Blame It on Bath Page 0,15

the blackmailer was still free and able to cause trouble, Gerard was in desperate need of everything Katherine Howe offered . . . but haring off to catch the villain might cost him his best chance at financial security if he failed. It was unlikely other heiresses in possession of a hundred thousand pounds could be found at will. Finally he admitted he would have to verify just how real her proposal was, the sooner the better. If she had lied to him or misrepresented her situation, he could be on his way at once. He almost hoped for that outcome as he crossed the Thames, heading toward Holborn, where her solicitor had his offices. If everything she said was true . . . He had to make very certain of it before he decided, but he also had to do it quickly.

Mr. Tyrell had plain but comfortable premises near Cary Street, not far from Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Gerard hadn’t had occasion to visit many solicitors, but he judged Mr. Tyrell to be a successful man. He sent in Lady Howe’s letter with his card by way of introduction and was shown in soon after. Tyrell greeted him very affably, looking rather genial and placid; but Gerard didn’t miss the shrewdness of his gaze.

“How may I help you, sir?” Tyrell leaned back in his chair, the sunlight glinting off his round spectacles.

“I require information about Lady Howe,” Gerard said. “As her letter indicated.”

“Yes, indeed. Lady Howe instructed me to answer all your questions with perfect candor.”

Gerard smiled. Tyrell didn’t look like he would say a word that wasn’t in direct response to a question, but he expected that. Damned lawyers. “How long have you known and been employed by the lady?”

“I was employed by her father originally,” said Tyrell readily. “When he died, she asked me to stay on. I first met her when she was a child.”

“What sort of man was her father?” Gerard couldn’t forget what she had said the night before, that her father had respected his, and that was what had led her to propose marriage to him.

“Driven. Demanding. Ambitious and intelligent. I never saw anyone get the better of him in business.”

Those attributes could explain why Hollenbrook admired Durham, who had been all of those things. Gerard wondered if the daughter was cut from the same cloth. “What was his background?”

“Common.” Tyrell lifted one shoulder, not displaying a whiff of surprise at Gerard’s inquiries. “I’ve no idea who his parents were—Lady Howe would be better able to tell you that—but I believe he started as a young man in the mill he later came to own. Within twenty years he built up a considerable trade in dry goods and made a fortune supplying the army.”

“Indeed,” muttered Gerard. He had his own opinion of the people who supplied the army, and much of it wasn’t flattering. “How large a fortune?” he asked abruptly.

Tyrell’s glasses glittered as the attorney tilted his head. “Almost one hundred thirty thousand pounds, at his death.”

Christ. Had Lady Howe understated things?

“Thirty thousand pounds was left for his widow,” Tyrell went on. “The remainder to his daughter and her heirs.”

No, she’d been exactly right. “Outright? Not to her husband?” Gerard knew very well a married woman’s property belonged to her husband. Katherine Howe might think it was hers, might desire it to be hers, but the law might not agree.

“Outright,” said Tyrell with a slight smile. “Lord Howe died three weeks before Mr. Hollenbrook. I believe Mr. Hollenbrook changed his will before His Lordship was cold in the grave.”

Then the money was really hers. A widow was almost as independent, legally, as a man. Why couldn’t she simply refuse this nephew’s entreaty to marry him? She said she didn’t want to marry again, but must.

“Forgive me,” Gerard said, trying to sound somewhat confused and apologetic. “I understood Lady Howe to be in a tight circumstance. It sounds to me as though she’s a widow in possession of a large fortune, hardly desperate.”

“I’m sure the lady knows her circumstances well enough to give a good report of them.”

Gerard realized he was drumming his fingers on his boot, resting on his knee. Tyrell was as slippery as he’d expected him to be. He didn’t have time for this nonsense. He sat forward and propped one elbow on the solicitor’s desk. “Mr. Tyrell, I am here at Lady Howe’s instigation, as you well know from her letter. I am contemplating marrying the lady, and would like