His Unexpected Heiress: Entangled Inheritances

by Britton, Sally

  “Ah, I see. A walk along the shrubbery of the garden would be better for that than walking within the garden itself.” Adam spoke somewhat cheekily. It wasn’t his business where she walked. None of his business at all.

  “Everything here is beautiful,” she answered, her eyes sweeping over the lawns and trees. “It is all a garden to someone who grew up in a crowded town. But I do have a destination in mind. Would you—would you like to accompany me?”

  As he had thought her put out with him, perhaps even regretting their over-familiarity in past days, the invitation surprised him. How could he not accept? “Of course, Miss Chapple. I will follow where you lead.”

  The gentle, unaffected smile he liked best appeared and she gestured eastward. “Then we are to journey this way together, Mr. Gillensford.” She continued walking and he kept beside her, the horse following along with head down to occasionally nip at the grass.

  The sounds of the night had begun, though there was time yet before the sun disappeared beyond the horizon entirely. The insects that buzzed and bumbled about during the day had retired, and the crickets started their songs in earnest. Few birds flew overhead, as though those still out were hurrying home to their branches. The owl, the nightingale, and thrush would take their places soon.

  They walked by an opening in the hedge to the flower gardens, Elaine’s eyes still more often on the ground than the world around her.

  “Did the picnic go well today?” she asked, her voice quiet in the stillness around them.

  “I thought it all marvelous.” He spoke with complete sincerity. “The children enjoyed themselves, making several friends. I also confess myself impressed with your handling of their parents. You turned every aspect of your unusual circumstances to your favor, and you maintained as much composure as a duchess.”

  Her cheeks reddened and her lips turned upward, her pleasure modest. Her eyes lifted, but she kept them ahead rather than look at him. “I am glad you think so. Thank you for assisting me today. I do not think I would have done so well without your silent encouragement.”

  “I did nothing,” he insisted. “My part was small if it existed at all. After today, I hope you have greater confidence in your place here. It is only the beginning, of course, but given that I already like you more than I like my own family, I cannot think it will be difficult to win the good opinion of everyone else.”

  She laughed, the sound as soft as the fading bird song. “I think you paint too pretty a picture with words such as that. I am not born to this, Mr. Gillensford. Not everyone will be receptive, and if I step one foot out of line they will be twice as harsh with me. We both know that.”

  Though it pained him to admit it, Elaine spoke the truth. Yet he would not let her dwell on that negative thought. Adam tilted his chin upward. “Then it is a very good thing you hold yourself to such high standards.”

  Folding her arms over her middle, Elaine’s eyes settled on the darkening horizon. “High standards for a seamstress. When I think of all the mistakes I have made these past weeks, I am quite horrified. How many things have I done wrong and no one has bothered to tell me about them? Mrs. Mayworth has corrected how I address the servants, and Graham must continually remind me to put on a bonnet and gloves to step outside.” She slanted a mischievous glance at him. “You can see I ignored that advice this evening. But it was so beautiful out, and I wanted to enjoy the breeze. Bonnets are particularly detrimental to such things. Besides, there is no one here to see me.”

  Did that mean he was no one, or that she did not mind him being there to see her? The answer to that question eluded him and guessing at what she might say if he asked made him inexplicably uncomfortable.

  “What good is it to be mistress of all of Tertium Park if you are required to obey every rule, all the time?” he asked, encouraging her where he should have told her to heed the butler’s advice. “Besides, I quite like your hair.”

  Her blush returned and her eyes went forward again. “So you have said before. Thank you. It earned me a great deal of teasing when I was younger. One of my suitors even told me it was a pity about my hair, as it distracted from what might otherwise be called comely features.” Though she spoke lightly, her nose wrinkled at the shared memory.

  That made Adam feel somewhat insulted on her behalf. “He obviously wasn’t a man of good taste.” When she only raised her eyebrows, he quickly defended his position. “In the royal gallery, there was an exhibition on Italian paintings. I went, and there were the most stunning portraits of red-headed women I have ever seen. I think the Italians must have had something of an obsession for a time—but the paintings were extraordinary. There was one in particular, by Titian, that I could not help but admire. He saw the beauty in the color, the way light reflected from it, and he presented the woman of that piece in such a way that all must see the same.”

  “I highly doubt anyone of my acquaintance before you has been in a position to see the royal gallery,” she said, somewhat loftily. The way she bit her lip after speaking, as though to prevent showing pleasure in the remark, somewhat frustrated him.

  He shrugged before making his retort. “They had no need to view paint on canvas to see the beauty of such a woman, given you were before them to demonstrate how the color can become a lady.”

  That comment darkened her cheeks. “You are flattering me, Mr. Gillensford.” A sigh escaped her as she turned her face away from him. “I wish you would not.”

  That comment stung, as though she called his honesty into question. Which she should, given how much he hid from her. But that was not the point of their current conversation and he could not let her think him an idle flatterer.

  “I am in earnest, Miss Chapple.” Adam gave his attention to the taller grass of the meadow they had entered, behind the household gardens. The sheep most likely would be turned loose upon the long grasses soon. “I understand it is difficult to change a long-held opinion about yourself, especially when thoughtless fools have reinforced it through careless words. But I have never paid you a compliment lacking sincerity. I promise you that.”

  Elaine cast him a surprised glance before turning quickly away. She said nothing to his words, though he hoped her silence meant she examined them closely.

  After a time, she altered their course to walk directly into the waving grass. Her fingertips brushed the heads of wildflowers while her lips remained pressed together in a tight line. The sky had turned a deep orange with streaks of purple reaching into the darker blue of the coming night. When she spoke at last, he had almost decided to take his leave.

  “Sometimes, I feel rather like these flowers.” Her fingers stroked the pink petals of a small bloom. “It’s called a flat-pea. As lovely as it is, it belongs here in the meadow, away from the garden so carefully tended. If it tried to take root there in the flowerbeds, it would be plucked out and thrown into a pile of rubbish to be burned.” She shuddered and released the plant.

  “That is a rather dismal view of things.” Adam touched the pink flower, too. “You are not a wild flower, Miss Chapple. You are a woman who has been given a new home, and a new way of life.”

  “Your family would pluck me out of it if they could,” she answered softly. Then she looked up to the sky. “It is growing late. I think I shall go back, through the garden gate.”

  He sighed and scratched at his forehead where his hat pressed. She was quite right about head-coverings proving a nuisance. “I will accompany you that far, to make certain of your safety.”

  They started back through the grass, until she found a small footpath likely taken by the servants and local rabbits. He stayed beside her, though it meant continuing to tromp through the meadow’s long grasses. When they came to the gate, his eyes lit upon a cheerful sight. Somehow, one of the rose bushes had escaped the confines of the garden hedge. A few long branches of bright yellow buds reached out of the shrubbery, as though trying to escape to the meadow.

  “Miss Chapple,” he said, releasing the
reins of his horse. “Look here.” He went to one of the rose’s limbs and carefully broke it from its brothers. “Perhaps you have things the wrong way around. As cultivated as the garden might be, look at the beauty that tries to grow elsewhere. It is not so much about where a flower belongs, as where it finds the ability to grow.” He held the rose out to her, the yellow petals bright despite the fading light.

  Elaine took the flower from him and raised it nearly to her lips, closing her eyes to breathe in its scent. “You cannot turn my metaphor against me so easily, sir.” Despite her words, her expression grew softer. Then she stared up at him through the shadows growing around them, confusion in her gray eyes. “I wish I could trust your words.”

  An ache began somewhere in Adam’s center and slowly spread outward. Standing so close, the night air warm and rich, Adam wanted nothing more than to give her comfort. But what would his words be worth when she discovered his betrayal of her trust? He could not delay that moment forever, and it would cause her pain to learn the truth.

  What if he told her right then? What if he confessed everything to her, about his reasons for being at her side and how those reasons had begun to change.

  If he could only show her exactly what was in his mind and heart.

  Hesitantly, Adam lifted a gloved hand to her cheek. Her eyes widened at the touch, but she did not pull away. She trusted him, believed in him, and counted him a friend. That gave him hope, though he knew himself unworthy of all her good opinions.

  He needed to tell her the truth. How would she look at him after? Not with such faith in him. “I will do everything in my power to prove worthy of your friendship, Elaine.”

  For a moment, she appeared confused. “I did not think you wished to be my friend anymore.”

  The words spoken were almost tremulous, an emotion lacing through them that made his heart drop with new shame. She had seemed to withdraw, to hold herself away from him, ever since that day in the conservatory. But perhaps he had pulled too far from her company in his attempt to return to an appropriate formality.

  Adam dropped his hand from her cheek, though he wished instead to keep it there, to assure her with his touch as well as his words. “I cannot think of a person in my life whose friendship I value more than yours.”

  Her eyes revealed a fragility to her he had not seen so plainly before, as though she might shatter if he spoke the wrong word.

  The confession he needed to make died before it reached his lips. After her vulnerability displayed at the picnic, her tenuous triumph, he could not wound her with the truth that evening. Not yet. Not when she stared up at him, as though she cared for him.

  He tore his gaze from hers and reached for the gate to the garden. He opened it for her, stepping back to allow her clear passage. “Good evening, Miss Chapple.”

  Rose still in her hands, she went through the opening, but turned when he closed it. The gate’s top came to her shoulders, granting them easy sight of one another.

  “Will I see you tomorrow?” she asked, her eyes widened almost hopefully.

  “I think you shall. Your dance instructor comes tomorrow, does he not?” he asked, hands still on the gate. It would be so easy to touch her again, or to bend over the barrier between them.

  “He does.”

  Adam forced himself to take a step back, and then a second. “Then I will certainly be here. You have a ball in a fortnight. It is my duty to help you practice.” He bowed, keeping his eyes on hers through the movement. “If that meets with your approval.”

  Elaine nodded, raising the rose to her lips as though to hide her pleased smile. She only managed to appear even more enchanting. “Then good evening, Mr. Gillensford.” She curtsied, then turned and walked at a quick pace through the gardens, disappearing behind an ornamental shrubbery.

  Adam took in and released a deep breath, the scent of roses lingering in the night air. He gathered the reins of his horse, who had wandered several yards away to eat the flowers in the meadow. He mounted and directed the beast to the road. The moon was rising, thankfully, to light his way back to his brother’s manor.

  All he could think of, following the moon’s silvery path, was the way Elaine’s lips had pressed into the rose petals when she smiled. He could take comfort in making her happy, in momentarily dispelling her fears. But it wasn’t enough. When she learned he helped her in pursuit of his own selfish dreams, she would never look at him the same way again.

  He needed to stop thinking that way. What she thought of him mattered little, in the end. Because what mattered most was Elaine’s success. He had to put that at the forefront of all his concerns.

  Adjusting his thoughts, he tried to put himself back onto her defense. She was right about his family, and the way people would watch her for mistakes.

  Somehow, he had to protect her from censure. If she would not marry, and she would not take herself somewhere else until she had established some sort of reputation among her newly acquired peers, the neighborhood must come to love her. Everyone had to see Miss Chapple for the remarkable woman she was and think the best of her.

  Her success would determine whether or not he obtained his inheritance, after all.

  Riding through the semi-darkness, Adam tried not to dwell on how hollow that motive now seemed when it had been the driving strength behind his actions in the beginning. Nothing had changed. Not really. He couldn’t let things change.

  But Elaine’s lips upon the rose petals, her gray eyes staring up at him, was not an image easily put from his mind.

  Chapter 13

  Elaine bit her bottom lip to keep from giggling, the sight of the dance master attempting to arrange the placement of Nancy and William’s arms striking her as most ridiculous. At eleven and six, William stood at nearly double Nancy’s height.

  “You think it amusing now,” Adam whispered from where he stood more than a yard in front of her, “it is almost your turn.” He smirked, as though offering a challenge.

  Raising her nose in the air was her only response. As a student of Mrs. Harper’s School for Young Ladies, Elaine had learned to dance well enough. Although with ten years between the last time she gamboled down Mrs. Harper’s dining room and the present, she did not expect to be as proficient as she had once been.

  “Are you certain you need us, mistress?” Mrs. Mayworth asked, wincing as though the very thought of dancing pained her.

  Turning to address the housekeeper and the frowning butler, as both had been pressed into service for the dancing lessons, Elaine tried to reassure them. “Yes, we do. We need all the help available to us. I am grateful for you both.”

  Mr. Carrow, a man shorter than Elaine’s five and a half feet, scampered in one last circle around the children before he came and stood next to Elaine. “Yes, yes. Fine, fine.” He had demonstrated for them a pattern of steps, had everyone practice on their own in one long line, and now thought them ready to attempt the same with partners. “Remember, you go to the right of your partner first, moving to their position, back to back. Then you return to your original situation, forming a completed circle. This is an allemande.”

  The dancing master signaled to his assistant, his niece, at the pianoforte. She began to play, and as agreed upon the butler and housekeeper went first. Then Elaine and Adam, her steps hesitant enough that she had to make up for it at the end of the “circle” by taking too-large a stride. Mr. Carrow narrowed his eyes at her but said nothing. The children, she was pleased to see, did the maneuver exactly correct.

  “Excellent. Miss Chapple, you must be bolder or you will be out of rhythm every time.” He gestured to the servants. “Lead down the middle, if you please.”

  Graham and Mrs. Mayworth stepped forward to join hands, then did a sort of skipping walk down the middle of the other couples, before turning and taking up Nancy and William’s position at the bottom of their line.

  Elaine moved to copy them with Adam, trying to concentrate on his steps to match hers appropriately to his.
This distracted her enough that she did not release his hand immediately when she should have. The children executed the movement nearly perfectly, when it was their turn to move from the top of the dancing row to the bottom.

  “Dear me. The children are quite accomplished.” Mr. Carrow bowed to them both, making Nancy giggle behind her hand. “Children, will you come stand to this side of the room. Yes, there. Practice the hands joining in front and behind, if you will.”

  Then he stalked up to Elaine, somehow making her feel small with his exasperated frown. He stared at her, then waved a hand to signal his niece. She changed the music to a slower tune. “Mr. Gillensford, if you will permit me to partner with your lady.”

  Adam bowed and stepped back, his teasing look replaced with one of more concern. Elaine pulled her attention from him and attempted to give her full focus to the master.

  “You will dance with me, Miss Chapple. See here, let us make certain your feet wish to move as they are bid.” He stretched out a foot, and then the other, tapping the ground before him in time with the music. “You see, your feet must know when to touch the floor. Try.”

  Blushing at her ineptitude, Elaine mirrored him. Keeping rhythm had never been a problem for her before. Yet so much depended upon her ability to perform at least a set at the ball without revealing herself to be completely uneducated.

  “Good, good. Now, allemande.”

  Elaine went left instead of right, nearly running into Mr. Carrow. He paused again and pursed his lips. “You said you received instruction before. Tell me. Did you experience these difficulties at that time?”

  Twin flames sprung up in her cheeks, and Elaine knew they glowed most fiercely given how hot her skin turned. “No, Mr. Carrow. I cannot remember having trouble like this before.” She steadfastly ignored Adam, refusing to see whether he pitied her or laughed at her.