Page 35 of The Heir
Mama was going to scream. Victoria knew it. She saw the muscles cording in her mother’s neck and the white lines that appeared around her mouth. She steeled herself, ready to answer shout for shout. Dash knew it, too. She could feel him tremble as he pressed closer to her.
Jane’s gaze, as always, shot to Sir John to see how he regarded the scene. This time she and Victoria both got a surprise.
Sir John looked embarrassed. He’d been caught out, and he knew it. Victoria pressed a hand over her mouth to stifle her laugh.
Mama realized something was amiss, and she swallowed all her anger in a single hard lump.
“Very well, Victoria,” she said, but she kept her gaze fixed on Sir John. “If it will give me a moment’s peace. Lehzen, see that the door is left open.”
“Jane, come,” said Victoria, scrambling to be gone before Mama had a chance to change her mind. “And bring that book you were talking about. And your workbasket. I want to see how your stitching is coming along.”
Jane got up and turned. Victoria could not help but notice she angled herself so that her body was between the stool and her father’s searching eyes.What is she doing?
There was no way to tell. All Victoria knew was that when Jane turned back, she had her book and basket. She slunk obediently behind Victoria and Dash into the smaller of the two sitting rooms.
The princess chose the settee, which was big enough for them both. Dash curled up at her feet, perfectly content as long as no voices were raised.
“Now, let us see that book you brought.” Victoria extended her hand.
Jane gave her the book and sat down beside her. Lehzen settled herself into the straight-backed chair beside the hearth and took up her sewing. It just so happened that she now faced the open door, which would allow her to see the moment anyone approached the threshold.
Victoria dropped her voice to a murmur. “Did you . . . did you have something you wished to say to me?” She turned a page in the book.
“I did,” said Jane. “But . . . I don’t know if it matters.”
“I would like to hear it, anyway.”
Jane stared at her hard. Victoria could read the question in her gaze as plain as the words on the page in front of her.
Does she mean it?
Victoria cringed inwardly. Jane had reason to wonder. Victoria had not exactly hidden her feelings. Jane had always been a piece of the daily puzzle that must be worked around or avoided altogether. Occasionally, Victoria felt sorry for her. After all, it must be very hard to be Sir John’s daughter. But there was nothing more than that. Not since they were children.
Back then they had played together and laughed together. Then it had all changed. She tried to put her finger on when and how and, disconcertingly, found she could not.
“I walked home across the green last night,” Jane breathed. “To look at the place where you fell. I found these.”
Jane opened her basket. Using the basket lid as a screen, she handed Victoria a sadly battered pair of pince-nez spectacles. A wrinkled black ribbon stained with dried mud dangled from the frame.
Victoria received the spectacles into her hands as if they were precious jewels. Jane, who never spoke out of turn, who sat and sulked and slunk, who always did exactly what she was told, had gone walking where she should not. Jane had doubted her father and had gone out to search for answers.
“But with Father changing his story and saying the dead man was a gardener, it can’t mean anything.”
Victoria closed her fingers around the pince-nez.
“No,” she said to this new, strange Jane. “It means a great deal. Because that story is a lie, and now we have proof.”
Proof that she had seen what she had seen. That this time she had not seen a ghost. That she was not mad.
“How can this be proof of anything?” Jane’s question cut through Victoria’s triumphant thoughts. “Anyone can wear spectacles. Even a gardener.”
How?
Victoria closed her eyes. She willed her anger and her imaginings away.
I will see what is in front of me. Only that.
She opened her eyes.
