's not your fault," Claire muttered.
     Claire moved listlessly about the cottage. She poured a basin of steaming water from the
heavy cast iron kettle on the hearth, and washed her face.
     The supper, brought up early from the main house, a piece of roasted rabbit trapped fresh
that morning, a boiled potato, and some gooseberries, sat untouched on the bare wood table.
      As she pushed back from the table, Mouse jumped up and sniffed at the morsels.
     "Go on, then. At least one of us has an appetite," she said. Mouse's whiskers twitched with delight.
     Claire's eyes moistened with affection as her companion of fourteen years feasted on the
rabbit. She remembered, as a child, following a faint mew into the woods to find an abandoned
little bag of bones with a head twice as large as its torso. The two were inseparable from the
day she brought the kitten home in her apron pocket. She reached over and stroked the massive
bulk of mottled brown, black and tan fur, and was rewarded by a guttural purr.
     The sun set in hews of deep russet, violet, and gold beyond the window as Claire stood before
her armoire. The wardrobe she had brought with her consisted of practical clothing: a heavy cape
and three dresses of sturdy material with fitted bodices and long skirts. Jessica, deeming her
unsuitably prepared for genteel country life, had slipped in a gown of printed silk with scandalously
short sleeves and a scooped neckline, along with a fawn-colored simple-but-elegant long-sleeved linen dress.
     Claire stood for a moment, regarding herself in the beveled mirror embedded in the door of
the armoire and grimaced at her annoyingly pert nose and the splash of freckles across it. She
pulled out the simple fawn-colored gown. From a drawer she withdrew a gold medallion on a
delicate chain, a gift from her great-aunt Clarissa. She felt a special bond with her aunt who had
never married. As Claire fastened it about her neck, she felt it warm to the temperature of her skin.
Her wheat colored hair, the same color as the late summer hills, was caught up in a knot on top
of her head—a few stray tendrils refusing the capture framed her strong oval face.
     She moved slowly, prolonging the time when she would have to leave the comfort and quietude
of her small cottage. Mouse was perched on the table, a woebegone look in her sea-green eyes.
     Claire slipped into her boots, removed her cloak from the wooden peg by the door, and blew
out the lamp.
     The chestnut, hitched earlier to the cart, waited at the post outside her door. The mare whinnied
with impatience and tossed her hickory-colored mane.
     "I'm not all that fond of the idea, myself," she confided in the mare. "Do let's make the best of it."
     Last year, upon her arrival, her brother had offered her a strong young chestnut mare from his
stable and a small, two-wheeled weathered wooden cart to transport her about the estate. It was
unseemly, he believed, for a lady to travel the hills on foot, which Claire seemed prone to do.
The mare had proved to be temperamental and the cart had an annoying squeak at each rotation
of the left wheel.
     Claire paused a moment and breathed deeply. The air, beginning to cool, released a spongy
fragrance of field grass. The moon was full but faint on the horizon of the early evening sky. It
teased itself around her as would fine silk falling gently on her shoulders. She smiled in spite of herself.
     As Claire stepped up into the cart and took the reins, a shiver passed through her. She clucked
the chestnut forward down the path.

The sound of the chestnut's hooves was muted by the moist grasses and the damp earth of early
evening. In the distance, a screech owl cried, and the carriage wheel squeaked out a response.
     Anticipating an evening of tiresome talk with insipid women and monotonous men, Claire
yawned openly. The thought of Lord Fletcher holding court in the Library, quoting Emily Bronte
in that excessively sensitive voice of his put her in a temper which softened only slightly as she
approached Longwell Estate.
     Strains of a waltz floated from the open doors of the foyer as Claire climbed from the carriage
and handed the stable boy the reins. As if by intuitive design, Jessica appeared to greet her,
carefully descending the steps in a fluff of blue. "Entertaining becomes you," Claire said with
genuine appreciation. "You look positively radiant."
     With a slight blush, Jessica said, "And you have never looked more appetizing. Do come in.
Your brother is waiting to introduce you to a handsome young man he met only yesterday
in the village."
          Claire could feel a slight lurch in her stomach and remembered for a moment the dinner
left uneaten. Yes, perhaps it's that, she thought. She took a slow, deep breath and tried to smile.
       At the entrance of the ballroom, her brother, Lord Leopold Longwell, eldest son and heir
of their father's estate, broke from his conversation and beckoned her.
     The backdrop of the formal ballroom framed the two men in the doorway. The walk-in fireplace
was ablaze and the crystal chandeliers reflected shards of color around the room. The rich velvet
tapestries and elegant furniture set off the beauty of the highly polished ballroom floor on which
several couples danced the quadrille as a string quartet played. Leopold's prized hunting trophy,
a stuffed gray wolf, poised in bay-at-the-moon position next to the hearth, gave the otherwise
storybook castle setting an eerie twist.
       "Ah, sister dear, you're looking particularly…well, this evening." The sweep of his eyes left
her with the familiar feeling of being just short of adequate. "Do allow me to introduce you to my
friend, Andrew Farrington. Andrew, my baby sister, Clarissa."
     Claire despised being referred to in diminutive terms and by her formal name, as Leopold well
knew. She felt the earlier pique rise inside her.
     Leopold stepped back with a short bow toward Andrew.
     Claire lifted her chin to meet the penetrating gaze of Andrew Farrington. She felt her jaw go
slack and her eyes enlarge as she took in this most wondrous creature. She was unable to look
away. His beauty was enhanced by the glow in his hazel-blue eyes. He was tall, slender, and
handsome in a feminine sort of way, dressed in a gray blousy shirt stitched with gold, burgundy
velvet breeches, and mid-calf boots. His silky brown hair was rich and thick, worn a bit longer than usual.
     Claire, finally able to break her gaze, gasped. Genuinely flustered, she stammered,
"I beg your pardon…I've no right…how indelicate of me…oh…"
     "I dare say, that went rather well," Leopold chuckled.
     "My deepest pleasure, m'lady," Andrew fairly whispered as he bent to brush her hand with
a kiss, arousing in her an almost overwhelming desire which she quickly stifled.
     The warmth of his smile and the sight of her own reflection in his eyes was a balm for her
rattled mind. How unlike anything she had experienced since… Claire closed the door quickly
on that particular thought.
     Tears pushed behind her eyes and her heart tightened as she remembered against her will
the loss of love, love as she would never know it again. Unspoken pain welled and she felt as
though she might swoon.
     At just that moment, Andrew took her arm firmly and said, "Will you honor me with this dance?"
    The internal chaos of memory was replaced by rapidly spreading warmth radiating from his
touch. Claire was aglow, but alarmed. She felt exposed and vulnerable. Whatever was happening
to her was most disconcerting, although not entirely unpleasant.
     "Yes, please. I mean, thank you," she mumbled, again embarrassing herself by total gracelessness.
     Jessica gave her a conspiratorial wink as Andrew led Claire onto the dance floor. As she placed her
hand on his right arm just below his shoulder she felt herself drawn toward him, encircled by his arm.
Claire was acutely aware of the strong, yet supple body radiating a heat that called to her. Their eyes
locked and the rest of the world blurred into a haze of slow motion and misty sounds. The strains of
music were distant waves of sensuality. Surely, this couldn't be happening, Claire thought, and then
surrendered to the moment.

. . .

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