He waited, but she shook her head. Snapping at Freddie wasn’t going to help. ‘Tell me.’
‘There can be no doubt that this restriction on inheritance would have been explained to your grandfather on each of the occasions when he rewrote his will. After his marriage, the birth of your mother, the death of your grandmother. He could have taken steps then to have this restriction removed. He chose to let it stand.’
‘Why? Why would he do that?’
Freddie shrugged. ‘Maybe because it was part of family tradition. Maybe because his father had left it in place. I would have advised removal but my great-uncle, your grandfather came from a different age. They saw things differently.’
‘Even so—’
‘He had three opportunities to remove the entailment and the Crown would argue that it was clearly his wish to let it stand. Counsel would doubtless counter that if he hadn’t had a stroke, had realised the situation you were in, he would have changed it,’ Freddie said in an attempt to comfort her.
‘If he hadn’t had a stroke I would be married to Michael Linton,’ she replied. Safely married. That was what he used to say. Not like her mother…
‘I’m sorry, May. The only guarantee I can give is that whichever way it went the costs would be heavy and, as you are aware, there’s no money in the estate to cover them.’
‘You’re saying that I’d lose the house anyway,’ she said dully. ‘That whatever I do I lose.’
‘The only people who ever win in a situation like this are the lawyers,’ he admitted. ‘Hopefully, you’ll be able to realise enough from the sale of the house contents, once the inheritance tax is paid, to provide funds for a flat or even a small house.’
‘They want inheritance tax and the house?’
‘The two are entirely separate.’
She shook her head, still unable to believe this was happening. ‘If it was going to some deserving charity I could live with it, but to have my home sucked into the Government coffers…’ Words failed her.
‘Your ancestor’s will was written at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The country was at war. He was a patriot.’
‘Oh, please! It was nothing but an arm twisted up the back of a philandering son. Settle down and get on with producing the next generation or I’ll cut you off without a shilling.’
‘Maybe. But it was added as an entailment to the estate and no one has ever challenged it. There’s still just time, May. You could get married.’
‘Is that an offer?’
‘Unfortunately, bigamy would not satisfy the legal requirements.’
Freddie Jennings had a sense of humour? Who knew?
‘You’re not seeing anyone?’ he asked hopefully.
She shook her head. There had only ever been one boy, man, who’d ever lit a fire in her heart, her body…
‘Between nursing Grandpa and running my own business, I’m afraid there hasn’t been a lot of time to “see” anyone,’ she said.
‘There’s not even a friend who’d be prepared to go through the motions?’
‘I’m all out of unattached men at the moment,’ she replied. ‘Well, there is Jed Atkins who does a bit for me in the garden now and then,’ she said, her grip on reality beginning to slip. ‘He’s in his seventies, but pretty lively and I’d have to fight off the competition.’
‘The competition?’
‘He’s very much in demand with the ladies at the Darby and Joan club, so I’m told.’
‘May…’ he cautioned as she began to laugh, but the situation was unreal. How could he expect her to take it seriously? ‘I think I’d better take you home.’
‘I don’t suppose you have any clients in urgent need of a marriage of convenience so that they can stay in the country?’ she asked as he ushered her from his office, clearly afraid that she was going to become hysterical.
He needn’t have worried. She was a Coleridge. Mary Louise Coleridge of Coleridge House. Brought up to serve the community, behave impeccably on all occasions, do the right thing even when your heart was breaking.
She wasn’t about to become hysterical just because Freddie Jennings had told her she was about to lose everything.
‘But if you are considering something along those lines,’ he warned as he held the car door for her, ‘please make sure he signs a prenuptial agreement or you’re going to have to pay dearly to get rid of him.’
‘Make that a lose/lose/lose situation,’ she said. Then, taking a step back, ‘Actually, I’d rather walk home. I need some fresh air.’
He said something but she was already walking away. She needed to be on her own. Needed to think.
Without Coleridge House, she would not only lose her home, but her livelihood. As would Harriet Robson, her grandfather’s housekeeper for more than thirty years and the nearest thing to a mother she’d ever known.
She’d have to find a job. Somewhere to live. Or, of course, a husband.
She bought the early edition of the local newspaper from the stand by the park gates to look at the sits vac and property columns. What a joke. There were no jobs for a woman weeks away from her thirtieth birthday who didn’t have a degree or even a typing certificate to her name. And the price of property in Maybridge was staggering. The lonely hearts column was a boom area, though, and, with a valuable house as an incentive, a husband might prove the easiest of the three to find. But, with three weeks until her birthday, even that was going to be a tough ask.
Adam Wavell looked from the sleeping infant tucked into the pink nest of her buggy to the note in his hand.
Sorry, sorry, sorry. I know I should have told you about Nancie, but you’d have shouted at me…
Shouted at her. Shouted at her! Of course he would have shouted at her, for all the good it had ever done.
‘Problem?’
‘You could say that.’ For the first time since he’d employed Jake Edwards as his PA, he regretted not choosing one of the equally qualified women who’d applied for the job, any one of whom would by now have been clucking and cooing over the infant. Taking charge and leaving him to get on with running his company. ‘My sister is having a crisis.’
‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’
No. He’d worked hard to distance himself from his family.
‘Saffy. She lives in France,’ he said.
Maybe. It had taken only one call to discover that she’d sublet the apartment he’d leased for her months ago. Presumably she was living off the proceeds of the rent since she hadn’t asked him for money. Yet.
Presumably she’d moved in with the baby’s father, a relationship that she hadn’t chosen to share with him and had now, presumably, hit the skids.
Her occasional phone calls could have come from anywhere and any suggestion that he was cross-examining her about what she was doing, who she was seeing only resulted in longer gaps between them. It was her life and while she seemed happy he didn’t pry. At twenty-nine, she was old enough to have grown out of her wildness and settled down. Clearly, he thought as he reread the letter, he’d been fooling himself.
I’ve got myself into some real trouble, Adam…
Trouble. Nothing new there, then. She’d made a career of it.
Michel’s family set their bloodhounds