A Rival Heir by Laura Matthews

Longstreet was not an accommodating patient.
    “Take it away, take it away!” Aunt Longstreet insisted when Nell tried to wrap her foot in a warm rug. “It does me not the least good, as I have told you a hundred times if I’ve told you once.”
    As it was quite true that her aunt had said this many times, Nell removed the rug, but she knew from experience that her aunt would demand its return within the hour. If Rosemarie Longstreet was cranky at the best of times, she was intolerable when her foot throbbed from the gout. But as she would not listen to reason, it was better to retreat from her vicinity.
    Thus Nell disposed of the warm rug by setting it on the stool across from her aunt’s chair and announced that she was going to the lending library.
    “You’re leaving me alone?” her companion asked in a querulous voice.
    “No, I’m leaving you to the tender care of the servants,” Nell told her firmly. “Mrs. Hodges is ready to be of service at the slightest ring of the bell which I have put on the table right next to your chair.”
    “Oh, the servants,” her aunt said dismissively. “There’s probably not a one of them in the house.”
    “I assure you that there is, including your dressing woman.” Nell picked up her paisley shawl and draped it around her shoulders. “It’s too fine a day for me to stay indoors. I shall find you a book at the lending library, and perhaps I will even bring you back a ginger biscuit from the pastry cook’s.”
    “I pray you will not put yourself to so much bother,” Aunt Longstreet sniffed.
    Nell laughed and patted her aunt’s cheek. “It is no bother at all, my dear. You’ll be more comfortable without me hovering over you.”
    “That is certainly true.”
    On her way out of the house Nell consulted briefly with the housekeeper, accepting a basket that good woman handed her, and a list of necessities. While Nell would not have hesitated for a moment to take off with a basket over her arm in the country, she did just feel a twinge of discomfort about doing so in Bath. It occurred to her that she had seen no one else strolling about the sophisticated streets of the town with a basket on her arm. She would look very provincial indeed!
    But looking provincial was not the worst fate she could endure, Nell decided as she escaped from the stuffy townhouse. Aunt Longstreet insisted in keeping the rooms over-warm for such a springlike day, and it was delightful for Nell to find herself in the fresh morning air scented by new growth. Stretching her long legs, she set a good pace down the square and across the maze of streets to Milsom. Unfortunately, she found it was too early for the library to be open, so she indulged herself in gazing in the windows of the shops along the street.
    If I had a spare guinea, she thought, I would most decidedly purchase that beaded reticule or perhaps the pink slippers. The fact that she had nowhere to wear such items bothered her not in the least. It was merely a game she played, even at the country store where she shopped when in Westmorland. Nell liked pretty things, as her mother had. Margaret Armstrong’s disastrous marriage had made it necessary for her, over the course of Nell’s early life, to dispose of the jewelry she had brought from her home.
    Each time a piece had to be sold, she would fondle it for a day or two, telling the young Nell how her Papa had given it to her at her coming out, or her Mama had ordered it specially for this birthday, or her sister had passed on one of her own less favored items. Margaret would pin the brooch to Nell’s apron, or let the necklace rest around her neck for a while. “Someday you’ll have jewelry of your own,” she had assured the girl. “Unless, of course, you are as imprudent as I and marry for love!”
    But her parents’ marriage, as imprudent as it had proved financially, had been quite wonderful in other ways. Her father and mother had cared deeply for one another, and had been