Scandal's Heiress

by Amelia Smith

  He must know that she was right, she thought.

  “I like to think that we would have met, in any case,” Thomas said, “and become friends, or… I don’t know. You are probably right, but I have before me only the lonely prospect of returning to a land I never got along with. I would rather face it with you by my side.”

  “With me?” Hyacinth said. “Again, no. I still have my own affairs to attend to and I am not at all sure that I wish to be married, ever.”

  “No? It would be a shame to see you a spinster.”

  “If I have independent means, it would be better than many marriages,” Hyacinth said. He was probably thinking about that kiss, that ill-advised kiss they’d shared. The night was cool, but the sailors were all out on deck, looking towards the shore. Even if she gave in to her desire to touch those lips again, she couldn't do so with all the men looking on.

  “Some marriages are happy,” Thomas said. “Our captain and his wife, for example.”

  “They are,” Hyacinth said. “I think my father and mother were happy too, but then, she died young, and… it cannot last.” Her father had been devastated. Whatever his affair had been with George's mother, it had not been love. They had lost too much when her mother died. She had lost too much.

  “You don’t speak of her often,” Thomas said.

  “No, but I was only ten years old when she died.”

  “Were you lonely?” he asked.

  “Of course I was. Wouldn’t you have been lonely if your mother had died?”

  “No, I don’t think I would have missed her so much.”

  “How ever not?” She could not imagine not missing a mother. She did not understand him. If he had seemed passionate, that night in the dark, it was probably an illusion, or an effect of wine and moonlight.

  “I rarely saw her,” Thomas said, after a pause. “She was always in London or visiting friends when I was young, and knowing what I later learned about my father, I can understand why. I would have been sad at her passing, but it wouldn’t have made much difference in my day-to-day life. I would still have had the same nursemaids, tutors, schools. No. It would have made little difference to me.”

  He shrugged when he finished, as if his words didn't mean much to him, but they puzzled Hyacinth, and saddened her. “She must love you, in her way?” she said.

  “Perhaps. I'll see her soon, along with the rest of them, whoever is left.”

  The ship slid on through the channel, past a clanging bell-buoy.

  “It is all very close now, isn’t it?” Hyacinth said.

  “Yes, but…” Thomas reached out, touching Hyacinth’s elbow. There, in the dark, with the last miles of their journey fast slipping into their wake, his touch sent a ripple of alarm straight to her heart. She turned to face him.

  “I would prize your friendship,” he said.

  “Friendship?” Hyacinth said. How could he be a friend? She had had friends in Gibraltar, when she was a girl, and before George's mother had died. She certainly didn't count any men among her friends. “We have so little in common,” she said.

  “We do, though,” Thomas said. “We are both returning exiles, and reluctant ones, too. My old friends, never mind my family, wouldn't understand how that feels. You would.”

  Hyacinth shook her head. “We cannot meet in clubs or converse in private, or even have correspondence without causing comment,” she said, but she realized that he was right, he was like her, in some ways. She would be lonely in London. Aunt Celia was unlikely to approve of all her intellectual interests, never mind her ambition to establish a school. It would be good to have a confidant, however unlikely their friendship. “I will consider you a friend,” she said, “for what little that's worth.”

  “We will meet again, I know it,” he said. He ran his hand down her forearm and settled it over her own hand on the rail, as if he would have embraced more of her if he could. They both stared out to the horizon. The silence between them was only heightened by the small noises of the ship under sail, and the far-away murmur of sailors talking over a game of cards.

  “I really must return to my cabin,” Hyacinth said. “I have much to prepare for tomorrow.”

  “So do I,” Thomas said. “Adieu, my friend.”

  With that, he squeezed her hand and broke away, while the coastline closed in like a cloud.

  #

  It was late in the short December daylight when the Whistler finally weighed anchor in Portsmouth. With the ship steady in the harbor, Hyacinth penned a short message to Aunt Celia to be posted immediately to her residence in Brighton, along with a note to Mr. Portnoy's school, informing the schoolmaster of their arrival. George was bursting to escape his cabin. Hyacinth felt like the confines of the ship would drive her mad, too, now that they were almost free of it.

  She checked over her trunks one last time, then a tentative knock sounded on the door. Hyacinth opened it quickly to see the captain’s wife dressed for travel.

  “Mrs. Hotham!” Hyacinth exclaimed. “Are you leaving already?”

  Mrs. Hotham took a deep breath and smiled. “Yes. I'm quite ready to be off this ship with its rations of hard tack and salt cod. Would you accompany me to shore? The captain has arranged a suite of rooms at an inn for us, but he won’t be able to leave the ship until tomorrow noon at the earliest. You and Maria are most welcome to spend the night there with me.”

  “I’d be delighted to,” Hyacinth said, hesitating.

  “We can arrange a room for George, too, if needed. Are you ready?”

  “Yes! I certainly am.” With that, she left her cabin behind at last.

  George jumped out onto deck, one boot half on, the other dangling from his teeth by its laces.

  One of the sailors saw him and suppressed a grin. “Be orderly there, lad!” he said.

  George grinned back and paused only long enough to finish putting on his boot before sprinting across the deck to the waiting boat. Maria breathed a deep sigh of relief.

  “Come,” Hyacinth told her. “We’ll have proper beds and a good hot dinner tonight.”

  Captain Hotham came to help his wife down the ladder into the boat, and to bid Hyacinth a safe journey onwards. Hyacinth thanked him for his hospitality, and George, relieved to be in the open air again, thanked him too.

  “I’m so sorry, Captain Hotham, for the trouble I caused you,” he said.

  The captain winked at him. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

  “And Captain?” George said. “Would you please… please don’t tell my father.”

  “I’ll do my best,” the captain promised, “as long as he doesn’t catch wind of it through others, if you take my meaning.”

  “I do, Captain,” George said. “Thank you.”

  The captain consulted with the second mate, said farewell to his wife for the evening, and then they were skimming across the harbor, bound for shore. Swarms of local navy boats had come out to meet the warships. It was different from the bay at Gibraltar. A dull, English city wrapped all around it and the steely dark clouds hung overhead. Hyacinth shivered.

  “I wonder that Mr. Smithson didn't come to bid you farewell, Miss Grey,” Mrs. Hotham remarked.

  “He couldn’t’ve come, ma’am,” one of the sailors said. “He was off with the first boat.”

  “Was he so eager to get away from us then?” Mrs. Hotham tutted. “Oh well, I daresay he had important business to attend to.”

  “I’m sure he did,” Hyacinth said. There had only been one boat set down when they first reached their mooring. Most of the sailors were needed to put the ship in order before the crew could go ashore, and it was a long row in to the docks. A piece of dull-colored seaweed floated by. She had said her farewells to him the night before, but now she wished she could have seen him one last time by daylight. She was sorry to see him go.

  The oars lapped in and out of the water, punctuating the growing noise of the approaching shore, the calls of fishmongers on the docks, the noise of h
orses and dogs and so many men and women and children crowded together. By the time they reached shore, it was dark enough that the vendors and inns were lighting their lamps.

  Maria and Hyacinth helped Mrs. Hotham to shore, their feet wobbly underneath them. George nearly fell over as he leaped out of the boat, and the sailors laughed at his clumsiness.

  “You'll get your land legs by morning,” one of them said.

  George blushed.

  “Come on,” Hyacinth said. “If we old ladies can walk, you can, too.” She looked around, trying to get her bearings, but in the dusk it was hard to see enough to get a true sense of the place, so huge, compared to the ship, and far bigger than the little outpost at Gibraltar, the only town she really knew.

  “It is so good to be home again,” Mrs. Hotham said, urging her on.

  “Home again,” Hyacinth said. “I will have to get to know it as if from nothing, even though I was born here.”

  “Were you born here in Portsmouth?” Mrs. Hotham asked. “I should have thought you would have told me a thing like that.”

  “I suppose it slipped my mind,” Hyacinth said.

  One of the sailors hailed a wagon to carry their trunks to the inn, and she was spared further conversation by the confusion of getting through the unfamiliar streets. Maria and George stuck to her skirts, afraid to get lost in the crowds. George did look very thin, Hyacinth thought, comparing him to a group of boys standing on a corner playing with marbles. She hoped he would recover quickly from his imprisonment in the cabin. The chill and damp of night closed in like walls, as if England would be just as confining as close quarters on a ship had been.

  They arrived at the inn and were whisked up to Mrs. Hotham's suite by the innkeeper himself.

  “Your dinner will be along shortly, ladies,” he said. “If you have need of anything, the bell is here.”

  He was halfway out the door before Hyacinth realized he was going.

  “Wait!” she said.

  The innkeeper returned his attention to her impatiently.

  “Could you please give us the directions to Mr. Portnoy's school?”

  “Mr. Portnoy's?” the innkeeper knit his brow. “Surely you know! It's just across the square, here.”

  “Can I go tonight, Hy?” George chimed in.

  “I...” Hyacinth stammered. “I'd hoped you would stay tonight, but I don't see why not, if they're still up and about.”

  “Oh, they will be,” the innkeeper said. “It's early yet. The boys there usually have games after dark, this time of year. I hear them shouting at all hours.”

  “All hours?” Hyacinth said. “That doesn't sound very orderly.”

  The innkeeper shook his head. “They're as good a school as any, send boys up to Cambridge sometimes. Just out the front door, cross the square, can't miss it. Green shutters. Big old place, almost as big as my inn.”

  George was at the door.

  “Eat your dinner with us, at least,” Hyacinth said.

  “He'll be fed well enough there,” the innkeeper said. “I'll tell the kitchen to send dinner for three ladies, then.”

  With that, he left. George shouldered his bag and looked pleadingly at Maria, who sighed. Mrs. Hotham raised her eyebrows, then swept off into one of the suite's two small bedchambers. Hyacinth gave in.

  “I suppose Maria and I can carry your trunk between us,” she said.

  “Be back in time for dinner,” Mrs. Hotham called from the other room. “Captain Hotham says this inn has the best beef stew in Portsmouth.” George hesitated for a moment at the mention of beef stew, but then he opened the door.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hotham, and tell the captain thank you again,” George said, one foot in the hall.

  “I will, dear,” Mrs. Hotham said. “Off you go!”

  #

  Chapter 7: Windcastle House

  The moment Portsmouth came into view, over a month after they'd left Gibraltar, Thomas was possessed by a fevered desire to be on shore again, to face his family before he turned tail and jumped onto a ship for the Indies instead. He tried to put Miss Grey out of his mind. He half regretted leaving her without a final good-bye, but England was staring at him with its cold rainy eye, inspecting him and finding him a disgrace to his lineage. Miss Grey, Hyacinth, knew him as just a man, coming home from a successful foray into the subcontinent. She did not know him as an aristocrat, and he was glad of that. If she liked him at all, it wasn't for his family, or even his wealth.

  What had he seen reflected in Sarita's eyes? He had no idea. The whole decade seemed a bit like a fevered dream against the rain and mud and the gathering dark around him. For now, he was just a man in an old, ill-fitting suit, on a voyage which could not end well. He would remember Sarita again someday.

  The coachman barked at a cart blocking the road, jolting Thomas back to the present. He tried not to fall into the passenger beside him, an elderly gentleman who was somehow managing to snore despite the constant jerk and sway of the coach. England was just as he had left it: the stink, the shouting, the cold misty rain. Maybe the young ladies in London would manage to make him forget Hyacinth, standing at the stern of the ship, looking back at the watery road they traveled together.

  #

  An hour before midnight, a hackney deposited Thomas and his two small trunks in front of Windcastle House, the ancient London residence of his extended family.

  He hesitated at the gate. The house loomed, ghostly in the flickering lamplight. A few lights shone from inside, which was probably only a sign that some servants were about. With any luck, he would be the only member of the family there, and he could gather news from the servants before having to face his relations. With a little more luck, he would escape inheriting any cumbersome estates and walk away a free man. But he doubted it.

  At least it wasn’t the castle at Windcastle. Thomas wouldn’t have liked to storm those gates at midnight. He walked across the street and rang.

  A sleepy porter appeared moments later, keys clinking on a heavy iron ring. He regarded Thomas through the bars of the gate.

  “May I help you, Sir?” The porter’s tone communicated contempt. Thomas's trunks were mud-spattered, his cuffs ragged and dusty. He straightened his posture.

  “Are any of the family in residence?” he asked.

  The porter raised his eyebrows. “And who might you be, Sir?”

  “Thomas Smithson Pently.”

  The man was clearly racking his brains, trying to ascertain where Thomas fit into the family, if at all.

  “Algernon’s son,” Thomas clarified.

  “His second son?” the man said, a note of panic creeping into his voice.

  Thomas nodded.

  “Pardon me for holding you up, Sir Pently! I’ll ring for Mr. Jones right away!” He tugged the bell-pull twice, hurriedly, and dropped the keys in his attempt to unlock the gate. He finally got the key in and turned it, dropping into an apologetic bow as Thomas entered.

  “I take it my father is still alive?” he asked.

  The man sucked in his breath. “Oh, yes. Quite alive, I believe, though they say there was a fever last summer. Quite a fever.”

  “And Marquess Gravely?”

  The man looked puzzled.

  “My cousin Gregory,” Thomas clarified.

  The man shifted back and forth, then finally swallowed and answered. “Mr. Jones had... he had better tell you about it. I... I... ”

  “Never mind,” Thomas said. “I've been this long without knowing, I can wait a few minutes more.” He looked at the house and wondered what twists and turns it had in store for him. It would be a mercy for everyone but himself if Gregory, Marquess Gravely, had died. Gregory had been sickly all his young life, and his father had hated him for it, wishing aloud more than once that Georgina had been a son, instead of a useless daughter. She was headstrong, but she was strong in other ways, too, and her father had doted on her in his cold, angry way. Thomas might have asked the porter about Gregory again, but a f
lurry of movement from inside the great house drew his attention away.

  “Your younger brother is in town,” the porter said, clearing his throat. “Maybe he can tell you the rest.”

  The main door swung open, as if on cue, silhouetting a man with polished boots and a well-tailored coat that did not quite disguise the growing paunch at his middle.

  “Harry! Where is my gig?” he slurred.

  Thomas stood back.

  “Sir, the groom will have it around directly,” the porter said.

  The man was frowning as if he was about to launch into a tirade about the porter’s slowness when he spotted Thomas, where he stood at the base of the steps.

  “And what poor relation of yours is this?” he demanded, looking askance at Thomas's tattered attire.

  “He says that he is your brother, Sir.” The porter shuffled his feet and looked over his shoulder to Thomas, who was starting to laugh.

  “Good evening, Nate!” he said. “Are you drunk already?”

  Nathan scratched his head as Thomas stepped forward into the light. “Thomas?” he said.

  “The same,” he confirmed.

  “Whatever possessed you to grow all that muck on your face?” Nathan asked.

  “Try shaving yourself on a sailing ship someday,” Thomas said.

  Nathan’s gig, an extravagant, high construction, built for show as much as for speed, rolled into the courtyard. Nathan looked back and forth between it and his long lost brother, favoring the gig. “I didn’t think you would come back,” he said. He sounded put out.

  Thomas shrugged. “I might not have, but Father’s summons came and I was beginning to... let's just say it came at just the right time. He’s still hale and hearty?”

  “As much as I am,” Nathan chuckled, “not that that’s any great claim.” He walked closer to Thomas and peered into his eyes. “He's old though. Tough, not like poor Gregory there.”