Page 30 of The Heir
“For buying or betting?” inquired Liza.
“Both, probably.” Ned held his nose and downed half of the potion in his glass.
Father believed that a man should keep a generous table, and Mother complied, or rather, Mother ordered the housekeeper, Mrs. Pullet, to order Cook to comply. It was an area in which Jane was unambiguously grateful to her father. Breakfast was the only meal she had at home where she could eat what she liked without Mother sighing over her unladylike appetite.
This morning, however, Jane looked at the array of eggs, kedgeree, fish, kidneys, and mutton chops, and her stomach roiled.
She sat down at the table and took some toast from the rack. Her brother looked down at his potion, grimaced, and took another swallow. Jane thought about how Susan was no longer part of the household, how not one of them knew where she might be or what might happen to her next without a reference or firm prospects, and how that was his doing.
“Susan’s been dismissed, Ned,” said Jane.
“I’d noticed. I told Mother she shouldn’t have done it, not over something so small, but you know how Mother gets.” He looked green around the gills, but he still drank off the second half of the beverage. “Get me some coffee, won’t you?”
“That’s all you did?” asked Jane.
“Leave it, Jane,” said Liza. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What else should I have done?” Seeing no one was going to obey his orders, Ned got to his feet and slouched to the coffee urn. “What are you even talking about?”
“As if you don’t know,” muttered Jane.
“As it happens, I have no idea.”
Jane forced herself to swallow her toast. She couldn’t look at Ned just now, so she turned to her sister. “Liza. That book Aunt Cathleen sent you, with the etchings of the countryside in County Clare . . . Do you know where it is?”
“What do you want with that thing?” Liza’s question was unusually sharp. Clearly, it was beginning to dawn on her that something had shifted in Jane’s manner, and she did not trust it.
Jane suppressed a shiver and took another bite of toast to cover her discomfort. “The princess is reading Irish history,” Jane mumbled. “I thought she might be interested in seeing it.”
“An excellent thought.”
Father stood at the room’s threshold. Liza, Ned, and Jane all stood up, just as they had been taught to do as children. He ignored them. Or, rather, he ignored Ned and Liza.
“Are you ready to go, Jane?”
“I thought—” she began, but he was already frowning. “Yes, of course.” She hadn’t even had time to finish her toast, but of course she could not keep Father waiting.
Liza fetched Aunt Cathleen’s book while Betty bundled Jane into coat and bonnet. And handed her the pink reticule. Jane bit her lip hard to keep from showing the relief she felt.
The carriage was waiting. Jane was glad to be driven today, although it meant being closeted with Father. The morning was already warm and damp. With the sun shining through the haze, the day promised to be hot and close.
Papa drew back the curtains and gave orders for the coachman to walk on.
Jane folded her gloved hands over her book and did her best to keep her eyes fastened on them. She tried not to look at the reticule on the seat beside her. She’d had no chance to look inside to see if the spectacles were still in there. Betty or another maid, perhaps Meg, might have gone through her bag, looking for crumpled handkerchiefs or dirty gloves in need of laundering. They might have seen the strange object with its muddy ribbon and removed it.
Jane knew Father was watching her. She felt it in the way her skin prickled under her cuffs and in the way her jaw burned.
Oddly, she thought about the princess then and the way she could shout her disapproval to the world. The princess did not look for a fight. She demanded one.
Why am I thinking about that now?
“There is something you need to know, Jane. A story you will hear today.”
Jane was jolted out of her thoughts. Her gaze—guilty, frightened—flickered to her bag lying on the seat beside her and then widened in horror, in case Father had noticed.
But he had turned away from her to contemplate the world outside the window.
“The man that the princess saw yesterday when she fell off her horse was a gardener who had died on his way home.”
