Inheritance of Bourton Manor

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Leah hadn’t slept.

She'd drifted off somewhere around two in the morning.

It had been the kind of sleep that left you more exhausted than when you closed your eyes.

She tossed and turned, replaying snippets of conversations and images.

Mostly, she lay in the dark with her hands folded on her chest like a person in a coffin, staring at the ceiling and thinking.

Her thoughts had flitted between the relationship with Rowan, which was unexpected and amazing.

She felt seen. Heard. Cared for. Rowan was the first man in a long time that she’d considered having a real relationship with.

They already had a friendship. He was different from any man she dated in the US.

Rowan made her smile. He was smart. Witty. The highlight of her day was being in his presence. The night before had been wonderful. She felt settled and connected for the first time in her entire life.

But Madeline Hargrove was also real, unfortunately.

Ask him what he knows.

It was like the universe caught a glimpse of Leah finding true happiness and sent Madeline to interrupt. No happiness for Leah. Nope.

Madeline said it like she was doing Leah a favor. Like she was the one person in the entire village finally willing to tell William Ellsworth's daughter the truth. Leah had turned around and looked at Rowan, who had dropped his head.

That had been enough. His face had told her everything before he'd said a word. Everything she thought she had learned about her late father and the sordid story that landed Leah and her mother in the United States alone and impoverished had yet another layer of mystery.

She gave up on sleep before five.

She padded across the cold floor to the closet and pulled out the sweater she'd found weeks ago in a box of her father's things.

Heavy wool, oatmeal colored, enormous. She'd taken to wearing it in the mornings when the house was at its coldest. She pulled it over her head and pushed the sleeves up past her wrists and went downstairs.

The kitchen was dark. The garden beyond the window was darker.

She could see the fog sitting heavy over the grass, the hedgerows reduced to shapes, and the stone wall bordering the property barely visible.

Out here, this far from the main road, the silence was endless and all-encompassing.

It had been a little nerve-racking at first.

But she’d settled into the quiet.

She filled the kettle and set it on the stove. Tea now, coffee later. Her nerves were still fried.

She remembered last night in fragments. The lantern walk had been beautiful in a way she hadn’t expected.

She recalled the procession to the river, the lanterns shining in the Windrush.

Rowan's hand rested on her back. The lanterns floated into the night as she stood next to him, wishing for something she couldn't quite name.

His hand found hers. When she turned to look at him, he was already watching her.

She'd thought, standing there in the water meadow, that it was the first time in a very long time she'd felt like something good was about to happen to her. Her whole life had been spent waiting for the next bad thing: the next eviction, the next car breakdown. Her life had consisted of getting by and hoping there wasn’t another catastrophe before she recovered from the last.

She’d rarely had time to recover. It wasn’t until she arrived at Bourton-on-the-Water that she finally got a chance to rest, heal from her car accident, and think about her future.

Then Madeline Hargrove had materialized out of the dark like a bad omen in designer wool.

The kettle began to rattle. She poured her tea, stood at the window, and stared at the fog.

She thought about what Madeline had said.

A clause concerning legitimate heirs. She turned the phrase over.

She was the legitimate heir. William Ellsworth was her father.

He'd put her name in the deed himself, sent for her himself, and left her a plane ticket, a trust fund, and forty years’ worth of apology.

He hadn't done any of that for someone he wasn't sure about.

But Madeline's voice had been very certain.

And Rowan had dropped his head—a sure sign of guilt.

She turned away from the window.

Normally, she would go to his cottage for breakfast.

She couldn’t right then. Rowan knew there was a question about her parentage and never said a word. He’d spent countless hours helping her go through her father’s library in search of the truth.

And the whole time he’d known there was another shoe that was about to drop.

She made a second cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table. Her gaze fixed on the garden emerging from the evaporating fog. The place she had such grand plans for. Plans that might not even be possible if the estate was not hers.

She thought about her mother, who had never really understood the family she married into. She remembered how young her parents looked in that Las Vegas chapel. The woman in those photos, beautiful and smiling, was not the same mother Leah had known growing up.

They were happy once.

She'd thought that a dozen times since finding the photo, and it still caught her off guard. The evidence of her parents' happiness felt like a betrayal. She’d never seen or felt that happiness. She couldn’t get her head around them being happy and loving.

The knock at the back door wasn’t a surprise. Leah knew he’d show up eventually.

Leah opened the door and said nothing. He stepped inside, carrying a container she already knew held bacon and toast. It squeezed her heart. He had been taking care of her since she landed in England.

She made him a cup of tea while he retrieved two plates from the cupboard. He opened the container and plated the sourdough toast and bacon. She put his tea in front of his plate and sat down. They sipped their tea and ate in silence.

She waited.

"There's a clause in the original deed," he said after he finished his slice of toast. "The language is old.

It was never updated, not in your grandfather's time and not in your father's.

It requires the estate to pass to a legitimate heir of William Ellsworth.

" He paused. "Madeline's solicitor has raised the question of whether your parents' marriage was properly registered in England. The Las Vegas ceremony was always questioned.”

"Vegas marriages are legal,” Leah snapped. “British people have their rules, but trust me, in the US, they are very legal, and there are more than a few people who wished they weren’t.”

"Apparently, it was never formally registered here. In England. Under English law." He looked uncomfortable. Not guilty, exactly. "Madeline's position is that without that registration, the legitimacy question is open to challenge."

She shook her head, trying to understand why Madeline was determined to take away the only good thing she had in her life.

"When did you find out?" she said.

He didn't look away. "Shortly after I learned you were going to inherit the property."

She stayed quiet. The silence grew as she stared at her plate, trying to take in what he had just told her.

Two months. He had known for two months that her right to be here was in doubt.

For two months, he had helped her plan gardens, fix up greenhouses, and dream about a future that might never happen.

"You didn't tell me," she said. Her voice came out flat. Emotionless. All that joy had been packed up and put away once again.

"I was trying to—"

"Find a way to fix it. I know." She set the cup down carefully. "That's what you always do, isn't it? Try to manage things for me. Protect me from information you think I can't handle."

"That's not what I wanted to do.”

"It is." She looked at him, really seeing him. This was the man who had kissed her last night, even though he knew what was going on. "You've been doing this since I arrived. You decide what I should know and when, like I'm a child who needs to be protected."

He opened his mouth and closed it, clearly realizing he couldn’t argue with facts.

"Did my father know?" she asked.

"I don't think so. The language in the deed is archaic. I don't think anyone thought about it until Madeline's solicitor started looking for angles."

"Angles." The word tasted bitter. "She wants me gone that badly."

"She wants the land. She's always wanted it. The Hargrove property borders yours on the east side. If she can prove you're not the legitimate heir, the estate would likely go to auction. She'd have first right of refusal as an adjoining landowner."

Leah pushed her plate away. The bacon had gone cold. She wasn't hungry anymore.

“She’s old. She’s not going to live another twenty or thirty years. What is she going to do with it? Does she not realize she can’t take the property or the money she’d get by selling it to the grave? I don’t understand!”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “It’s a personal vendetta.”

Leah seethed. She didn’t want to have hate in her heart, but Madeline had destroyed her life over and over. Why? Why keep coming after her? She broke her mother. Ruined her father. When was it enough?

"What were you planning to do? Wait until Madeline's solicitor shows up with papers and then tell me? Surprise, Leah, you might not actually own any of this? Bye-bye. I just spent most of the money in the account to pay Gerald off. And now you’re telling me I basically just paid them to take everything from me? "

"I was looking for the registration documents. I thought if I could find proof that your parents' marriage had been properly recorded here, it would resolve everything."

"And did you find anything?"

His silence was answer enough.

She pressed her fingers to her temple. She thought about her mother, young and in love and marrying an Englishman in a Vegas chapel. Had her father known they needed to register the marriage in England? Or had they been so caught up in each other that the legal details hadn't mattered?

"There has to be something," she said. "Some record. Some proof."

"I've searched your father's papers, the library, and even the parish records, but I found nothing."

"Then we'll look harder."

Leah dug deep. She’d been knocked down too many times in her life.

She was done getting bowled over by people with more money and influence.

No more.

"I'm not giving up. I'm not letting Madeline Hargrove take my rights away from me because of some technicality about paperwork that should have been filed forty years ago."

He nodded. "I'll help you. Whatever you need."

"Will you?" The question came out harsh. "Or will you decide I can't handle the truth and keep things from me again?"

He flinched. Good. She wanted him to feel that.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I should have told you."

"Yes. You should have."

"I know," he said quietly.

She was mad at him, but she couldn’t stay mad. He was just one of those people who wanted to be a protector. He had dedicated his life to taking care of the estate and the family that owned it. He was the one who took care of her father in his final days.

“I’m not quitting,” she said, reaffirming her conviction to fight.

“I’m going to shower. I have work to do.”