Chapter 2
There is such a tendency to exaggeration and inaccuracy in Irish reports that delay in acting on them is always desirable.
“Please. Take a seat.”
I pursed my lips, following the sweep of her ladyship’s hand as she pointed toward the master’s chair. Was she jesting? “I-I’m fine here, Your Ladyship. Standing, that is.”
“Ah.” With a curl of her lips, her ladyship clasped the curved silver handle of her cane with both hands and rapped it on the floor before her. “You prefer to speak as equals. Eye to eye. I like that, Maggie. It shows character. Though, do know I was merely concerned for your health.”
She pivoted, her dark gaze affixed on the portrait that stood witness above the master’s chair.
“I don’t envy him. Inherited quite the calamity from Peele,” said her ladyship, taking one step, then another toward the master’s desk, dragging the cane as well as any dandy who took luncheon with Colonel Moore-Vandeleur.
It was enough to remind me of another cane.
Another dandy. Another time. I shuddered.
“Lord John Russell, prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Tried his best, poor chap, but bungled everything, if you ask me.” She gestured toward the portrait, paused, then turned to face me.
My heart leapt in my chest as she perched on the edge of the desk, and I stood that little bit straighter.
“I won’t keep you in suspense any longer.
First, the terms. You said you wanted land, a place you can call your own.
I can provide that. I have a need that requires what I hope will be your full cooperation.
In exchange, when your task is complete, I will gift you a cottage with five acres on my land. ”
Five? I pursed my lips. There wasn’t a landlord in Ireland with five spare acres to rent, never mind give away.
Every inch was accounted for. We toiled the land for the landlord, who sold every ounce of our labor to the markets in England.
Even now, they were sending food across the sea while we died in ditches.
In exchange, most got a quarter acre. Barely enough space for a one-roomed home and a patch of potatoes. “Did you say five acres?”
Her ladyship nodded slowly. “I will be frank. The land isn’t disposed to cultivation, save the blaggarding potato. But sheep should thrive.”
“I don’t understand.” With a shake of my head, I took a step forward, then thought better of it and rocked back onto my bare heels.
“You don’t have to. Just know it’s yours if you agree to our arrangement.”
This smelled of the Devil himself, come to deal with the soulless wretches who yearned for anything but existence. I was one such soulless wretch. My crime was proof of that.
“Lady—” I stopped. I didn’t even know her name. She smiled.
“Browne. Or, Lady Catherine. Whichever you prefer.”
I nodded. “Lady Catherine. You’ll forgive my asking, but how can I be sure you’ll keep to these terms?”
“Ah! You are a clever one. Good, good!” Reaching into the dark depths of her coat, she produced a folded sheaf of papers. “I have it all here in this contract. I can, of course, read it to you.”
There’d be no need for that. My eyes slid from the contract to meet her steely gaze. “What must I do in exchange?”
Placing the document on the desk, Lady Catherine stood.
“I need a girl to pose as my daughter, Wilhelmina. I have six months before a bevy of lawyers arrive at my home to prove that she is, in fact, dead. Our goal is to convince them she is not. In that time, I expect you to learn how to hold a conversation with these learned men, and how to comport yourself as Wilhelmina in society. Her husband, the Earl of Norbury, passed last year, and his family have heard rumor of her own passing. If they can prove it, Wilhelmina’s inheritance will revert to the old earl’s great-niece, and I will be left destitute while her money-grasping husband milks the situation to fill his own coffers.
I’ve put it about that Wilhelmina is sick with her grief, but I’ve stretched her mourning period as far as decorum allows.
This is, of course, no great matter to you.
However, there are four hundred souls under my care.
Good people. And though I am no great landowner, I will not see them suffer if I can help it.
We’re the same, you and I. Born and bred and sick of the suffering. ”
A chill wended its way under my smock, and my father’s words echoed in my mind: An Anglo would sell his soul to own the flea-bitten shirt off an Irishman’s back. And any aristocrat in Ireland is not only Anglo, but well and truly British.
“Think of it, Maggie,” her ladyship continued. “A simple task in exchange for your own freedom. The opportunity to pull the wool over the eyes of the very people who refuse to do anything but dig mass graves and export Irish-grown food to feed their own people.”
Nothing about this arrangement felt right.
I was no idiot … but I needed to sit before I fell from lack of blood.
It drained from my face all the way to my toes with each word she spoke, until I shivered where I stood.
I took a step, and another, being sure to keep distance between us as I circled the master’s desk.
She followed my movements, her dark gaze locked on mine as I carefully placed a hand on the chair and lowered myself into its forbidden depths.
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t ask permission to sit.
Could do naught but tear my eyes from hers and glance at the contract that lay within arm’s reach.
It couldn’t have been for nothing. All this, everything that had happened—it wasn’t enough to be alive, to survive. It had to be for something. For it was all my fault. Everything.
From my father’s wan face as we were turned out of our home, to his silent tears as we laid eyes on the hundreds of bodies crawling over each other outside the Kilrush workhouse.
To the scalp my father and neighbors had dug—a hole in the ground large enough for the twelve of us to huddle within, with naught but branches to keep out the rain—certain Colonel Moore-Vandeleur would recant, would forgive, would invite his prized land agent back to work.
We had to stay near. Stay close, lest he came looking.
Until baby Crofton died in my mother’s arms, and her with no energy to weep.
And by the time Father realized we had to try and make it to Ennis, we were too weak to travel but a little every day.
That’s when the dogs came baying. And it was all my fault.
“You appear piqued,” said her ladyship, but I still stared at the contract.
Breathing in, then out. Gathering my thoughts.
A home, independent of a master, of relying on the whim of another.
A place I could call my own. A place where my family could live in memory.
A tangible thing to atone for my sins, where I could finally put them to rest, where they could finally be at rest.
“I have … I have questions,” I said softly, closing my eyes against the sting of tears.
“I’m sure you do.” And with a rustle of taffeta, Lady Catherine strode toward the door. “I’ll call for tea and answer any concerns you may have.”
What of Wilhelmina’s friends? Wouldn’t they know I was not her? What if we were caught, what would happen to me? What of this land—would it truly be mine, or would I still have to pay rent, either to her or a middleman?
I grilled her, and her ladyship had a ready answer for everything.
Wilhelmina had been brought up in France and had no acquaintances in Ireland.
As a result, she was more French than Irish, and the gamble had paid off when Wilhelmina married the earl.
The ceremony was a private, family affair—as the earl was ailing—and the only other witness besides Lady Catherine had been the earl’s old friend, Lord Croyden, also deceased.
Lady Catherine abhorred high society and made it her business to rarely appear, so few of her circle would have met Wilhelmina as an adult.
If we were caught, Lady Catherine had the means to get me away safely, and she alone would bear the legal brunt. However, if the law discovered the deception, it would mean no land for me.
If all went well, the land would be mine, without rent or middleman—with one condition. If I ever felt the need to sell it off, I needed to sell it back to Lady Catherine.
“That’s it?” I asked.
Lady Catherine had dragged a chair from the back of the office so she might sit opposite me. It was strange, sitting in the master’s chair, a contract clutched in my hands as if I were the master and she the wretch.
“That’s it,” she said with a nod. “If you’d like, we can go through the contract point by point until you’re satisfied.”
“No need,” I murmured. I’d already scanned the words as she answered my questions. Everything was written in simple language. It was straightforward and followed everything she had said. “And this will stand in a court of law?”
“It will.”
I turned over the page and squinted. “Whose signatures are these? Ah … never mind, My Lady. Their titles are here.”
Esquires. Solicitors. The document had been notarized. It was sound.
“You surprise me, Maggie.”
I glanced up from the contract to find her brows arched to her hairline. God’s blood! I flushed. “Where did a tenant’s daughter learn to read?”
“Land agent,” I corrected, smoothing the contract over the desk. “My father was a land agent, My Lady.”
“And … you were turned out?”
Her face paled in tandem with my own rising shame. I took a deep breath. “Yes, My Lady. My eldest brother and I were lucky enough to work in the Big House until that … happened. Her ladyship educated me in English speech and letters, as I had an aptitude for it.”
Silence fell, a thick void of unanswered questions I imagined she wanted to ask.
Why would a landlord turn out a land agent?
Why would a lady of the house take it upon herself to teach a servant to read?
For a moment, I thought all my distrust and delay would end in Lady Catherine calling for the master to find another girl.
A different wretch to save—one who didn’t belong to a turned-out land agent, for he must have been disgraced in some way to have lost his livelihood.
I’d said too much. Revealed more than necessary.
The master’s fountain pen lay discarded on the smooth, dark wooden top of the desk, and I reached for it, chest constricting.
As my fingers grasped the cool metal barrel of the pen, Lady Catherine whipped out her hand and covered mine with hers. I froze, my heart hammering faster than that of a hare in flight.
“Look at me, Maggie,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. But I couldn’t. This was it. After offering the world on a platter, she was about to take it all away.
“Look at me,” she insisted, a dangerous edge creeping into her voice that compelled the servant in me to scrape my eyes from the pen. To draw them upward. To meet her gaze. “They take, and take, and treat us like dogs. But they’ll never win if you can shut them out of here.”
With her free hand, she slapped a palm over her heart.
But she was them. Didn’t she understand that it mattered not where she lived or died? She was Anglo-Irish—an Irish-born British aristocrat and well-to-do. Certified so by her title. Forgiven her birth by the queen herself.
And we were naught but animals to them. Working livestock that needed to breed bodies in order to keep the breadbasket of the British Empire in working order.
“Are you amenable to the terms laid out before you?” she asked, patting my hand before pulling away.
My chest caved inward, and I released a breath on a gust that threatened to blow the contract from the table. If this woman wanted to believe we were the same, if she thought overlooking my family’s disgrace was a gesture of solidarity, then I certainly wouldn’t stop her.
I quickly twisted the cap from the pen, dipped it in the inkpot, and scratched my signature along the line.
“Yes, My Lady,” I answered, replacing the cap as my stomach flipped over. For better or worse, I would become Wilhelmina for this woman. And when the deed was done, I would earn my freedom.