The Jane Austen Society(33)

“Sir, your daughter cares greatly both for you and for this estate,” Andrew countered, suspecting that the conversation was about to take a very difficult turn.

James Knight shook his head. “Who knows what that girl cares about. I surely don’t. Certainly she never bothered to marry or bear children to carry on the family name, her one female duty.”

Andrew could feel an old familiar anger rising within him, and he practically had to bite his lip, given what he knew of James Knight’s involvement in Frances’s few chances at love. Andrew wasn’t sure he had ever met a greater hypocrite than this man now dying before him.

James Knight sat up in bed and Andrew went to adjust the pillows behind him, then sat back down on the chair left by the bedside for the infrequent visitors.

“Pass me some paper,” the old man ordered, “and go get Dr. Gray’s nurse. She should be downstairs by now, to give me my bath. Oh, and that writing desk over in the corner—I’ll take that, too.”

Andrew hesitated but did what he was told, then gritted his teeth and walked one floor down to find Harriet Peckham standing in the front entrance, inspecting the visitors’ log on the small side table.

He had never liked Harriet, whom he suspected of being a busybody. But trained nurses were hard to entice out to Chawton, a town with all of one hundred homes and practically no commercial business to speak of. At least Harriet, who had grown up in town, was a familiar sight to the villagers and could be relied upon to show up in any emergency.

When Andrew and the nurse entered the bedroom together, James Knight held up a sheet of the paper that Andrew had given him. “I need you both to witness my signature on this. I don’t want any questions about it, no bloody argument about my state of mind. I am completely satisfied as to its contents, and there’s not to be another word about it, do you hear?”

He then placed the document back down on the mahogany writing desk and signed it with a flourish. Andrew went slowly over to the side of the bed and added his signature, then motioned for Harriet to come over and do the same.

“That’s done then. As it should be. Maybe this estate—including the cottage—will now stand a chance. The last thing I want when I’m gone is a bunch of American tourists hanging over the fencing, trying to sneak a peek inside, and I don’t trust that daughter of mine to keep any such thing from happening.” James Knight glanced quickly at Miss Peckham, then over to Andrew, where he saw increasing anger darting across his longtime lawyer’s face. “You’re going to take this and lock it away, and that is the end of it, understood? And as my lawyer, you are of course required to keep its contents completely confidential.”

Andrew sighed. He knew when he was beat. He had been here before.

Back in the privacy of his office, Andrew now read the new will before him.

Inside his locked cabinet was another will, one that had been executed nearly half a century ago, in 1896, soon after the passing of the new death-taxation laws. This earlier document had left the entire estate to the eldest surviving child of James Knight. At the time of execution this would have been Frances’s brother, Cecil, who had been born that same year and ended up dying in his thirties in a hunting accident. The estate would then pass to the next eldest child, being Frances, born two years after her brother in 1898. This was similar to the pattern of inheritance that the Knight family had prescribed for generations. To keep the property in the Knight family, the estate had often been inherited by women laterally over the centuries, rather than being passed down to some distant male relative.

This 1896 will was the only one that the various Knight relatives would have been aware of over the years. Now everything was about to be upended by this most bitter, disapproving man.

So this was the daughter’s reward, an inheritance of exactly nothing. Her recompense for all the years of loneliness, the caregiving, the apparently unforgivable sin of not providing an heir.

Andrew stood up. He dreaded one day having to give the news to Frances. But they had been here, before, too.

They were nothing if not familiar, the two of them, with sharing crushing disappointment.





CHAPTER ELEVEN

Chawton, Hampshire

December 14, 1945

Dr. Gray had not visited Adeline Grover for several weeks. He did not think it appropriate—her care was now entirely up to her and needed to be. He also did not want to be put in an uncomfortable position again or asked to do something he shouldn’t. The longer he went without seeing her, the greater the chance she would move through some of her anger (which so often of late seemed, disturbingly, to be directed at him) toward the start, at least, of resignation.

He was sitting at his desk one dark, wintry Friday morning, when his nurse came in with a small envelope. He opened the holiday card in front of her, read it quickly, then stood up. Stuffing the card into the front left pocket of his suit jacket, he tried to simultaneously retrieve a small parcel from his desk drawer as nonchalantly as possible under Harriet’s eager gaze.

“I’m going to go out on my rounds a little early this morning, Miss Peckham.”

She stared at him curiously. He had never cared for her, even though she was a thorough and diligent enough nurse. But at moments such as this he could see the small eyes of the town upon him. He suspected she was a big source of the gossiping behind his back.

So he did not tell her where he was going and hoped she had not recognized the handwriting on the envelope—he couldn’t imagine how.