The Unknowing Heiress

Chapter 1

She was not ignorant of the whispers that followed her when she journeyed outside the safe boundaries of the Ascot and Montrose villages. She was different. Upon her first ball at the age of seventeen, she’d heard a quiet question being asked by one of her father’s guests.

“Is she a slave girl?” a fine lady had murmured. She was draped in luxurious silks a jewels and her tone indicated her true disgust at Maggie’s presence in the same room as her.

The comment had hurt Maggie beyond anything she’d ever heard before. She was not hurt at the fact that someone might have thought her a slave. She’d read about the poor people being shipped from their homelands to wait on rich families. It hurt her because even though she had been brought up as an English young lady, even though she spoke with a refined British accent, she was seen as a thorn in the side of the British aristocracy. She was someone that people had to tolerate. She was that unfortunate half-breed child that Lord Montrose had taken pity on. She would never be an equal. People she encountered avoided meeting her eye.

That was why she was climbing trees in the summer. She had just celebrated her eighteenth birthday, and she could have done it in London after having been presented to society but she’d elected to forgo it indefinitely, though her family didn’t know that.

Only Max did, and he completely understood.

“Returning you with broken wrists would have most definitely disinvited me from dinner,” chuckled Max.

Maggie rolled her eyes and peered at Max’s new creation. It wasn’t finished, but he’d drawn the outline of the oak she’d climbed, as well as a girl standing on the top branches, peering up at the sky. It was extraordinary, even if incomplete. “Why is it you always draw me?” she asked him curiously. “I know of fifty others who would gladly sit for you.”

Max smiled slightly and concealed the unfinished drawing behind other sketches. “You are my most fascinating subject,” he replied simply.

“Audacious, perhaps,” Maggie joked, “but not fascinating.”

“Well, I know of no other young lady who enjoys spending her afternoons in trees. I find that fascinating,” Max informed her comically. “Come along, you had better change your dress before anyone sees you like that.”

Maggie knew he was right. “Where would I be without you to catch me, Maxwell?” Maggie asked him wistfully. Max had been invaluable in helping Maggie to stay sane, and even marginally positive over the years. While she still retained her outspoken nature and her ability to find trouble wherever she went, her spirit was slowing being stripped from her.

On dark days, very dark days, she sometimes wished that her father had left her where he’d found her. She probably would have contracted her mother’s diphtheria and would have been buried in a grave beside her. Maggie could not remember Caroline Wheeler anymore, or Carrie as she liked to be called.

On other days, like today, she pushed those thoughts from her mind and she put on a brave smile. Her little brother and sisters did not need to know the perils of being different in what was a specifically pale aristocratic society.

“I am no lady, Max,” Maggie laughed, her reply distorted, “I cannot sew or sing or play the pianoforte well. I cannot draw like you and my French is a catastrophe.”

“Votre français n'est pas terrible,” he said in a teasing tone.

While she did not understand him fully, she knew that he was mocking her French. “Quiet you.” She smirked. Maggie was very well read and she was very clever, she just failed dismally in all aspects of being a proper lady. That and she was far too outspoken. Whatever part of the brain that stopped ladies from saying the first thought that came into their minds, Maggie lacked. “Why aren’t you in London?” she suddenly asked. The season was not only for women. Young gentleman flocked to the town to enjoy their fair share of debutantes while they scoured the ballrooms for husbands with good fortune.