A Highland Werewolf Wedding - By Terry Spear Page 0,85

bought the other properties also. All of them were bequeathed to you.”

“I’d had no word. My parents never mentioned any of this to me.”

The solicitor nodded. “You were young.”

She hadn’t been for years. Cearnach frowned at the solicitor.

Mr. Hoover cleared his throat. “We did try to locate you, Miss Hawthorn. You’d changed your identity and moved so many times over the years…” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

He glanced down at his notes. “You own two manors and a keep in Scotland that have been continuously rented out at a goodly income for years. The properties have been well maintained and are in good shape. All but Senton Castle, which as you probably have learned is in…”

“Ruins, I know,” Elaine said, frowning.

“Did the Hawthorns store any merchandise at any of the locations?” Cearnach asked.

“You mean, sir, the merchandise stolen from ships while they were away at sea?” Mr. Hoover inquired, his brows raised.

Elaine barely breathed.

So the old fox knew. Cearnach nodded. “Aye, that’s what I mean.”

“Nay. Several warehouses full of stolen merchandise were captured and sold to pay off those whose property had been taken at sea. Some of the merchandise had already been moved before the authorities learned of the locations.”

“None of the merchandise was left at the manor houses?” Elaine asked, glancing at the documents, then passing them to Ian, who began to study them in earnest.

“Nay.”

“Did my uncles leave me a key?”

“To the manor houses and keep, aye. Several. To the warehouses, several more. But those I didn’t bother to pay the rent on. No need when they held no more goods and the storage space wasn’t being used. I turned the keys over to the owners of the warehouses years ago. Most of the buildings don’t even exist any longer.”

“So no merchandise that my uncles might have stolen is left,” Elaine said, sounding both disappointed and relieved at the same time.

“That we know about, nay. That doesn’t mean they didn’t hide some in another location that I don’t know about. I brought you the deeds and wished to offer my services to continue to manage your properties, should you so desire.”

“Why didn’t you contact me about this? As soon as you could?” she asked, her cheeks growing flushed, her whole posture stiff.

“We couldn’t locate you.”

“Maybe early on,” she retorted. “But my cousin found me. Why couldn’t you have?”

Mr. Hoover sat even more rigidly in the chair, his jaw tightening with tension. “He hired someone to locate you and told me you were coming here to meet with him. I asked how he had located you. He said he had friends in low places, laughed, and wouldn’t say anything further. Even so, it took him ten years after he…” Mr. Hoover paused, glanced at Ian and Cearnach, then focused again on Elaine and hesitated to finish what he was going to say.

“He… what?” Elaine asked, her voice terse.

The solicitor ground his teeth. “Your uncles had told me never to contact your relations in Scotland, but a renter offered a substantial amount of money to buy one of your manors ten years ago. I didn’t know what to do. He decided to keep renting. If you were no longer living…” He sighed. “I had to find you, to let you know you had properties and learn what you wanted to do with them. I thought maybe one of your cousins might know your whereabouts.

“I contacted Robert Kilpatrick since I handle his estates also. I didn’t tell him about your properties, although I’m certain he assumed that the only reason I would try to learn where you’d gone was because you had an estate. He said since I couldn’t find you, he’d have someone else search for you. It wasn’t easy. He had several false starts, and then finally you changed your name back to Hawthorn and returned to Florida a month ago. As soon as Mr. Kilpatrick could verify it was you…”

“How did he confirm it was me?” she asked warily. “I’m certain there are tons of female Hawthorns in the state.”

“Aye. I don’t know for sure. He wouldn’t say. I assume he used a wolf living in the area to check on you and substantiate that you were one of us, for one thing. You were the only Hawthorn she-wolf in the area.”

“But once you learned she was living in Florida, you didn’t contact her,” Cearnach said. “We contacted you once we discovered she had estates in Scotland. You didn’t bother to try and