The Heiress

by Molly Greeley

  “Why are the servants so harried, do you think?” I said.

  Miss Hall gave me an odd look. “They have visitors to prepare for.”

  “Yes, but.” I looked up at the ceiling, and lost the rest of my thought to the shadows in the corners.

  Miss Hall sighed and made another few stitches. But she said, “Belowstairs, they will have been preparing tonight’s dinner for the last several days. Acres of food, I believe. They will all want to show off the house to its best advantage, and Lady Catherine, and the future mistress of Rosings.”

  The future mistress of Rosings. I watched as the words appeared before me in Miss Hall’s soft, sloping hand, trailing off in curls.

  “Mrs. Barrister has been in a froth over the flowers; I think the gardeners are quite frightened of her.” Miss Hall smiled a little at her work. She was not wearing black, as I and Mamma were, but a subdued gray, with a black armband. She had taken recently to wearing the ruffled caps of matrons or spinsters, which hid most of her hair and made her look older than her six-and-twenty years. I found, strangely, that I missed the sight of her hair, the wings of it curving over either side of her high brow—like the wings of a ladybird poised to fly. I had the urge to remove her cap, to feel for myself whether those wings were as smooth as they appeared, to follow their trajectory around her skull and upward to the heavy plaited knot of hair just a little back from the crown of her head. And then down again; my fingertips, with their whorled lines like a tree’s secret patterns buried under the bark, tingled as I imagined running them over the round of her cheek, the flexible shell of her ear. I wondered what her earlobe would feel like, that soft curving bit of flesh, if I were to hold it between my thumb and forefinger, and something tightened in the very lowest part of my belly, like a most delicious cramp.

  “And of course,” Miss Hall continued, “the guest rooms needed airing. And everything needs polishing. There’s the china and silver to be cleaned. The candles to be trimmed and lighted.” She sewed in silence for a while as my wandering eyes moved across her familiar features, dropping naturally to her throat, her sloping shoulders, the shelf of her bosom within her stays. And farther still, over the spread of her hips and lap, reminding me of Papa’s garden sculptures, under her skirt. Then she said, “You really ought to know these things. You should have been training with Lady Catherine and Mrs. Barrister already for years.”

  The criticism might have made me glare and blush, were I not feeling so wonderfully indifferent. “Dr. Grant has said too much responsibility is bad for me. As you know.”

  “Dr. Grant . . .” But Miss Hall stopped speaking, her lips pressed together like a sealed letter, and I without the strength of will to break the wax. We had not spoken of my drops since that one time in the rose garden. I watched the flash of my governess’s needle in the dimness.

  “What are you making?”

  A little of the ill humor left Miss Hall’s face. “A baby’s gown. My sister is expecting her first child very soon.”

  More quiet. My thoughts drifted from Miss Hall’s clever hands to her unflattering cap; distantly, I wondered whether my governess had entirely given up on the idea of marriage and children of her own. Even after so many years, I still knew only scraps of information about her life, much of it gleaned by peppering my letters to her with questions—some of which she answered, some of which, particularly the more bold and deep-delving, she pointedly ignored.

  From Mamma, I knew that Miss Hall’s father had, like so many other gentlemen, lost his money at the gaming tables; but Miss Hall herself never spoke of this, and even I knew better than to probe that particular wound. She had one sister, two years her junior, who also went to work as a governess right out of school, but who wed a London merchant with a thriving business a year or so ago. Miss Hall, however, was always with me here in Kent where the pool of eligible men could more honestly be called a puddle; at our annual harvest ball, while I, forbidden by Dr. Grant’s injunction to dance, sat with my parents watching our neighbors and tenants form set after set, Miss Hall was asked to dance often—twice, one year, by the draper’s son. She looked happy then, merry, smiling widely, a gleam of perspiration on her collarbones. But none of the men who asked her to dance had, as far as I knew, asked for her hand in any more serious way.

  I said, “I will marry you.”

  It was a stray remark, as idle as “I wish the rain would stop,” or “I might go into the village this morning”; it felt as natural as either of those remarks would, too. But all at once, the silence in the room was so complete that I realized I had been hearing the soft drawing of thread through fabric; the subtle whisper of cotton as Miss Hall turned it as she worked.

  Even my own and Miss Hall’s breaths had now ceased, as completely as if we both died quite abruptly, and for a moment I felt panic rush up past the dampening blanket of my drops; I drew in a gulp of air with theatrical loudness, felt my ribs expand as far as they could within the cage of my stays to accommodate my breath, and expelled it again on a sigh.

  Miss Hall stared down at the needle in her one hand, at the white of the fabric in the other. I could not understand her expression; I saw no arrow, was certain I heard no gunfire. So why did Miss Hall look so exactly as I always imagined someone might look after being shot: perfectly still, stunned by the improbability of the blooming bloodstain?

  “That was a wicked thing to say,” Miss Hall said, very quietly. “Even in jest, as I assume you meant it.” She gathered up her work with exceptional haste and said, “I shall leave you to rest.” She was gone from the room between one eye-blink and the next, and I was left with a sensation of endless falling.

  The visit was all hushed whispers and gently pressed palms. Uncles Fitzwilliam and Darcy insisted on closeting themselves with Rosings’s steward, Mr. Colt, to satisfy themselves that Mamma and the estate were in capable hands. My mother sniffed when they admitted that it seemed she knew what she was about, and said to Uncle Fitzwilliam, “And who was it, Robert, who kept Father’s estate running after his death? I was not away at Cambridge; nor was I yet married, as Anne was. It all fell to me, as it has fallen to me now. But I have risen to the challenge; I always do.”

  Every evening, when we went in to dinner, Mr. Darcy led Mamma through, and though the honor of taking me in ought really to have gone to Edward, somehow it was always Fitzwilliam on whose arm I found myself; Fitzwilliam who was seated beside me at the table. Mamma smiled out over us all, the jet bugles on her gown glinting in the light from the silver candlesticks, and led the conversation—was the conversation, rarely needing the participation of anyone else. But her expression changed, little by little, over the course of each evening; even as she spoke without ceasing, her eyes lingered on me and Fitzwilliam, and I could feel her waiting, waiting for some sign of true attachment between her daughter and her beloved sister’s son. And, too, I felt her disappointment—a puckered, peevish thing—and, increasingly, her worry, which was pale and papery as a pressed flower, as delicate as I was, myself.

  One afternoon, Mamma turned to poor Georgiana, at nine years old my youngest cousin by far, whose birth caused Aunt Darcy’s death. Georgiana was a tall, silent wisp of a girl, who positively wilted when my mother turned the full force of her attention upon her.

  “Play for us, Niece,” Mamma said. “Your father has nothing but good to report of your talents, but I should like to hear for myself what your music master has accomplished.”

  I thought Georgiana might cry, but she whispered, “Yes, Aunt de Bourgh,” and sat at the pianoforte.

  Miss Hall, who had been spending most of her time embroidering the baby’s gown, stood immediately and offered to turn the pages of the music, smiling with more warmth than she had shown me in days. I watched, something terrible swelling in my belly like bread dough.

  I did not notice at first when my cousin John took the seat beside me. But he smiled at me, and asked after my health, and his manner was so easy, so amiable, that I found mysel
f thinking wistfully that if I must marry any man, I would rather it be John than Fitzwilliam, for all that John was by far the plainer of the two and had no fortune of his own. He sat beside me as Georgiana played, and I did my best to answer him when he spoke, trying not to feel, as I always used to with Papa, that I had nothing to say that could possibly interest him. I pressed my slippered toes against the carpet, hard enough to hurt, a strangling frustration creeping over me like the vines of ivy whose progress over the churchyard poplar I still marked each Sunday. John and Edward and Fitzwilliam moved in the world with an easiness I would never be allowed, even if I were not ill—Edward and Fitzwilliam busy with their estates and education, John with his recent promotion in the army. They lived lives I could not entirely imagine. And because I was ill, nothing ever changed in my life from year to year, and so I had nothing to talk about.

  None of this should matter at all, really, or so I told myself; my dullness was not my fault, and it was silly to become overwrought about it. It would be nice, though, to have something worth talking about.

  Yet despite my dullness, John stayed with me for an hour or so, even when Edward and Fitzwilliam, using the excuse of looking out over the estate, escaped the dreariness of the drawing room for the outdoors.

  “Anne is your cousin. Talk to her. She deserves civility from you, at least.”

  My eyes opened. I must have dozed off at some point, for long enough that my cousins returned from their excursion; Edward stood across the room with his father, both nursing glasses of port that glowed like twin sunsets, and beside the fireplace, a few feet from the settee upon which I lay, were John and Fitzwilliam.

  Both glanced at me, and I let my lids drop a little. When he spoke, Fitzwilliam’s voice was quieter even than John’s, but still I understood him clearly.

  “I do not mean to be rude,” he said. “But how exactly does one converse with a doll?”

  Chapter Ten

  “You never read to Anne anymore, Miss Hall; this must be remedied,” Mamma said one afternoon, a day or two after our relatives departed. She had been querulous from the moment the Darcy carriage disappeared down the drive. “Anne is too weak to read much, herself, but Dr. Grant says listening cannot be too taxing for her, provided the material is not something that will overexcite her.”

  Miss Hall looked at me and I stared back, unblinking. I was drifting, too limp to become even moderately excited, let alone overly so. It was a delicious feeling. I was breathing, but so languorously that I fancied, if I closed my eyes, I could pass for dead. It had happened before—I was awoken by my maid’s screams, and the entire household’s rushing feet in the corridor outside my chamber. There was nothing humorous about it at the time—through my mind flitted the memory of Nurse wailing, of Mamma with her hand pressed to my breast—but for some reason, the recollection made me smile now.

  Miss Hall selected a book from the small pile on the table beside her chair and removed the bit of ribbon with which, months ago it must have been, she last marked her place.

  “Let me see,” she said, then trailed a finger down the page, slowly, so slowly. I looked away. “Ah . . . Yes. ‘Suppose a young lady educated by a mother, who to the best sense and truest breeding joined the utmost reverence for religion, and the tenderest concern for the soul of her child . . .’”

  I wanted to yawn—my jaw ached with the tension of trying not to do so.

  “‘Let this accomplished parent bestow upon her daughter a culture worthy of herself; instructing her in every thing that can become the female and the Christian character; among the rest, recommending a lovely modesty, and graceful simplicity of apparel . . .’”

  “Quite right,” Mamma said, and nodded her approval of Miss Hall’s restrained gown of printed cotton. By contrast, Mamma’s striped silk gown, though dyed black for mourning, was rich with lace, her fingers heavy with jewels and her earlobes with large gray pearls.

  Miss Hall coughed lightly into her hand, tucking her lips together, just briefly, as if to contain a smile. “‘To what has been said in favor of modest apparel under this head, I must not forget to add, that it is a powerful attractive to honorable love. The male heart is a study—’” Here Miss Hall looked up at me, an odd, prodding glance; I pushed my knuckles against my mouth.

  “‘To gain men’s affection, women in general are naturally desirous. They need not deny, they cannot conceal it. The sexes were made for each other. We wish for a place in your hearts: why should you not wish for one in ours?’”

  A sound tumbled from my lips—I could see it as much as hear it; it had the frothy quality of the water in the garden fountain. It was an inappropriate sound, not quite the laugh that I was trying to contain but somehow darker, rising from the inky spaces inside myself where I rarely ventured. I watched it leave my mouth and tried to snatch it back, but it was too late. My sound was out in the world, and so I let my hand drop back down. “‘They need not deny, they cannot conceal it,’” I said, and then I let the sound out again.

  “Anne!”

  I looked up to find that Miss Hall had stopped reading and was staring at me, wide-eyed, over the top of the book. Mamma’s mouth was pursed like a flower bud.

  My nurse only used a switch on me once, for some infraction I could not even remember; Papa was furious when he discovered the marks on my palm, shouting that I was ill, and what was Nurse thinking? Miss Hall’s mouth, just now, looked to me like the sting from that switch: a worried red weal.

  “She’s overwrought,” Mamma said.

  Miss Hall closed the book. “I apologize, Your Ladyship, I thought Fordyce’s Sermons would be soothing.”

  “As they should be,” Mamma said, and now her voice sounded like the switch, that sharp smack as it landed its blows. “Anne, stop it. You are hysterical.”

  My face twitched as I strove to control its expression. “I am well,” I said, and patted my chest. “There was something caught, but it has come loose now.” And my smile did feel loose, my lower jaw like a door half off its hinges.

  Mamma eyed me. “That is quite enough excitement for one afternoon. Miss Hall, help Anne to her room to recover. And fetch Nurse—perhaps another draught is in order?”

  I sat with Miss Hall in the garden temple. When my maid opened the curtains that morning, the bright view through the windowpanes filled me with a sudden desire for release, and I all but begged Miss Hall to come outside with me after breakfast. Nurse came to us there, gouty and grumbling, as we sat sewing together and not speaking; and so when Miss Hall finally did speak, my usual lassitude had returned, and I had slipped down a little on the bench.

  One of my arms was flung across the bench’s back, my head resting upon my sleeve. A fly lit upon the back of my hand, and from this angle I had a good view of it; the shifting of its transparent wings drew my eye, and now were caught fast, fascinated. The fly was so small that it should be nearly impossible to see in any detail, but I could make out the legs, like the finest of silken threads, and the veins in the leaflike wings. I pursed my lips, blew softly—or so I thought—but the gust to the fly was like a gale, sending it tumbling over, and a little clutch of fear and sorriness for killing it breached the gentle fog of my mind. But no—the fly righted itself—flexed its wings—continued its careful exploration of my hand, creeping over the long bones that extended from fingers to wrist, climbing the hillocks of my knuckles. I didn’t dare move, lest I disturb its progress again. But of course, I was accustomed to stillness.

  If I were to raise my eyes just a little, I would see the house looming over us. At this time of day, the sun sat at such an angle that the house’s pinnacles cast shadows across the lawn. I could not help fancying that they reached for me, long narrow fingers that would grasp me if they could, pulling me back inside the house’s open, whispering mouth. It was a strange truth that it was only since Rosings began to speak to me that I felt I truly loved it, loved it the way it ought to be loved by the person in whose care it rested. Except, of course,
that it did not rest with me, not truly. I was guardian of its secret cares, but I did none of the hard labor of fixing its problems, myself.

  I thought, sometimes, about Miss Hall’s brother; but then I felt the trembling overwhelm me at the thought of actually having to take charge of Rosings Park. A healthy woman, I was sure, would not feel faint at the mere thought of controlling her own inheritance. I often wanted to clap my hands over my ears to block out the sound of all those things in the drawing room, and all that vast land outside the window. All of it wanting something from me. And then I was sorry for trying to block them out, for I was the only one who listened to them; they needed me.

  Out here, at least, though the roses murmured and the woods wept, their voices were easier to ignore than the voice of the house itself, dispersed as they were throughout the broad sweeping sky; and so I kept my eyes cast down, away from the house’s reaching fingers.

  “Miss de Bourgh.”

  Miss Hall had to repeat herself, twice, before I was able to pull my eyes away from my hand. I turned my head carefully, determined not to accidentally dislodge my small companion. Miss Hall’s work was crumpled in her hands, and I stared; the fabric would be terribly creased when she released it.

  “Miss de Bourgh,” Miss Hall said again, and I raised my eyes from those hands, that fabric, to Miss Hall’s face, which was also crumpling, folding in upon itself beneath the weight of whatever it was she was about to say.

  My entire body hardened to stone.

  “I . . . need to tell you something.” And now Miss Hall’s voice wrinkled, too, little shudders of sound that made no sense at all. “I am leaving. I will give my notice to Lady Catherine today, but I—I wanted to tell you first.”

  Miss Hall paused, watched me, waiting, apparently, for some reaction, but I said nothing—could say nothing. Stone cannot speak.