The Butterfly Effect

Chapter One

                                                                    (three months later)

"Emilia, stop movin' about," My lady's maid, Clara, whispered, "I've been tryin' ta put this here corset on ya' for fifteen minutes and goin'."

Clara is an older woman, with soft brown eyes a thin figure, and graying, black hair that goes down to her knees. She has been my lady's maid since I was twelve and treats me like her own daughter. Clara was unable to have children, due to an accident she had when she was my age. She does not talk about it, but when I was a child, she told me to always treasure the things we do not give thought to. I did not understand what she meant until one night when my father was putting me to bed. I had been out on town with Clara all day, and I thought it was truly a wonderful day. That all changed when I saw the look in her eyes, at the time I was only eight so I could not comprehend it fully, but I knew she was sad. Today I would explain it as a yearning, or a type of deep nostalgia. Regardless, my father had explained to me after deep questioning that Clara had lost four children in childbirth. At the time I felt greedy, a sense of young enjoyment that I was the one that got to experience Clara, rather than them. Now I just feel miserable, I look at her and see the potential she had as a mother, the length she would go to for her children, the lengths she is went to for me.

A sharp pain in my side draws me out of my thoughts, and I hiss as a bone of corset pokes up on my rib. Clara draws the corset a little tighter, forcing the bone further into my skin. "Clara, please," I moan. "Loosen it up." I do not usually use Clara's dialect, but when it is just us, I feel most comfortable.

"Oh, quit your yappin,' love, it's just a pinch." As she says that though, she pulls the ties loose, and begins redoing it. "Not to mention, the ball's only a few hours long."

"Clara, why do I have to go to this, you know I am not going to meet anyone." I sigh as I think of all the foul mongrels my father thinks of as men. "'The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.'"

Clara lets out a snort, "Who do you think you are quoting Shakespeare! You never know, you might find someone that meets your fancy!"

I giggle as she harmlessly pokes me in the neck. "But, Clara, there simply is no one. No one has ever caught my eye."

"That's not true Em,' there was one boy," Clara snorts. "I say boy, but I should say man, he was quite the fella."

I look down as I realize who Clara's talking about, "Cla-...Clara"

Clara makes a noise, and lets out a gasp," Oh, Emilia, I'm sorry, love...I'm sorry."

Clara takes my hands in hers and leans my head against her chest. As she mumbles those words, I wonder what she must be sorry for. I did not even meet him other than that one time. My fantasies led me to fall in love with a man I had only exchanged a handful of words with. Yet, as tell myself this I cannot help but to mourn him like I would a lover, his voice fresh in my mind, his lips soft on my hand, his eyes knowingly searching my body like a work of art.

The day I found out Cameron died was the anniversary of my mother's death, October 1st, I was wondering the castle looking for the details of her as I had the year before, running my fingers over the coarse stone walls, leaning my forehead against the cool metal of the cliché suits of armor we have the lining the grand entrance. It was the clicking of heeled shoes that drew me out of my somber. My tutor, Clementine Owens, descendent of King Henry V's - my great something grandfather-, courtier, as she so often reminds me. (I laugh because she is bragging to me, me the actual princess of England.) Anyways, it was the clicking of her obnoxious heels (which she tells the shoemaker to add an extra centimeter or two to) that awakened me from my sorrows.