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The Heir's Predicament

By Lorri Dudley

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Chapter One

“Shh. Keep your voice down.” Maggie Prescott held her index finger to her lips. “Or this could become one big disaster.” She’d seen Lord Granville standing on his balcony earlier that morning with his arms crossed and prominent wide-legged stance, surveying his grounds with a sharp eye. A prickling shiver walked up her spine. She’d avoided his notice during her first escapades to Greenview Manor, but the master of the house didn’t appear to be someone she wanted to cross.
“I’ve done some foolhardy things in my past, but dash it, this beats them all.” Her uncle’s white linen sleeves flapped in the breeze, and his blue eyes shone brightly despite his dark scowl. She still hadn’t grown accustomed to seeing him with facial hair, his light brown scruff blending in with his tanned skin.
Maggie hid her slippers underneath the wild tamarind bush and tilted her head back to examine the feat ahead. The large breadfruit tree looked sturdy enough, and it had held her weight on prior attempts. Surely it could accommodate her uncle, Captain Anthony Middleton’s, larger masculine frame.
She swallowed and planned her winding route among the limbs. There was no need to be concerned. Lord Granville was in the fields, directing his men until sundown as he did every day, even Sunday. She and her uncle would slip in, locate the diary, and be sailing back to London before nightfall.
“My gut’s rolling like waves before a storm.” Uncle Anthony shook his head. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
“Are you sure your stomach’s not protesting the bottle of rum you finished off with the crew last night?”
“Such cheekiness.” He glowered at her but then ruined the effect with a wink. “You get that from your uncle.”
The tropical trade winds of Antigua rustled the palm branches and the dense green canopy of the large breadfruit tree that shaded the grand manor house. Maggie faced him and placed her hands on his shoulders. “I don’t see another way. How else am I to regain my mother’s diary?”
“My sister is your mother.” He pointed a finger under Maggie’s chin. “She’s the one who raised and loved you and always will.” Uncle Anthony’s whispered tone sounded harsh, but he still went along with her plan, bending his knee and interlocking his fingers as a makeshift step to hoist her onto a branch.
Maggie silently whispered a prayer for patience as she blew a wisp of hair out of her eyes. How could she convey the importance of discovering the origins of her birth? Try as she might, she’d failed to make anybody, even her uncle, fully understand. “I will always think of Cilla and Tobie as my parents. I love them, which is why I need to learn the truth of my lineage.” She placed a foot on her uncle’s hands. “They’ve given me so much already, and I refuse to be a burden to them.”
“You’re too young to be worried about spinsterhood,” he hissed in a sharp whisper.
“I’ll be turning twenty this year.”
He snorted. “As if that’s ancient.”
“Ready?” They’d dawdled long enough.
“I understand the ton puts all their stock in pure bloodlines.” He exhaled and lifted her with a grunt. “But I still think using the front entrance would be easier.”
Her shoulder brushed the thick weathered trunk, but the sturdy fabric of her gown didn’t rip. “The butler slammed the door in our face the moment I mentioned the diary.”
“Arrogant butlers are all the rage.” He flinched as a piece of bark broke away and bounced off his cheek. “If it so happens that you’re the heiress of this estate, I hope you sack him without a reference.”
She gripped a low-hanging branch and readied to kick her leg up. “Please turn your back for a moment.”
“For the record, I still think this is a terrible idea.” Uncle Anthony grunted his displeasure but complied. “This entire debacle has been a wretched notion from the beginning. All this time, I thought you were at the local parish going through records, not invading houses. You’re fortunate you haven’t been shot.”
Maggie hooked her leg around the branch, pulling herself until she rested on top. “We didn’t sail across the Atlantic to get turned away by a butler. Besides, we’ll be fine. I spent a week watching Lord Granville’s whereabouts. He’s a remarkably routine man.”
She resettled her skirts. Tree climbing was an underappreciated skill in England. Several of her governesses had lectured her on the inappropriateness of such a talent. One even fainted after discovering Maggie in the high branches of an oak tree. She’d revived Miss Fitch with smelling salts, only for the woman quit on the spot. It was a pity. Maggie had liked the sensitive woman, and the governess’s departure allowed for the austere Miss Van Hetters to accept the position.
The following branches proved easier to ascend as long as she kept her skirts from snagging on twigs and branches. She climbed until she stood on a limb extending toward the roofline near the grand house’s second-floor balcony. She jumped to test the weight, and the branch barely swayed. It should hold Uncle Anthony.
She pushed aside some leaves obscuring her view of the grounds surrounding the Grand Manor. White canvas sails of the windmill where the sugar cane was crushed slowly circled in the breeze, and the sweet, medicinal smell of the boiling houses distilling molasses into rum mixed with the yeasty scent of the breadfruit tree. The estate lands sloped down the palm tree-lined lane, past the waves of green sugar cane, to Old Road. Just beyond that lay crystal blue waters, and if she squinted, she could see the main mast of The Windward, Uncle Anthony’s ship, anchored in the harbor. This view could have been the exact one her mother witnessed from the veranda. A jitteriness rolled her stomach, like the feeling she’d gotten after she’d snuck the remainder of coffee this morning from the pot Uncle Anthony drank after his night of carousing.
“Psst!” she called to her uncle below. He didn’t move, merely stood as he would at the helm of his ship, staring off at the horizon. His hair hadn’t thinned, not even from the top view, although he would be considered middle-aged at nine and thirty. His sun-bleached locks fell in thick waves and added to his debonair appearance that drew the ladies’ eyes, even if Uncle Anthony showed no intention of settling down.
She willed him to turn around and keep to the mission. Movement near the edge of the field startled her, and one foot slipped off the branch. She held tight to an upper limb and released a breath.
A group of five women returned from the field, balancing the afternoon cane bundles on their heads as they made their way to the windmill. Their emergence meant it was precisely three o’clock. Lord Granville ran the plantation like clockwork, allowing Maggie to plan this escapade down to the precise moment when the main house would be vacant.
Uncle Anthony leaned against the tree’s trunk as the women strolled up the hill, their hips swaying back and forth. The workers would be inside the stone windmill for twenty minutes before returning to the field—time to hurry.
“Uncle Anthony, you can climb up now,” she whispered, but his only movement was his head shifting with the direction of the lithe slave woman as they entered the mill to unload their burdens. Maggie leaned down. Was he too preoccupied admiring the ladies to remember why they were here? She plucked a breadfruit from a nearby branch and dropped it, hitting her uncle squarely between the shoulders.
He flinched and turned to peer up at her, holding his palms out as if to say, what was that for?
She waved him up.
The tree shook as he climbed, and Maggie tightened her grip on the upper branch.
“Are you certain the limb is going to hold my weight?” His whisper exaggerated the raspy tone of his voice. He stood barefooted on the branch just below hers.
“Indeed.” She focused on her next climb. “Just don’t go until I’m on the veranda.” She stepped out like a tightrope walker and paused. “And don’t look down.” She didn’t know whether she said the last bit for her benefit or her uncle’s, but she sidestepped onto the branch, still holding onto the upper limb. The final few steps required her to release her overhead grip, but after multiple practice voyages, she no longer hesitated to disengage. She balanced the few remaining steps and leapt to the roof.
Wooden shingles bit into her hands as she clung to the dormitory peak and eased to a seated position. Her palms tingled from the great height, but she scooted down a body-length to the roofline.
Uncle Anthony soared onto the gable end beside her with ease. His young adulthood spent scaling ratlines on his Majesty’s Royal Navy ships quashed any fear of heights. “Your mother and father would have my head if they knew you were jumping onto housetops.”
An all too familiar stab of guilt drained the moment’s excitement at the thought of her adopted parents. “They’ve caught me climbing trees before. They may think nothing of it.” Only because if discovered, their outrage over her disappearance and having her maid pretend to be Maggie at boarding school would supersede their anger at her climbing on a roof. She inched her way down the dried and curled wooden shingles. If her desire to discover the truth about her birth parents hadn’t burned so great in her chest, she never would have done anything to disappoint her family. She could only hope that her plan would work and that they’d never find out about this adventure.
Her uncle snorted. “Your parents? Your mother boxes my ears if I indulge in one pint too many.”
She hung her legs over the wooden gutter, finding the veranda railing below with her foot. “They’ll be too busy ringing a peel over me and flying into the boughs for you sailing me across the Atlantic.”
Her uncle paled and closed his eyes. “Don’t remind me.”
She dropped to the rail and lowered onto a small wooden chair next to a table that graced the balcony. Each morning as the sun rose, the master of Greenview Manor sat and read in that very seat as he partook of his morning coffee and a Johnnycake.
Part of her admired the man’s strict schedule. She could set her watch pin to Lord Granville’s daily routine. Her papa, Tobie, also abided by a stringent regimen with the men under him at the War Office, but at home, Maggie only knew Tobie at ease, laughing, joking, and playing with Maggie and her two younger siblings. Could Lord Granville also hold a softer side?
She swallowed. If they got caught, she prayed his lordship not only offered a softer side but a forgiving one.
Uncle Anthony jumped onto the terrace like a cat.
She slipped through the open balcony doors, peering around the meticulously kept room, listening for servants. The whole lot of them, even the surly butler, should be in the kitchen, off-set from the main house in case of fire, preparing for the evening meal. She breathed the fresh scent of lye soap and bergamot. The coverlet on the large four-poster bed lay smooth and flat. Starched pillows lined the wooden headboard in tidy rows. Atop his hand-carved teak bureau sat a porcelain washbasin and a framed miniature portrait of a mature woman, likely his mother. On a nearby desk stood a candlestick, a silver tray with a stack of correspondences, a letter opener, inkwell, and a quill pen.
She stepped aside from the balcony door to allow room for Uncle Anthony to enter and peeked at the paper lying on the master’s bed stand. His daily tasks were listed in neatly slanted script and meticulously checked off with bold strokes, except the last one.

Respond to invitations
Write a letter home
Find missing key to desk drawer

In familiarizing herself with the layout of the grand manor in search of the hidden room housing her mama’s diary, she’d grown acquainted with the man who frequented its halls without officially encountering him. He was fastidious in neatness and cleanliness. He organized his bookshelves by subject and title and his closets by color. The first time she’d dared enter the master’s chamber, she hastily exited with guilt nipping at her heels. A young innocent shouldn’t be snooping about a man’s quarters, much less sneaking into his house uninvited.
Sweat trickled down her back, and she glanced at the clock on his bureau—quarter past three. The valet would return from pressing his master’s shirts at quarter to five, when the men returned from the fields.
She had planned to take what belonged to her, namely her mother’s diary, and be on her way, none the wiser. However, the hidden place under the stairs proved harder to locate than expected. Yesterday, when she was about to relent and conclude the instructions embedded in her mother’s song were a childish fantasy, she saw the gap between the bookshelf and the wall. Upon closer inspection, she’d located the secret door under the attic stairs, but after several attempts to move the bookcase on her own, she’d had no choice but to involve her uncle.
“Which way?”
She borrowed the master’s oil lamp from his nightstand and tipped her head toward the hall before striding around the massive bed. Cracking the door open, she listened and scanned the area before slipping from the master chamber. Her bare feet padded softly on the wooden floorboards. She moved aside, evading the one that squeaked.
Her uncle overlooked her intentional misstep, and the plank groaned its displeasure. Her breath caught as they both stood rigid, waiting for someone to call out, Who’s there? But she heard only the distant singing of workers in the fields.
She slipped past the stairs, waving for her uncle to follow, and they stopped at a door on her left. Her fingers trembled as she lifted the latch and entered the room. This was it. She’d soon have the answers she’d prayed for. Flowered paper lined the walls, and the whitewashed furniture held a feminine quality. This must have been her mother’s sitting area since the adjoining door led to a dressing room and bedchamber. The same reverent awe that had tickled her stomach the first time she entered remained steadfast.
“It’s over here.” She strode to a large bookshelf on the left side of the room flanked by two upholstered chairs. A nearby window spilled light into the small chamber, enticing inhabitants to curl up in the cozy seat and read. A door to the right of the chair opened to a flight of stairs leading to the attic. The bookcase rested an inch or so away from the wall, and rising onto her toes, she ran her fingers along the top edge and felt the casement molding of a hidden door.
Uncle Anthony rubbed his chin and eyed the object. “Let’s try to shift it without removing the articles.”
Rows of books lined the shelves. The History of the Fall of Rome, Two Treatises of Government by John Locke, and A volume of Lord Byron’s poems presented a small sample of the collection. Were these her mother’s books? Had her mother read them? Did she, too, enjoy the adventure of reading? If only Maggie had more time to peruse the content of these shelves, but answers to her questions could only be found within her mother’s diary, which the song said rested in a room beneath the stairs.
Uncle Anthony gripped the corners, and his face reddened as he strained to lift. “Blasted pain…” It didn’t move.
“Let me try and help. On the count of three.” Maggie set the oil lamp on the floor and grasped the other side. “One… two… three….”
Uncle Anthony grunted and tugged while she attempted to wriggle the bookshelf away from the wall, but it wouldn’t budge.
“I told you it was heavy.” Maggie rubbed her reddened palms.
Uncle Anthony dragged in deep breaths from the exertion. “Confounded thing weighs more than a hog’s head of sugar, and it takes four men to roll one of those up a plank.”
“I merely need you to move the bookshelf enough for me to slide through the door.” She pulled a handful of books off the top shelf and stacked them in a pile.
“There isn’t time for this.” He scowled and shook his head, setting a few books haphazardly onto the floor.
“Careful to keep them in order. They’re alphabetized by title.”
Maggie ignored the grumblings that followed as she removed a large conch shell with its polished pink center that served as a bookend for a series of Britannica encyclopedias. A flash of memory surfaced of wiping water from her face and holding up a similar conch shell for her mother to see. Her face was but a blurred image, but Maggie sensed her mother’s pleasure and recalled her instructions on removing the conch.
This shell remained intact. Maggie forced her fingers to set it aside and remove the encyclopedias. Questions poured through her mind. She would have answers once they moved the bookshelf.
“Let’s try again.” Uncle Anthony didn’t wait to clear out the bottom two shelves but bent to lift the casement, shifting it an inch.
“Wait.” She set down the last volume and gripped the side of the bookcase. “Lift.”
They struggled to drag aside the solid wood shelving. Her uncle’s face turned from red to purple as he sidestepped in a waddle. With a whoosh of air, he stepped back.
Maggie rushed to the exposed wall and lifted the latch to the hidden door with shaky fingers. She bit down on her smile and inhaled a fluttering breath. Stale, dusty air tickled her nose, and she sneezed. The undainty sound bounced off the walls.
Uncle Anthony cupped a hand over her mouth, and she froze, not daring to breathe.

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