Her Stepmother Married Her Off as Punishment to a Ruined Man — But His Ruin Was a Disguise, and Her Dying Father’s Secret Deed Made Him the Only Husband Who Could Restore Her Inheritance and Avenge Them Both

 PART 5

The plan was simple, and it nearly failed before it began. Mr. Havverstock lived in a small market town some thirty miles from Blackwood Hall, in a house he had inherited from his father. Sir Aldis proposed to go himself, under cover of darkness, and to bring the solicitor back — not to Blackwood Hall, where he might be watched, but to a meeting place of their own choosing.

“The syndicate will be watching the road to Blackwood,” Sir Aldis said, spreading a map across the table in his study. “They will not be watching the road to Havverstock’s house, because they believe I am a broken man who does nothing but drink and stare at the walls. That is the advantage of a ruined reputation. It makes you invisible.”

“I am coming with you,” Rosamund said.

“No.”

“I am coming.” She met his eyes. “This is my father’s trust, my inheritance, my fight. I will not sit in this cold house while you risk your life for a document that belongs to me. And if something goes wrong, two of us can move faster than one.”

Sir Aldis looked at her for a long moment. Something in his expression was not quite refusal anymore. “You will do exactly as I say. When I tell you to hide, you hide. When I tell you to run, you run.”

“And if you are the one who needs saving?”

“Then I trust you will manage it better than I would.” It was, from him, almost a joke. Rosamund found she liked it more than she expected to.

They rode out at midnight through rain that turned the roads to mud. Rosamund, who had not ridden in years, clung to the saddle and followed Sir Aldis’s shadow through the dark. Twice her horse stumbled on the flooded track, and twice he was there before she had to call out, one hand steadying her bridle, his voice low and even in the dark — not tender, exactly, but careful, the way a man is careful with something he has decided matters. They reached the town near dawn and approached Mr. Havverstock’s house from the back, through a lane barely more than a footpath.

The house was dark. Sir Aldis circled it once, twice, then came to the kitchen door and knocked — three times, a pause, twice. The door opened a crack. An old woman’s face appeared in the gap.

“Who’s there?”

“Mr. Havverstock,” Sir Aldis said. “I have come on business regarding the Fairfax trust. Tell him it is urgent. His life may depend on it.”

The door opened wider.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Hales, led them through a dark kitchen and up a narrow stair to a bedchamber where a thin, gray-faced man lay propped against his pillows. Mr. Havverstock was perhaps sixty, with the sharp, tired eyes of a man who had spent his life reading the fine print of other people’s misfortunes. He looked at Rosamund, then at Sir Aldis, and his face changed.

A young clerk sat in the corner of the room, sorting papers by candlelight. He looked up sharply as they entered, then returned without a word to his work.

“Miss Keen,” Mr. Havverstock said. “You came.”

“I came,” Rosamund said, coming to his bedside. “My father told me to trust you in all things. He said there was a deed — a trust — about my marriage and a peer.”

Mr. Havverstock’s eyes flickered. “He told you about the trust.”

“He did. He gave me this.” Rosamund drew out Edmund’s letter and held it out.

Mr. Havverstock took it, read it, and for a long moment was very still. Then he reached painfully to the table beside his bed and drew out a sheaf of papers, tied with ribbon, the ink still crisp. “This is the deed of settlement — the true instrument, signed by your father not six weeks before he died, and lodged with me as trustee. Cecilia does not know it exists. She believes the estate passes through the will alone, and she has had a forged copy of that will drawn up by a man named William Crew, the syndicate’s chief agent, to secure everything the trust does not already cover. But the trust is beyond her reach, provided its single condition is met.”

He looked at Rosamund. “It says that if Rosamund Keen marries a man who is a peer of the realm, the trust releases her one-third of Ashgate Hall, the eastern grain stores, and the controlling interest in the mill to her immediately upon the marriage — without probate, without filing, without waiting on anyone’s leave. Your father wanted you to have the means to escape whatever Cecilia arranged for you, the moment you were free to use it.”

“But my husband is a baronet, not a peer,” Rosamund said. “The condition does not apply.”

Mr. Havverstock looked at her, and then at Sir Aldis, who stood in the shadows of the bedchamber, silent and watchful. “That,” said Mr. Havverstock slowly, “is a matter your husband can explain better than I can.”

Rosamund turned to Sir Aldis. The ruined man met her eyes, and for a long moment the room was very still.

“Who are you?” she asked.