The Secret Heiress

by Luke Devenish

  ‘I am at my work,’ said Matilda, taking her eyes off Ida at last and returning to her pen.

  ‘My mistake,’ said Ida, cheerily, making for the door. She glanced at the writing desk as she passed. The paper Matilda worked upon was covered in thick, uneven handwriting, functional just, where it wasn’t marred by ink spots. It was very unattractive on the whole; the sort of penmanship that would have earned Ida a sharp rap over the knuckles from the schoolmistress once upon a time, had she ever dared let it be seen. ‘Penning a letter?’ she asked.

  Matilda stopped very still and said nothing.

  Ida closed the door behind her again as quietly as she could. She was starting to realise that Matilda was somewhat changeable. She’d seemed warmer at the graveyard, nicer, but now she was cold and reserved. Ida knew she would simply have to get as used to this unpredictability in her.

  Cradling the flowers in her apron, Ida returned upstairs to Matilda’s room first, where she arranged the blooms into two small bouquets. Choosing two other vases from among the several the room contained, Ida upended water from the washbasin jug into them before adding the flowers. The effect in each was very pretty.

  She heard the low rumble of Barker’s voice from somewhere in the hallway outside. ‘You ought to get her out there, give her a bit of an airing,’ he was saying.

  ‘Miss Gregory is not some open wound to be exposed to the elements,’ Samuel replied.

  The relationship between the two men was very strange to Ida’s mind. The violence with which she’d seen Samuel treat Barker on the carriage, and the insolence with which Barker had driven him to it, spoke of things unsaid between them. And yet they were speaking now. Ida crept to the door and peeked out. At the other end of the hallway the valet was slouched at the open door to Samuel’s rooms. Ida couldn’t see Samuel within, but his voice carried, polished and higher class.

  ‘Isn’t she?’ The valet asked. ‘Some in town might differ there, Mr Hackett, especially now that gossip’s done its work.’

  ‘I abhor gossip,’ Samuel responded.

  ‘Not this gossip you don’t, and you’ve got me to thank for it.’ Barker tapped his long, straight nose. ‘Thank me and the tongues of all the disgruntled.’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Samuel shouted. He came red-faced to his door and Barker backed away a little.

  ‘You’re missing my point,’ Barker said.

  ‘I get your point perfectly well,’ Samuel told him.

  ‘Do you?’ said Barker. ‘Let’s see then. What do you reckon will come when you listen to some common sense and start squiring that wax-headed noodle on your arm for a bit?’

  Samuel seemed to bite back a flush of anger and Ida made sure no part of her was protruding past the door of the Chinese room where either man might spot her. She couldn’t quite see them now, but their voices stayed clear. ‘You call your mistress “wax-headed”, do you?’ Samuel objected.

  The valet was very dry. ‘Sorry. I forget you’re slow on the uptake, yourself, Hackett.’ He altered his tone to one more appropriate for a child. ‘You might not have noticed it, but the other Miss Gregory, the one that’s not dead, she has a memory like a billy can that upset a shotgun – full of holes.’

  ‘I suppose you think that my conducting Miss Gregory in public will illicit some manner of sympathy?’ said Samuel, clearly weary of Barker. ‘The fiancée and the sister taking comfort in each other’s grief?’

  ‘You surprise me,’ said Barker. ‘It’s sympathy that won’t go astray, neither, not for her and not for you, which might very well be a good thing.’

  Ida dared peek again and saw that Samuel had reached for his door handle. ‘Thank you very much, Barker, that will be all.’ He shut the door.

  Ida thought she knew what at least part of the conversation meant, and it was gratifying to learn she’d been right in her suspicions. The gossip mentioned was surely that concerning Margaret Gregory’s suicide. From the way that Barker had spoken it seemed like he felt that Samuel should be grateful he had had a hand in spreading it. Who would be grateful for scandal? Yet, the scandal was still acknowledged by Barker as real. Sympathy that might be elicited from taking Miss Matilda out in public was seen as an antidote for it.

  Ida hated that Samuel was somehow beholden to his awful servant and that Barker presumed to advise him. Samuel was in every way Barker’s better; a beautiful man, gentry born. Why wouldn’t he rid himself of such a bad valet?

  She took the larger of the two floral arrangements to the dressing table – which was when she got a further shock.

  The blue glass vial was gone again.

  Ida glanced all around for it but the piece had vanished once more.

  Ida thought of Matilda downstairs in the library writing in her ink-spotted hand. She adjusted the vase of flowers. ‘Someone’s playing silly buggers with me,’ she muttered.

  • • •

  When Samuel proposed the notion of Matilda accompanying him to the Castlemaine District Ball, Matilda said yes. But only once Samuel had left the breakfast table and Aggie had come into the dining room did Matilda express the fear that she would not last from dusk to dawn, the necessary number of hours required to grace a country ball. Ida listened to this with interest, placing the used breakfast things on a tray.

  ‘I will fall asleep,’ Matilda worried. ‘I will be found beneath a table somewhere, or outside in the grass. I will be unable to stop myself from sleeping.’

  Ida saw Aggie’s eyes wander to the same spot on the floor where she herself had imagined Matilda’s dead sister might have been found.

  ‘I will bring disgrace upon dear brother Samuel for it,’ Matilda feared.

  Aggie pulled her eyes away and made assurances that nothing so dire would occur.

  ‘But how would you know, Marshall?’ Matilda asked of her. ‘You have never been to a ball, either.’

  Aggie glanced then at her own reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. ‘Nor do I expect to, miss,’ she said, looking away from the glass. ‘But I shall enjoy your enjoyment of one. You must go if Mr Samuel has asked you.’

  ‘I’m dreading it now,’ said Matilda.

  ‘But you told him yes.’

  ‘I couldn’t refuse him. He’s so kind to me . . .’ She trailed off, plainly beset with insecurity.

  ‘Sympathy,’ said Ida. ‘It’ll help bring some sympathy.’

  Matilda and Aggie looked at her.

  ‘Why is that needed?’ Aggie asked. She looked annoyed with Ida for sticking her nose in. In truth, Ida didn’t know why sympathy might be a good thing and it bothered her. The overheard chat between Samuel and Barker had not made it clear. Yet it had still seemed like something useful to contribute.

  Aggie made Matilda examine herself in the mantle mirror in her place – a distraction. ‘Now listen to me,’ Aggie told her, ‘is it not true that when you were a little girl and your father was still with you, you and your sister dreamed and dreamed of being invited to balls, and were enchanted with the notion of dancing until dawn?’

  Matilda’s suspicious look came over her. ‘How could you know such a thing about me, Marshall?’

  Ida saw Aggie’s attention drifting to the spot on the floor again. ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Matilda seemed to fight inside herself. ‘Perhaps it is. I do not know. My memory.’

  Aggie nodded, understanding.

  ‘But I don’t see how you could know of it, if I don’t,’ Matilda said.

  ‘I know it because every girl dreams it, miss,’ Aggie smiled. ‘Isn’t that true, Ida?’

  Ida jumped at being included in the conversation again, and nearly dropped a saucer. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I’d love to go to a ball.’

  Aggie nodded at her. She took a brush from her dress pocket and began stroking Matilda’s long, unpinned hair, not yet put up for the day.

  ‘Oh,’ said Matilda. The beauty of her reflection and the motion of the hairbrush had their effect; she began to seem calmer.
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  ‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ Aggie asked.

  Matilda nodded, eyelids closed. ‘Matilda went to a ball once . . .’

  Aggie paused with the brush. ‘You’re Matilda,’ she reminded.

  Matilda’s eyelids opened. ‘No, I’m not.’ She looked searchingly at Aggie’s reflection in the mirror, and in that same mirror saw puzzled Ida.

  Not knowing what else to do, Ida nodded politely at Matilda’s reflected face.

  ‘Am I really, though?’ Matilda wondered, vulnerable.

  Aggie was patient. ‘Mr Clarkenwell told you a dreadful lie, remember? And so did a lot of other people. You were never Margaret at all – she was. She was the one who was ill, too. You’re Matilda and you’re not ill.’ She waited as the beautiful young woman once again digested this. ‘So, it must have been Margaret that went to a ball,’ she added, as gently as she could.

  Matilda’s look was bitter. ‘Sometimes I quite resent my sister.’

  ‘Well, no one would blame you for that,’ said Aggie, resuming with the brush. ‘She caused the wrong in the first place.’

  ‘I resent her for ruining my certainty.’

  Aggie didn’t understand. Matilda turned to her. ‘I was sure. I had become so sure, Marshall.’

  She’d lost Aggie. ‘Sure of what, miss?’

  ‘Sure of whom I was, at last, after so very long of not being sure . . .’ There were tears beginning to well in Matilda’s huge brown eyes. ‘I really thought I knew for certain.’

  ‘That was the viciousness of the lie confusing you, confusing everybody. You’re Miss Matilda. You always were.’

  Matilda seemed to give in. ‘You’re quite right.’ She let her eyelids close again with Aggie’s brush strokes.

  ‘You’ll not have the chance to fall asleep, Matilda.’

  Matilda’s eyes sprang open and she, Aggie and Ida turned to the dining room door. Samuel was there, dressed ready to go into town.

  ‘Well, you won’t,’ he said, smiling, stepping into the room, ‘so you mustn’t worry. Only the tipsy old men nod off at the balls. Everyone else has too fine a time in the hullabaloo to even think about sleep.’

  Ida glanced at Matilda and saw that she was blushing, robbed of reply.

  ‘Miss Matilda has never attended such an affair, Mr Hackett,’ Aggie answered, curtseying.

  Samuel’s kind blue eyes met Ida’s and she saw that he wanted her to leave him and Matilda alone.

  Smiling shyly back at him, she took the tray of used breakfast things to the hall, fully intending to park there and listen while Samuel sat down with Matilda – but Aggie followed her.

  ‘Why are you standing there, Ida, aren’t those things meant for the kitchen?’

  ‘Sssh,’ Ida hissed.

  ‘People only dance until dawn because it is preferable to travelling home along bad country roads in darkness,’ said Samuel from inside the room, ‘but I’m informed that the District Ball is only held following consultation with the almanac.’

  Aggie looked shocked anew by Ida. ‘It is shameful to eavesdrop upon your betters’ she admonished. ‘Go to the kitchen at once.’

  Ida was pained. ‘The mistress didn’t sleep well at all the first night. She was wandering around the house.’ She spoke in a barely audible whisper. ‘Wandering near Mr Samuel’s rooms.’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  Ida shook her head, apologetic. ‘I saw them. Nothing happened that shouldn’t have, but what did happen was enough.’

  Aggie needed to lean against a wall to steady herself, she was so mortified.

  ‘Now we’ve got to eavesdrop, don’t we?’ Ida insisted.

  ‘We will know what our mistress permits us to know,’ said Aggie, appalled by everything. ‘Now go.’ She pushed Ida in the direction of the green baize door.

  ‘The almanac tells us when the moon is at its brightest,’ Samuel continued from the dining room. ‘So I promise you, Matilda, on the night of our ball, the moon will be full in the sky. The almanac will have ensured it. There’ll be plenty of light to make the drive home long before dawn.’

  Ida didn’t move far. ‘Mr Barker eavesdrops all the time,’ she hissed at Aggie. ‘I never know when he’s going to appear.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. What interest does that man have in the business of women?’

  Inside the room Matilda asked, ‘But what if there are clouds, brother?’

  Samuel just laughed.

  Matilda was quiet for a moment before laughing, too. ‘What if there are clouds?’ she repeated, as if this was now a joke. ‘What happens then?’

  Suddenly there was a cry and the sound of someone knocking into the table. Aggie and Ida heard the noise and rushed to the open door to find Samuel and Matilda awkwardly looking away from each other.

  ‘I . . . I thought he meant to bite me,’ Matilda blurted.

  Aggie reeled.

  The smooth, fair skin at Samuel’s throat went red. ‘Miss Gregory . . .’

  ‘I’m so silly, aren’t I?’ said Matilda. ‘It’s not what he meant to do at all.’

  Samuel somehow left the room with all the dignity he could gather.

  Aggie said nothing for a moment, before her eyes fell reflexively to the spot on the floor. She pulled them away.

  ‘Did he try to kiss you, miss?’ Ida asked, gently. She could only dream of receiving such a wonderful thing from Samuel.

  Matilda looked at her with surprise for a moment. Ida felt as if she were being weighed for her qualification in something, but what that might be Ida couldn’t suppose. After another moment of this Matilda nodded. ‘He did, Ida. I . . . I misunderstood it.’

  Ida’s heart went out to her. Matilda seemed as fragile as glass again, like she’d been at the graveyard, or the day she’d been collected from the Hall. Her changeability was extraordinary.

  ‘Well, if it happens again, you’ll know what to do, won’t you, miss?’ Aggie said, softly, taking charge once more. ‘You’ll be more prepared for it.’

  Ida wished she herself had been the subject of that kiss.

  • • •

  It was only afterwards, when Matilda had gone out to stroll in the grounds, that Ida found herself unsettled by what she’d witnessed. She tried to concentrate on her tasks but was unable to keep her head from the increasing strangeness of it all. Samuel had tried to kiss Matilda, which meant he was rapidly acquiring feelings for her, very rapidly indeed. Was this respectable, Ida wondered? She didn’t know. A proposal could be forthcoming, in itself a happy prospect for any girl, but given the events that had seen Matilda return to Summersby in the first place.

  Ida knew herself to be young and inexperienced in life, despite her efforts to be otherwise, yet Samuel had been engaged to Matilda’s dead sister. What would people make of things if he got himself betrothed to Matilda? This, she realised, could be a very good reason to illicit sympathy from people beforehand. If people felt sympathetic they might also feel better disposed towards such an unexpected announcement.

  • • •

  Ida stepped out from the shadow of the entrance porch as Samuel stepped down from the carriage and strode towards Summersby’s great door. She knew Barker waited somewhere within the house and she wished to speak with Samuel without the risk of the black-clad valet overhearing.

  ‘You’ve come back from town then, Mr Hackett?’ she said, by way of alerting her presence to him.

  Samuel was taken off guard at seeing her, but at once recovered and actually looked pleased to see her. ‘Ida,’ he said, acknowledging her with a smile.

  ‘Can I speak to you a minute?’ she asked, with what she hoped was suitable appeal.

  Samuel’s brow creased a little and Ida realised with alarm that he thought she meant to bring up the kiss. She was quick to disavow it. ‘Something very distressing has come to my ears, Mr Hackett,’ she said, ‘something I overheard when I went into town yesterday on my afternoon free.’

  Samuel’s brow creased deeper, but his smil
e remained.

  Ida kept to the story she’d rehearsed. ‘It upset me that such wicked things could be said, Mr Hackett, and I . . . well, I thought you should know about it . . .’ she trailed away as Samuel’s expression remained unaltered.

  ‘What did you hear?’ he asked, kindly.

  Ida steeled herself, studying him without, she hoped, looking as if she was doing so. ‘I heard that the late Miss Gregory died by her own hand.’

  Samuel’s expression revealed absolutely nothing.

  Ida’s nerve failed her. ‘It’s terrible what people will say,’ she blurted, ‘people with nothing better to do than sow misery over other people’s sorrow – if I’d known the gossipers I would have given them a piece of my mind, but being just a maid and only sixteen . . .’

  Tears pricked Samuel’s eyes and this silenced her. ‘It’s true,’ he said.

  Ida went very still.

  ‘My fiancée took her own life.’

  Ida was left with nothing in reply.

  ‘I have so badly wanted to tell you of it,’ he said. ‘Your kindness of heart was obvious from the very first day we met each other, as was your honesty and loyalty, Ida, but all the same, it is so very difficult to speak of such a thing.’

  Ida felt ashamed of herself.

  ‘We found her on the floor that morning,’ said Samuel, ‘still warm as if her heart was beating, but she was gone, Ida.’

  ‘Who’s we?’ she asked without thinking.

  He pulled up slightly at this. ‘Barker and I.’

  ‘Him?’

  He smiled sadly at her. ‘You find our arrangement perplexing, Ida, he can be very uncouth at times, I know, but you must believe me when I tell you he is indispensible to me. I would have fallen to pieces that day without Barker; I was distraught at the loss. He took care of everything, you understand, all the sad arrangements afterwards. There was no one else to do it, you see.’

  Ida nodded.

  ‘But I am afraid we have lost the battle to still the tongues of the town,’ Samuel said, softly. ‘People know what she did.’

  ‘It would seem so – I’m sorry, Mr Hackett,’ Ida said. She hated herself for having raised the matter with him so dishonestly.

  Samuel nodded once and smiled at her again, with genuine warmth and gratitude. ‘I was right to call you a friend.’ He reached for her hand, grasping the tips of her fingers in his before letting them go again.