Chapter 2
“Iam still quite sure we ought not to be here.”
Viola kept her voice low as the clerk led them through to the solicitor’s waiting room — a narrow, panelled space with two upright chairs and a clock upon the mantel that ticked a beat too slowly.
Hannah drew her down into one of the chairs. “You were named, Viola. One does not ignore a summons from a solicitor.”
“One does when it has plainly been sent in error.” Viola folded her hands in her lap to still them. “I shall be told as much within the hour, and then we shall have come all this way for nothing.”
“We shall have come all this way to London, which is hardly nothing.” Hannah’s mouth curved, though weariness showed at the corners of her eyes.
It had been a long drive from Gloucestershire, and Viola could still feel the shudder of the carriage wheels in her bones.
She had not slept. Her thoughts had been far too tumultuous for it.
Yet Hannah, beside her, looked as elegant and composed as she ever did — married these several years to an Earl, and it told in every line of her.
“You did never correspond with the lady?”
“Never once.” Viola shook her head. “We were introduced, and I recall her quite clearly. But an introduction is not a connection. That is what I cannot make sense of.”
A thought of Lady Warrington came to her unbidden — the gentle way the lady had spoken to her, the unexpected care with which she had asked after her father.
Once, when Lord Tyne had been confined to his bed with fever, a box of oranges had arrived at the house without ceremony or card.
Lady Warrington had waved away every word of thanks and would hear no more of it.
A small kindness. Nothing more than that. Whatever waited beyond that inner door, Viola told herself, it would be small as well — a keepsake, a token, a trifling sum at the very most.
Hannah leaned closer. “I shall tell you again what I heard at the inn. The girl who carried up our water said Mr. Braithwaite has received another young lady this very week — another with no clear connection to Lady Warrington at all.” Her brows lifted.
“So you are not so singular as you fear. There is a pattern in it somewhere, whatever it may prove to be.”
“That is no comfort.” Viola almost smiled. “It means there are two of us to be embarrassed, not one.”
The inner door opened.
“Miss Trent. Lady Manion.” A small, somewhat stout gentleman stood in the doorway, half-moon glasses perched upon his nose. “I am Mr. Braithwaite. Thank you for coming so far. Will you come through?”
Viola rose on legs that did not feel entirely her own and followed him into the inner office — a larger room, its walls shelved with bound and ribboned papers, an oak desk at its center, the air thick with beeswax and old leather.
She had thought they would be alone. They were not.
A gentleman stood at the window with his back half to the room, and he turned as she came in.
He was dark-haired, his eyes a sharp and startling blue, and he did not smile.
His gaze moved over her once, then over Hannah, with a cool, assessing weight that made Viola lift her chin before she had decided to lift it.
“You will forgive his lordship’s presence.
” A faint apology touched Braithwaite’s tone.
“He holds an interest in certain of Lady Warrington’s dispositions, and asked to attend today.
” He seemed about to say more, a name, an introduction, but the gentleman gave the smallest shake of his head, and Braithwaite let it pass.
The gentleman barely inclined his head, as if she did not warrant the turning of his shoulders. His jaw tightened once, then stilled. Whatever he made of her, he had shut it away behind that contained, unmoving face. He did not give her his name. She did not dare to ask it.
“Please.” Braithwaite gestured them to the chairs before his desk, settled himself behind it, and drew a single sheet from the top of his pile.
He did not keep them waiting. “Lady Warrington’s instructions concerning you are brief, Miss Trent, and quite particular.
I shall read them as she set them down.”
Viola pressed her hands flat in her lap.
“‘To Miss Viola Trent, daughter to the Viscount Tyne, I bequeath the sum of twenty thousand pounds, together with my London residence, Stoneleigh House, including its contents and household complement. The house is mine to give and is not included in the entailed estate. I give it solely and completely to Miss Viola Trent.’”
Heat rushed into Viola’s face. A breath later it was gone, and a cold swept in to take its place.
Twenty thousand pounds. And Stoneleigh House.
“That cannot be right,” she said.
At the window, the gentleman had gone very still.
Everyone in London knew Stoneleigh House.
It was spoken of with admiration and with envy both — the house one named to describe what wealth and taste together could build.
Viola thought of her father’s study: the threadbare carpet, the ink bottle never refilled, the single candle he carried from room to room rather than light more than one.
The two pictures refused to sit together in her mind.
“There is no error, Miss Trent.” Braithwaite’s voice was kind, and firm with it. “Lady Warrington’s will was witnessed and verified in every particular. She was of entirely sound mind, and her intentions were as clear as any I have known.”
He set the page down and folded his hands upon it.
“There is, however, one particular more, and I am instructed to give it exactly.” He looked at her over the half-moon glasses.
“The gift is absolute. But it does not come to you in a single stroke. The sums will be released by stages, each in its season, upon conditions Lady Warrington set down and sealed in my keeping — to be opened only as each occasion arises. I may not tell you what they are. I will tell you that they are hers — not the law’s delay, nor the estate’s caution.
She designed the manner of the giving as deliberately as the gift. ”
“Conditions.” The word came out thinner than Viola intended. “Then there is something I am required to do?”
“There is something she believed you would do, Miss Trent. I can put it no better than that.” Something like warmth crossed the solicitor’s dry face, there and gone. “In eleven years of keeping her instructions, I never once found a careless line in them. I do not expect to begin now.”
At the window, the gentleman made a low sound that was not quite a laugh. “Conditions,” he said, to no one at all. “Of course there are.”
Braithwaite drew a sealed letter from beneath the page and held it across the desk. “This she asked me to give you upon the reading. For your eyes.”
Viola took it. Her name stood upon the front in a long, flowing hand. Her fingers would not be still, and she pressed the letter to her chest as if it might hold her together.
“The first of her instructions to me,” Braithwaite said, with a small nod at the letter. “By her own order — before all else, this.”
A chair scraped. The gentleman had taken a half-step from the window, and stopped, his hand closing once at his side before going still.
“Mr. Braithwaite.” His voice was low and even, and cold enough to raise the hair on Viola’s arms. “A word with you. Not now — when you are at leisure.” He spared Viola a single glance, hard and unsmiling, that said more plainly than any words that he counted her account far from settled.
It was no courtesy, but something nearer to a promise.
Then he bowed to no one in particular and left, the door closing behind him with a quiet, deliberate care that was somehow worse than if he had slammed it.
Viola did not remember leaving the office. She was aware only of the sudden brilliance of the sun as they stepped into the street, the warm press of the summer air against her face. She stopped, swaying, and Hannah’s arm came at once about her waist.
“Viola. Are you quite well?”
“I cannot take it in.” A raw breath escaped her. “Why would she do such a thing? And that gentleman — ” She closed her eyes. “He looked at me as if I had taken it from his very hands.”
“Then let us not stand in the street for him to see it.” Hannah steered her towards the carriage. “Come. The letter may tell you more than the solicitor would.”
Inside, the door shut upon the clamour of the street, Viola broke the seal at last. The paper whispered as she unfolded it, and she read it aloud, her voice unsteady.
“‘Miss Trent. You must trust that I have acted with purpose and intention. You will be surrounded by those who do not understand; bear their scrutiny with courage and determination.’” Her brow drew together.
“‘Kindness has been far from your family. It is my hope that this gift offers you some of what you have lacked, and brings about a change in a great many things.’”
That was all. No name, no reason, no word of why she, of all the young women in England, had been singled out. Viola read it twice more in silence, then folded it with great care, afraid the paper might tear.
“You hoped for more,” Hannah said softly.
“Of course I did.” Tears stood in Viola’s eyes.
“I have been given a fortune, and one of the finest houses in London, and I do not understand a word of why.” She turned her face to the window.
“And there is a gentleman, some lord, I never learned which, who believes every part of it was stolen from him.”
Hannah said nothing for a moment. “And there is the other thing,” she said. “The conditions.”
Viola looked back at her.
“You heard the solicitor as well as I did. Released by stages, upon conditions of her own setting, sealed away in his keeping.” Hannah tapped one gloved finger against her knee, working at it the way she worked at everything, as a knot to be undone.
“Viola — a woman does not trouble to set conditions on a gift unless she expects something of the person receiving it. Whatever Lady Warrington wanted of you, she wanted it after her death, which means she could not simply ask. So she built the asking into the gift itself.” She looked at the folded letter in Viola’s hands.
“That is not an ending you are holding, dearest. I begin to think it is an instruction.”
“An instruction to do what?”
“I have not the smallest idea.” Hannah sat back. “But I suspect that when you come upon it, you will know it — and I suspect she was sure of the same.”
Hannah said nothing. There was nothing to say. The carriage carried them on through the crowded streets, and Viola’s thoughts turned and turned without rest.
She had been lifted up in the world. She did not doubt it. But she thought of the cold blue eyes of the man at the window, a man whose name she had not even been given, and she wondered how many more would look at her so before this business was done.