The Heiress

by Molly Greeley

  I feared the only way to move that cold heavy thing inside of me was to give Mr. Watters my answer, and the easy thing would be to accept him.

  I was accustomed to doing the easy thing.

  Downstairs, two floors below, I heard the front door opening and the murmur of faraway voices. Someone had come home. My hand pressed harder against my ribs, as if to keep my insides from spilling out between them.

  Mr. Watters’s walking stick, with its distinctive silver knob, was resting against the wall in the entranceway when I went downstairs. I stood staring at it, the seed abruptly putting out strangling vines inside of me, which wrapped around my heart, squeezing until I thought it might burst.

  There was a noise from the breakfast room, a clink of china-on-china. It could be John or Mrs. Fitzwilliam and not Mr. Watters at all. But my feet, braver than the rest of me, were already moving down the hall, and when I reached the doorway I found it was, indeed, Mr. Watters inside, sitting at the table with the four pages of the newspaper spread open before him. A cup of tea steamed on its gold-rimmed saucer, and Mr. Watters appeared very casual in only his shirtsleeves and dark-patterned waistcoat. His cravat was so extravagantly knotted that I could not help wondering how long he had to stand this morning, chin raised as his valet constructed it.

  My greatest fear was that he would use his knowledge of me and Eliza as a means of forcing me to marry him. Our actions might not be subject to prosecution, but we could both be utterly ruined were rumors to circulate. I cared less for myself than for Eliza, with no country home to which she could escape. I studied him for a moment—sharp profile, long legs stretched out in front of him—and thought, heaven help me, that I wanted to believe he would not be so unfeeling, though I’d little reason to think either well or badly of him. Really, I knew him hardly at all.

  I was going to turn around—he was so clearly at ease, it would be a shame to disturb him just now—but he looked up, saw me, and rose. “What an unexpected pleasure,” he said.

  When I said nothing, my tongue suddenly as knotted as his cravat, he moved to pull out a chair for me. “Please, will you sit?”

  I sat as carefully as if the chair were made of glass.

  “Am I right in hoping,” he said, holding each word in his mouth for a moment before releasing it lightly into the air between us, “that you are here because you have made a decision regarding my offer?”

  I breathed quickly through my nose, in my lap my hands clutching each other tightly as lovers. “Yes,” I said, and then, “No. That is—I mean—”

  “You mean . . . your answer is no.”

  “Yes,” I said, and then added, “I mean, yes, my answer is no.” I could not even reject a proposal properly, I thought; and closed my eyes in misery.

  When I opened them again, he was holding his cup in his hands, turning it around and around.

  “I am sorry,” I said.

  His laugh was small and humorless. “Do you know,” he said, “I actually believe you are.” A faint smile; and this, at least, held some warmth.

  My own smile was at first tight as a locked door; and then, as understanding of what I had just foresworn flowed suddenly through me, a waterfall of relief, it broke wide open on all the other possibilities for which my “no” cleared the way.

  Eliza was an entire world. I could spend my entire life exploring and still there would be more to discover. She lay spread like a quilt over my bed, her stays loosened so that I could feel the natural curves of her. Her gown was laid carefully over the chair by the window, with her silk stockings atop it. Mine was draped across the clothespress. Our slippers tumbled together at the foot of the bed.

  My chamber door was locked. Except for the servants, the house was quite empty. We had all afternoon if we wished it, and no one to disturb us. I walked my fingers over the bend of her shoulder from freckle to freckle.

  As usual, this morning’s newspaper had mentioned recent arrests and trials, sentences and reprieves. But one in particular had caught my eye: a groom in a genteel household, convicted of an unnatural crime and sentenced to death.

  I’d looked across the table to where Mr. Watters was still sipping his coffee. Whether he had seen the story or not I could not have said, for while my own face felt locked in an expression of horror, his was as cool and unreadable as that of a classical statue.

  When I first ventured into London on his arm, I’d felt as if the city was undressing before me, each new door I entered like a piece of clothing discarded, baring more of London’s secrets to me. And now I had the same delightful feeling; I undressed Eliza the way I once imagined I undressed the city. But it was just a fancy; I had come to understand that, unlike Eliza’s form, London would never be entirely revealed to me. As a woman, and a gently bred woman, at that, so many pockets of this place would always be barred and mysterious to me.

  I had a vague notion that there were places for men like Mr. Watters to go and be in the company of other men like him; and, too, the vague notion that they were not safe from persecution within the walls of such establishments. Gentlemen had their clubs, free of ladies’ prying eyes. Gentlemen had the entirety of the world in which to room. But we, I thought, stroking my hand down Eliza’s arm, over her side and the slope of her belly, had one advantage. In the expectation that we must be retiring—that we must always be in one another’s company because of the risk that men’s appetites pose to a woman alone—society kept us hobbled, even as it offered us sanctuary to be our true selves.

  I cupped Eliza’s cheek. “I am nine-and-twenty,” I said, “and I have never once felt like this before.” I would once have been ashamed of my age; embarrassed by the littleness of my life until now. But at last, at last, I was not.

  “Mmm.” She turned her head, dragged her lips along my palm. “Are you truly so very old?” Her eyes gleamed up at me.

  I tried to reclaim my hand, but she held my wrist fast. “And how old are you?”

  “Twenty-one. And quite hopeless when it comes to romance.”

  I’d known she was younger than I, but old enough to have had three Seasons. And it was not her age that made my skin suddenly itch. “Have you so much experience with romance, then?”

  A soft laugh. “No. Not so much. There was a girl at school. But she married years ago, at just seventeen; I have not seen her since.” She raised her eyes to mine, and now they were very serious. “Nor,” she added, raising herself up on one elbow so our faces were on a level with one another, “have I thought about her at all in a long time. Nor anyone else, since I first walked into Harriet’s drawing room and saw you sitting there, all haloed in your little patch of spring sunlight. Not since you told me with such spectacular frankness that I had something in my teeth.”

  Her words felt impossible in their loveliness. “And what of men?”

  Eliza dropped back down onto the bed and rolled onto her back. “Men,” she said, and sighed. “Men and romance do not fit together in my mind at all.” She stared up at the canopy for some minutes, while I stroked her wrist and forearm. “Papa said his friend Mr. Andrews has been speaking of me in . . . flattering terms.”

  My hand stilled. “Mr. Andrews?” I said, though the name meant nothing to me; she had never mentioned it before.

  “He is almost as old as my father,” Eliza said, her eyes still fixed overhead. “When I was a child, he used to bring sweets for me and Julia. His wife died several years ago. He has no children, but he would like some.”

  I was silent, watching her.

  “He made his fortune in shipping.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “It is not the match my mother envisioned for me, but I think Julia’s intended will make up for Mr. Andrews’s lack of connections. And in a generation or two, our descendants will seem genteel enough to satisfy most people.”

  The room swirled a little around me. No, no, no, no—

  “Has he—offered for you?”

  She looked at me, eyes water-bright. “Not yet,�
�� she said. “But soon, I think.” She reached for my hand, but I pulled it away, drew my knees up to my chest, and encircled them with both arms. This was impossible—I had only just rejected Mr. Watters.

  “Could you—how could you—” I breathed in and out, then said the first thing that entered my head in a coherent manner. “How could you bear to share a bed with him?”

  Eliza scrambled to her own knees and perched so, her jaw working strangely.

  “My mother has always said that women have the burden of endurance,” she said at last. “We endure all the things that men cannot, for the good of society. Childbed, and quietness. I suppose I could bear his attentions as well.” She pushed her knuckles against her lips, then let her hand drop.

  “This is probably the best chance I have,” she said. “This is my third Season, Anne. I have not had a single offer. One or two young men seem amused by me, but none wish to marry me.”

  “Then they are fools,” I said simply, for it was the truth.

  “Oh, Frank,” Eliza said, and now when she took my hand I did not resist. She held it again to her cheek, and it absorbed the wetness there.

  Chapter Thirty

  I was invited to Miss Julia’s wedding purely because I was a guest at the home of her intimate friend. I knew this, but still I was grateful for the opportunity, for I had not seen Eliza for nearly a fortnight. She was busy helping with wedding preparations, though she did find time to write to me nearly every day, if only a brief note.

  Julia insists that only Gunter’s will do for the cake, she wrote one day. Mamma has acquiesced, though our cook makes perfectly delicious cakes for ordinary occasions, and would almost certainly do as well for extraordinary occasions.

  The letter continued in this manner for several lines. And then:

  I think of you every hour.

  She never mentioned Mr. Andrews at all.

  The rector’s voice resounded throughout St. George’s, amplified by the high arched ceilings. I had been to only a few weddings in my life, those of neighbors and important tenants; my cousins’ nuptials took place too far away for me, in my supposed weakness, to attend them. I sat now between Mrs. Fitzwilliam and Mr. Watters as the familiar words of the wedding service were spoken, the ring given.

  I glanced at Mr. Watters, his profile smooth as pressed linen. We each knew something of the other, now; truths few others did, or ever would. A fragile trust laced us; if I were still taking my drops, I thought I might have seen it woven between us now, thin and strong as spider threads. Almost, almost I wished things could be different; that I could be happy doing the easy thing; but attraction is a mystery, and an affinity of minds even more so. I felt neither of these things with him, and so, sitting in a lovely cathedral on a summer’s morning, I could not feel sorry that he and I would not be standing together before a clergyman, solemnly vowing things neither of us meant.

  When Julia promised her obedience, a sweet smile upon her lips, my jaw clenched in its old, impotent way.

  I thought of Miss Hall’s silent fury when I spoke to her so casually of marriage, probing the memory as I might a sore tooth; but there was no tenderness at all left. In its place was Eliza and a story, as fanciful as those I loved as a child, wherein we had more than stolen hours together, but could live together as devotedly and affectionately as any husband and wife.

  “Blessed are all they that fear the Lord: and walk in his ways,” the rector intoned; but I scarcely heard him.

  We were able to snatch a few moments together during the wedding breakfast. The Amherst home gleamed with polish; the food was plentiful; the guests merry. We all admired the wedding cake, all the more so once we tasted it, heavy with dried fruit and sweet with sugar. Mr. Watters escorted me into and out of the church, and into the Amherst residence, with no sign of ill will, his teeth as determinedly gleaming as ever.

  Eliza was, of course, much engaged in helping her mother ensure their guests’ comfort, but she spared me many quick smiles, and at last she came over to the corner where I secluded myself, away from so much required conversational effort, and whispered, “Come.” The tips of her fingers brushed the inside of my wrist.

  I followed her from the room, noting that Mr. Watters watched us leave. When I looked at him, though, he merely lifted one corner of his mouth, then turned to engage the gentleman beside him in conversation.

  The Amherst garden was a little larger than John’s, and better tended. Eliza slipped her arm through mine, moving us briskly away from the house, where a pretty stone bench sat half-hidden by a small fountain.

  “I am so glad it is over,” she said.

  “Your sister seems very happy.”

  “She is,” Eliza said, but she looked about us, restless as a dragonfly and just as bright in her made-over gown.

  “What is it?” I said this even as my breath grew short, suspended somewhere between my breast and my throat, from the fear that I knew what her answer would be.

  Eliza leaned back on her palms, raising her face to the feeble sun. “Mr. Andrews asked to speak to me after the breakfast.”

  I did not ask which gentleman Mr. Andrews was. I had marked him almost instantly, his hair gray and thinning, his coat well cut, his face amiable. He spent much of the breakfast speaking with Mrs. Amherst, who was unmistakably attentive to him. I spent much of the breakfast trying to ignore his existence, and failing utterly.

  I spoke now only because I must know the answer, but the words tore at my throat. “And . . . what will you say to him?”

  Her eyes squeezed. “What I must.”

  I seized her hand. “Come back to Kent with me,” I said, and when her eyes opened and her head began to shake, I spoke frantically to forestall the inevitable. Not of marriage—I was not so naive now as I once was. But of creating our own sort of forever, our own terms. “You can be my companion—that is what we can tell people. It is perfectly respectable. You will have everything you need; we can take a house in Town so that you can see your family often.”

  Her eyes widened, full as twin moons. “Anne—”

  “No.” I shook my head. “No. I—love you,” I said; and the words that we had not spoken to one another before trailed between us now like candle smoke. “I would spend my life with you, if you will let me.”

  She stared at me for so long that I had to release my breath or die for want of air. The next breath I took was a ragged, hopeless thing. She shook her head, slowly, as if the motion pained her; and I began to weep.

  “Anne, please,” she whispered. She took my wet face in her hands and kissed me. “Please.”

  I drew back and wiped my face with the back of one wrist. “How can you marry him? How can you bear to—to become a man’s possession? You, of all people?”

  “What would be different if I lived with you? I am not independent as you are, Anne! I have no land of my own, no income of my own. I would give anything—anything—to be as fortunate as you; but I am not, and I must be practical.”

  I was shivering, though it was not cold. “You show very little imagination,” I said, “for someone who reads Mary Wollstonecraft and delights in the most extraordinary novels.”

  “That is unfair!” Eliza’s mouth was a slash of color in her white face. “Mary Wollstonecraft was reviled after her death when her indiscretions became known! Hers might have been different to ours, but make no mistake, Anne; we would be reviled as well.”

  My voice came out like a stranger’s, stark as lightning against a black country sky. “And do you know how Mary Wollstonecraft died? Just like so many other women, bringing a child into the world.”

  Eliza pressed her palms to her forehead, her fingertips in her hair threatening to unravel her maid’s fine work. “As a companion,” she said, “I would have no standing in society. At least as a wife I will command some respect.” She dropped her hands and looked at me. “Did you mean to give me an allowance as your companion?”

  I knew not what to say, for I had not thought so f
ar. “I . . . I could, certainly,” I said, and she laughed, sharp as onions.

  “Would you really insult me so?”

  “I do not mean—of course not. But I understand . . . does not a husband give his wife pin money?” I reached for her hands again, and she let me take them, though they lay limp in my own. “What of your talk of wives—and husband-wives? If your choices are a life of dependence . . . or a life of dependence . . . would it not be better to at least enjoy the benefits of affection?”

  “Affection,” she said softly. Her hands twitched a little; and then her fingers curled over mine. I nearly began weeping again, this time with relief.

  And then she spoke further. “You will have my affection for the rest of my days,” she said. “But can you not see that what you imagine is impossible? Lovely”—with a brush of her mouth over mine; and now her mouth tasted brackish—“but impossible.”

  I did not speak to anyone when we returned to John’s house, except to complain of a headache that I did not have. Spinner came to help me out of my gown, despite the early hour, and to take the pins from my hair one by one. I lay down under the bedclothes and closed my eyes, listening as she tidied the room. When at last the door closed behind her, I let myself cry in earnest.