Chapter 3
Graeme listened to the receding footfalls as a footman escorted Miss Whittington away from the study. He hesitated at the door. Only a moment. Only until he spied her black shawl draped over the arm of the chair. It must have slipped when she stood.
When he lifted the lacy confection, a waft of neroli clung to it: light, sweet, with a warmth that lingered like sunlight through silk curtains, absurdly out of place in a study of dust and leather.
So, she came armed with orange blossoms as well as eyelashes.
He almost laughed. The scent surprised him, not what he expected of a merchant’s daughter and hardly the choice of a woman in desperate straits.
Neroli was a costly fragrance. Was she playing at wealth to dispel suspicion?
Then, if she was the daughter of Mr. Whittington…
He rubbed the bridge of his nose where the spectacles had left their mark.
The name Whittington meant something. His father’s ledgers were full of it.
Cotton shipments. Bengal silks. A fortune that had propped up half the London trade houses.
If she truly was Whittington’s daughter, then she came armed with more than perfume and dimples.
And yet, could he believe that the old earl, supercilious relic that he was, would consent to take a merchant’s daughter to wife?
The same man who had cut his own brother adrift for daring the same sin? The hypocrisy stung.
Perhaps the earl had wanted to salt the family wound, or perhaps he was simply that desperate to deny his great-nephew the inheritance.
Walking back to the desk, Graeme began folding the shawl to tuck into a drawer, its scent lingering in the air.
It would take more than one interview to discover her game, he realized. However confident he was that she was a fortune huntress, he had no evidence, but then it was not necessarily proof he required so much as her acquiescence.
She unsettled him more than he cared to admit, not just because she might be the Miss P.W. he sought, but because she was far too beautiful to be ignored. Was he such a roué to be distracted by a pretty face? Drifting into thought, he worried the shawl’s silk beneath his fingertips.
As he placed it into the drawer, cold metal brushed the backs of his fingers.
Absently, he retrieved the signet ring from beneath the folds of the shawl and slipped it onto his pinky finger.
Graeme rubbed the crest with his thumb. He feared the estate’s unentailed fortune going to a philanderer, and he resented the late earl for wanting to punish his presumptive heir for transgressions two generations passed.
Tossing the ring onto the shawl, he closed the drawer with a thud echoed by distant thunder.
Miss P.W.
The estate solicitor’s voice echoed in his mind: the codicil leaves nothing in the coffers… hastily scrawled initials will inherit all unentailed wealth… unwise to contest because of public scandal… find Miss P.W. and persuade her to relinquish it freely.
Graeme had dismissed the codicil as the carelessness of a dying man, that was until Miss Phoebe Whittington swept into the study with her bold eyes and talk of invitations.
Coincidence? Or design? He needed time to investigate.
His original intention had been only to assess the condition of the estate and hall and the loyalty of the staff before moving his family into residence, not to carry on an extended charade.
Miss Whittington, not to mention the codicil, complicated the matter. He needed time.
Whether Phoebe Whittington was a brazen fraud or the very Miss P.W. named in the codicil, one fact was clear: she could not be allowed to leave Lobelia Hall.