Haunted by the Earl's Touch - By Ann Lethbridge Page 0,14

requires that I marry in order to inherit?’

The lawyer nodded gravely. ‘Indeed. Within the year.’

‘Marry who?’ she asked.

The earl’s mouth curled in a predatory smile. ‘That is the question, isn’t it?’

Irritated beyond endurance, she rose to her feet. ‘You are hardly helpful, sir.’

Forced to rise also, the earl gave her a mirthless smile. ‘I thought you said you were clever, Miss Wilding.’

She looked at him blankly.

‘He means you must marry him,’ Gerald said, scowling. ‘But you could marry Jeffrey or me. That would put a spoke in his wheels.’

The earl glowered, but said nothing.

She strode over to the solicitor, whose forehead was beaded with sweat. He pulled out a kerchief and mopped his brow. ‘Well, Mr Savary, is it true?’ she asked. ‘Does the late earl’s will require me to marry...’ she waved an arm in the earl’s direction ‘...him?’

‘It is silent on the issue, Miss Wilding.’ He swallowed. ‘Under the law, no one can require your marriage to any particular person. However, if you wish to inherit the money, you must marry someone. Perhaps there is someone....’ His words tailed off at a low growl from the earl.

Someone. She wanted to laugh. And then she wanted to cry. Someone. She was a schoolteacher. A charity case. And a beanpole to boot. Suddenly a very rich beanpole. She glanced over at the earl. ‘No doubt there will be many someones lining up at my door on the morrow.’

The earl glared at her. ‘Over my dead body.’

‘Or over mine,’ she said as the full enormity of it all solidified in her mind.

‘There is that,’ he agreed.

‘Are you saying you intend us to marry?’ she asked.

He looked at her for a long moment and she had the feeling that sympathy lurked somewhere in those flat grey eyes, then they hardened to polished steel and she knew she was mistaken. ‘Marry to suit my grandfather?’ he rasped. ‘Not if I can help it.’

She flinched at the harshness of his reply and was glad that he did not see her reaction as he turned at once to the solicitor.

‘There must be some loophole you have not considered. Bring those papers to my study. I will review them in detail.’

He strode from the room.

Mrs Hampton gave Mary an accusatory glare. ‘Come, Gerald. Jeffrey. We need to talk.’ She departed in what appeared to be high dudgeon for some unknown destination with the two young men in tow.

Unsure what else to do, Mary gathered herself to return to her chamber. She needed time to think about this new development. She could only pray the earl would find a way out of the conundrum. She certainly did not want to, nor would she, marry him. Or anyone else for that matter. She’d put away the hopes for a husband many years before

‘Er, miss?’ Savary said.

‘Yes?’

‘There was one thing I forgot to mention to his lordship.’

She gazed at him askance. Forgetting to mention something to his lordship sounded like a serious mistake given the earl’s present mood. She had not thought the man so stupid. ‘What did you forget?’

‘He should have let me read things in order.’ He fussed with the papers on the desk. ‘You must have his permission. Whoever you choose to marry, he must approve.’

A burst of anger ripped through her at being required to bend to the earl’s wishes on this or any matter. Especially one so altogether personal. Proving herself to be suitable to work as a teacher, to gain her independence, had taken years of hard work. She wasn’t about to give it up on some stranger’s whim. ‘I suggest you hurry and tell his lordship the good news. I expect it will make him feel a great deal more sanguine about what has happened here today.’

‘Do you think so?’

A laugh bubbled up inside her. Hysteria, no doubt. ‘I have not the slightest idea of what goes on in his lordship’s mind.’ That much was certainly true. ‘Please excuse me.’

She stalked out of the room. Whether anger improved her sense of direction, or she was getting used to the Abbey, she found her way back to her room without any problem.

The room was chilly. It was the stone walls, she thought, rubbing her arms with her hands, then wrapping her old woollen shawl around her shoulders. Stone walls needed tapestries and blazing fires. She poked at the glowing embers and added more coal. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and stared through the diamond windowpanes. From here she could