The Secret Heiress

by Luke Devenish

  Matilda stopped short again and Ida’s heart sank at the fear she would fall at the final hurdle. ‘No, I don’t like it,’ Matilda said. ‘I’m going back to my room.’

  Aggie’s look suggested she would not be releasing her grip on the hope of escape while she still had a fight in her. ‘But what is it you don’t like, miss? Tell me.’

  Matilda fluttered, ready to run. ‘The pressure, the expectation upon me . . .’

  ‘What pressure is there in stepping into sunshine on such a nice day, in such a nice yellow dress, with your hair so lovely, in your very best hat?’

  Matilda’s fingers rested on the curls that Aggie had laboured hard in perfecting with the irons. ‘You say he is my relative?’ she whispered, her huge, round eyes threatening tears.

  Aggie turned the key and twisted the brass knob of the front door, letting a stream of sunlight fall upon them all as Yip ran out and stretched the rope to its end, impatient to pull them outside with her.

  ‘He is the man who was betrothed to your twin sister, your poor Miss Margaret, the one who died.’ Aggie took her mistress by the hand and stepped onto the portico first.

  Matilda beheld a strikingly handsome man her own age, expensively dressed, with the summer sun striking the gold of his hair and skin and moustache. Samuel looked briefly askance at Yip before stepping forward with a greeting smile, his grey gloved hand outstretched.

  ‘That makes him like your brother-in-law.’ Aggie slipped her mistress’s hand inside Samuel’s, then stepped aside, restraining Yip.

  ‘Mr Samuel Hackett of Summersby . . .’ Beaming Ida introduced him.

  Matilda stepped fully into the light and was clearly dazzled for a moment by the way it struck and glittered and bounced upon Samuel’s blond hair, upon his smooth, tanned skin, upon his lips, and upon the gold of his cufflinks and waistcoat buttons. With her untaken hand she tried to shield herself from this light but he gently turned her from the glare so that the sun was behind her and she could see him wholly and clearly as he was.

  Samuel brought her lace-gloved hand to his lips and kissed it.

  ‘This is Miss Gregory, Mr Hackett,’ Ida was telling him. ‘Miss Matilda Gregory, that is, our new mistress.’

  Ida watched as Matilda seemed utterly struck by Samuel’s beauty, and this only caused Ida herself to look at him anew. His features were perfectly symmetrical and so highly pleasing, like a face from a painting. A girl could learn to love such a face, Ida already knew.

  ‘Miss Gregory, we meet in and are united by the saddest of circumstances,’ said Samuel, releasing Matilda’s hand. ‘I am sure you are as heartbroken to lose a cherished sister as am I to lose so beloved a fiancée.’

  Matilda glanced at Aggie and was aware that some form of reply was expected of her. ‘I wish she had come to visit me,’ she offered, before glancing at Aggie again to see if this meant with the maid’s approval. It didn’t. ‘She never came once, or at least . . . I don’t remember her doing so,’ Matilda continued, apparently unable to choose a new course. ‘Why do you think she stayed away from me? She so hates being parted.’

  Samuel responded with no disapproval of his own. Rather, his face showed only the deepest sympathy – and movingly for Ida – shame. ‘I wish only that I could offer you an explanation for your sister’s actions,’ he offered, ‘but I have none.’ He cleared his throat and regarded Matilda with an expression that was earnest and humble. ‘A great injustice was done against you, Miss Gregory. I don’t know why or really how, but it was done all the same.’

  Matilda seemed to lose herself in his cornflower blue eyes.

  Ida became aware of Barker, dark and brooding, watching the exchange from where he slouched at their hired carriage, in the leafy street beyond the wrought-iron gate. He was intensely focused upon Samuel from beneath his unruly hair.

  ‘It is my sister who is ill?’ Matilda asked, tentative.

  Aggie stepped in. ‘That’s right, miss, as I told you before. No one thinks an illness lies with you. Not anymore. Isn’t that right, Mr Hackett?’ she asked, turning to Samuel.

  Samuel answered without taking his eyes from Matilda. ‘It was my fiancée who was unsound in her mind,’ he said, with a catch in his voice.

  Ida saw Barker step through the gate and onto the front path.

  Samuel seemed to recover himself. ‘You were kept here wrongfully, Miss Gregory. I don’t know how it was done, as I said, but it could only have happened before I began courting Matilda . . .’ He corrected himself. ‘Margaret, I mean – before I even courted Margaret and knew your dear, late father.’

  Ida listened intently. There was so much about the situation that remained mysterious to her mind. Samuel seemed to become aware of her attention just as Barker appeared at his elbow. A look passed between the two of them that Ida was unable to read.

  ‘I must confess I had no knowledge of your existence until I read my late fiancée’s will,’ Samuel said to Matilda, ending whatever further explanation he had seemed about to provide. ‘Had I known of the truth, I assure you I would have done my utmost to expose and amend the situation.’

  Ida blinked, digesting this, as Barker gave a cough. Samuel seemed reluctant to introduce him. ‘Oh – this is my valet, Barker, Miss Gregory,’ he told her, with lessened interest, indicating the black-clad man beside him. ‘He is an indispensible man.’

  Barker displayed hard, white teeth as he grinned. Ida averted her eyes from the display. ‘It will be my pleasure to direct the mistress’s comfort,’ he said in his rough accent.

  ‘You were not a valet then,’ Matilda said, squinting at him.

  Barker’s grin froze.

  ‘You were something else. Not a valet. We didn’t have a valet. Did you work in the stables?’

  Barker cast a sideways glance at Samuel. ‘Miss Gregory is right, I’m sure. My memory ain’t what it was.’

  Aggie stepped in. ‘Miss Gregory’s own memory sometimes plays tricks,’ she said, tactfully.

  Samuel smiled, apologetic. ‘Like myself Mr Barker is not originally from Summersby. Perhaps he resembles another servant you know?’

  Matilda studied Barker again, before smiling knowingly at him. ‘You were so madly in love . . .’

  Ida saw a vivid blush sweep up Barker’s throat from his collar, before he stepped back with a negligible bow.

  Samuel held out his arm for Matilda and she accepted it naturally, as if she had known him for months, not minutes. ‘Let me show you to the carriage,’ he said, ‘I do so look forward to having you as my guest at Summersby while you decide what your future holds, Miss Gregory.’

  Ida started in surprise. ‘Doesn’t Summersby belong to Miss Gregory now?’ she asked without thinking.

  Samuel and Matilda stopped.

  ‘Well, yes, of course,’ said Samuel. He gave Ida a smile that told her he was grateful for being shown the oversight. ‘Under my late fiancée’s will, or rather, under her late father’s will, Miss Gregory of course owns Summersby entirely.’ He turned to Matilda again. ‘It is your home and I am the guest.’

  Ida looked pleased she’d not spoken out of turn – or revealed the extent of her eavesdropping – until she saw the look on Barker’s face, which plainly said otherwise.

  Matilda looked confused. ‘Summersby. Is it where I once lived?’

  Aggie nodded at her, reassuringly.

  ‘I do believe it was,’ said Samuel.

  Ida watched them walk down the path towards the carriage beyond, and prepared to follow them. Aggie realised Barker was frowning at Yip, still straining at the rope in her hand. ‘Is that your mistress’s animal?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, no, Mr Barker,’ Aggie said, ‘I mean, not really, you see—’

  ‘Good,’ said Barker, cutting her off. ‘Summersby’s no place for lapdogs.’ He began to slope off after Samuel along the path.

  Aggie looked at Ida in confusion. ‘But . . . Mr Barker?’ she called after him.

  The valet turned, his piercing bla
ck eyes lacking all warmth.

  ‘But I’m to come, too . . .’ Aggie began. ‘What will my mistress do without me if I don’t?’

  ‘No care of mine either way,’ said Barker. ‘If you’re coming, then be quick about it, woman, but the dog’s got no place, understand?’

  Ida felt she’d experienced more than enough of Barker’s ill humour for one day. ‘Why shouldn’t she bring the dog, then? What’s a little mutt like that going to harm?’

  Barker turned around fully and then strode all the way back to where they stood. ‘You arguing with me, Ida?’

  Ida stood firm. ‘It’s a big house and as good as empty. Aggie’s Yip won’t get under your big flat feet, so stop being such a misery.’

  Barker bunched his hands into fists. ‘No.’

  Ida thought of the poor little dog that had died. ‘But there’s been a pet before.’

  ‘And it was the last.’ His face was murderous.

  ‘You rotten old—’

  Aggie put a hand on her arm, stopping her. ‘It’s all right, Ida,’ she whispered. ‘I wouldn’t want to upset Mr Barker, not when I’m only new. Yip will be safe and sound here at the Hall.’

  • • •

  Taking her seat in the second, lesser carriage that Samuel had provided for the luggage, Ida cast a last look back at the bewildered dog, tethered to the door of the Hall and wondering where the walk had gone. Her heart broke at the cruelty of it. She knew that Aggie’s own heart had already snapped in two. Ida willed herself to think only of the new mistress now, who was going, Ida knew, to a life of happiness at last, and Aggie with her. Surely, someone at the Hall would continue feeding Yip, Ida told herself.

  When the carriages pulled away, Ida tried to block her ears to the sound of Yip’s barking but found that nothing would quell the noise. She tried listing in her mind the things that had struck her as interesting about the day.

  One. Samuel had known the sisters’ father, the late Mr Gregory. Ida had not thought to ask when it was exactly that Samuel had come to Summersby, but now she had the likely answer – it was when Mr Gregory was still alive. And yet he had not met Matilda before today.

  Two. Matilda had mistaken Barker for a servant she had known in the past, a man who held a different position than valet, and yet as Ida had watched Matilda it had seemed equally possible that Matilda had recognised Barker as much as mistake him for someone else. The man she remembered had been in love. In love with who?

  Three. Barker had been adamant that Yip would not accompany them. Had he been so devoted to the late Miss Gregory’s dog that he simply could not contemplate another taking its place? Ida thought this unlikely. Barker hadn’t even bothered to give poor Billy a burial. All he’d done was toss the little animal onto a rubbish heap.

  The late Miss Gregory had hired Ida because she was inquisitive. Deceitful the lady may have been, and dead she now sadly was, but neither was reason in Ida’s view to warrant her being let down. Miss Gregory had seen the potential in Ida when so few others had, her own mother included.

  This was potential that Ida greatly intended to reach.

  BIDDY

  DECEMBER 1903

  2

  Biddy MacBryde was cheery, pretty, lately sixteen, and employed as the Reverend’s first kitchenmaid, and the story she spun on the way to the Bridge Road shops with her best friend Queenie, fifteen, the Reverend’s second kitchenmaid, was this: Biddy was engaged in a clandestine romance with Tom, the handsome grocer’s boy at Topp’s General Store. Good-looking Tom could appreciate a beauty when he clocked one, Biddy’s story went, no matter how soot-stained the rags that lessened her, and he and Biddy were in love as a consequence, but no one must ever know of it.

  ‘You don’t say,’ said Queenie, in flat response to this preposterousness.

  Biddy was hoping for rather more investment in this fantasy as they made their way by foot in the hot summer sun up the Lennox Street hill. ‘I’ve been so tormented by the burden,’ she added, encouragingly. ‘You can’t picture what it’s been like for me, with a near-bursting heart. Being in love is wonderful, just like they say it is in stories, but the pressure it places on your emotions, well, it’s like being laid up in bed. It’s a relief to tell you everything at last.’

  Queenie looked in danger of being bored.

  Biddy had loved spinning stories for as long as Queenie had been her best friend, which was a year and a half now, and as long as they’d worked together as kitchenmaids for the Reverend Archibald Flowers. Some of the stories she came out with were so outrageous they sent Queenie into fits, but today Queenie seemed not quite herself and Biddy feared she knew why.

  In the week just past, Biddy and Queenie had together overheard talk in the front parlour between Reverend Flowers and Mrs Rattray, the stern Scotch housekeeper who was their superior. The talk concerned the need to find an ‘upstairs’ maid for the Manse and the difficulties this involved given the deplorable standard of domestic servants in Melbourne. Mrs Rattray had proposed that Biddy or Queenie be elevated with the help of additional training to become a quarter-way capable ‘above-stairs girl’, which would still be preferable, Mrs Rattray had said, to the flotsam the Reverend would end up with if he advertised in a newspaper. Reverend Flowers had seen the good sense in this and agreed, even though his Manse had neither upstairs nor down, being built on the one storey. But any thrill of excitement Biddy and Queenie might have felt at the prospect of advancement was cut short. Having to choose between the two kitchen maids, Mrs Rattray had told the Reverend that she was rather more inclined to consider Biddy suitable for uplifting, given she was so much more pleasing to the eye.

  Eavesdropping with Biddy on the other side of the parlour door, Queenie had felt this slight like a dagger though her heart, turning to Biddy with tears in her eyes. Mortified by Queenie’s deep hurt, Biddy had found herself lost for words, and the subject had not been mentioned by either of them since. Biddy had told herself she would refuse the promotion if offered. Far better to retain a friend. But the moment had not yet come where she might make this intended sacrifice known to Queenie. If she so much as skirted near the sensitive topic Queenie threatened to turn on the waterworks again. The romance story was a refuge. It gave Biddy something to say while she thought on how best to broach the thing that most needed saying.

  The two girls reached the top of Lennox Street and paused in the hot December glare to dab their faces with hankies and adjust their broad-brimmed straw hats against the sun.

  Queenie turned to her. ‘What shall I do when we go inside the store, then?’ she asked. ‘Now that you’ve told me the big secret, I feel like I might burst with it as well.’

  Biddy was pleased her friend had decided to pick up the romance story after all. ‘Any hint of what I’ve told you on your face and old Topp will be onto us! He disapproves, you see.’

  ‘But what about Tom? How can I treat him the same way now that I know everything?’

  Biddy caught an odd look in Queenie’s eye, a look she couldn’t quite name. ‘I told you everything because I thought you could be trusted,’ she said, wringing the melodrama and happy that Queenie was now playing along.

  They turned to the right and began strolling along dusty Bridge Road, grateful for the shade from the row of shops’ verandas. ‘It’s just that I’m not as worldly when it comes to secret romances,’ Queenie said. ‘I don’t know what I might do or say under the pressure of containing it.’

  Biddy slapped down a perfect trump card. ‘Turn around and go back to the Manse right now!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Now. Off!’ Biddy snatched the basket from Queenie’s arm with a flourish and hooked it over her own.

  ‘Biddy . . .’

  ‘You’ll bring about my ruin. I can see it!’ Biddy raised a quivering finger and placed it against her lips, before moistening her eyes in sorrow, the finger at her lips becoming a hand that vainly halted a choked sob. Biddy turned on her toes and rushed into the front door of
Topp’s General Store as if she’d just drawn the first act of her play to curtain.

  • • •

  Finding herself the only customer inside the cool interior of the store, Biddy allowed her eyes to adjust for a minute, inventing Act Two in her head. She glanced through the glass, saw Queenie still lingering outside and wondered how long it would be before her friend followed her inside to continue the fun.

  ‘Afternoon, Biddy,’ said a knowing voice from behind her. ‘You two playing silly games again?’

  Biddy spun around to meet the smile of Tom himself, tall and lean, and certainly handsome. As with many of Biddy’s stories, the embroidery that was the ‘secret romance’ had needed a scrap of truthfulness to stitch itself to. Biddy and Tom, when the store wasn’t busy and no one was at them to get back to work, quite enjoyed talking to each other. The conversations they had, while by no means highbrow, weren’t exactly street level either. They discussed interesting things; things they saw in The Argus newspaper; things they’d learned from a book; opinions they’d gathered about the world and the interesting people in it.

  ‘Don’t know what the matter is with Queenie today,’ said Biddy, approaching the counter, ‘she can’t seem to stay in the same mood for more than a minute. Must be the heat.’

  ‘The heat’s something terrible,’ Tom agreed. ‘I’ve even rolled my shirtsleeves up.’ Biddy pretended she hadn’t already noticed the rare sight of Tom’s sinewy forearms. ‘But it’s not so bad in here,’ said Tom. ‘The mercury says it’s only eighty-five. Be twice that on the tram tracks.’

  Biddy had been fanning herself but stopped. ‘It’s like a Coolgardie safe in here, it’s so reviving,’ she claimed, knowing that it could have been hot enough to boil a sheep on her head and still she would have called the store cool, for Tom’s sake.