MC BIKER ROMANCE: Bad Boy Romance: BETRAYED: (New Adult Motorcycle Club Navy SEAL Romance) (Contemporary Military Romance Thriller) (53 page)

Chapter 12

Emma

I shook it off. I tried to. I had to. Walking out of the estate I felt afraid, but too hurried to indulge it. I barely had a moment to think of how absurd it was that I should be here now. So long ago this had been all I wanted: to wake up in the morning on his estate. But in those fantasies I had always been the lady of the house, and the house had been, well, the main house.

As I passed the main house, though, I couldn’t help but feel that the little cottage that Henry was in now suited him more, in its own sort of way. Or, at least, it suited the life he’d led without me for most of the time. It would have been wrong, him in that grand house. That grand house was for us to live. When I thought of him throwing parties there, as the men at the card table last night insisted he had, I couldn’t imagine them without me as a hostess.

But it wouldn’t be. It couldn’t be. And I needed to focus on the task at hand: getting my own house back.

The appointment with Mr. Burnham had been set for nine o’clock in the morning, and I had promised him, up and down, that I would not be late. Or rather, I had promised his secretary, who had finally worn down under my constant pleas. The secretary had made sure that I knew he would get in trouble even for putting me on the schedule, and this had confirmed my suspicions. Mr. Burnham had been specifically avoiding speaking to me, and I needed to find out why.

So I could not stop back at the lodging house to clean myself up, and dress in clothing more appropriate to the matter at hand. No, I was in a ball gown, in the middle of London, and I felt absolutely absurd. At least I had lost my mask somewhere along the way, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

I put myself in a cab, and told him to race to the offices as best he knew how, and that there would be a bit extra in it for him if he did. He was a little skeptical when I told him the names of the offices, and I realized he imagined I would want to go home. I would have told him that the way to get home was to get to the offices before it became so late that the secretary gave away my appointment, but that would have taken far too much explanation. So I just asserted that I knew what I said and that I meant what I said, and he took off like a shot.

At least the offices weren’t that far from Henry’s estate. I’d get there quickly, and with precious little time to fret about my appearance. The carriage jolted with the horse’s uneven, forced steps, but I did my best to smooth out my wild hair. There was no glass here, which I mourned. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how I was looking.

Ah, well. It couldn’t be helped.

When I reached the offices of Mr. Burnham, I gave the cabbie his due.

And then I hesitated.

I remembered the last time I’d tried to sort this all out. It hadn’t been with the solicitor, but with grandmother herself. But we’d met in the salon, and she’d dressed very officially for the occasion. She looked as though she thought she should look like a solicitor. She was all in black, and above all wore a very solemn expression.

The night before, we’d done the yelling and the screaming. And she’d told me all her leverage, and she’d told me why she insisted I would not make such a mistake. And she’d told me I’d come around.

And I did.

There were no papers signed. Grandmother didn’t want it on paper, for reasons that were obvious to me. But we spoke the words, formally.

“I, Emma Cavendish, shall not marry nor henceforth have any relations but those unavoidable in the course of participation in the London social scene, with Henry Headwidge. I swear and affirm my understanding that if any lapse should occur, I shall be disinherited entirely, and that the Headwidge family shall lose protection from what is known about them.”

I had said the words, and then Grandmother had said hers. I didn’t even remember anymore exactly what they were, something about forbearing to serve justice against the Headwidges so long as I maintained my promise and, of course, promises that I should be provided for.

And she’d upheld her own end of the bargain. And I had not upheld mine.

So I walked into the law offices of Mr. Burnham a guilty, late, disheveled woman.

The secretary was not pleased to see me. He informed me I was late, as though I were not already perfectly aware, and as though my appearance did not clearly indicate hurry.

“He was most upset when he heard I had allowed you an appointment,” he told me, and I felt I had misread him. His tone was conspiratorial, and it gave me just a touch of relief from the unrelenting sense that I was in the wrong and the whole world was going to crash down around my shoulders any moment.

Mr. Burnham wasn’t here, anyway. He had gone to another solicitor’s office to hammer out an agreement, apparently. And so it would not even matter. The secretary showed me to his office, where I sat, and waited.

I read the titles of the books on the walls. They were almost all extremely dull. They were, as a matter of course, books about the law, and books about philosophy. Some science and some history was strewn about among them. It was more or less as I would have expected, except that they were entirely out of order – not the way the library of a solicitor should be.

And then I found it: one little novel that had found its way onto the shelves somehow, and had impudently settled in between a thick volume of Greek history and a collection of treatise about cases that had been heard by the crown in London in the seventeenth century.

I smiled.

And just as I was off guard, in came Mr. Burnham.

He was a large man, and in the years since I last saw him, he had only grown larger. Seeing him now, I was struck with a sudden remembrance of the last time I had seen him: at the reading of my mother and father’s wills. I’d been extremely distraught, and extremely young, and he’d been kind. He had kind eyes.

“Miss Cavendish,” he said to me now. It was not a question, nor a protest. It was simply a sad observation that I was me and I was here.

I gave him time to sit down, and he took it. Then he fiddled with the objects on his desk for a while, ordering them just so. It was a farce. There I was, in a full ball gown, and with messy hair, on what could very likely be the most important day of my life, held in suspense. And there he was, neat and orderly, worrying about trivial things.

He sighed.

“Miss Cavendish,” he said again, “I’ve known you since you were very young.”

No small talk. No bothersome questions about how I was doing or this or that or the other. Simply that.

“Yes, perhaps that is the problem. Perhaps because you knew me when I was young you think it is within your rights to exclude me from important matters in which I ought to be involved.”

The words were out of my mouth before I knew I was saying them. But once I had, I didn’t regret it. He ought to know how I felt. It was unacceptable.

But he didn’t seem disturbed in the least. He only leaned back.

“I know you are anxious, Miss Cavendish,” he said.

“I am,” I confirmed.

“But things are unfortunately not so simple as all that.”

I expected him to continue. I thought he should tell me what they
were
like, then, but he left it sitting there. It was as though he were hesitant to speak to me about all this in the first place, so he was going to make me draw every word out of him.

“And how are they not so simple?”

And then the dam broke, and his sea of words came spilling over.

“Well, your grandmother is not well. Yes, I see you know that. Of course you know that. But I mean that she is also not well in the mind, as it were. There have been physicians come to see her, and at times she is lucid for them. Most of the time when we have the psychologist in to examine her, she is having one of her few good days. Isn’t that always the way? It’s just that, under the circumstances, with some of the things she has been saying, it seems best if we had an evaluation that she were, as you can imagine, not in proper mind.”

It began to become clear.

“You want her will to be considered invalid? You would do that to my grandmother?”

Once again, there I went, speaking before I thought. Once I’d said it, though, I realized my folly.

“My dear Miss Cavendish, I wish you to understand: we do this in large part for your own enrichment.”

It was my turn to lean back and be quiet a moment, and considered what I should say.

“She’s been saying … many things. And many of them are regarding yourself. She’s made grand statements, and the will she has dictated to me is … most irregular.”

In all these years, she must never have put into writing the agreement we made that June day, that had so destroyed my life. Or created it.

“And you believe that were she of sound mind, she would not have dictated such a will? What does it contain?”

I watched him squirm. He didn’t want to tell me. So be it. I wouldn’t mind not being told as much.

“And it is not only that,” he said, changing the subject, “but she is making certain other claims, that must be investigated fully. If she
is
in her right mind, then quite a stir might be made if it ever got out, you see.”

I could feel myself going pale. What an odd sensation! The blood was draining entirely from my face, and from my head as a whole. The old woman was going to do that, then? I supposed that this was to be expected. She would have to put her threat against Henry in writing, now that she would not be alive to hold it over my head in her little mind.

“And do you intend to act on these … utterances?” I asked. My voice was so quiet, even to my own ears.

“My dear,” he said, kindly, “I don’t wish to act on anything. I only say that things must be investigated. And I was hoping, dearly, that they might be proven or disproven fully, so that when I must tell you, I could tell you the truth of the matter as well as what your grandmother has to say about it.

His manner seemed odd, considering the subject at hand.

“Is this why you have kept me from her?” I asked.

He nodded, looking down and fiddling with the row of fountain pens all laid out on a blotting cloth on his desk.

“I fear your grandmother may say things to you that will be upsetting, or confusing. Particularly the demands she intends to make of you, as of this iteration of her will. I have, in my own way, simply been trying to help the timing align, so that you might see your grandmother either when I can tell you what she has to say is of no consequence or, better yet, when she is not saying such things.”

The excitement, such as it had been, was leaving me. I had thought this man an adversary. It seemed so mistaken now. Did I not remember him? Did I not remember that he was a kind man?

“You’ve kept me from my house,” I said, almost as an afterthought.

“Yes, I’m sorry about that. It seemed the most prudent thing to do. If you were at home, doubtless you would speak to your grandmother. And it simply isn’t the time, I’m afraid.”

I considered what to do. I could have a frank discussion with Mr. Burnham, sure. But I was loath to have such a conversation. Quite aside from anything else, my appearance might make it more obvious than I would like that I was already in breach of the conditions of my grandmother’s will.

And besides, I didn’t want to speak the words, and I didn’t want to hear them. I could still feel last night somewhere in my bones, and the thought of clinically discussing that I should not be allowed to feel such things ever again …

“If I swear to you that I will not go and see my grandmother, will you allow me and my travel companion and our servant to take up residence where I belong, in my family home?”

I said it in a pointed way, which I didn’t mean, but which seemed necessary to achieve my desired ends. The man nodded vigorously, and it was decided.

Having gotten what I wanted, I could have left just then. But after such a business, manners seemed to dictate that we should sit and talk for a bit. It was something like the same conversation I’d had so many times with so many women in London over so many cucumber sandwiches. But it was a little different. He asked questions most people didn’t think to ask, and I had to consider carefully and try to remember. For a man who was so busy, he didn’t seem hurried in the slightest, and by the time I left his office I had been there nearly an hour.

I went straight to the boarding house after Mr. Burnham and I had run out of things to say. I was long overdue to bathe and to change, and when I thought of my bed my eyes closed themselves entirely without my intervention. I’d slept some the night before, but not nearly enough. There had been far, far more interesting things to do. In the carriage on the way to the boarding house I found my mind running back to that bed, in that cottage.

The things he’d done to me! I’d been curious before, sure, but never so curious as to procure myself any literature that I might use to enlighten myself on the matter. I’d decided, quite as a matter of necessity, that that part of my life was never to be. And so it was all just a surprise. I knew the general gist, of course. I understood the basic anatomy of the act. But all the rest of it still shocked me when I thought back. It seemed so undignified! Where he had put his mouth … what he had done with his hands …