The Unknowing Heiress

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

“Come on, Max,” Maggie complained. After several days in a carriage, entertainment was scarce and travelling games could become tedious. Maggie and Max were playing one of her favourites to play with her sisters. Maggie and Max’s palms were joined horizontally. Maggie’s hands were on the bottom. The object of the game was to slap the tops of one’s opponent’s hands before they could pull away. Max was playing atrociously on purpose, Maggie believed. “Do not just let me win!”

Max sniggered as once again he didn’t move his hands as Maggie slapped them. “You always complain when Emmett does not let you win at chess,” he reminded her. “What is the precedence? Do I let you win or don’t I?”

Maggie huffed. “Chess is difficult and Uncle Emmett has been playing the game since he was a boy himself! This is a child’s game!”

“Alright, you put your hands on top of mine,” he instructed.

Maggie had always liked Max’s hands. Usually, men in the aristocracy rarely lifted a finger and so their hands were smooth. But not Max’s. No, like her, Max had spent his childhood climbing trees and playing sports as well. He also spent his days lugging his canvases about the grounds and so his hands were rough and calloused in parts. Maggie thought them masculine hands. However, seeing as her own hands had not the feeling of silk, perhaps they were masculine, too.

Quicker than a flash of lightning his hands moved from under her palms to slap the top, but not hard enough to inflict great pain. “I won,” he said smugly.

“Again,” Maggie instructed, determined to win with him playing properly.

They played for another hour. They would have played longer were it not for the fact that they began to travel through outer London.

It had been over a year since Maggie had ventured into London, though before she had been accompanied by her entire family. Lizzie had been sleeping across her father and mother’s laps and Edward had been playing the same game with Georgie. Now she was travelling with only her dear friend. She had never travelled farther than the Ascot village unchaperoned as she was. It was very exciting.

London was so different to the small villages that Derbyshire housed. The grassy hills and picturesque scenery bordered every little town, while the London streets were modern, paved with cobble stones and lined with businesses that made all sorts of goods and provided every service imaginable.

The carriage was to take them to an inn. Isaac had rented rooms there when he had first arrived in London and before he had met Maggie. He had been hopeful that he would convince his daughter to go to America with him.

The inn was a fine stone building built above a busy tavern. They were arriving in the early evening so the gentlemen of the town had gathered to spend their wages on ale and a hot meal.

She knew her parents would not be comfortable with her staying above a tavern with all sorts of drunkards below but she felt safe with Max. Their driver opened the carriage for them and Max climbed out first so that he could help Maggie down. The driver began to remove their trunks from the roof so that they could be transferred to their rooms.

“Oh, Max.” Maggie suddenly gasped. “Will you please lend me some paper? I have not the time to search for my stationary before the carriage is to return to Montrose.”

Max obliged immediately and removed a piece of paper from his book and handed it to her. He also provided her with a graphite pencil. Maggie leaned against the carriage and scrawled a note to her parents.

It read:

Dearest Daddy, Mama, etc.