The Mysterious Heir Read Online Free Page A

turned to see him, he sighed, dropped the coin back into his pocket, and went in through the door. Three elderly women were debating the correctness of having a purple feather upon a mourning bonnet and a young girl and her overbearing mother were debating about the merits of a chip straw against the wisdom of a rather more dashing white satin bonnet with what the young girl tearfully maintained were the sweetest blue flowers. No wonder, the stout gentleman thought, grimacing, no one had heard his steady tapping.
    The elderly parties were being waited on by a weary elderly woman, who nodded like a metronome at their every opposing comment. And the girl and her mother were being served by a slender young woman dressed serviceably in brown. When she looked up for a moment and saw the stout gentleman, her wide light brown eyes grew wider in dismay and the faint blush on her white cheeks fled. She began to step toward him, but he shook his head and smiled back at her to alleviate her distress. He took out his watch and pointed to it, nodded, and went out of the shop again. At that the young woman relaxed and went back to the transaction she had been overseeing, which was beginning to end in a flood of tears on the girl’s part and a tight-lipped nod on the mother’s side.
    The stout man stood sighing and rocking back and forth on his heels in impatience outside the shop. He did not like to go into the shop where Elizabeth worked. It always filled him with dismay and a feeling of incompetence when he saw the way she actually had to go out and earn the money she contributed to the household every week. Deuce take it, he thought savagely, she ought to be making the rounds picking out bonnets to adorn herself with, rather than creating and selling them like a common shopgirl. His niece, working as a shopgirl. His niece, still on the vine, and such a fine-looking girl too, but with no husband and no prospects of one and no dowry and no prospect of one. He felt the familiar guilt and sorrow he always experienced when he thought of Elizabeth, but this time he pushed the thoughts away with the force of the rising excitement he felt about the letter he now bore, beating wildly with every wild beat of his heart.
    It was only after the girl and her mother left, the girl sniveling, the mother looking triumphant, that Elizabeth herself came flying out the door. She had thrown her pelisse over her dress, her light brown hair glinted like satin where the westering sun touched it, and her fine topaz eyes were bright and wide with excitement. Her uncle thought again, with a pang, of roses born to blush unseen, and so with none of the preamble he had been rehearsing, he pulled the letter from his coat and thrust it at her.
    “What is it, Uncle?” Elizabeth breathed, unable to take in the fact of the letter till her eyes had scanned his face. “You never come to the shop. Is it Mother? Or Aunt? Or Anthony? Miss Scott let me out early, for even she knows it is not your habit to come to the shop. Oh, please, what is it?”
    “Nothing dire. Nothing amiss with anyone at home. It’s only that I’ve such exciting news, it couldn’t wait until you got home,” he said with truth. For it was of prime importance that Elizabeth read and absorb the contents of the letter before she got home, and more importantly, before she spoke with her cousin Anthony.
    “This letter?” Elizabeth asked, puzzled.
    “Yes, the letter,” her uncle said impatiently. “Read it. Read it and then ask questions.”
    Elizabeth stood in the center of the street and rapidly scanned the letter. Halfway through it, she looked up at her uncle, her speaking face lit with radiance. But her uncle shook his head and urged her, “Read on, read on.”
    “Oh, Uncle,” Elizabeth gasped when she had finished, “it is too incredible! Anthony has a chance to become the heir presumptive to the Earl of Auden. It seems unbelievable.”
    “Incredible and unbelievable,” her uncle said