Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
The parish office was small and overheated. A woman sat behind a desk near the window, silver-haired and wearing thick glasses. She looked up when they came in and smiled.
"Good morning," she said. "What can I do for you?"
Leah had rehearsed it in the truck, but the words still came out tangled. She gave the woman her parents’ names and waited.
The woman didn't ask why, and Leah was grateful. She just folded her hands on the desk. "Ellsworth. That's a Bourton name."
"Yes. Bourton-on-the-Water. That's where I'm from." The words came out before Leah could even think about it. She felt Rowan glance at her. That's where I'm from. She'd never said that before. But it felt right.
The woman stood and pushed her chair back. "The registers from that period are in the vestry. Take a seat. This may take a few minutes."
She disappeared through a door behind the desk. Leah sat in one of the two chairs arranged against the wall and immediately stood up again. She couldn't sit.
Rowan leaned against the edge of the desk and watched her pace.
"If it's not here—" she started.
"It's here."
"You don't know that."
"No," he agreed. "But Edith knew your father. And everything I ever knew about your father says she’s right. He would have done the job properly."
"Properly is a relative term in my family,” she snorted.
He smiled at that, and she almost smiled back. The door opened, and the woman came out carrying a heavy bound volume in red leather. Leah's entire body went still.
The woman set it on the desk. "Let's have a look."
She put on her reading glasses and opened the register. The pages made a soft, thick sound as she turned them. Leah watched her finger move down the columns, month by month, and tried to breathe normally. January. February. March. The finger kept moving.
"Ah," the woman said.
The finger stopped.
"Here we are." She turned the register around on the desk so they could see. "Marriage solemnized at St. Mary's, Cheltenham. William Ellsworth, of Bourton-on-the-Water. And Sandra." Her mother's maiden name sat there in faded brown ink, written in a stranger's careful hand.
She stared at the two names on the page.
It was recorded in the parish register. There was no question about it. It was as legal as any marriage in England.
The woman behind the desk cleared her throat gently. "I can make you a certified copy of the entry. Your solicitor will want to request the official certificate from the Register Office as well, but I can get you a copy for today."
"Yes," Leah said. "Please. Thank you."
It took ten minutes. Leah spent them sitting in the chair by the wall with Rowan's hand resting on her shoulder, watching the rain streak the little window.
The estate was hers.
There was no question. There had never been a question.
There was only a bluff, dressed up in legal language, designed to frighten a woman Madeline Hargrove had assumed would be easily intimidated.
Leah was not her mother. All those years of barely surviving had made her tough. She learned not to back down.
So, maybe it was all working out the way it was supposed to.
The woman came back with the copy in a stiff envelope, stamped and signed. Leah paid the small fee and thanked her.
The rain had softened to a mist. The churchyard stretched down the hill, with wet headstones and dripping yews. One day she would come back to explore. But she had time for that later.
They walked down the path toward the truck. Leah held the envelope against her chest with both arms. She felt like she was floating about three inches above the pavement.
They were almost to the truck when Rowan stopped walking.
She turned to ask what was wrong, and he was standing there, looking at her, rain beading in his hair. Then he crossed the two steps between them and kissed her.
There was nothing tentative about it this time. No asking. His hand came up to the side of her face. She dropped one arm from the envelope and fisted her hand in the front of his coat and kissed him back, not caring even a little bit who saw.
Let them talk. Let them say horrible things about the daughter of the American.
When they finally broke apart, she was laughing. She couldn't help it. It just came out of her.
"What," he said, smiling.
"Nothing. Everything." She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand.
She called Whitfield from the truck. She blurted out what they found. There was a short silence on the line.
"Well," Whitfield said. "That's that, then."
"That's that?"
"Miss Ellsworth, that’s all we needed. There is no challenge. There never was, but now there isn't even the shadow of one." She heard the scratch of a pen. "I'll obtain the official certificate, and I'll write to Mrs. Hargrove's solicitors today. I expect we will hear nothing further.”
"Your father did well. For both of you. I'm glad you found it."
She thanked him and ended the call.
And then, finally, it hit her.
The tears came up out of nowhere, hot and sudden.
She pressed both hands over her face and cried.
They weren't sad tears. They weren't even entirely happy tears.
They were the kind that came when you'd been holding a weight so long you'd stopped feeling it.
And when that weight was gone, your body didn't know what to do with the absence.
Rowan didn't say anything. He reached into the glovebox, pulled out a stack of bakery napkins, and put them in her lap. He rested his hand on the back of her neck, offering comfort without needing to speak.
"I'm okay," she said finally, into a napkin.
She blew her nose and laughed at herself, wet and ugly. "I keep waiting for the bad thing. That's all. I've been waiting my whole life for the bad thing, and this is the good thing. I don't actually know what to do with the good thing."
"You'll learn," he said.
As they approached Bourton, Rowan asked, "Tea?"
She’d been avoiding town because of the gossip.
Not anymore.
“Yes, please.”
There were a handful of people inside, and Dorothy and Pat were at their usual table by the window, with a teapot between them, heads together over something that was almost certainly gossip.
Meg was behind the counter. She looked up when they walked in. Her eyes went straight to Leah's face, and whatever she saw there made her reach for the teapot before Leah had even taken her coat off.
"Sit down," Meg said. “If this is about Madeline, I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.”
Meg brought the pot, poured, and set down a plate of teacakes neither of them had ordered. Then she pulled out the chair across from them and sat down herself.
"Well," Meg said. “What’d she do now?”
Leah explained it bit by bit. The estate was hers. It always had been, and now there was proof. Madeline's solicitors would get a letter from Whitfield before the week ended.
Meg's eyes filled, and she pressed her hand over her mouth. A tear slid down her cheek.
"Oh, thank God," Meg said. Her voice was thick. "Oh, thank God. Your father would have—" She stopped and shook her head and wiped her face with a napkin from the dispenser, laughing at herself. "Look at me. I don't cry.” She waved a hand. "Oh, Leah, love. I am so glad."
And that, of course, set Leah off again. She reached for a napkin when she noticed Dorothy and Pat were standing there.
"What's happened?" Pat demanded, looking between their faces. "Someone tell us this instant. Are you all right? Is it Madeline?"
"It's good news, for once," Meg said, wet-eyed and smiling. "Sit down, both of you, before you fall down."
They sat down. Leah had to tell the whole story again from the start, and this time she made it further before her voice shook.
"Madeline is going to be absolutely furious,” Pat said with a great deal of satisfaction.
Dorothy laughed. “Oh, yes, she is."
"She'll have to stop," Meg said. "There's nothing left to fight.
It was always going to come out, whatever she thought she knew.
Your father was too careful a man to leave it any other way.
" She looked at Leah for a long moment. "He'd be so glad you're here.
I hope you know that. He'd be so glad it's you. "
Leah hoped so.
The news would be everywhere by morning.
Let it spread, she thought. Let it reach the big house with the iron gate.
She and Rowan walked back to his truck. Rowan took her hand as they walked.
She had once told him she didn't know what it felt like to be settled. That she had never felt it, not even once.
She knew it now.
She belonged here. It had taken forty years, but she belonged here.