Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
Anna
I’d been dreaming all night. Something happy and comfortable. As awareness started to trickle into my consciousness, my limbs still felt deliciously heavy, as did my head pressed into my pillow. The heat of my body had warmed my blankets, and I did not wish to move, despite light coloring the back of my eyelids.
I yawned, rubbing my eyes. Oh, but I did not wish to get out of bed. Back home, I slept as late as I desired, especially when Papa was traveling. I should not feel this comfortable in Graham Everett’s home, but goodness, I’d slept better than I had in ages. I’d written everything down in my notebook, every strange interaction from Ginny’s lecture in the drawing room to Graham’s obvious wheedling at dinner, before falling fast asleep.
Part of me was eager to hear the rushing sea and watch the tide roll in, but an equal part of me simply wanted this week over and done so I could enjoy the view with Papa instead. I hated how forced and tense things were with the Everetts. How delicate every matter was, and how desperately they wished to please me. If Ginny’s outburst was any indication, and Graham’s constant attempt to rush me through Brighton, they all hated me and would rather be rid of me. After they got what they wanted, of course.
Graham had proven that fact long ago.
My wooden bedframe creaked, and I froze, eyes still closed. Pressure shifted on my mattress, though I remained still as a board.
The movement ceased. Had I imagined it? Was I still dreaming? I almost believed I was, until little breaths sounded from above me. A sniff. Had an animal climbed onto my bed?
I opened my eyes to slits and peeked through my eyelashes; I was facing the door, which was slightly ajar.
Another small movement, pressure on either side of me like whatever it was, it had braced itself over me.
I turned and looked up, meeting a pair of sea-green eyes.
Sucking in a breath, I felt a scream already in my throat, when a little hand covered my mouth.
“Shh,” the tiny voice said. “Don’t scream, or she’ll catch us.”
I pushed up, scrambling back until my head hit the bedframe. “Who are you?” I croaked, my voice still rough with sleep. Was I being robbed? I looked around the room for the bellpull.
The little girl stared, her thick blonde curls springing out in every direction. An untidy sprinkling of freckles raked across her cheeks. She glanced back at the door.
“Who are you?” I breathed, snatching my blankets and covering myself as best I could.
“Tabitha.” A toothy grin appeared. She must’ve been seven or eight for the large teeth and gaps between them. “I’m your new sister.” The pride in her voice was unmistakable.
“My new what?”
The little hand shot back to my mouth, the girl’s eyes growing wide. “I would’ve come down for dinner, but Mama said you and Graham needed time alone.” Tabitha wiggled her eyebrows. Her eyes dashed to my trunk, then to my things that Mariah had laid out on the desk and bedside table.
“Graham is your brother?”
“Mm-hmm.”
This was his second sister? “How old are you?”
“Eight and a half,” she declared. “How old are you?”
“Almost one-and-twenty.”
For some reason, that fact seemed to encourage her. She scooted closer. “Mama said you were someone really special, and that I was not to interfere with Graham’s business. Did he propose last night?”
Propose? The girl was deluded. Were all eight-year-olds so out of touch with reality? “Your brother and I are absolutely not engaged, and never will be.”
She frowned, pouted, grunted. “Whyever not?”
“Because—” I stopped myself from saying, because he ruined my life, and instead finished with, “He is very disagreeable.”
Tabitha blinked, her frown still creasing her brow, then shrugged as though she couldn’t argue me. “He works a lot for us, so he can be quite grumpy, but I imagine he’ll be happier with a wife. And you’re very beautiful.” She gave me another toothy grin. “Can I have that golden brush on your table?”
I followed her gaze to my hairbrush. “No.”
She pouted again. “Why are you here then? If not to marry my brother?”
“He and my father are investment partners.” Why was I still talking to this girl? I glanced to the door. Where had I laid my robe?
“Your father ...” Tabitha touched her chin. Then, “Oh.” She looked at me with wide eyes. “Ohh.”
I leaned over, and with one foot on the floor, reached for the bellpull and tugged. Mariah would rescue me. I’d tried to maintain my modesty with an armful of my blankets, but Tabitha did not seem to care in the slightest.
“You’re that Lane woman.”
It was my turn to frown.
“He talks about you. But usually not kindly.” She turned thoughtful. “He says you harp upon him without end.”
I raised a brow. A smile itched at the corners of my lips. Graham had said that, had he? That explained Ginny’s attitude. Well, it was time for the truth to out. “You are mistaken, Miss Tabitha. It is your brother who harps upon me.”
“How so?” She sat back on her knees, crossing her arms, as ready to fight as a girl her age could be. She’d defend her rotten brother to the end, and I instantly respected her for it.
I drew in a deep breath. I had to remember that my audience was hissister, and a child. “For one, he teases me beyond reason. He’ll say one thing, but I know he means the opposite.”
She raised her chin. “That is just who he is. He likes to tease, but he doesn’t mean it. You just have to get him back.”
“Oh, I do,” I assured her. “But he also comes over to my house uninvited.”
Her eyebrows rose a half-inch.
“He comes to dinner informally in the dirty clothes he’s worn all day. Talking business at the table. And he has the nerve to comment on my daily activities, as though he has a say in what I should or should not do.”
Tabitha reared back dramatically. “How incredibly rude.”
For the first time in weeks, I smiled sincerely. “I wholeheartedly agree.”
Tabitha shook her head slowly, looking about the room, pondering. “Then again, I cannot think of another woman my brother has ever spoken of, kindly or otherwise. He leaves us for London and spends all his time with you.”
“With my father,” I amended.
“But he speaks more often about you.”
Good gracious, what was wrong with this girl? “I highly doubt that,” I said flatly.
Her eyes went round, sincere. “Mama says when a boy likes a girl, he’ll sometimes act strangely. Like when Tommy Bates pinches my arm in church.”
“No, no,” I started, stumbling over my words. “No, Miss Tabitha. That is not—”
“Miss Lane?” Mariah knocked on the cracked-open door, before pushing it open further. “Are you unwell?”
“Yes—” I called at the same time Tabitha said, “She’s well!”
“Tabitha?” A man’s voice—Graham’s?—called from down the hall.
The girl slammed her hand over her mouth, shock in her eyes, and scrambled to my side like I might protect her from an incoming foe. “Drat,” she muttered between her fingers.
The door opened, and Mariah stopped short at the sight of Tabitha half on top of me in my bed. “Get off her at once.” Her voice was stern.
I pulled my covers closer, and a moment later Graham, disheveled and hair frumpy like he’d just hopped out of bed, stepped behind Mariah, hovering at the door. Our eyes locked for the shortest second before his mouth fell open in shock.
“Tabitha Elise, what are you doing!”
“Meeting your someone special.” Tabitha wiggled her brows suggestively.
Graham’s cheeks turned cherry red, and the whole thing was almost worth it except that I was in bed and Graham was right there!
I touched my hair. Still in curling papers.
“Get out—!” we all said in tandem.
“—of Miss Lane’s room at once!” Graham bellowed before stepping back and out of sight.
Tabitha looked heavenward and slid off my bed like honey pouring out of a pot. “I shall come again,” she whispered, taking her time to straighten herself. “I will speak to him about manners and courtship, and this time he’ll get it right. I think you and I shall be fast friends.”
Reeling with embarrassment, I watched her skip away.
Mariah closed and locked the door, then rushed to my side. “Are you all right? I’ve heard stories about that girl belowstairs.”
I touched my cheeks, my temples. “I should like to hear them. I cannot decide if she’s a jester or a menace.”
“Both.” Mariah pulled out a blue cotton day dress and rummaged around in my trunk as I slid from under my covers. “But most of all, she’s trouble, downstairs at least.”
Mariah helped me dress, telling me everything she’d learned about Tabitha’s waywardness, how she often stole treats from the kitchen and tracked in dirt and sand from outside. The worst, perhaps, was her hidden collection of dead sea creatures that the servants would find in the most awful of places.
“Their maid Harriet said she opened Miss Tabitha’s armoire and found a large rotting crab hidden on the bottom shelf.”
“Good heavens.” I half laughed, until the thought of how a rotting crab must have smelled sobered me.
After dressing, I took a quarter of an hour to write down the morning’s events in my notebook. The adamancy of that little girl, the stealth. Papa would have been mortified had I ever behaved that way as a child. We seldom had visitors when I was young. Papa had been an only child too, so our little family stayed small. Interacting with mother’s family proved too painful, so apart from an obligatory visit once or twice a year, he avoided them.
The more I wrote, the lighter I felt. That girl with her wide-toothed grin. Completely unaffected by life or the opinions of others. She seemed so comfortable in her own skin, so carefree and open with her thoughts. She did not, for one moment, change who she was, how she spoke, or what she said according to whom she was addressing.
Childhood ignorance, to be sure. But when did one outgrow the ability to speak freely, openly, without thought of what might be lost or gained in the exchange?
The more I thought on it, the more I adored that little girl, properly behaved or not. The more I felt a sense of protectiveness over her fierce, free spirit. I did not want her to grow wise to manipulation like her brother.
Speaking of whom ...
I sighed, stepping out onto the balcony of my room. Birds cawed from a distance, swooping down to the water and back up again. A person could get used to this view. I leaned forward on the balustrade where sunshine warmed the cool stone. I was excited to go down to the shore, be near the water and just ... sit. But I also felt a rising anxiety at spending the afternoon with Graham, who’d no doubt fill my ears with nonsense and ruin the entire outing. Best to get it over with. Perhaps I could sneak down another time alone.
I peeked my head around my bedroom door, finding the way empty and quiet and safe enough to depart through. But I’d no sooner stepped foot in the foyer, when—
“Oh, Miss Lane.” I turned to find Mrs. Everett at my right. Her cheeks were rosy, her whole demeanor flustered. She wrung her hands together. “Miss Lane, I am mortified to hear that my daughter Tabitha intruded on you this morning.”
“Please, think nothing of it,” I assured her. “Honestly, after I realized she wasn’t going to murder me in my bed, she was quite entertaining.”
“She is wild and cares far too little for the opinions of others,” Ginny said, following her mother out of the drawing room. “She was very excited to meet you.”
I raised a brow. “She seems to have quite the imagination.” I still hadn’t recovered from the poor girl’s misconstrued idea of who I was, and especially who I was to Graham.
His heavy footsteps carried from a room around the staircase. “Mother,” he said, breathless, as though he’d run back and forth a hundred times and still had not prepared himself for the day. He looked fresh out of a bath, and I wondered, if, when he’d come upon me with Tabitha, he’d been just out of bed as well. Heat flooded my cheeks. He fretted with both his cravat and his damp, wavy hair as he stepped into the foyer, all musk and citrusy. “Ginny. Miss Lane.” His eye caught on my notebook and stayed there. He frowned, then bowed to the three of us, stern and serious. “A thousand apologies, Miss Lane—”
“Unnecessary,” I muttered, suddenly unable to meet his gaze. He’d seen me in my nightgown, with my hair still in curling papers! How would we get through this day, let alone five more, if every encounter was as tense and rigid as this one?
Graham frowned, holding his hands behind his back.
“Would you like to break your fast?” his mother asked me gently. “We’ve a small spread laid out in the dining room.”
“Or if you’re ready to explore Brighton’s coastline, we can leave now,” Graham said. He waited like a butler at attention.
Amiable, all of them. They walked on ice to please me.
They’d give me anything I wanted, and why? For what? Money. Opportunity. Absolutely nothing to do with merely wanting to host and befriend me. My mind started to snap, like the final threads in an old rope worn too thin. For once, I just wanted to be treated like someone who had nothing to give.
I cleared my throat of a sudden thickness. What good would it do, wishing to be anything other than I was? I couldn’t change to whom I’d been born. And honestly, despite it all, I did not want to.
“Thank you,” I said, lifting my chin like I always did when I felt uncertain. A trick Papa had taught me. “Yes, I shall break my fast.” Then the perfect plan formed in my head as though the devil himself had concocted it. I turned to Graham. “And afterward, I would like Miss Tabitha to join us on our explorations. Please do see that she is ready.”
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Everett said—pleaded, almost. “Tabitha must rest. She is quite out of sorts this morning.”
Was she out of sorts? Or was she exactly as she should be? I held my gaze against Graham’s, who’d gone pale. “I should really like her to join us.”
He swallowed, his nostrils flaring with what surely was frustration at my adamancy. He did not wish for his little sister to cause a fuss. But I wanted the company of someone who did not treat me like a polished thing. Someone who would speak their mind and opinions openly and truthfully without thought to consequence, and certainly without backhanded, two-faced kindness.
Graham nodded. “I shall have her prepared to leave at once.”
I hugged my notebook close. “Perfect.”