Chapter 1 #3
Only the solicitor replied, with a polite “Of course.”
Clearly, Francine Stroud’s decision to include two strangers in her will had upset the rest of her family.
Glimpsing toward the doors to the library, which Decamp had closed firmly behind him when he’d left, Leo wondered why the viscount was not present. It had been he, she gathered, standing at the balustrade. Had he not been invited to the reading of his own daughter’s will?
“It would be prudent for introductions first, perhaps,” Mr. Corman said. “Inspector, Miss Spencer, may I present—”
“Can we just get on with it, Corman?” the man sulking in his chair spat.
The woman seated next to him, her blonde hair pulled back into an austere bun and bound in black netting, tried to lay her hand on his. He jerked away and muttered something under his breath.
“Forgive my husband,” the woman said after being rebuffed. “This is a difficult time, and my mother’s request for the two of you to attend, that she has perhaps bequeathed you something…well, it is terribly strange.”
“We are in agreement,” Jasper replied. “I take it you are Mrs. Stroud’s daughter?” He looked to the woman seated one chair down from the solicitor. The two women were similar in looks, though Leo thought the one who’d spoken was slightly older and possessed more refined features.
Mr. Corman cleared his throat. “Yes, as I was saying, may I introduce Mrs. Stroud’s daughters, Mrs. Helen Dalton and Miss Nadia Stroud.”
“And this is my husband, Anthony,” Helen Dalton offered.
Leo suppressed the automatic urge to give the standard reply: Pleased to meet you.
It wasn’t pleasing to her at all. Nadia Stroud, less attractive than her older sister, appeared bored and slouched back in her chair in a masculine manner.
She had a cut crystal glass of spirits in front of her, as did Anthony Dalton.
“We are as confounded as you appear to be as to why we were summoned,” Leo said. “Mr. Corman?”
The solicitor was the only one here who could put everyone’s confusion to rest. He took his seat and opened a leather briefcase on the table in front of him.
“There is the usual business to discuss, of course, however, recognizing that Inspector Reid and Miss Spencer would be strangers to the family, Mrs. Stroud had asked that I first address the bestowment of their portion and then allow them to depart.”
Leo exhaled in relief, even as Anthony Dalton again huffed and muttered to his wife, “Why do they even have a portion? What was your mother about?”
Next to her, Jasper tensed as he directed a probing glare across the table toward Mr. Dalton.
Although, as rude as he was being, Leo understood the man’s question.
She’d tried—and failed—to speculate what Francine Stroud could have possibly wanted to bequeath to the two of them.
The woman had been Emmaline’s sister, and she would have known Gregory Reid.
But how had she known of the two children her former brother-in-law had taken under his wing after the deaths of her sister, niece, and nephew?
The solicitor overlooked Mr. Dalton’s complaint.
Opening a folio, he withdrew a sheet of paper.
Peering through the thick lenses of his spectacles, he read, “To Mr. Jasper Reid and Miss Leonora Spencer, I bequeath all property title to, and ownership of, the residence at Number 19 Craven Hill, London.”
A hot bolt of shock traveled down Leo’s spine and threatened to send her up from her chair.
She stayed seated; however, Anthony pushed his own chair back in a clatter as he leapt to his feet.
Helen’s face went slack, and she let out a strangled cry.
Leo, whose confusion had turned back in on itself, warping through her into yet another knot, turned to Jasper.
He’d gone stone still. His dark green eyes met hers briefly before hinging on the solicitor.
“Mr. Corman, there must be some mistake,” he said slowly.
“She…she gave them the London house?” Nadia Stroud sat forward in her chair, finally looking as if she cared about what was happening. “She can’t have done.”
Located in the distinguished Lancaster Gate neighborhood, just north of Hyde Park, Craven Hill was one of the finest streets in London.
Finer even than Charles Street, where Jasper lived in the Inspector’s old home.
That property, too, had been gifted by a relative of Emmaline’s—in that instance, by her grandmother to Gregory Reid.
“Inspector Reid is correct,” Leo said, raising her voice to be heard above Anthony and Helen arguing between themselves about what Francine had been thinking. “It doesn’t make any sense for Mrs. Stroud to have left us property.”
The solicitor appeared as if he had been prepared for a storm wind of arguments. Fitting, as the gales of rain outside had intensified. The electric chandelier overhead seemed to brighten as the storm further darkened the evening skies.
“Be that as it may, the two of you have been granted equal ownership of the Craven Hill address.” Mr. Corman came away from his seat to bring them a thinner folio than what he’d opened previously.
“This is the deed to the home and some other documents you will need for the property, and the keys, of course.” He gave this to Jasper, who stared at the folio in his hand with plain skepticism.
He pushed back his chair and stood. “I’d like some explanation, Mr. Corman. Miss Spencer and I did not even know Emmaline Reid had a sister. We’d never met Francine Stroud in our lives.”
“Do you see?” Anthony hissed to his wife, gesticulating toward Leo and Jasper. “Your mother had gone mad! Corman, there must be a way to obstruct this bestowment.”
The solicitor did not respond to Anthony but extended something more, this time to Leo. It was an envelope.
“Mrs. Stroud assured me that all will be explained within the contents of this letter,” he said, as Leo took the envelope.
“You are to read it together,” he instructed. “Apart from the rest of the family.”
Their names, Leonora and Jasper, had been scrawled on the front, in looping, unfamiliar handwriting. Leo rose from her chair on numb legs. The other three people at the table had all gone utterly silent when the letter had been presented.
“We’ll take our leave then,” Jasper said and, with his hand coming to rest on Leo’s lower back, led her from the library.