by Bianca Bloom
There was no word from the solicitors, though when I wrote to ask, they tended to dutifully confirm that the heir to my home had not been located. If they could not find an heir, then they did not say directly that we would inherit, though that seemed by far the likeliest outcome.
Two years after the day we were informed of Gilbert’s death, I planned a careful day of remembrance in the home to mark his passing. Because I knew that it would be a dreadful anniversary, Adam was not in my bed that morning. During my time in mourning, he had avoided the subject of marriage, but I knew that he was trying to improve his lot in life. He had solicited multiple investments for a mine that he and his associates were developing in Australia, and I knew that he was brilliant and we would be compensated well. It was only that a mine took so much time to get started.
Indeed, after I came out of half-mourning Adam was more than usually busy with the mine, and often asked for investments before his trips to London, where he would stay for weeks at a time. I missed him terribly, especially in the late winter, but I knew that he was only bettering his finances in order to prepare for marriage, and so I could not fault him. My bed did feel particularly empty, though.
So I rose early that morning and put on a lavender dress, fitting for a day of remembrance. I had asked Esther not to bring my breakfast tray, informing her that I would eat with my daughters. After breakfast, I would take them to the church cemetery, where we could lay some of the late spring flowers on my husband’s grave. Gilbert had been buried in India, but he had a headstone in the local plot so that we were not deprived of a site to visit.
I’d already told my girls what we to be doing that day, so I was surprised to find the breakfast room empty. But it wasn’t before Frances, the late riser, burst through the door in a flurry of crepe and flung herself into a chair.
“Mama,” she moaned, “Why are you not wearing black? For today, it is as if we are mourning anew.”
“Well,” I said, helping myself to some toast, “I suppose it’s because I still have to look at the accounts for the inn today, Frances, then visit Mrs. Saunders to see about some new rugs. I would rather not the village think that we had suffered another loss in our family.”
“But mama,” she protested, “It is only fitting that we wear black to remember.”
“Oh, and to look ghastly,” said Flora, sweeping into the room in a dress of yellow muslin. “Thanks Fran, I’d rather not.”
Frances put down her fork. “I can’t eat another bite. Mama, you’ve got to make Flora see that some things are more important than looking well.”
Flora snorted. “Oh, so Gilbert’s going to care how I look, then? And him cold in his grave? I hardly think so.”
She heaped her plate full of eggs, as she had read somewhere that they were good for the complexion.
Frances was still looking cold and bitter as an ocean wind. “Go ahead, then, Florie. Because he’s dead and can’t defend himself, it’s fine that we dishonor him.”
I had to interrupt them. “Girls, where is your sister?”
For a moment, both were silent. Now that Frances and Grace were no longer in the same bedchamber, I could not rely on either of them for information about the whereabouts of the other.
“Grace usually goes out in the mornings, doesn’t she?” Frances asked Flora, and I marveled again at how the twins always seemed to bounce back to the same little orbit, even directly after a devastating row.
Flora was sitting straight in her chair, eating her boiled egg with the dignity of a queen. “She’s always off doing something this early. After all, it’s dull with nobody about.”
I frowned. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Frances shook her head. “Mama, you are always hard at work. Poor Grace gets so dreadfully lonely, as if she were the only soul here on the isle.”
This was rather too much. “Well, she was to go to the cemetery with us.” I tried to recall whether Grace had been in her bed the night before. I usually went to say goodnight to her, unless I had company or business. The entire week, I had been reviewing our accounts late into the night, attempting to find ways for us to save money.
Of course, one of the areas in which we might be able to save money was gas. I needed a good deal of gas to keep at least two lamps lit when I worked late into the night. And yet if I gave our accounts only a cursory review, I might never find any way to save money.
“Well,” I said, with more confidence than I felt, “I know that she slept here last night.”
Frances nodded. “Yes, mummy. She won’t have gone far. But she was crying last night, still mourning for the father that left this world far too early.”
Though Flora did not respond, she also did not snort at this suggestion. “Grace was making an awful racket,” she said. “I’m not surprised that she’d want to raise her spirits somehow.”
I thought back to the day of Gilbert’s death, when I had placated my youngest with a visit to the ponies. All of the ponies born that year had been sold, and those born the year after. Grace had grown a bit, and she had stopped pestering me to keep them, likely knowing it would be useless.
Though she had starting saying that she would be saving her pocket money to buy one off me.
“All right, girls,” I said to the two of them. “We’ll go and check the stables. I would not be at all surprised to find your sister there.”
12
In fact, I was very surprised indeed that we did not find their sister there. The ponies were looking fat and healthy, as far as I could tell, but there was no sign of Grace.
Toby told me that she had been by, but that he didn’t know where she had gone.
“Don’t you worry, miss,” he said to me. “She never gets lost, that one.”
This only made me think of the possibility of Grace had, in fact, gotten lost, and I began to panic. The girl was always outdoors, and she probably knew the estate better than I did, but I hated the thought of her wandering the hills in a frenzy, distraught over her father’s death. On the first anniversary of his death, she had cried all morning, then refused to leave the ponies’ side in the afternoon. Why had I supposed that this year would be any easier?
“Grace has probably walked back into the hills,” said Frances, a rather smug air about her. “We may as well try to find her, or she’ll catch her death of cold in this weather.”
“Frances!” I hated the cavalier way she was speaking about death, but the wind was indeed uncommonly cold.
Flora rolled her eyes. “How are we supposed to chase after Grace if we’re not supposed to see anyone?”
“Well, just start up the path, Flora,” I said, though the truth was that I almost never walked on the hill behind the stables.
“What path?” asked Frances.
She had gone to stand by her twin, and both gave me looks of skepticism, as if I were dragging them into the forest to eat them.
I had only to start up the hill, knowing that they would roll their eyes and follow. Indeed, I was too preoccupied about Grace to worry about the twins. My eyes nearly glazed over as I started up what I thought was the path, running through all the reasons that Grace might have seen fit to skip this graveside memorial.
I nearly collided with a man who was walking down the hill, a battered suitcase in his hand.
“This is private property,” I hissed at him, stepping back and getting ready to claw his eyes out if the need arose. For once, I was thankful that Flora and Frances were terribly slow walkers, as I didn’t need to protect them from this man. I only needed to protect myself, something of which I was more than capable.
“The Glick Law Office requested that I come here, ma’am,” he said. “Please forgive me – my name is Hamilton Bell, and I used to come here often as a boy, so I took this path instead of going around the front.”
Since he shared my last name, he must be part of Gilbert’s family. That fact let me relax enough to lower my fists, but I still did not understand why on earth my late husband’s solicitor
would have asked the man to come for a visit. Did he also mean to memorialize Gilbert somehow?
“What is your business?” I asked, taking one small step toward him.
His hair spilled all about in wild curls on his head. It was much too long, and yet the tangle of it was undeniably attractive. Though he looked thin, and rather tired, there was something about him that did not let me look away. I wondered whether this Hamilton Bell might have once been famous, or if I had perhaps met him some years ago on one of his visits to the estate.
“Well, I was to speak to you about the entail on this estate,” he said. “If I understood Mr. Glick correctly, they have been making attempts to contact me for some years now.”
My two daughters walked up behind me just as the meaning of his words became clear. This gaunt, tanned man was the heir to my entire estate. I had thought him a tramp, and yet he held my fortunate, and my daughters’, in his hands.
Clearing my throat, I put on the airs of a society lady. I’d been Gilbert’s wife for long enough that the motions were quite natural to me, though I still had a tendency to rush the introductions.
“Mr. Bell,” I said, “Meet my daughters, Flora and Frances Sutherland.”
I lingered a bit on their surname, waiting to see whether this Mr. Bell would ask why it was not the same as mine, but he made no comment.
I turned to them. “Flora, Frances,” I said, “Make your bows to Mr. Bell.”
Flora had no doubt noticed that the man before us must have been very handsome once, and even now still had an air of quiet strength about him.
“How do you do, Mr. Bell,” she said. “I do hope you’re enjoying your time on the Isle of Skye.”
Frances recognized her sister’s flirtation, and decided that she wanted nothing more to do with all this. “Mama,” she said, whining like a child, “We were to find Grace!”
I turned back to my visitor, aware that was must seem very rude to him. “Gracie, my youngest, seems to have got herself lost. I must beg you to excuse us for our lack of manners – we are looking for her, and must continue.”
The stranger held up a hand. His voice was gruff. “Is she about nine years old? Fair haired?”
I nodded, fearing the worst, though Frances only sighed and Flora said, “She’s ten, small for her age. Unlike her sisters.”
To my relief, Mr. Bell ignored Flora’s assertion. There was rather too much truth in it – unlike the perennially thin Frances, Flora had ended up with quite a figure, much more pronounced than mine had ever been, even during my confinement.
“There’s an uncommonly handsome overlook,” he said, meeting the eyes of Frances and Flora. “It has a sheltered rock. I passed a young lady there, though she was hiding and probably thought herself unobserved.”
The idea that the man, this stranger, had gotten close to Gracie and found her out made me want to spit with anger, but he was giving instructions to the twins.
“The two of you could make it up there, even in your fine shoes. She would be thankful for your shawl, as it is cold in that wind,” he said to Frances, who was frowning as she sweated in her heavy wool dress and long black shawl.
I realized that in spite of myself, I was to be this gentleman’s temporary ally.
“Go ahead, girls. Get Grace and bring her back to the house.”
“But the churchyard,” said Frances, deflating. “And I have already found flowers!”
I tried not to shrug my shoulders. “We will go there later, after you have returned to the house,” I said.
Neither girl looked particularly pleased with this idea.
“And we will have a chance to stop in the village afterwards,” I said, as I saw Flora about to object that her beautiful dress would be wasted on the dead.
“Off with you,” I said to them both, deepening my voice in a way that both understood.
After they were safely out of sight, I turned to the visitor. I was uncommonly impressed with his ability to both find and dispatch my daughters, but his appearance still distressed me. He looked like a skeleton with too much skin.
“You may accompany me to the house,” I said to him. “Then we will speak.”
He nodded. “Thank you.”
And we crossed the great lawns in silence. I knew not what he was thinking, but my mind was still trying to catch up with the great shock. It was not to be, then – this estate, that I thought would provide for me and my daughters well into the future, was to go to a gaunt stranger.
13
When we sat down in our little sitting room, however, I was determined to put up a good fight.
“I am sorry that this is the first time I have offered my sympathies for the death of my cousin,” the man said gruffly. “He was a good boy. We often played together.”
I frowned. “Funny thing, then. He never mentioned you.”
“It’s been some years since we had seen each other.”
He went over to the window. Everything about his profile caused me alarm. There were his shoulders, large in spite of the gaunt look about him. The new Lord Bell would always take up a great deal of space in a room, even if he seemed to be near starving. His skin was darker than that of any gentleman, particularly Gilbert, who even coming home from India had been alternately pale as a sheet and pink as a radish. Lord Hamilton Bell, I thought with some bitterness, was not likely to be alone very long. In short order, one of the young women of the neighborhood would set her sights on him, and come up in the world, as I had, leaving the smells of fishermen behind.
Before that happened, I was going to have few chances to stake out a claim for myself and my daughters.
“I am prepared to buy the house from you,” I said. Then, swallowing, I realized that he could name his price, so I began to negotiate a bit. “I could also lease it, if you do not wish to sell straight away.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Thank you, Lady Bell,” he said, frowning. “But I can assure you that I have no intention of selling or leasing it.”
This was a bit of a relief, then. From his clothes, I had concluded that the man was not wealthy. But if he could afford to inherit the estate, pay the death duties, and sell nothing, he must be a very wealthy man indeed.
“I will be selling most of the estate,” he confessed. “But this house is one thing that I wish to keep.”
I frowned. This was a very odd decision, particularly when Lord Hamilton Bell could get a pretty penny for the house and build something more appropriate for a bachelor on a different part of the estate. “Why is that, then?”
He did not tell me. “I’m sorry, Lady Bell. You must understand that what I do with this estate is now my own affair.”
“And what you wish to do with it is to sell it off,” I said seething.
His face hardened. “I do not wish to sell any of it,” he countered. “But I must have funds somehow, and I am hardly going to get sixty thousand pounds by selling nothing.”
My breath came sharply in. Why on earth would the man require a whole sixty thousand pounds? Why, that was all the money I had in the world, and it was certainly more than a single man would need to live on, even with the death duties.
“A princely sum,” I said to him, my tongue sharp.
He looked over at me. I thought his eyes were lingering a bit too long on my lavender dress, but when I met them, he looked away. “The interest on it will be even worse if I do not pay immediately.”
I sucked in my breath. This was worse and worse! A man with great debts. Well, if he was stupid enough to get into such debt in the first place, perhaps he would be stupid enough to agree to a poor sale.
“I’ll give you fifty thousand for the house,” I told him. I had clawed my way into this palace, and there was no way that my three daughters and I were going to be thrown out. Even if we had to live like true paupers while I rebuilt the fortune, it would be worth it for Grace to keep her birthright, for the twins to spend the last days of their girlhood in comfort.
And for me
to keep my social position as Lady of the Manor, which was, indeed, the best way for me to go about rebuilding my fortune.
The man was now standing. “Lady Bell, I made it quite clear that I have no intention of selling this house.”
“Why on earth not? You made it quite clear that you could use the money.”
He sighed. “That I could, but this is where I have arrived, and where I intend to stay.”
“Not for the night.” I stood, and held my arm out toward the door. “You may leave.”
He responded by sitting down in one of the room’s most beautiful chairs. I realized with a start that it had been Gilbert’s favorite chair – it was as if the man had chosen it to mock me.
The fact that he looked rather like a picturesque statue sitting there, his hard head resting in his hand, made the insult all the graver.
“I might remind you, Lady Bell, that this house is now legally my own.”
I lowered my voice. “I might remind you, sir, that this village is small, and that I am the one who was born in it. If you are seen to be throwing a poor widow and her three daughters from their home, you will get no trade from anyone, no matter how rich your short-sighted little sales might make you.”
He stood up in anger, but for a moment he said nothing. And I realized that it might not be wise for me to push my luck with a man who, however ill-dressed he might seem, now had power over nearly every facet of my life.
“You may go to the inn,” I said. “Tell Mrs. Climpson that I sent you and she’ll give you a good room.”
His breathing was short. “For tonight. I am tired.”
He did look rather haggard, it was true, but not exhausted enough to quit sparring with me. “I will meet with you tomorrow, then.”
I stiffened. “Very well. We can meet in the offices at the inn.”
He shook his head. “I would prefer to meet here. Perhaps after breakfast?”
That precluded the possibility of a night with Adam. In annoyance, I snapped back at him, “Fine. I will expect you at eleven.”
