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The solicitor seemed only too happy to elaborate. “Your uncle expected it, sir. His will stipulates that the girl must be presented at court, accepted in all the households who refused to receive your uncle and garner no less than three offers of marriage before the Season is out.”
Richard shrugged. “Easy enough. We’ll all offer for her.”
Caruthers eyed him, mouth twitching as he unsuccessfully tried to cover his sneer. “I do not believe you are considered suitable, Captain Everard, but that will be up to the girl’s governess, Miss Adele Walcott, to determine. She is charged with monitoring the success of Lady Everard’s Season.”
Jerome shook his head. “This is ridiculous. Uncle loved his games. Take this proof to Doctor’s Commons for probate, and you’ll find he’s played you for a fool.”
The solicitor’s grin blossomed once more. “No, Mr. Everard, I fear in this case you are the fool. Your uncle offers you a small bequest and the estate on which you and your brother were born, if you help your new cousin take her place in Society. Otherwise, sir, even your horse is forfeit.”
Jerome rose then, even as Vaughn and Richard moved closer to him in front of the solicitor. “My uncle may have preferred secrecy,” Jerome said, “but the College of Heralds will insist on the truth, and so will I. Show me this proof.”
“All in good time,” the solicitor had replied with maddening calm. “I intend to journey to Dallsten Manor in Cumberland in a few days to meet with her ladyship, retrieve the necessary papers and hold a formal reading of the will. I expect you three will want to join me.”
Jerome’s fist tightened on the reins now, remembering. Join Caruthers? Never. If anything, they must discover the truth first. The solicitor’s story had to be a lie, a fiction designed to keep Jerome from taking control of his inheritance.
Uncle had never understood the importance of the Everard legacy, its various estates across England, the fleet of ships that plied the waters of the world. Hundreds of people—tenants, servants, staff, sailors, merchants and villagers—relied on the Everards. Uncle had delayed important decisions, shrugged off responsibility for improvements, always too busy with pursuits Jerome found purely trivial. From Jerome’s point of view, his uncle had wanted only to reap what his ancestors had sown with no thought of working for the future. And he had resented Jerome’s insistence on doing otherwise.
Well, Jerome had protected their dependents from his uncle’s capricious moods; he would protect them from a cozening female now. If this girl and her governess wanted a fight, he was ready to give it to them.
He swung down from the saddle, a cold wind brushing his face and threatening to whip the hat from Vaughn’s head.
“Watch the horses,” Jerome instructed Richard as Vaughn leapt down beside him.
Richard cocked a smile but dismounted as well. “Do you expect them to be stolen out from under us?”
“At this point, nothing would surprise me,” Jerome replied. With a nod to Vaughn, who adjusted his black hat to a rakish angle and fell into step beside him, he mounted the stairs to the stout oak door. Each bang of the brass knocker against the solid panel seemed to resound inside Jerome’s chest.
“Are they deaf?” Vaughn asked. He reached out and tugged at the door, but it held firm. Who locked a door in the light of day in the country? Did they expect to be attacked? Or did they have something to hide?
From within came the sound of a bolt being drawn. Jerome stiffened and saw Vaughn had done the same. The massive door swung open to reveal a tall, gangly footman with hair the color and texture of a newly thatched roof and gray livery nearly as rumpled. He eyed Jerome and Vaughn as if discovering something distasteful on the bottom of his shoe.
“May I help you?”
Jerome drew himself up, making him a few inches taller than the fellow. “Jerome Everard and company to see Miss Everard. We are her cousins.”
The footman’s eyes tightened in his narrow face. “Mr. Jerome Everard is not allowed entrance to this house. Good day, sirs.”
And he slammed shut the door.
“They’re leaving!” Samantha Everard sighed as she slumped against the frame of the schoolroom’s west window.
Adele Dallsten Walcott shook her head. Most days she loved the way the wide windows that circled the tower room brought in light. The glow brightened the dark worktable where she and her charge had sat for lessons for the last ten years and she had sat as the student for years before that. The light sparkled on the creamy walls, warmed the polished wood floor and gilded the pages of the history tomes and French language books that were their texts.
Today, unfortunately, the view had proven nothing but a distraction for her sixteen-year-old charge. Samantha had run to the window the moment the first knock echoed up the stairs, and nothing Adele said could budge her.
“Of course they’re leaving,” she told Samantha, laying aside the improving novel they had been reading this Sunday afternoon. “I told you it had to be a mistake. There is no reason for three gentlemen to visit Dallsten Manor.”
“Perhaps they’re old friends of yours,” Samantha said, craning her neck to see out the tower window.
Adele remembered when the knocker had sounded for her, but that was long ago, another life, it seemed sometimes. “Most of my old friends live in Evendale, and we saw them at services just this morning,” she pointed out.
“Friends of Papa, then,” Samantha insisted.
Adele hurt at the wistful sound of her voice. She rose and moved toward the window at last. “Your father has never sent us visitors unless he accompanied them. He and the Marquess of Widmore aren’t expected until the summer recess of Parliament.”
“But what about Mr. Caruthers?” Samantha asked with a wrinkle of her nose that said what she thought of the solicitor. She pressed her forehead against the glass. “Wait, what are they doing?”
Adele had tried to set an example (a lady did not stare out the window at passersby, after all), but her curiosity got the better of her, and she leaned over the padded window seat to peer out, as well.
The men stood conferring at the foot of the steps. From three stories up, she could not distinguish their features. The tallest, a red-haired giant, took the reins of their riding horses and pack horse and pulled them around the north tower. Was he heading for the stables? The leanest fellow, whose hair was hidden by a wide-brimmed hat, headed past Adele and Samantha’s viewpoint to the south, and she caught a flash of light from his side. Had he just drawn a sword?
The last man climbed to the door again, disappearing from their sight, but Adele thought she could feel the force of his knock all the way up in the third-floor schoolroom.
Samantha sprang away from the window in a flurry of pale muslin. “They have come to visit!”
“Samantha.” Adele’s command brought the girl up short before she reached the schoolroom door. Though panic tickled the back of Adele’s mind, she kept her face pleasant from long practice. “I want you to stay in the schoolroom. Do you understand?”
Samantha’s pretty face scrunched up. “No. Why can’t I go down to meet them?”
How could she explain without frightening the girl? Samantha still found the world new and exciting, each day a revelation. Adele had learned far more caution in her twenty-seven years. The only child of a baron, so close to the Scottish border without her father in residence, could make for a kidnapping.
Please, Lord, not Samantha! Protect us!
“Let me meet them first,” Adele said. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for their appearance here. Once I