Page 32 of The Heir
Do not trust him. Everything he’s giving you now, he’ll take it away again. You know he will.
Except this once, she had the means to keep his regard. All she had to do was open her mouth and tell him what she knew, what she’d found and kept.
“Father?”
“Yes, Jane?”
Her throat tightened. She swallowed, and the movement in her throat made her jaw ache where his blow had landed.
Perhaps this was what determined all the things that happened next. Jane would never know what imp or presentiment took hold of her in that single moment.
“Nothing,” she said, and she turned her face away.
Chapter 14
That morning, Mama was in a foul mood.
Victoria was not surprised by this any more than she was surprised by the appearance of her ghosts the night before. It was, after all, her fault for being caught out in the stairway when she should have been safe in the boudoir. And she acknowledged that. To make up for it, she attempted to be a model of obedience. She held perfectly still while being dressed and having her hair done. She ate only a tiny bit at breakfast. She made a decorously sentimental sketch of Dash in his basket, nothing that could be even mildly construed as rebellious.
Or interesting.She then felt obliged to ruffle Dash’s ears to show that she did not mean he was not interesting.
When Sir John arrived, with Jane trailing nervously in his wake, Victoria smiled politely.
“Good morning, Sir John. Good morning, Jane. What have you there?”
Jane clutched the book she was carrying like it was the only thing holding her upright. Sir John beamed down at his daughter. Victoria shivered at the power and the poison in his expression.
“A . . . book, ma’am,” Jane stammered. “Some etchings of Ireland. I thought—”
Lord. She’ll look at her father now to see if it is all right to think anything at all.
But this once Victoria saw she was mistaken. Jane did not look to Sir John. She met Victoria’s own gaze. In fact, Jane was staring hard, as if willing her to understand . . . something.
“Jane thought that as you are reading Irish history, ma’am, you would be interested in seeing something of the country.” Sir John sounded for all the world as if he was describing a dog who had just done a particularly clever trick.
“How very thoughtful,” said Mama. “Is it not, Victoria?”
Victoria kept her gaze on Jane’s. “I look forward to seeing what she’s brought.”
Jane let out a long breath, and her father shooed her to her usual corner.
An unfamiliar and distracting curiosity bubbled up inside Victoria. But, of course, it was not possible to talk with Jane now. It was time for lessons, and the system demanded she attend only to her tutors.
It will turn out to be nothing, she assured herself as she opened her grammar book.Jane has always been her father’s puppet. What could she possibly have to say that he hasn’t put into her mouth?
But Jane had never looked at Victoria in such a way before, and Victoria found herself itching to know what it meant.
The clock ticked. The morning’s lessons dragged. Victoria read her passages; she spoke her answers and wrote her essays. She exerted herself to keep from glancing at Jane. But when she did look, she saw Jane scowling at her fancywork, the book and, oddly, her pink reticule.
What does she have that for?Her maid should have taken it away with her coat and bonnet.
“Victoria! You do not attend!” snapped Mama.
Some days Mama was content to sit through Victoria’s lessons at her desk, working with her own correspondence. Not today. Today Mama sat directly behind her, sniping at the tutors, finding fault with Victoria’s posture, and berating her if she so much as took a breath to think. This, of course, made every lesson take twice as long as it should have.
The ache in her head and back returned. Victoria’s temper strained.
In contrast, Sir John had settled himself contentedly at his own desk to read and write his letters, exuding warm satisfaction like some great cat.
