Burning the midnight oil (by Heather)

Create a story around the cliché 'burning the midnight oil'. Minimum 500 words.

Did someone say, “cliché”?

Jab, jab, jab! Charlotte stabbed the little bodkin repeatedly into the breast of the statuesque, confident, elegant Emma Cardiff.

Panting, Charlotte stepped back and collected herself. The mannequin wobbled slightly before re-settling itself on its three wicker legs. Charlotte threw her bonnet to the floor and flopped back into the chair, burying her face in her aprons. The awful Emma Cardiff was still no doubt snoring discretely in her fine bedroom in the guest room just down the hall, blissfully unaware of the devastation she had caused in certain quarters of the household, and of the devastation that had just been wreaked on her wedding dress.

For the first time in this horrible week, Charlotte burst into tears.

She gulped back a sob and stared bleakly at the dress on the mannequin. For three full days now she had worked on the creation of ivory silk brocade, with its enormous tissue taffeta puffed sleeves, its mock orange blossoms, its hoop crinoline, its boned bodice (now speckled with a half dozen slashes where the bodkin had left its mark).

Nothing in her sixteen years (including the last three of them in service, as seamstress and upper maid) had prepared her for the situation she was in.

Like a Papist counting the beads on a rosary, Charlotte mentally fingered the moments of desolation in her life this week.

Could there be anything worse that the wretchedness of this moment? Once again, it was almost midnight, by the ticking clock in the upstairs drawing room that had been converted this week to a sewing salon. For the third night in a row, she was working until the small hours of the morning on the wedding dress; she could hardly see; she was so tired she felt frayed to tatters. She could see no way to have the gown ready for the wedding in two days time, even before the damage to the bodice that would now have to be replaced.

But yes, there had indeed been worse times this week. Charlotte thought of the exact moment when she realised that her monthly courses were long overdue, and that her sore and swelling breasts were a sure sign of a momentous predicament. She thought of the tiny being that she was sure was growing inside her. She stifled the wail that threatened to release itself.

Still, this was nothing compared with the horror of the moment when she had stood at the casement with Mrs Turnbull, watching a carriage pull into the estate’s sweeping driveway. “Ah,” Mrs Turnbull said, “if it isn’t young Miss Cardiff, here already for the wedding.”

“The wedding?” Charlotte spun toward her in surprise. “I know of no wedding.”

“Ah, yes, well, it’s all been a bit of a secret thing. But it can’t be a secret much longer, so I might as well tell you. Young Master Thomas is about to wed Miss Emma Cardiff at the coming weekend.”

“Master Thomas?” Charlotte could barely hear her own voice over the sudden roar of blood rushing in her ears. Her world shifted around her.

Horrible though that occurrence had been, the scene later that afternoon was the hardest of all to bear. It had happened when she had seen Tom alone in the garden and had accosted him. His frosty reply to her petition had dealt the final blow to her heart. “Surely you didn’t think our dalliance could affect my future in any way…really, Charlotte, this is most unseemly.”

Tears still streaming down her face, she thought of the numerous fittings this week with the smiling, guileless, ever-so-friendly and light-hearted Emma Cardiff.

And she thought back to the flirtations and the wonderful hours in Tom’s bed, learning the mysteries of her body, and his.

She wondered if someone could just die of anguish, if she might be found in the morning lying here on the floor, pale and lifeless. A fresh flood of tears emerged.

The lamp in the drawing room flickered, nearly empty, threatening to die out.

Charlotte rose unsteadily from her chair, sweeping thimble, cotton and needles from the table beside her in the process. She walked to the stone jug that was used to store the whale oil that fuelled the lamp. She picked it up, staring at it in her hands.

A small desperate cry escaped her lips. She kicked at the mannequin, knocking it to the floor. She poured a generous dollop of oil onto the creamy fabric.

Gaining energy, she strode around the room, liberally sprinkling oil around her. She carefully pushed open the drawing room doors, checking the long hall before stepping out. She tiptoed from one end of the hall to the other, tipping out oil as she went. She poured an extra dose at Miss Cardiff’s door and an even larger portion at Master Thomas’.

She scurried back to the drawing room. Throwing the empty jug into the corner, she grabbed the brass lamp and dashed it to the floor near the oil-soaked mannequin. Flames licked rapidly at the pools of oil, racing over the carpets and into the hall.

She ran down the hall without a backward glance, raced down the marble staircase and darted through the vestibule. She pressed open the massive front doors and disappeared into the darkness.

She had a long trek in front of her and hadn’t prepared for it at all.

The night was not over yet.