The Heiress Effect
His father was eyeing the artificial fly tied at the end of his line, prodding it back into shape after the depredations of the fish. “You didn’t displace her,” he said evenly. “I asked her if she wanted to come along, and she declined.”
“So she is angry at me. I wonder what I did.”
“Ask her,” his father said placidly. “I’m sure she’ll tell you.”
Oliver was sure she would, too. Free wasn’t the sort to hold anything back.
“I worry about her,” his father finally said. “I never realized how easy Laura and Patricia were. They wanted normal things. Security and marriage and a family. They wanted more than that, of course. But Free… I didn’t realize your mother and I were going to pass on all our ambition concentrated in one child.”
“What is it that Free wants?” Oliver asked, slightly puzzled.
His father smiled wryly. “What does she not? Ask her. I thought you were ambitious, Oliver. You’ve nothing on your youngest sister.”
Oliver found his sister waiting for them on the way home. She was standing on top of the hill by the stream. Her arms were folded and she hadn’t put her hair up. It blew behind her, a brilliant banner of orange the same color as his own close-cropped hair.
He paused a few feet away from her. “Free.”
She didn’t answer, but her chin squared. Yes, she was definitely angry with him.
She didn’t have a temper, or at least not the temper that people generally thought of when they imagined a woman with hair somewhere on the brighter end of the spectrum. She was patient and kind. She could also be stubborn and immovable.
“Free,” he said again. “How are you doing? Did you want to talk with me?”
She didn’t look at him. “Why would I?” She didn’t blink. “You haven’t kept your promise, so why should I talk to you?”
“Promise?” He stared at her in confusion. “Did I promise something?”
Now she finally turned to him. “Of course you did,” she said. “You promised to spend some time speaking Greek with me. Mama doesn’t know Greek, so she can’t, but you went to Eton.”
“I promised?”
“More than a year ago, at Christmas,” she said, with a firm nod of her head.
A vague recollection came back to him—of a late night sitting with his sister in front of the fire, passing pages of the newspaper back and forth.
“I can manage some of it from books,” she was saying, “but I need to practice. I need you.”
“As I recall,” Oliver said, “I promised I would help as soon as I had time, and I haven’t had any. In the intervening year, I’ve been…”
“You’ve spent months with the duke.” She folded her arms accusingly.
“That was different. I was talking to men in London about reform. That’s the whole reason I haven’t had any time. When this is all finished, then I’ll…”
Her chin rose. “When this is all finished? How long will that take, Oliver?”
“I’m really not sure.”
Her lips pursed. “It took more than three decades for the issue to receive serious consideration in Parliament again, after the last Reform Act. Last year’s bill was soundly defeated. It stands to reason that your goal might be years away.”
“That’s why I’m working so hard,” he told her. “The harder I work now, the sooner it will happen. Learning always keeps. Greek will still be there once I’m done with this.”
Her eyes flashed. “Oliver, if I start learning Greek two years from now, it will be too late.”
“Too late for what? Too late because you’ll be married?”
But she shook her head. “Too late for me to go to Cambridge.”
He stopped dead and looked at her. He felt a little chill run down his spine; he wasn’t sure where it had come from. He wanted to reach out and grab her, to fold her in his arms and keep her safe. From what, he wasn’t certain. From herself, perhaps.
“They don’t let women study at Cambridge,” he finally said.
“Do you not pay attention to anything?” she demanded. “Not now, they don’t. And there are no plans to open the University itself, of course. But there’s a committee talking about a women’s college in the village of Girton. I’m not old enough yet, Oliver, but by the time I am…”
God. She wanted to go to Cambridge. He pulled in a long breath and stared at her, but it didn’t help. His head seemed to be ringing, echoing with a noise that repeated over and over.
Well, some practical side of himself whispered, it could have been worse. She could want to go to Eton.
He refused to think about Free at Eton.
Instead, he took a few steps forward and took hold of her hand. She was smaller than he was—not so large a difference that he thought of it much, but his earliest memories of her were of vulnerability. Watching out for her. Picking her up and sweeping her in his arms in a wide circle while she screamed in delight, making sure to hold on tightly so that she wouldn’t fall.
“You think that all you’ll have to do to go to Cambridge is learn a little Greek?”
She stared up at him, her eyes clear and defiant.
“Do you have any idea what you’re taking on? When I went to Cambridge, I was barraged with an unceasing deluge of insult, both subtle and overt. I couldn’t go a day without someone telling me that I didn’t belong. You’ll have every one of my disadvantages—except I had my brother and Sebastian. You’ll be alone. And you’re a woman, Free; everyone will be against you. They’ll want you to fail twice as much as they wanted me to—first because you’re a nobody, and second because you’re a woman.”
She shook her head. “Then I’ll have to succeed three times as hard as they want me to fail. You, of all people, should understand that.”
“I love you,” he said. “That’s all this is. I love you, and I don’t want you to suffer. And…for me, Cambridge was the beginning. It was a handful of classes and exams and professors and papers, and afterward, the camaraderie of having attended school with a group of friends. And enemies.” He looked over at her.
She raised her chin defiantly.
“It won’t be like that for you. Going to Cambridge will not be a thing you do, followed by another thing and another thing. Going to Cambridge will define who you are forever after. For the rest of your life, you’ll be The Girl Who Went to Cambridge.”