Chapter 5
Grey clouds portended rain, dimming the study into deceptive night.
Candleflames wavered at every gust from the open windows.
Graeme had readied a stack of harmless correspondence for Miss Whittington to organize, enough to keep her occupied without breaching security.
He angled his gaze over the edge of his spectacles to spy the mantel clock, counting down until her arrival.
He hoped to write two letters first: one to the estate solicitor, one to his family. Yet his hand strayed again to the codicil. By now, he could recite the words.
Letting the paper fall limp from his hands, he muttered to the empty room, “To Miss P.W., with whom I spent many quiet evenings, even if only in thought, I leave…”
The old earl’s last bequest left the unentailed fortune and a small cottage to the mysterious “Miss P.W.” It might have been worse.
He might have left everything unentailed: investments, properties, holdings, artwork, even furnishings.
Nevertheless, the document was dangerous.
Hastily drafted on his deathbed, signed and witnessed, but maddeningly vague about the identity of “Miss P.W.,” it could be challenged.
Weathering the public scandal of a court case would be unpleasant, to say the least. Was it better to risk disgrace or watch the fortune vanish into a stranger’s hands?
If, as Graeme now suspected, Miss Whittington was “P.W.,” the battle would be harder still. She was spirited enough to fight for what she thought she was owed.
If hung in the air with a stale odor.
For all he knew, Miss P.W. was the late earl’s favored opera singer or even hunting dog, not a means to extol kindness, but rather to disinherit his only heir from the money since he could not disinherit the family from the entailment.
No opera singer had arrived to claim an almost betrothal, though, only a merchant’s daughter with bold eyes and talk of invitations.
Graeme slid the codicil back into its drawer, exchanging it for the shawl she had left behind.
Setting the shawl aside to return to Miss Whittington, he tucked the codicil to the back of the drawer before locking it securely.
If Miss Whittington had volunteered her so-called help in hopes of finding written validation of her inheritance, she would be disappointed. No reason to give the cat claws.
Fresh paper lay before him. Quill to ink, he began his letter to the estate solicitor, currently in London, handling formalities.
The man needed to be apprised of Miss Whittington’s arrival—before she made herself at home—and Graeme needed to inquire what, if anything, the solicitor knew of her, from claim to claimant.
Time marched steadily on as Graeme moved from one letter to the next, until, startling him out of his meditative writing, the clock struck the hour with officious precision, as if eager to herald the arrival of Miss Whittington herself.
Each chime was a reminder of his solitude’s end.
He tucked his spectacles into his pocket.
Just as the clock tolled six, its heartbeat echoing in the study like a summons, footsteps approached the door, on cue.
A gentle knock.
“Come.” Graeme smoothed the final fold of his second letter.
The familiar footman entered, ushering in Miss Whittington, this time with her lady’s maid hovering close behind. Graeme suppressed a smile. A harmless clerk requiring a chaperone. How flattering.
“Welcome.” He rose with a nod.
“Good evening, Mr. Ellison,” said Miss Whittington, her gaze flicking over him only briefly before skimming the room.
It lingered first on the bundles of twine-tied letters burdening the side table, then on the shawl folded neatly upon his desk.
She gave no remark on either. Instead, she directed her maid to the low table and chairs where they had previously taken tea.
“You may sit there. A pleasant prospect of the gardens will sweeten the tedium of watching us.”
The maid obeyed, her hands twisting, her attention darting, as if she half-expected an earl to leap from behind the curtains.
Miss Whittington paused at the window herself, peering out the fog-streaked glass. “Pity. The garden begged for a walk.”
He caught the bait in her tone and parried with bland courtesy. “Nothing would please me more than to accompany you.” After a pause of only one breath, he added, “When the weather permits.”
She hummed noncommittally and turned to the side table. Without waiting for an invitation, she took a seat and tugged at the twine binding one of the stacks, glancing at him through her lashes as if daring him to object.
“You’ve perceived my intention,” he said. “Tradesmen’s bills, wine accounts, household receipts. They need sorting before being copied into the ledger.”
Without protest, she drew said ledger closer, flipping through the pages with apparent indifference, though he suspected she weighed each sheet for overlooked treasure.
Graeme fetched the shawl and set it beside her hand. “You left this behind.”
Her lashes swept up, bold as a challenge. “I should have known you’d come to my rescue, gallant knight.”
He had a rejoinder ready, something dry enough to cut the sweetness, but her smile unseated it.
His tongue was too thick and heavy to move words.
For one dangerous instant, he nearly returned the smile.
Sheepish to have lost himself, even for a fraction of a second, he drew a chair opposite hers and reached for a second bundle of receipts, the neroli in the air wrapping around him with a taunt.
Better to work at close quarters, he told himself, than shout from the desk. Easier to ask questions, as well, when he knew her attention was occupied. Or so he had planned before his undoing by way of orange blossoms.
Miss Whittington dipped her pen and bent over the ledger, curls brushing her cheek. The faint scrape of nib against paper was the only sound between them, steady as a heartbeat.
Graeme pretended to study a receipt but found his gaze caught on the flex of her hand, the arch of her fingers, then the tilt of her head as she read, then…. He shook his focus. She made even bookkeeping look deliberate, as if she played at elegance for an audience of one.
At length, he braved, “Forgive me, Miss Whittington, but I cannot help finding your… arrangement with the late earl rather curious.”
Her quill paused, ink blotting the margin. “Do you?” Without looking up, she shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t.”
The corner of his mouth lifting, he leaned forward and pressed, “You would have been his fifth wife.”
Another shrug. “I know.” Her quill moved to the inkpot, then hovered. Her lashes lifted as her eyes met his. “But why not ask what you truly want to know, Mr. Ellison?”
He leaned back, arching a brow. “And what would that be?” Despite his calm composure, his pulse quickened.
With a sly, teasing smile, she bent again to her work. “Why a vivacious young lady should pledge herself to an old man. Is she a dreadful title-huntress? Or—gasp—something worse?”
Stunned into silence, Graeme’s lips parted, but no words followed.
To his relief, she spared him the trouble of finding a reply.
“I thought as much. Who wouldn’t wish to know why?
” She flicked through a bill for chimney sweeps, her movements too brisk to be careless.
“It is no great mystery. My father is… shall we say… exacting. Lord Collumby had offered for me last year, but I… declined, a decision my father has ensured I regret. When Lord Collumby renewed his invitation, it came as my salvation. Yes, he had wealth and title, but I sought only to secure a future for myself.” Lightening her tone, she added, “I would have fulfilled my duty as wife for what years remained to him, and in return, he would have given me freedom from my father.”
His brows drew together.
She dropped the bill onto a neat pile and reached for another, as though the explanation were nothing more than another marginal note. Only the lift of her chin betrayed that the words cost her.
Graeme shifted in his chair, more rattled than he wished to reveal.
Her candor disarmed him. He had expected coquettish evasions or bold-as-brass lies harmonized with love songs, not bald truth.
His suspicions that there was far more to her story held little weight compared to the honesty of her confession.
“So,” he said at last, “you weighed the bargain. Your youth in exchange for… security.” Silently, he added and wealth and title, soon to be untethered. “Remarkably pragmatic, Miss Whittington.”
His gaze lingered on her lashes, willing her to look at him, only to be granted an unreadable expression when her eyes finally met his.
“I didn’t crave his ring, Mr. Ellison, only his shield.” Bending her head once more over the invoices, her quill scratched neat columns.
Graeme found himself watching the curve of her brow rather than the figures on the page, and that unsettled him more than her confession.
Each time he took a breath to ask another question, to seek clarification, or to remark on the weather, a glance at her was enough to silence him, enough so that they worked only to the sound of rain patter.
In the back of his mind, he thought he ought to close the windows, but he could not tear himself away from her, spellbound as he was.
The mantel clock struck the quarter-hour, sharp and intrusive.
She awarded him a triumphant grin, her hand motioning to the collated stacks and tidy ledger. “You see, Mr. Ellison? I’m far more than pretty smiles and now have proof I’m talented with keeping order.”
I beg to differ, he thought, for you’ve disordered me. Schooling his voice to remain unaffected, he said with a polite incline of his head, “So it seems.”
Smoothing her gown with unhurried grace, she rose.
Graeme mirrored her, pushing back his chair. “That will do for today.”