The Heiress

by Molly Greeley

  “Your problem is not a difficult one,” she said. “You can easily set up an account in any of the shops from which you make a purchase. Have you a man to attend to your business affairs?”

  “Yes, in Kent. I mean to write to him.”

  “You can have the bills sent to him easily enough, I imagine.”

  The butler entered then with another card, and Mrs. Fitzwilliam rose.

  “We will leave you to your other callers,” she said. “But I look forward to seeing you all soon.” She smiled again that warm, true smile, which she seemed only to bestow upon the Amherst ladies.

  “And we must choose a time to visit the shops,” Miss Amherst said to me.

  I agreed, in a stammering sort of way, and followed Mrs. Fitzwilliam out, glancing once over my shoulder to find Miss Amherst looking after us, still smiling. I wondered if she ever frowned.

  “Mrs. Amherst was quite right,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam said as the carriage set off. “You will soon be overrun with invitations. You were so . . . unwell, at first. We have not put it about that you are in Town. But you will be such a curiosity, with your fortune and connections, and never having had a Season before.” She looked out the window, watching the street outside, and then added, all casualness, “You are . . . not promised to any particular gentleman, then? Perhaps someone in Kent?”

  I shook my head, but she was not looking at me so I was forced to speak. “No,” I said, a mouse’s squeak; and now she did look at me, eyes running over my form from bonnet to slippers, as if truly taking in every particular for the first time.

  And then she said, “Hm.” But before I could move my tongue to ask the question skipping down its length, she added, “I must say, I think David will be a little vexed if you go shopping with Eliza before you let him show you about.” A smile, almost as true as those she gave her friends. “He did invite you out first, after all.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The tiger in its too-tight cage was huge—monstrous. I’d heard it and the other big cats before we even entered the Royal Menagerie, the menace in their voices lifting the hairs on my arms. My fingers tightened on the wool sleeve of Mr. Watters’s coat; I half-believed, as we approached the building, that I would find myself faced with beasts wandering free and fierce. John and Mrs. Fitzwilliam, walking a little ahead of us, looked back at me, and my cousin smiled and said, “Don’t worry, Anne—they’re all shut up quite tight.” But still I stared up at the outside of the building, waiting for one of the monsters of my childhood imaginings to come rushing out at me. Mr. Watters steered me around a murky puddle, his silver-headed walking stick keeping up a distracting tap-tap-tap on the pavement.

  But inside the long, high-ceilinged room, I found my fear drained down through the soles of my feet. Cages lined the walls, and inside them beasts out of storybooks, impossibly huge and oddly shaped. An elephant, massive and humped as a boulder, took up a cage that spanned the width of the wall at the far end of the room. A horned, leathery rhinoceros was housed beside a sleek leopard. A baboon peered out at us, soft, furred fingers curled around its cage’s bars.

  But it was the tiger that caught my eye. It was listless; not sleeping, but not awake. Hopeless, perhaps, if tigers could be said to have hope. I thought of our old rector at Hunsford, Mr. Applewhite, so certain that souls were the sole province of human beings; no doubt he would scoff at the thought that so beastly a creature as a tiger could understand something as abstract as hope, much less lose it. But this tiger was unfathomably huge within its cramped cage, power in its great platter-like feet and square, toothy jaws. It should not remind me of nothing so much as a skin mounted on a wooden form, its eyes expressionless as glass. The white fur at its great paws and muzzle looked dirty, gray-tinged like everything else in London.

  I stood staring at the tiger, my head tipped back, tears crowding my eyes and throat.

  “Astonishing, is it not?” Mr. Watters said beside me. He stood with his legs spread a little apart, both hands resting on the knob of his walking stick. “Look at those claws—those haunches. I wager it would be a good deal taller than I am standing on its hind legs.”

  Mr. Watters had taken me out into the throbbing heart of London several days in a row, with his sister or John as trailing chaperone. The city unveiled itself to me bit by bit, shedding some of its mystery like a bather sheds clothing; I took it all in, overwhelmed, as the staid and stately homes of the neighborhoods around John’s house gave way to thronged shopping districts and humid concert halls; to Montagu House, with its marvelous curiosities, and sprawling parks where people promenaded in the thin sunlight and made me think of goods on display in shop windows. Without meaning to, I held myself tense in those crowds, half-expecting that I would meet Miss Hall by chance—a silly notion, but one I could not dispel. Yet still, I loved each of the city’s revelations—of the wondrousness of human imagination and my own body’s resilience, my feet firm upon the flagstone pavement, my lungs breathing easily of the air I’d been afraid of for so long.

  But I could not love this.

  I withdrew my hand from Mr. Watters’s arm, and he looked down at me, narrow brows arched in surprise. But I could not speak sensibly, my mouth crowded with thoughts of tiger-souls and tiger-hope, and the hopelessly insensible urge to unlatch the tiger’s barred cage and see all its potential unleashed on the world.

  Mr. Watters bowed over my right hand when we returned to John’s house. His breath was hot even through my thin glove, and I tucked my lips together, feeling, too, Mrs. Fitzwilliam’s and John’s sideways glances, hers assessing, his amused. Then Mr. Watters and John left again, this time for John’s club, and Mrs. Fitzwilliam disappeared to speak to the housekeeper, and I peeled my gloves off almost frantically. The back of my right hand was moist, as if I’d passed it through steam; I wiped it on the edge of my skirt, clenching my gloves tight in my other fist.

  My days used to move at the pace of the sun, slow and tedious, measured in shadows creeping across the floor and the interminable chocks of the drawing room clock. My new life left me overwhelmed, feeling as if I’d been buffeted from one end of the city to the other by a brisk wind. But it was the constant hum of expectation in the air around me that left me truly exhausted. If it was not Mr. Watters, who seemed always to be near at hand, smiling his many-toothed smiles, offering constant amusements and his own steady arm, it was Mrs. Fitzwilliam’s callers, who looked at me as if I were one of the menagerie’s fantastic beasts, rich and landed and unwed; and in need of caging.

  “We will have guests in our box tonight,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam said, turning so her maid could help her into her cape.

  My cape, lined with fox fur against the chill of the spring evening, was already fastened around my shoulders; Spinner drew its wide-mouthed hood up over my hair with great care. I turned my head to look at Mrs. Fitzwilliam, the edge of the hood obstructing my vision a little, and nearly sighed.

  “Oh?” I said.

  She looked back at me with a slight smile. “You needn’t look so despondent—is it really so terrible, making new friends? But these are friends you know already: Mrs. Amherst and her daughters.”

  “Oh,” I said again, but with an entirely different inflection.

  I had seen nothing of the Amherst ladies since we called upon them. Though Mrs. Fitzwilliam did her best to promote them in society, a whiff of trade still followed them everywhere, and so they were not invited to many of the parties to which the Fitzwilliam name gained her admittance. Not one of the other young ladies to whom I had been introduced put me so immediately at ease as Miss Amherst, and though I knew how unlikely it was that we would meet by chance, I still found myself searching each drawing room we entered for a crown of red hair and a generous, laughing mouth.

  “They will meet us at Drury Lane,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam said as John and Mr. Watters emerged from John’s study, bringing with them a faint aroma of brandy. I nodded, swallowed, very aware of the hedonistic softness of fur against my shoulders
.

  The Theatre Royal at Drury Lane was a smart, square building, only just constructed, Mr. Watters told me on our ride through the city, five or so years ago. He handed me out onto the pavement with great courtesy, taking my elbow to move me out of the way as another carriage took the place of ours, spilling more theatergoers into the London twilight. Snowflakes fell, just a few here and there, as if someone far above was dropping them at random, one by one.

  John and Mrs. Fitzwilliam joined us before the theater. He stood at his ease, his wife’s hand tucked into the crook of his arm, while she looked this way and that, presumably for the Amherst carriage; but as the minutes passed he finally turned to Mr. Watters and said, “Take the ladies inside; it wouldn’t do to have them take a chill. I will wait for Mrs. Amherst.”

  Mr. Watters offered his sister his other arm. Against my will, I was grateful for his steadying presence, for without his deft maneuvering I no doubt would have tripped or smashed into someone, so engrossed was I in taking in the grandeur of the building’s interior. We passed through the rotunda, with its round red columns and handsome cupola, and I forgot to mind my feet on the unfamiliar staircases.

  I heard the noise of the audience before we reached our seats. My fingers tightened on Mr. Watters’s sleeve; he looked down at me with faint amusement and leaned down to murmur, “Do not faint, Miss de Bourgh; you will be quite safe with me, even if the crowd gets rowdy.”

  I blinked away from him and was saved the trouble of responding by the sight of the theater opening up before me. I must have looked like a rustic, standing there with my eyes big as oranges; but who could fail to be moved by such a place? There was a whole world there, gilded and so brightly lit my eyes were dazzled. At a nudge from Mr. Watters, I followed him to my chair, sitting without taking my eyes from the spectacle before me.

  Boxes, like the one in which we sat, rose on both sides of the stage. They were filling with elegant ladies and gentlemen, while below a larger crowd gathered in the pit, people jostling one another in their haste to greet friends. All the voices melded together to produce a sort of overwhelming, wordless hum.

  Mr. Watters leaned close again. “The gaslights were only just installed a few months ago,” he said. “This is the first theater in London to be so well lit.”

  “It is astonishing,” I said.

  “All the better,” he said, after a moment, “because it shows off your new healthfulness to advantage.”

  I turned to look at him, and whatever he saw in my face—outrage? bewilderment?—made him laugh. “I apologize, I did not intend to discomfit you. It is only . . .” He smiled with one side of his mouth, voice low and head bent toward me so I could hear him above the general clamor. “You have a bloom about you, Miss de Bourgh; I am so glad to see you so fully restored to health.”

  Quite of their own accord, my eyes jerked themselves away from him as my cheeks grew ember hot. There was a sudden flurry behind us, and Mr. Watters, to my relief, stood to greet the Amherst ladies as John escorted them into our box. I swallowed and extended my hand in greeting, first to Mrs. Amherst, who glittered at her ears and throat, then to Miss Amherst and Miss Julia. They all greeted us cordially, though I noticed Mrs. Amherst and her younger daughter offered a little more pointed attention to Mr. Watters. John edged past us to reach his chair beside his wife, while the other ladies arranged themselves on the chairs behind ours.

  “This is Anne’s first time to the theater,” John said, his voice raised to be heard above the general din.

  “No! Not really?” Mrs. Amherst said. “Though I suppose there is little opportunity for theatergoing in Kent. We come as often as we can, though Mr. Amherst never joins us—he cannot abide the spectacle.” She gave a laugh, a more restrained variation on her eldest daughter’s. I glanced at Miss Amherst, who was sitting directly behind me, to find her watching me. For some reason, this made the embers in my cheeks flare all the hotter.

  “Unlike Papa, I love the spectacle,” she said, leaning forward so I could hear her. “I hope you will enjoy yourself this evening, Miss de Bourgh; if the tragedy of the play itself is not to your liking, the pantomime after will lighten your spirits.”

  “Is the play a tragedy, then?”

  Her face was open and amazed. “Macbeth? My dear Miss de Bourgh, I know you have not seen a play, but have you never read Shakespeare?”

  Her question put me off-balance; yet, once again, I could sense no meanness in her words, only genuine surprise. “No,” I said. “To be . . . frank—though I know when last we met you warned me against it—I have read little enough of anything, other than sermons. Those I could probably recite asleep.”

  She regarded me seriously. “By choice?” she said. “Or was the choice not yours to make?”

  “My education was . . . narrow.” I thought of Miss Hall and her clandestine offering of The Seasons. “Not, I think, by my governess’s choice, but by my mother’s orders. She does not approve of—theatricals, or novels, or poetry, or . . .”

  “Now that,” Miss Amherst said, “is a true tragedy. But look—” She touched me with the tips of her gloved fingers, just a bump to the top of my shoulder, and nodded toward the front of the theater. I turned back to look just as the heavy curtain was pulled back to reveal the stage.

  The play’s beginning hardly quietened the general noise of the crowd, and the constancy of the gaslights made me feel rather as if we were all of us part of some larger theatrical than the one being performed on the stage. There was a general air of merriment; down in the pit, people ate nuts and drank wine; in the boxes, people talked and watched each other, pointing with fans and quizzing glasses. I tried to keep my attention on the play itself, which was easier than it should be, given the general commotion; the actors and actresses had voices that rang out like cathedral bells, and even the painted sets were detailed and absorbing in their artistry. Mr. Watters directed a remark or two my way, and John and Mrs. Fitzwilliam chatted amiably with Miss Julia and Mrs. Amherst throughout the performance, but I sat mostly still and silent, watching.

  Once, though, I felt a little gust of warm laughter against the back of my neck, and I turned my head a bit to catch Miss Amherst’s eye. She grinned, nodded at the stage, and said, “I have seen this twice before, and the porter always makes me laugh.”

  After the play was a rough pantomime, followed by a strongman with muscles like thick twisted vines. Miss Amherst touched me again, this time on the wrist with her fan.

  “We have not had a chance to visit the shops,” she said. “I wonder if you are free tomorrow—if you are still interested, that is?”

  “I am,” I said, a touch too quickly, but she smiled at my eagerness.

  “We must go early, if you can bear it after a late evening,” she said.

  “Tonight is nothing—my cousin assures me we will be home by eleven o’clock. Until I came to Town, I did not fully understand when people spoke of London hours.”

  “Ah, you are becoming acclimated.”

  “Not terribly well,” I said. “I am too dull for much of London society.”

  Miss Amherst bent closer, whispering. “Most of London society is very dull,” she said. “They are only also very loud—always in a tasteful way, of course—and their dullness is screened by fine furs and feathers.” Her wide mouth stretched impossibly wider. “But then, my mother is forever telling me to temper my opinions if I ever want to catch a husband; you probably should not listen to me.”

  I found myself smiling in turn. “Someone once told me frankness was not much appreciated in Town,” I said. “I find I rather enjoy yours, however.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Though the day was fine, weak sunlight even breaking through the general covering of clouds, Miss Amherst collected me in her carriage.

  “I thought we would wander among all the shops; and so we might still, if there’s time,” she said. “But after our talk yesterday, there is a place we simply must visit before any other. Everything e
lse can wait.”

  “What is it?” I said, but she only laughed and refused to tell me.

  She seemed undaunted by the throngs in the streets as we drove; when I mentioned this, and how clanging everything still seemed to me, she said her family had lived in London for many years.

  “My mother, of course, wishes my father to buy an estate in the country,” she said, craning her neck to look at a woman pushing a flower cart. “But Papa says he would not know a single thing about being a country gentleman. He would probably ruin an estate and lose all our fortune. He knew his business, and now his money is safely in the funds, where he likes it. Mamma”—with a wry smile—“is not satisfied, however, and harangues him on the subject daily.”

  I pressed my lips together to keep myself from asking what Mr. Amherst’s business was; here, I thought, my frankness would not be welcome. Mrs. Fitzwilliam was always sensitive to questions about her family’s links to manufacturing, and as she and the Amherst ladies were in school together, it stood to reason that their families might have been involved in similar pursuits.

  But, yet again, Miss Amherst surprised me. “Papa had several cotton mills. If you need an opinion on the quality of fabric at the draper’s, you’ve only to ask—I have an eye, immodest though I might sound for admitting it.”

  I thought of Mamma, who never hesitated to praise her own best qualities, and to my surprise, found myself smiling. “Modesty is sometimes valued overmuch, I think.”

  Her answering smile was quick as a darting bluebird, and just as bright. “That is just what I think, too.”

  “They call it the Temple of the Muses,” Miss Amherst said as the footman helped us down. “A little dramatic, perhaps, but an excellent place to start a lifelong love affair with books.”

  The front of the shop bore the motto The Cheapest Bookstore in the World. I had never been inside a true bookshop, much less one with such a claim to make. Hunsford boasted a small circulating library, where I had gone a few times; but their selection was small, made smaller by Mamma’s prohibitions against frivolous reading, and I never particularly enjoyed venturing inside. But this place was nothing like the little library; it was nothing like my father’s book room. It was something else altogether.