There were no other direct male heirs.
Neither daughters nor the children of daughters could inherit.
The marquisate would revert to the Crown.
With every dry word out of the solicitor’s mouth, Lottie frowned, the dismay in her chest rising higher and higher, until it had nowhere else to go but out her mouth.
“Pardon?” Her voice cut through the solicitor’s monotone words. “I do not understand.”
Every head in the room turned her way, eyebrows raising in surprise. Grandmère in her widow’s weeds and Margaret with her melancholy eyes. Frank with an annoyed eye roll and the Duke of Ferndown with a scowl.
“Yes?” The gray-haired solicitor looked over his spectacles at her, clearly exa sperated.
Perhaps the Lottie of years past would have retreated from such unspoken censure.
But the Lottie ofnowwas different.
Grief and pain had carved new channels in her heart.
She forged ahead. “There are no other heirs, you say?”
“None.”
“But . . .”
Her frown returned in force.
She saw all-too-clearly in her mind’s eye a country doctor in shirtsleeves, lifting a squalling newborn Freddie, a joyful smile on his face.
“Lady Charlotte, have you anything to say?” the solicitor asked, a snap to his words.
“Yes.” Lottie straightened her spine and looked the man in the eye. “What about Cousin Alex?”
1
Edinburgh, Scotland
October 12, 1820
Dr. Alexander Whitaker disliked surprises.
He particularly disliked surprises that altered carefully laid plans and strictly measured time. The sort that threatened to upend his life.
Surprises precisely like the shock of this moment.
“P-pardon?” Alex stuttered, washing blood off his hands before reaching for a towel. “Could ye please repeat that last wee bit? I cannae have heard ye correctly.”
Mr. Carter—a man whose card proclaimed him to be a solicitor with Carter, Mason, & Smith LLP of London—shifted his bag from one hand to the other.
They stood in the consultation room of Alex’s surgery on King Street in New Town, the room awash in the pale morning light. Muted traffic sounded from the road outside.
“As I said,” Mr. Carter replied, “you are the sole surviving male descendant of the Lords Lockheade. The title and its extensive entailed holdings have devolved upon you.”
A long pause.
The solicitor’s eyes dropped to the blood splattered on Alex’s surgical apron. The man swallowed, face paling.
“Surely there has been a mistake.” Alex’s pulse raced, a precursor to full-out panic.
