Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Aclerk hurried forward to take their cloaks.
“Oh, you’re wearing the pendant,” Kitty said. “I didn’t notice it earlier.”
Minerva rested her fingertips against the purple stone. For an instant, she expected the heat again, as if some part of her had learned to anticipate it.
“It looked pretty in the early morning light,” she said.
It had. She had sat in her room by the tiny window and opened the locket to study the picture of her cousin.
So like Mama. She had held the piece for long moments, noting the complete absence of tingling or prickling or other strange sensations.
Finally, she had slipped the chain around her neck and found that it had felt oddly right, as if she had merely put it back where it had always been.
She touched it now and thought of the stranger’s gaze dropping to the hollow of her throat and lingering there. Of the way he had made her feel—unsettled, breathless. Disquieted.
“I’ll wait here,” Kitty said, drawing Minerva back to the moment.
The clerk offered her a seat in the outer area before ushering Minerva into Mr. Granger’s private office.
“Miss Ashworth,” Mr. Granger said with a smile, getting to his feet and rounding his desk to greet her.
“Please sit.” He gestured toward a pair of burgundy leather straight-back chairs that faced the mahogany desk.
Minerva accepted a seat and looked around.
The walls were papered in gold damask. Directly across from the desk was a fireplace with a dark wood mantel that was nearly completely obscured by piles of books and papers.
The fireplace was flanked by two tall shelves equally burdened by thick tomes.
In the corner, behind the desk, stood a stack of large black boxes with gold initials on the front: A. W. G.
The desk itself was an exercise in organized disarray. Piles of documents covered the surface. There were an inkwell and quills to one side and on the other, a brass oil lamp that sat unlit.
“I was wondering…” Minerva said, her words trailing away as she realized the inappropriateness of the question she meant to ask.
“Yes?” Mr. Granger said, settling in his chair on the far side of the desk. It was deep red velvet with a tufted back and wooden frame. Minerva thought it looked quite comfortable.
I was wondering…who was the man who left your office just now?
And how would she explain her curiosity?
“I was wondering how we proceed,” she said instead.
The solicitor nodded. “We’ll get right to it.” He set a small stack of documents before her. “As I mentioned yesterday, your cousin left you a house, Cliff Cottage, and money, the principal to remain invested. The income is to be paid quarterly on Lady Day, Midsummer, Michaelmas, and Christmas.”
He lifted one of the sheets, tapping its corner.
“A portion of the most recent quarter’s interest was never drawn.
That sum, fifty-odd pounds, is yours immediately.
It should serve for travel, a few new dresses, the settling of small accounts until your first regular payment falls due on Lady Day, three weeks from now.
” He smiled faintly. “I took the liberty of instructing Mrs. Todd’s bank to prepare a draft in your name. ”
“Fifty pounds each quarter,” Minerva said with a small laugh. She earned half of that for an entire year. Her thoughts ran through a quick calculation before she even realized she was doing it: Travel costs to get there. Wages for a maid once they arrived. Food for three people—
“Oh, no, you misunderstand,” he said. “Fifty pounds remain from last quarter’s accounts. But moving forward, you’ll have one hundred and twenty-five each quarter…five hundred a year.”
Minerva stared at him for a long moment. The amount would have been merely moderate in her previous life but felt an enormous fortune now. An unlikely fortune for a widow living in a cottage in Cornwall.
“How did my cousin amass such a sum?”
“The house has belonged to the women of your family for generations. Unusual, that, but not unheard of. As to the money…The principal is a combination of Mrs. Todd’s inheritances from her husband and her maiden aunts.
When you marry, the funds will become the property of your husband.
But not the house. That will remain yours.
Everything is detailed here.” He tapped his finger on the document before her.
The property of your husband. The phrase settled over her like a shroud. Marriage would give a man the right to spend her inheritance or squander it or make unwise investments that left her—and any children she might bear—penniless. The panic she felt at the thought made her stomach churn.
It was not marriage she feared in and of itself.
It was the way she knew it to work. She had loved her father, respected him, adored him.
Did it make her a terrible daughter that were he sitting before her now, she would rail at him and decry his choices?
He had borrowed against his future and signed documents he perhaps had not read carefully enough.
The end result for Minerva had been a barren, cold room, a paltry wage, and three years of calculating whether she could afford soap, a candle, a crust of bread.
A husband would have that same power over her. By law. By custom. By simple fact of being her husband.
She would not allow it.
“There is one further condition I must bring to your attention,” Mr. Granger said in his carefully neutral tone.
“The house has always passed with a particular requirement attached. It is not a condition I or Mrs. Todd created. It has been part of the inheritance for as long as the records show.” He paused and steepled his fingers.
“You must reside at Cliff Cottage. Not for a period. Permanently. For the duration of your life.”
The room was very quiet. Minerva heard the ticking of a clock somewhere behind her.
“And if I do not?” she asked, her voice level. She had become, over the past three years, adept at keeping her voice level.
“If you choose not to reside there, the income ceases immediately and permanently. The house and monies will then be held in trust until the event of your death, at which point all will pass to the next living female heir. You will receive nothing.”
Cold fury sluiced through her. She had spent this conversation understanding it to mean that she had legal control of her own life for the first time, but that was not the case.
In fact, the house owned her as surely as a husband would, except that she could neither divorce the house nor become its widow.
But as quickly as her anger surged, it faded as she recognized the paradox: the condition that trapped her was also the condition that protected her.
Because she must live at Cliff Cottage, she could not marry and see a husband take control of her income.
Or rather, she supposed she could marry but the income was already spoken for by the residence.
The lifetime condition was simultaneously a cage and a shield.
The house would not squander her money on poor investments.
Still, she was not free. She was simply owned by something older and less personal than a husband.
She looked at the documents before her.
Go to Cornwall and have everything Catherine had left her.
Refuse and have nothing.
She had already lived with nothing. She knew the taste of it, hunger gnawing at her belly and burning the back of her tongue. The feel of it, icy cold in winter, shivering under a too-thin blanket. The smell of it, ammonia sharp in the hallway, vomit on the street.
“You sign here.” Mr. Granger indicated the spot.
Minerva hesitated before accepting the proffered quill.
She remembered many meals during which her father had detailed matters of business at the table.
She had been a rapt audience. Discussions of business had fascinated her, though she knew from other young ladies her age that their fathers rarely if ever spoke of such things in front of them and they were grateful for that.
She had believed them to be her friends, those young ladies. Fair weather friends. The memories of their rapid desertion still stung.
She stared at the pile of documents. It felt, absurdly, as if her father stood beside her now, reminding her that any contract must be read in full, and the contents understood before signing.
Had he heeded his own advice when he signed away his fortune?
“I will read the document in full. Not just the bits you tell me to read,” she said.
Instead of taking insult, Mr. Granger’s eyes lit up, and a small smile turned his lips.
“I encourage you to do precisely that.” He sat back, steepled his fingers, and remained silent as Minerva read.
He proved surprisingly patient, clarifying even the smallest points whenever she stopped to ask questions.
When she was done, she asked, “Why does everything pass to my husband when I marry? That is not specified in this document. The only point mentioned is that the house must remain mine.”
Mr. Granger looked nonplussed. “It is the way of things,” he said.
“Is there a way I can alter that condition to ensure that my inheritance remains mine?”
He blinked. “You… That is…”
Minerva regarded him in silence. She had watched love fail to protect her.
She had watched a father who adored his daughter sign documents that left her with nothing.
Intention was not protection. Good faith was not protection.
Only legal control of her own circumstances was protection, and marriage transferred that control to a husband by the simple fact of law, regardless of the man’s character or intentions.
“You could choose not to marry. Or you could find a man willing to live at Cliff Cottage with you and sign away any rights to your income.” He did not sound as if he thought such a man would be easy to find.
“I see,” she said.