The Heiress

by Molly Greeley

  I went sea bathing again the following morning after breakfast. I slept oddly without my drops, waking sometimes in the night rather than sleeping like a dead thing all the way through, but I was hungry for breakfast. My parents watched as I ate three pieces of toast slathered in preserves, then began to lick my fingers. Mamma rapped me smartly on the wrist with her knuckles.

  The sea was as cold this morning as it was yesterday. This time, only Nurse accompanied me down to the beach; Mamma had calls to pay, and Papa could not have come even had he wished to, for the bathers were segregated by sex to preserve the ladies’ modesty. I struggled again against the dippers’ strong arms, but I did not scream, and only cried a little after I was taken out of the water.

  In the afternoon, though, I did not feel like playing as I had the day before. Something had settled at the small of my back, a pressing feeling like a fist that would not go away. My legs felt strange, almost as if they were not there at all, and yet there was sometimes a horrible sensation, too, like ants crawling up and down my calves under my stockings. I wriggled and squirmed, trying to get the feeling to go away, but during the moments it was gone there was only a terrible numbness, and I had to lift my skirt, to Nurse’s exclamation of dismay, to make sure my legs had not fallen off.

  By evening, I was shivering. It was cold in my chamber, so cold that my skin was covered all over in little bumps and my nose was running. I whinged and snapped, twisting away when Nurse tried to smooth back my hair, annoyed by the very presence of the maid who came to build up the fire. When Mamma and Papa came in to see me before their dinner, their faces grew flushed from the fire’s heat, but I still shook under the covers. Papa’s distress at finding me so unwell was visible, but my mother looked almost pleased.

  “This is what comes,” she said, “of ignoring a trusted doctor’s advice.”

  Papa, however, was determined that the cure be thoroughly tested. Only see, he said, how well I had done the day before! I had a little cold, now, that was all—it was only a minor setback, and in a few days I would be well again and could again be dipped in the sea. The bracing saltwater could only strengthen anything, or anyone, with which it came into contact.

  But the following morning, my condition had worsened. Nurse, drawn and exhausted-looking, told Mamma that the young mistress was awake most of the night, writhing about in bed and complaining that there were insects all over her, and they would not leave her alone.

  I was crying out when they came upstairs, my hair stuck to my face, which was wet with both tears and perspiration. I hurt deep within my limbs, pain at the very core of me, squeezing; but I could not find the words to express what I was feeling beyond moaning, “It hurts, make it stop,” over and over.

  “She says she is freezing,” Nurse said, “but just look at the state of her.”

  “‘Just a cold,’ indeed,” said Mamma.

  Though I had eaten almost nothing for more than a day, it seemed my body still had plenty of reserves to reject. Nurse was not quite quick enough when I began to vomit, and the bed linens, already sweat-damp, needed to be changed immediately. Usually so placid, today I lashed out at the maids as they tried to urge me off the mattress. I crawled back onto the newly made-up bed like a half-drowned man onto shore, and then proceeded to vomit again. This time, at least, my nurse was ready with a bowl.

  She was not ready, however, when my body began to purge itself from the other end, and at last she summoned a maid to bring my parents. They found me curled in a miserable ball around my cramping belly, eyes tightly closed against the light of the fat tallow candles.

  A doctor was summoned with alacrity. Mamma narrowed her eyes at the unfashionable cut of his coat and the mud on his boots but kept silent at a sharp look from my father. They watched as the doctor gently straightened my body so that he could probe my belly and feel my neck; it took some persuading, but at last he managed to get me to open my eyes, to find himself faced with pupils blown monstrously wide. My lips were cracked but my skin was pale and clammy; I would, he declared, be dangerously dehydrated soon. When he listened to my chest, my heart thundered in his ear with worrisome rapidity.

  Laudanum, he said, producing a bottle of the sweetened brown liquid with which we were all so familiar, was the only thing for me. It would stopper the looseness of my bowels and allow me to drink water and tea. Mamma’s expression softened with relief when, only a short time after a dose had been administered, I began to relax toward sleep. Papa was wise enough not to suggest a repeat of the sea bathing experiment, and we passed our remaining days in Brighton much as we would have had we been at home in Kent.

  Chapter Six

  When we returned from Brighton, Rosings Park seemed to stretch itself up on its toes to greet us over the bare-branched tops of the trees lining the lane. I rolled my eyes up so I could see every pinnacle as our carriage rolled closer to the drive. There was a little snow on the roof and grounds, light as sugar dusted over a cake, and when we went inside the house, Peters and Mrs. Barrister greeted us and led us to the drawing room, where a fire waited and everything was warm and familiar.

  But within a day or two, the hooded eyes of all the de Bourgh family portraits lining the walls made me twitch; the fabric of the window seat cushion seemed to chafe even through my clothes. I looked out at the garden and was irritated by the sculpted perfection of the hedges and topiaries, their rustling leaves the only splash of green in the winter landscape. I thought of the sea, which seemed far less terrible now that I was no longer caught up in its watery grasp; of my booted feet making deep imprints on the damp sand. Dread clutched at my heart, making it quiver, making me gasp. Only my drops calmed the terrible vibration inside my chest, and I drank them down as if I were dying of thirst and they were the only sips of water to be found.

  I looked up at the ceiling, so high and heavy, and could think only, More, more, more, more.

  My mother seemed larger back in our home than she had in Brighton. As usual, I spent a great deal of time watching her—giving orders to the servants, holding court in the drawing room when company came to call, dispensing advice to cottagers the way Nurse dispensed my drops—and she seemed to me like a wild creature, swelling and safe in its own territory.

  Papa, though, seemed restless after we returned. He came into the nursery more often than usual; I sometimes woke from my stupor to find him peering down at me, Nurse hovering by his elbow. His face seemed to be composed entirely of tight lines, as if it had been sketched in short, angry strokes. He did not go off to London but remained in Kent for weeks and weeks, as the sun slowly gained a little strength and snowdrops bloomed in one sudden effort, carpeting the woods at the edge of the garden with their nodding white blossoms.

  When Dr. Grant made his usual visit, Papa, for once, attended. Once the examination was over and a new bottle of laudanum safely in Nurse’s possession, Papa said, “I have been considering the matter of Anne’s education.” He held his hands clasped behind his back and looked only at the doctor, his eyes carefully keeping away from Mamma, whose brows dipped suddenly, dangerously, toward one another. “I believe it is beyond time that she have a governess.”

  Dr. Grant raised his eyebrows. “A governess? Hmm.” He blew air out between his lips, and I wrinkled my nose behind his back. “I have no objections, provided the woman understands Miss de Bourgh’s . . . considerable limitations.”

  My new governess, at first glance, appeared average in every way, with features that were neither homely nor pretty, hair that was neither quite gold nor quite brown, a figure settled comfortably between slim and stout. She was dressed modestly in a gown that was neither too ornate for her station, nor so plain that she looked out of place in Rosings’s drawing room. She came to Rosings Park fresh from Miss Briggs’s Seminary—“Where you would have gone, Anne, had your health allowed,” Mamma said.

  We sat looking at one another, and though the silence only lasted for a few seconds—I knew, for I counted them off in the ticking
of the clock—my entire body began to burn under the cool appraisal in Miss Hall’s eyes. She took in my bones and my pallor, all dressed up in a gown so richly covered in whitework embroidery that it was almost stiff, despite the cotton’s softness; she took in the way I listed a little against the arm of my chair. Then she looked down at her lap, shuttering her expression.

  “I understand your father is insolvent,” Mamma said then. “I wonder that he was able to afford your education.”

  Miss Hall’s lips parted, but she swallowed whatever words might have come out, her throat working as though around a bite of meat that she had not properly chewed. It took but a moment for her to gain mastery of herself, and then she said, “I was fortunate, Your Ladyship, in that Miss Briggs agreed to keep me on if I helped with the younger girls’ instruction.”

  “Yes, she said you had some experience, and that you’ve all the usual accomplishments. You taught drawing, I believe? And needlework?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “French? Music? Dancing?”

  “Yes, Your Ladyship. And Italian.”

  Mamma flicked her painted fan, as if to dismiss the word Italian from her drawing room. “Anne, of course, cannot be expected to do much. Her health does not permit strenuous study.”

  Miss Hall’s eyes darted from Mamma to me and back again, as if trying to make sense of them both; then she nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “She is at her best in the mornings; in the afternoons, she requires rest and quiet.”

  “Of course, Your Ladyship.” A pause, and another look at me, quick as a cat’s paw. “I am certain that I shall understand Miss de Bourgh’s constitution soon enough, but in the meantime I would wish to do neither too much nor too little. May I ask what subjects you think might be too tiring? Music, for instance—you’ve such a fine instrument here. I assume you wish Miss de Bourgh to learn to use it?”

  “Oh, music,” Mamma said. “There is nothing better in this world than music. My sister, Lady Anne Darcy, was a most accomplished musician. But she was strong enough to withstand the hours necessary to practice.”

  “It could be that Miss de Bourgh takes after her aunt,” Miss Hall said. “I am sure that I could manage a course of musical education that would not be unduly taxing. After all, Your Ladyship,” she said, “where would we ladies be without our accomplishments?”

  Mamma raised her brows. “Where would you be, you mean. For myself, I have never held with any of that nonsense. My sister learned all the things young ladies are supposed to learn, and her performances and drawings were pleasant enough to hear and see. But she’d have done well enough without them; she had a fine dowry and our connections to ensure she would never want for suitors. I never bothered to learn, and I married quite well; and before that I oversaw my family’s estate after my father passed, while my brother was still at Cambridge. Ladies only need accomplishments when they are not secure in their prospects. Anne has her inheritance, and she has a husband waiting, just as soon as they are both grown up.”

  She sat back in her chair, surveying Miss Hall, her lips puckered, as if she had taken too much vinegar. “Securing a governess was entirely Sir Lewis’s idea,” she said. “I am not at all convinced it is wise, given Anne’s indisposition. But I can at least ensure that she is not overburdened by the experience.” A pause, and a narrowing of her eyes. “I hope you are not prone to having opinions, Miss Hall.”

  Miss Hall looked down once more. “No indeed, Lady Catherine.”

  “You are how old?” Miss Hall said on her third day at Rosings.

  I was sitting across from her in the nursery-turned-school-room, bent over a square of fabric. I was meant to be making an even hem along one edge, but my stitches stood out like bad teeth, some big, some small, none of them straight. I thought of Nurse’s easy indulgent smile with its missing eyetooth, now banished to the kitchen except when I needed my medicine, and refused to raise my head to meet my governess’s eyes; my cheeks were tight and hot, my eyes prickling.

  “Twelve,” I said to the work in my hands.

  “Speak up.” Miss Hall’s voice was sharp. “Ladies do not mumble.”

  I ground my back teeth together.

  “Ladies,” Miss Hall said, leaning forward and tapping me on the side of my jaw, “do not do that, either.”

  I looked up at her, and Miss Hall sighed. “Stop scowling and tell me again—without mumbling—how old you are, Miss de Bourgh.”

  “I am twelve years old, Miss Hall,” I said after a moment, and my governess nodded.

  “Twelve years old, and yet you cannot sew.”

  “I can sew!”

  Miss Hall raised one eyebrow, looking pointedly down at the disaster in my hands. “Miss de Bourgh, I do not know what to call this, but it is not sewing.” She leaned forward. “By the age of twelve, I would have expected you to be, at the least, well on your way toward accomplishment at embroidery. But it seems you have never so much as held a needle.”

  Mutinous, I said nothing.

  “Ladies,” Miss Hall said after a pause, “are sometimes seen as idle creatures, are we not? But women do work, and our work is important—vital, even. It just happens to be quieter than the work done by men. A woman who can sew a straight hem will never be without something to do, for every household, however big or small, needs shirts and petticoats made and mended. Fancywork, for a young woman of your station, will serve to beautify your home and your garments, and those of your family. Not to mention all the good work you can do for the poor in the parish, all those women with more children than they know what to do with and no time to keep them properly clothed.”

  “Mamma never sews,” I said.

  Miss Hall sucked in a little breath, then let it out slowly. When she spoke, it seemed she was choosing her words with great care. “Lady Catherine,” she said, “is not my pupil. And I am certain she occupies her time in other ways.”

  My mother had no patience for poetry, and made it clear that no daughter of hers was to waste time on history; so Miss Hall made me read aloud for an hour every morning from the Book of Common Prayer. I at first protested that I knew how to read, at least—my mother had taught me from this very same book from a very young age!—but after my first stumbling attempt, Miss Hall shook her head in something like despair and said I must practice if I were ever to be proficient.

  “You might have been taught,” she said, “but no one expected you to keep up with it. The mind is like . . . like an arm, or a leg; it must be subjected to vigorous exercise, or risk going soft.”

  “I’m not supposed to do anything vigorous,” I said. “And reading hurts my eyes.”

  “Even so,” Miss Hall said, and opened the book, pointing to a particular passage. “Begin here.”

  “This is—oh, this is too stupid. I am too stupid—”

  Miss Hall let out a breath; released the clenching of her fist so that her long fingers lay flat against the tabletop.

  “You are not stupid,” she said. “Though you do sound stupid when you speak so. Apply yourself, Miss de Bourgh—any young lady who will someday be mistress of an estate must have at least this most rudimentary education.”

  But I turned my face away.

  “I am tired,” I said, though the morning was only half gone and I was not due to take my medicine for some time yet.

  There was a long pause, and then Miss Hall began clearing away our books and papers. “I will leave you to your rest, then,” she said, her voice quite expressionless.

  But I glanced up when the door to the school room opened, and caught my governess’s quick, contemptuous look before Miss Hall stepped into the corridor and closed the door behind her.

  It was only when Miss Hall put columns of numbers in front of me to decipher that, at last, something came easily.

  The numbers, in fact—a list of accounts, like those, Miss Hall said, that our steward, Mr. Colt, must keep for Papa, of debts owed and tradesmen paid; money in and money out in surprising an
d unsettling plentitude in both directions—came together quite naturally. Even as Miss Hall explained what she wanted, my eyes were moving down the column, my head making sense of what I saw there. It was rather, I thought, like slotting the pieces of my geography puzzle together; only far easier.

  When I turned the long column into a tidy sum, Miss Hall stepped forward to examine my work. I watched my governess’s eyebrows climb, then drop together in a V over her nose. And then climb again.

  At last she turned to me and said, “Has Sir Lewis been working with you, Miss de Bourgh? I was under the impression that you had not had much instruction in mathematics.”

  “No,” I said. “Papa has never—no.” What an idea. My eyes dropped to the page, to my careful addition and subtraction. “Did I work it wrong?”

  Miss Hall shook her head slowly. “No, indeed,” she said. “You did it exactly right. And far more quickly than I expected.” A small smile. “You did very well, Miss de Bourgh.”

  Chapter Seven

  My father strode into the entrance hall one morning, greatcoat flapping and mud on his boots, to find me studying the painting of the old manor house that hung at the foot of the staircase. He halted his own forward momentum, head turning so suddenly that I thought he must have spotted something unexpected or startling—I looked around, half-thinking I would find that a horse or a fox wandered into the house and was standing somewhere behind me. But there was nothing there; I was the unexpected thing.

  Papa hesitated a moment, and then came forward, nodding at the painting. “It was a poky old place,” he said. “Drafty. Your grandmother had a sentimental attachment to it, but I could not wait to pull it down and start fresh.”

  We stood side by side, looking up at the old house, rendered immortal in oil paints. Its stone walls were weathered, its windows very narrow. Large trees grew up all around it, trees that, now, no longer existed.