Chapter 31
Thirty-One
Women aren’t allowed to make wills, as our property legally belongs to our husbands—an obvious injustice. Yet wills can be a vehicle for cruelty. Maybe we’re better off saying our farewells in person, without the temptation to abandon our principles.
We shall read the will immediately,” Lance said, when Godric and I walked into the library after supper. “I don’t want to risk the newlyweds returning to bed.”
“That’s not entirely fair,” Ophelia said. She was snuggled on the couch, Peony on her lap. “You and Colette also—”
I sat down and squeezed her hand. “Don’t be impolite.”
She frowned fiercely. “But—”
“Embarrassing people isn’t kind.” I was sticking to my two rules—be kind, don’t lie—which meant teaching them to Ophelia. She was my daughter. Our daughter.
“It is not customary for minor children to attend a reading of a will,” Godric said. “Ophelia, may I ask you to return to your room, please?”
“Why? Did Burnsby write something about me?”
Godric held up a folded piece of paper, sealed with red wax and signed over in Burnsby’s sprawling signature. “I have no idea what is in the document, as your father’s London solicitors would have prepared this will. Still, I think it would be best if you left the reading to the adults.”
“I am an adult,” Ophelia said.
“For your own sake, you and Peony should ring for tea and read a novel,” I said.
“My own sake?” Her chin jutted into the air.
“Our father was a peevish and unkind man,” Lance said, strolling over and tweaking one of her curls. “If you wish to see the document when you come of age, I will gladly share it.”
Ophelia got to her feet. “It’s absurd to protect me after years of living in the abbey.” She pushed Peony’s carriage from the room, sighing loudly.
Crumpsall bowed. “Lady Burnsby, would you like me to serve tea?”
“Yes,” Colette replied, nodding. “Would you please inform the household that I prefer to be addressed as Lady Marmont? I find my husband’s title more appealing than the one he inherited. ‘Burnsby’ so easily slips to ‘buffoon.’”
“A fair point,” Lance said. “Crumpsall, please fetch Aunt Mima and Miss Ainsworth, along with the tea tray.”
Lance was not grieving; his face was buoyant.
Why should he grieve for a father who had sent him away at birth, treated him despicably, and scarred him with a poker?
Though I was fond of Mima, no one could describe her as a steady presence, suited to raising a lively boy, let alone two.
Yet Burnsby had regularly dispatched the boys to the abbey during their vacations, rather than to one of his other houses.
The butler bowed again and withdrew.
“Would you prefer to retire to our chamber?” Lance asked Colette. “You needn’t stay. We have no need of my late father’s money, his title, or his property. Whatever he wrote in his will is irrelevant to our future.”
“I shan’t leave you,” she said, kissing his cheek. “The estate is yours by right, and if your father tried to give away your inheritance, we shall fight for it.”
I was more and more convinced that Lance wasn’t merely relieved by his father’s demise. I’d describe him as joyous.
“By the way, I talked to Trundle out in the stables,” Lance said, turning to Godric.
“As long as the snow holds off tonight, we have sufficient horses for three sleighs. Once we reach the nearest inn, we can hire carriages to take us back to civilization. Crumpsall will keep the abbey ticking over until I return.”
“Haunted abbeys should be confined to novels,” Colette said with a dramatic flourish of her fan. “I shall never return to this hellish stone vault.”
“Sometimes I almost forget you are French,” her husband said affectionately.
Colette ignored that. “I suppose that Lance must keep his estates in England, if only for the sake of our son, should we have one.”
Something in her face caught my attention. “Colette!”
She twinkled at me. “Last night I was repulsed by champagne, and this morning I couldn’t touch my crumpet, which my maid considers an infallible sign.”
No wonder Lance was so happy! I jumped up to hug her. “You will be a wonderful mother.”
“My very best congratulations,” Godric said, rising and giving Lance one of those manly blows that signal attachment.
“I don’t mean to desert you by returning to France,” Colette said to me, “but I could only be comfortable in my own house and country. I’m sure that England’s doctors are well enough, but I shall ask the accoucheur who attended my own mama to live with us for the last few months of my confinement.
When the time comes for you to give birth, perhaps you will travel to Paris as well? ”
My stomach flipped, thinking of a baby with tumbling black curls and gray-green eyes.
Godric drew me down on the couch and kissed my ear. “I will be at your side, no matter the continent you choose, Evie.” I felt myself turning pink. Since we hadn’t yet consummated our union, babies seemed a long way off.
“Excellent!” Colette clapped. “When you find yourself with child, Evie, please do move to my house so that I can guard over you. Your sister and Ophelia must cross the Channel as well.”
Thankfully, the embarrassing subject was truncated by the butler carrying a tea tray, followed by Mima in her striped gown and Sophonisba dressed entirely in black, including a black veil that fell from the crown of her head all the way to her feet.
(I admit to fascination: When did she instruct a seamstress to create this garment? Last year? Five years ago? The abbreviated bodice suggested the design was recent.)
After a round of greetings—during which Mima was confused and Sophonisba haughty—we prepared to listen to the will, for all the world as if the document were entertainment offered by our host, akin to an indifferent performance of Haydn or a discourse on watercolors.
Mima refused to seat herself. “Clifford will surely make himself as disagreeable in death as he was in life,” she observed, taking herself off to the window seat overlooking the cemetery.
Having served tea, Crumpsall bowed and left.
I had one thing to say before we began. “Miss Ainsworth, I am sorry that my late husband was such an unrepentant scoundrel. You were shamefully treated.”
Her lip curled. “You were nothing to him. I was always at his side, always, from the moment he first saw me in Paris.”
I picked up my teacup again.
“Not kind,” Colette observed. “You were at Burnsby’s side, Miss Ainsworth, believing that he was your husband. Weren’t you acquiescing with his purported bigamy? Wouldn’t that have constituted a charge of ‘accessory to a felony’?”
Sophonisba’s face contorted before her mouth curled into a sneer once again.
“You could have reported him to the authorities when he married Hecuba,” Colette continued. “Did that never occur to you?”
Colette was defending me, which I loved. All the same, I was certain that Sophonisba had been as deceived as Hecuba, Alice, and myself.
“I don’t believe that Miss Ainsworth had any idea that the late Lord Burnsby had married Hecuba until he walked into the abbey with his new wife,” I said, watching Sophonisba’s face closely. “Mima said she threw herself into Burnsby’s arms in front of his bride.”
Sophonisba’s chin wobbled and then firmed. “I’d prefer not to revisit the memory.” A tacit way of saying I was correct.
What a bastard Burnsby had been: presumably breaking not only Hecuba’s but Sophonisba’s heart in one blow.
“What did you say to your purported husband after he introduced you to Hecuba?” Colette asked, not a woman who readily dropped a line of questioning.
Sophonisba’s hands had curled into fists. “Lord Burnsby was not a man who welcomed disagreement. Lady Everley would agree, I’m sure.”
Lady Everley.
In the midst of this painful, albeit riveting, experience, I felt a bolt of pure joy. How wonderful not to be a Burnsby. How lovely to be attached to Godric.
I countered with a rhetorical question. “How could Miss Ainsworth have fought back against Burnsby, having neither a powerful family nor friends?”
“True, a fallen woman has no standing,” Colette conceded.
Lance intervened. “Miss Ainsworth, I regret that my father treated you so abominably. Godric, as my solicitor, will you please read aloud the will?”
Godric set down his teacup and moved to stand with his back to the fire, facing all of us. “As you can see,” he said, holding up the will again, “Lord Burnsby signed over the untouched seal of this document on July sixteenth, 1798.”
“That’s a week after Alice died,” Lance observed.
(Alice being Burnsby’s third wife, in case you’ve forgotten. I was the fourth.)
“Lady Everley, can you attest to the signature?” my husband asked.
I nodded. “I took over the household accounts during our marriage. That is Lord Burnsby’s signature.”
The will was astonishingly short.
~ CLIFFORD BURNSBY’S LAST WILL & TESTAMENT ~
JULY 16, IN THE THIRTY-EIGHTH YEAR OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE III OF ENGLAND, 1798
In the name of God, Amen. I, Lord Clifford Clifton Burnsby of England and Scotland, in perfect health and memory, God be praised, do make and ordain this my last will and testament in manner and form following, that is to say, first I commend my soul into the hands of God my creator, hoping and assuredly believing through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Savior to be made partaker of life everlasting, and my body to the earth whereof it is made.
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” Mima said, from over by the window.
Item. All my entailed properties, I give, devise, and bequeath to my heir, Lancelot Burnsby, whom I ordain and make executor of this my last will and testament.
Colette let out a relieved sigh, but Lance’s expression didn’t change.
Item. I give unto my wife, should I have one at the time of my death, the sum of eight thousand pounds.
Godric looked up. “Lance, my understanding is that Evie’s father, Sir William Sutton, is in possession of a codicil stipulating a more generous jointure.”