“I am glad one of us knows their way around the city,” Bella said, smiling. Then she sobered. “I should be glad to have behind me whatever he has to tell me. I want that part of my life done and over with,” Bella strongly said.
Gwinnie’s maid looked across at her with an expression Bella couldn’t fathom, but suddenly she felt wary of the woman.
The ducal arms on the carriage doors drew a small crowd of curious passersby. Bella mused that their presence in front of Hargate, Owen, and Hargate may raise the local status of the solicitors. She allowed the groom who’d ridden at the back of the carriage to help her down.
When they walked through the door into the office, she was pleased with what she saw—a neat, respectable law firm office. With Harry, it was sometimes hard to know whom he would take his business to.
Three clerks sat at a long pine table, books scattered on the table next to and on top of stacks of papers. Only one—the youngest, by appearance—looked up and rose as they entered.
“How might we help you?” the young man said, bowing slightly.
“I have an appointment with Mr. Hargate,” Bella said. “I am Lady Isabella Blessingame, and this is Lady Guinevere Nowlton.”
The young man looked from one to the other and at Gwinnie’s maid standing behind them. “He was only expecting you, Lady Blessingame,” the young man said uncertainly.
“Did you truly expect a woman to come here alone,” Gwinnie demanded, looking down her nose at the man in much the manner of her grandmother.
“Yes, no! Of course not, but—”
“There is nobut,” Bella interrupted. “Inform Mr. Hargate we are here, and arrange a chair for Lady Guinevere’s maid to await us out here.”
“Immediately, my lady,” the young man said, his voice breaking slightly. “If you’ll follow me,” he said, leading them to a door in the back corner. “Michael,” he bawled out over his shoulder, “give the maid your chair!” Then he looked at them sweetly and opened the door. It led to a hallway to the back of the building and to a stairway landing. He led them up the narrow, steep stairs that opened onto a large, sunlit room. Bookshelves covered every spare space of the wall that did not have a window. Papers and worn, leather-bound books were stacked everywhere, including the hearth space that was now cold due to summer. A pine solicitor’s hutch sat behind the desk, while at the desk sat a tall man with a fringe of gray hair like a tonsured monk. He might have faded back into the bookshelves that lined the long, narrow office if it weren’t for his crimson jacquard waistcoat. He sat almost hidden behind the stacks of papers, some bound together, others in slip-shod towers ready to fall over across his wide desk.
“Lady Blessingame and Lady Guinevere Nowlton to see you, sir,” the young law clerk said from the top of the stairs.
The man jerked his head up. “Two ladies?” he asked.
“Yes,” Bella said from the top of the stairs, “surely you did not expect me to come to your place of business without companionship. To complete the niceties, Lady Guinevere’s maid is with us, at the moment, settled in your front office.” She swept past their escort upstairs and made her way into the office. Gwinnie followed close behind.
Bella stood before the man’s desk for a moment, but when he said nothing, just looked at her, bemused, she made a show of spreading her skirts out as she sat in the chair across from him. Gwinnie sat next to her. “Now, sir, you will explain to me why you summoned me to London and the situation we have before us. I was not pleased to receive your summons. I found it arrogant in the extreme for several reasons.”
She raised a gloved hand to tick off reasons on her fingers.
“One. Sir Harry has been dead for some time. Two. Only now, years later, you request I come to London to meet you to discuss additional aspects regarding Harry’s will, implying you hadn’t been totally forthcoming at the time of his death. Aside from this, I find it the height of rudeness for you to demand I come to you. If I hadn’t already been planning to return to London, I would have ignored your—how should I put it—summons? Three. Youdictatethe day and hour for the meeting, then when I arrive, you put me off for two days. Four. You arranged for me to stay in a hotel that you assured me was the height of propriety, yet proved otherwise. While there I was the subject of various rude and crude importuning. And five. Judging by your clerk’s attitude, you assumed I would come alone, though why, I cannot conceive.”
Bella tossed her head up. “I am forced to wonder, just what sort of woman do you believe me to be?”
From the doorway came clapping. Bella and Gwinnie turned to see a well-set-up man in an exquisitely tailored gray suit.
“I told you, Father, you are ham-handed,” the man laconically said, looking at Mr. Hargate seated at the desk, hunched lower behind his stacks of paper.
“Excuse me, ladies,” the man said, bowing slightly. “I am Richard Hargate, the second Hargate of Hargate, Owen, and Hargate. The clerk downstairs said you are Lady Blessingame and Lady Guinevere Nowlton?” he said, his voice rising to a question.
Bella inclined her head.
“Excellent,” he said. He languidly stripped off his gloves, then tucked his gloves in his hat, and set the hat atop a bookshelf by the door. He looked about the office, then selected a stack of papers on the desk to move to the floor and sat on the corner of the desk he’d cleared.
“Now, I feel I must tell you that my father is an excellent solicitor, but doesn’t do well with people, especially of the feminine variety. Sometimes I find it astounding that he ever married and had issue at all.”
The older man jerked his head up at that statement and glared at his son over his wire-framed glasses.
“My mother was a saint,” the younger Mr. Hargate continued. Behind him, his father frowned, but nodded.
Bella didn’t know why it would be so; however, that single reaction from the senior Mr. Hargate made her feel much more in charity with him.
Richard Hargate cocked his head to the side as he leaned forward, staring at Lady Guinevere. “Excuse me, my lady, you look familiar to me, but I can’t place from where. I am typically quite good at remembering people.”
Bella saw Gwinnie blush.
