LITMIR.BIZ

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of that! Would you like to stop for ices while I visit the lawyer? I should count it a great favor if you would take the carriage at the front and go to Gunter’s while I slip out the back. As soon as I saw the crush in the ballroom today I asked Meadows to summon me a hackney. I’d rather not have a crowd following me.”

      A great lover of sweets, Mae brightened at the suggestion. “Are you sure you’d not like to meet me there? We could stop by the lawyer’s after.”

      “No, for wherever my carriage goes now, the most annoying throng gathers. Besides, looking as fetching as you do in that new gown, I image some admirers will stop to flirt with you. Darlington will burn with remorse.”

      “Red always did become me, and if I do say so, I’ve kept my figure. The most magnificent breasts in London, they used to say, and you’re still quite handsome, aren’t you, my pretties?” she crooned, patting her ample bosom, the powdered top of which bulged above the low bodice of her scarlet dress. “Seeing how Frederic threw me over for that chit out of the opera—the most grasping, coldhearted little strumpet you could imagine—I like to believe he did come to regret his choice.”

      Belle gave her companion a hug. “I’m certain of it! Now, off with you and create my diversion.”

      “You, my dear, have taken on the appearance of a—a veritable Quaker!” Mae said frankly, looking Belle up and down as she put on her pelisse. “Not that you ain’t still a beauty, whatever you wear. But with your looks, to garb yourself in a plain gray gown with nary a ribbon, cut so high there’s not a bit of flesh showing!” Mae shook her head, obviously finding Belle’s behavior incomprehensible.

      Belle shrugged. “I can dress to please myself now.”

      Mae looked at Belle thoughtfully. “Will you please yourself? I don’t mean to vex you by saying it again, and you may call me a foolish old romantic, which I’m sure I am, but I cannot see how you mean to exist without a man in your life, and you so young! It’s…it’s not natural.”

      Belle walked to the door, her smile brittle. “You’ve not been listening to my detractors. Have you not heard that I’m the most unnatural woman in England?”

      CHAPTER TWO

      AS SOON AS Mae left, Belle headed for the servants’ stairs. Enjoying her role, Mae would bandy comments with the gentlemen waiting to accost Belle when she departed, basking in their compliments—and doubtless receiving a coin or two discreetly slipped into the notes she would promise to deliver to her companion. By the time the loitering men realized she was not joining Mae, Belle would be well away.

      After tying in place the scarf that masked her gold hair, Belle donned her charcoal traveling cloak and paced to the back gate, where the hackney she’d requested waited. While the vehicle traversed the distance from Soho into the City, she wondered again what business could be so pressing her solicitor believed it required her immediate attention.

      Had he encountered some difficulties in changing the terms of Kitty’s trust? Hoping any problems could be speedily resolved, she stepped down at her destination.

      As she walked to the door, two clerks in conversation and a tradesman with his cart passed by, ignoring her. She paused, drinking in the wonder of it. Though, toward the end, she’d insisted on wearing gowns even less revealing than those favored by ladies of the ton, in the bright colors Bellingham preferred and that garish blue coach—the first thing she’d replaced after his death, with a new equipage all in black—she could go nowhere unremarked. It was still the sweetest of pleasures to walk down a street outside of Mayfair and attract no more notice than any other Londoner going about her business.

      Just what business that was, she would soon discover.

      Within a few moments of her arrival, Mr. Smithers’s clerk ushered her into his office, where the solicitor thanked her for answering his summons so promptly.

      “My companion fears I must have suffered some grievous financial reverses,” Belle said as she took the seat he indicated. “I hope you are not about to inform me that my investments have taken a sudden fall on the ’Change.”

      Returning her smile, the lawyer shook his head. “Quite the contrary, actually. I have the pleasure of informing you that you have been named chief beneficiary in the will of the late Richard Maxwell, Viscount Bellingham. The estate itself, of course, is entailed upon a cousin. However, except for small bequests to his wife and daughter, Lord Bellingham left the whole of his cash assets, the value of which is still being calculated, as well as all his unentailed property—a Suffolk manor, a Lincolnshire hunting box and a London town house—to you.”

      Belle stared at the solicitor, unable to credit what she’d just heard. “There must be some mistake!”

      “’Tis irregular, given that you had no link by blood or law to the deceased, but nonetheless quite legal. And no mistake. His late lordship’s solicitor spent most of yesterday afternoon with me, expounding on the details.”

      “But…why?” Belle asked, more than half to herself. “He knew I had sufficient means to support myself, should anything happen to him.” Her brow knit in perplexity, her shock turned to suspicion as she tried to puzzle out Bellingham’s reasoning. “How much did he leave his wife and daughter?”

      “Two hundred pounds each. Whereas his overall cash assets are estimated to be about twenty thousand pounds.”

      “Twenty thousand—” Belle echoed. “Why, ’tis infamous!” As an explanation for Bellingham’s extraordinary bequest flashed into her head, irritation gave way to sheer, mindless rage. Jumping to her feet, she began to pace the office, too furious to speak.

      “Apparently,” Smithers said blandly, “Lord Bellingham wished to guarantee that you had more than ‘sufficient’ support. You are now an extremely wealthy woman.”

      “Who,” Belle said, pausing long enough to glare back at the solicitor, “is therefore much less likely to take a new protector to supplant him.”

      As Mr. Smithers prudently refrained from comment, a vivid memory of an angry scene recurred to her. Belle, incensed and guilty at the thought of a sixteen-year-old daughter abandoned by her father, threatening to leave Bellingham if he did not honor his responsibilities to his kin by returning to reside, at least outwardly, with his family. Bellingham countering that if Belle ran away, he would neglect his relations entirely to search for her. They’d reached a stalemate of sorts, Bellingham refusing to give up living with her but agreeing to visit his wife and daughter more regularly.

      This, then, was her late protector’s attempt at checkmate—a permanent, legal spurning of his despised wife in preference to her, done in such a manner that she could neither dispute with him over it nor refuse it.

      Once again he was trying to take over her life, mark her as his own, and force her to dance by the strings he controlled—even from beyond the grave.

      She could almost hear the vicious whispers circulating through the ton when the terms of his will became known.

      The sense of lightness that had buoyed her after Bellingham’s death melted away and her chest began to tighten with the same crushing weight of enforced obligation that she’d endured for almost seven years.

      Even as she felt she must scream in vexation, an inspiration occurred. Perhaps there was a way to evade checkmate. She whirled to face Mr. Smithers.

      “The bequest is legally mine—funds, property, all?”

      “Yes. In an effort to protect the widow and daughter, Bellingham’s solicitors spent several weeks trying to find a way around the will’s terms, to no avail. The legacy is definitely legal, and indisputably yours.”

      “And ’tis mine to handle as I choose?”

      “Yes, though I would recommend, with such a vast sum and numerous properties, that you retain an agent to advise you on the management of it.” Smithers lifted a brow, curiosity in his expression.

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