Miss Edward

The lost title

Chapter 5

Katherine did not sleep.

She sat on the side of her bed, retracing where she might have left the title, as though the paper had hidden itself out of guilt. Yes, guilt as if it had betrayed a young soul.

For a brief moment, she closed her eyes, only to see Mr. Legrand. She so desperately wanted him out of sight, yet his image kept returning.

Had it been him? Had he taken it?

No. There would be no manner of him taking it. He was a proper gentleman, even if he was persuasive enough to earn her regard. She wanted to blame him, but he had given her no reason to.

And yet her mind returned to him repeatedly, as he had been the last to speak to her with such intensity. He had stood alone on the dance floor after her departure. Mr. Arrington had said so in his thoughts, though she had no knowledge of it. She only knew that Mr. Legrand was an observant man, as much as she hated to admit it, who would see things no others would. If anyone had seen a piece of paper fall from a lady's hand, it would have been a man like him.

But no, that was fanciful thinking. She would not accuse him of such.

Then something struck her. Mrs. Helmbold had seen it. Did she dare inquire of the occurrence? She feared the woman would spread the tidings apace. It was of no use; she could not afford such a scandal now. They would think her careless, a young woman playing at being a landowner. There could only be one to be trusted fully Mr. Arrington. But then again, she believed this would put her in debt to him.

And that, she understood, was a different kind of danger, a danger she dare not navigate.

She stood from the bed, pacing back and forth across the floor, feeling the cold beneath her bare feet, the candlelight dwindling in the hand that bore it.

The memory of the dance would not leave her.

She had not taken the title with her; she would not have been so foolish as to do so. She could see it clearly, as though she were still beside the musicians, amidst the crowd. Mr. Arrington had given it to her whilst they danced; he had carefully placed it in her hand in that brief moment before she had left, feeling paralyzed at the news.

It had been such a transient passage of time she could scarcely comprehend its gravity.

How could she? How could anyone understand that matter?

She stopped pacing and sat again on the side of the bed; her feet now numb.

If she acquainted Mr. Arrington with the fact that she had misplaced it at the dance, what would he say? He had given it to her, carefully placed it in her hand with such gentle grace; all she had felt was the seal. To acquaint him with such news that she had lost it there, amidst the prying eyes of others would be as if she were telling him, "I am not to be trusted with such a grand gift bestowed upon me."

She bit her bottom lip again and winced. The cut from before still stung.

She drew the shawl tightly around her and went to the window. The estate was dark; somehow, she managed to see the shapes of the rose bushes, the very ones she loved to run her hands through. What if she never found it? What if it was gone? Could she even get to Prague without it? The question sat heavy with her. Without it, she was simply Miss Edward to the world; with it, she held a powerful title, almost too powerful to believe. One of the grandest estates was hers, rightfully so.

Without that seal, she was again only Miss Edward of Erlington. With it, she was Katherine Edward of Prague.

Her thoughts pulled to Prague itself. She had only been there as a child; never had she imagined the cobbled stone streets, the river holding a light different than Willobrook, an estate that had seen so much history pass through its very doors and now held, in its trunk, the reason she held the title. The letter, she hoped, would explain why an uncle who hardly wrote had chosen a niece who had never been told she held an inheritance, let alone an inheritance of such grandeur.

She questioned whether the letter would speak of freedom or of obligation. Did it really matter? What it did say, she now understood, was that she was responsible for the welfare of the tenants; the servants, the landscape, the social part of it was now for her to keep.

If she lost the estate now, before she had even taken sight of it, she could only imagine the great tidings Mrs. Helmbold would spread.

She turned from the window. The candle now dimmed, its wax adorning the holder.

Morning could not approach fast enough for her. She would rise before Mrs. Helmbold could spread any further tidings or at least; that was what she could hope for. Perhaps it was fanciful thinking to believe Mrs. Helmbold could hold her tongue that long.

It is a matter of the most serious mortification to find my own thoughts so completely rebellious as to find Mr. Legrand intruding again, occupying reflections at times and in feelings that ought not to be.

She pressed her head against the cool window, not comprehending why her hand would be so rebellious as not to cooperate with her thoughts, to put him out of mind and out of sight. Had he known about Prague? Is that the reason he was so persuasive with her? No, he would not; he was not that. She sighed, attributing her present wretchedness to the heaviness of her limbs, and that there was no way of evading it; her body alone spoke of it.