The Heiress Effect (45 page)

She looked at him. It felt as if she looked
through
him. “Really, Oliver?” One hand went to her hip. “It
took courage to walk away from Clemons and let the other boys do
what they did? It took courage to consider Bradenton’s offer to
humiliate me? My. Courage isn’t what it used to be.”

Those words felt like spears in his stomach.
The worst part was, though, he could see her hands, shaking. Her
eyes, wide and full of hurt. As badly as she’d struck out at him,
he’d hurt her that much, too. And he couldn’t even say that he
hadn’t meant it.

“I thought so,” she said, turning away from
him. “I’ll send someone over for the rest of my things.” She swept
past him.

He wanted to reach for her—to tell her not to
leave. To take hold of her arm as she walked past. To do anything
at all.

He didn’t. She walked out and he didn’t stop
her. He let that moment slip by—the last moment he had to apologize
and save it all—and he wasn’t sure if it was courage or
cowardice.

Freddy’s funeral was a quiet affair. There
weren’t many people who had known Oliver’s aunt—just the boy who
delivered her groceries, a few ladies who had visited her, and her
family.

Oliver’s sisters had come down—Laura with her
husband and Oliver’s smallest niece, an infant who whimpered
through the ceremony, and Patricia with her husband and their
twins. Free had come, too. She stood for a long time at their
aunt’s coffin, looking in, not saying a word. She ran her hand
along the edge and wept silently.

It felt wrong to have his aunt laid out in a
church. She would have hated lying exposed in a strange place. She
would have hated having everyone’s eyes on her—even if it was only
the eyes of those few who knew her. Freddy may have been the only
person who would have sighed in relief at the thought of being
buried six feet below the ground in a tiny coffin. When the grave
had been filled in, Oliver laid his flowers on it.

“There you are,” he whispered. “Nobody will
get to you now.”

After the burial, they retired with her
solicitor to her small apartment.

Oliver had spent every Christmas that he
remembered here. It had been a tradition born out of necessity. His
mother hadn’t wanted Freddy to be alone at Christmas, and Freddy
had refused to leave her rooms to come to New Shaling. Therefore,
their entire family had come here—even when the rooms had become
too small to fit the family.

They made a multitude now, so many that there
weren’t chairs enough for everyone. Oliver and his sisters, his
niece and nephews, his parents… His father stood next to a wall;
Reuven sat with his boys on the floor.

It was somewhat of a surprise that Freddy
had
a solicitor. For that matter, he hadn’t supposed she
would write a will. It wasn’t as if Freddy had much to give away,
and hearing her few belongings dispensed with summary dispatch
seemed cruel.

“This will,” the solicitor said, “dates from
late last week.” He drew out several sheets of paper—far longer
than Oliver would have imagined would be needed under the
circumstances.

But then, this was Freddy. The
preamble—lengthy and argumentative—had them all exchanging glances,
uncertain if it was acceptable to smile so soon after her passing.
It sounded so much like her that it almost felt as if she were
here. She went on for a page about what she expected from each of
them—the legacy that they would be upholding, the expectations she
had.

And then the solicitor cleared his throat and
started on the bequests.

His aunt left a few family heirlooms and a
miniature of their mother to Serena Marshall, her sister.

“To Oliver, my nephew—I would leave you a
portion of my worldly goods, but I don’t think you have need of
them. I leave you instead the few quilts I have sewn over the years
that I have kept for myself. They’re a good sight better than
anything that can be purchased in the stores these days, and not a
machine-stitch on them. Make sure you keep warm. As you grow older,
you’ll find yourself more susceptible to chills.”

He felt a lump in his throat. Freddy had
poured so much of her time and energy into her quilts that this was
like getting a piece of her as a memory.

“To Laura and Patricia, I leave the remainder
of the money I inherited as a child, to be divided equally among
the two of them. I also give all my remaining household goods to be
divided between them as they agree. I particularly commend the
following: my paring knife, which has rarely needed sharpening; the
wardrobe I have used for these last few decades, and my good
china.”

Laura looked at Patricia over their husband’s
arms.

“That can’t be right,” Laura finally said. “I
can’t imagine that the contents of Freddy’s accounts are worth
much, but this disposes of all her possessions without…”

They both glanced at Free, who sat in her
chair looking down. Oliver ached for her. For Freddy. For the
argument they’d had and never made up, the one that had led Freddy
to cut her favorite niece from her will entirely.

“We did argue,” Free said softly. “And I
don’t want—it’s not about that.”

No. It wasn’t about the possessions. It was
about knowing that she hadn’t been forgiven.

“No,” Patricia said, “it’s simple. We’ll just
divide things evenly between the three of us. I’m sure Aunt Freddy
would want that. That she’s wishing that she had done just such a
thing at this moment.”

The solicitor adjusted his spectacles and
looked over at the two of them. “But there is a bequest for Miss
Frederica Marshall.”

Everyone looked up at that. Laura gave a
shrug to her sister, as if to say,
I have no idea what else it
could be.

“Lastly, I come to Frederica Marshall, my
goddaughter, niece, namesake and scourge of my existence. Several
years ago, as I am sure you are all aware, she was presumptuous
enough to insist that I leave this apartment—that I go out in the
world and have an adventure, even if it was so trivial a one as to
buy an apple. After she left, I attempted to do so.”

Free let out a broken breath, so close to a
sob.

“I discovered myself incapable of leaving,”
the solicitor read. “For some reason, I could not fit through the
door. But I did my best to make do, and so for that reason, I leave
the proceeds of my grand adventure and the contents of my trunk to
Miss Frederica Marshall. I suspect that she will make better use of
them than I did.”

Free looked up. “Proceeds?” she said quietly.
“What proceeds would she be talking about?”

“The proceeds of Miss Barton’s estate,” the
solicitor said. “Those would be the royalties on twenty-five
volumes published to date, not counting the four that are in the
process of publication.”

Frederica blinked. “
Twenty-five
volumes?” she repeated.

Oliver felt a sudden, staggering pain. He
knew which authoress had penned twenty-five volumes, one after the
other, in quick succession. It had been only twenty-three last
January, but… His sister walked over to his aunt’s trunk, flipped
open the lid. She reached inside.

There were sheaves of paper written all over
in his aunt’s crabbed writing. She picked up one and set it on the
table.

Oliver knew—he absolutely
knew
—what he
would see on the pages.

“
Mrs. Larriger and the Welsh Brigade,”
Free read. She took out another sheaf. “
Mrs. Larriger and the
French Comtesse. Mrs. Larriger Goes to Ireland.”
Her voice
caught. “Who is Mrs. Larriger?”

But Oliver knew. If his sister sifted through
the papers long enough, Mrs. Larriger would find her way to China,
to India, across all the seas of the world. He remembered mocking
these books with Jane, laughing that the author had clearly gone no
farther than Portsmouth.

He’d been wrong. The author had not even come
that far. She had lived the majority of her life in scarcely more
than a hundred square feet. And she’d had so much adventure hidden
in her that it had poured out of her once she’d let it loose. It
was almost impossible to take in the enormity of Aunt Freddy’s
secret. Mrs. Larriger had roamed the world—smoking peace pipes with
Indians, befriending a flock of penguins, getting captured by
whalers and winning her way free.

While Freddy sat in a small room watching the
door, hoping that tomorrow she would be able to leave.

Maybe she had.

It was a short list.

Jane had brought up an entire sheaf of
paper—beautiful, creamy paper—and had made sure that her inkwell
was full.

She’d intended to fill pages with her plans.
In the end, though, the list she had managed to come up with was
tiny.

What I will do next,
she had labeled
it.

One thing wasn’t on the list: Jane had no
intention of submitting to another painful round of the social
whirl. Of setting herself up to be judged and found wanting. Balls
and soirees and parties might sound lovely in theory, but in
reality they were exhausting and heartbreaking. Instead, her wants
were simple.

Do good things.

Make more friends.

Keep the friends I have.

After a long moment’s thought, she added one
last item.

Prove Oliver wrong.

It belonged on her list. Fourth, she
decided—he deserved no more importance in her future life than
that—but it belonged. For now…

It still hurt. She ached from it hurting.
She’d spent the afternoon with her sister, planning details of the
wedding. She’d smiled so much she felt as if her mouth would crack
from the effort.

It
hurt.

But even beneath that ache, she felt a cool
clarity: She was glad she had known him, glad that she’d broken
away from the person she once had been. From the façade that had
played her more than she had played it. She wouldn’t take on
another role, least of all because a man who claimed to love her
asked her to do it.

He’d hurt her, but she’d make it like all the
other hurts she’d received: nothing more than an act of
propagation.

Jane was poised on the verge of something
even better. And she knew exactly how it started: with
friendship.

Jane set her list to one side and pulled
another sheet of paper to her.

Dear Genevieve and Geraldine,
she
wrote.
The last time we corresponded, you were in London and I
was in Nottingham. Circumstances have changed, and I am now in
town. I had hoped we might be able to renew our friendship…

Oliver was still in a daze by the time he
returned to Clermont House. He shrugged off his brother’s
condolences and retreated to his chambers.

Many months ago, Oliver had purchased a book.
He’d intended to look through it at the time, but then events had
intervened. It had been shunted to the bottom of this trunk; when
he’d come back from Cambridge, it had been shuffled to a low shelf.
He hunted through the books, checking dusty spines, until he found
the one he was looking for.