“You’d know if you read your mail!” Emma glared at him now, clearly irritated.
I never read mail from Ashmead.For a long time, he had ignored even Emma’s until one Christmas in Lisbon when he grew maudlin over his fellow officers’ cheerful letters from home.
“You’d know about the will, too,” she went on. “He stripped the estate, and with less and less trade from the hall and fewer visitors, bad times fell on the valley. I thought if you returned, we might turn it—”
“What does this God-forsaken will have to do with me?” Her rambling irritated him. “Get to the point, Emma.”
She stared at him as if he were a madman. “You really don’t know, do you? I mean, you ignored Da’s mail and even mine until that note you sent three years ago, but I didn’t think you’d ignore the earl or Mr. Spangler.”
“Who the devil is Spangler?”
“The earl’s solicitor. Didn’t he notify you?”
The day Rob discovered he owed his commission as a lieutenant to the Earl of Clarion, he refused to accept any further interference from the man or his estate. He earned every promotion he got after that, to the disgust of officers who considered themselves his betters. Letters came. He burned them unopened. He studied his sister with narrowed eyes. “Notify me about what?”
“The will,” she repeated, emphasizing the word with exasperation. “What do you think we’re talking about?”
“We’re going in circles. What exactly does this will have to do with me? Are you trying to tell me he left me something?”
He almost missed her next words.
“Willowbrook. He left you Willowbrook,” she whispered.
Willowbrook?A vision of the woman, standing proud with her turnips and her musket, washed through him. “No,” he roared, “Hell no.” He reared up, almost toppling his chair, and leaned on the table with both fists. “He can’t make me into some damned landowner to suit his fancy.”
*
The next morning,he still struggled to digest what Emma had told him and still had no idea what to do about it. He sure as hell had no desire to confront the new earl. David Caulfield paraded his superiority over the innkeeper’s son their entire childhood. Rob had had enough aristocratic disdain from officers who resented his rise in rank, every one of them in finely tailored uniforms sent from Gieves & Hawkes in London by their titled fathers. He wasn’t about to submit to it in Ashmead.
But he had to do something. Better, he thought, to avoid the earl and confront Clarion’s man of business, Spangler, who Emma assured him had premises in Nottingham, a half day’s ride from The Willow and the Rose. A cacophony of confused thoughts and emotions rode with him. They couldn’t force him into some landed squire, and he wasn’t about to get mired in Ashmead.
He tried to forget the hope in his sister’s eyes. Even if he accepted this bequest, what difference would it make to the valley? Willowbrook appeared prosperous enough as it was.
An unpleasant idea wormed its way into his consciousness. The old man apparently left Rob the holding, but if the new earl believed he would never return to claim it, he might have continued to use it as he chose. The woman living there seemed to be on cozy terms with the earl.Is she his mistress?
The thought of her in David’s bed outraged him. A surge of jealousy flooded him, followed quickly by resentment.Willowbrook is mine. I may not want it, but David can damned well take his sordid affairs elsewhere.
Rob groaned at his contradictory emotions.I don’t want it. I don’t want some rope tying me to Ashmead, but I sure as hell don’t want the Earl of Clarion using it either.Confusion continued all the way to Nottingham, and Spangler didn’t help.
The man’s premises, filled as they were with thick carpets, dark paneling, and heavy furniture, struck Rob as the office of a social climber, a sprouting mushroom. Rob felt like washing his hands after the man’s limp handshake and condescending greeting.
“Baronet? That would amuse the previous earl, I can tell you,” the man oozed, his eyes glittering with some sort of private amusement. Rob didn’t see the humor. “It would explain why our correspondence went awry, wouldn’t it? We addressed plain Lieutenant Robert Benson, and here you are a major, eh, Sir Robert?”
Something in the way he saidSirtwisted Rob’s guts. He stifled the urge to throttle the man.
“As you see, Spangler. I’m told there was a will.”
“Yes, yes. You received a generous benefit. No cash, of course, but generous all the same. Biggest of the lot, in fact. More than all the others.”
“Others?”
“His lordship left gifts to many.” Again, some private joke lurked in the man’s eyes. His lips twitched as he eyed Rob. The wordbastardlurked in silence, at least in Rob’s mind.
“I presume you’re here to take possession,” the man said, clearly enjoying his authority.
“I’m here to refuse it,” Rob spat. Even as he said it, a possessive surge of resentment over a Clarion mistress in residence in his property made his mouth sour.
All good humor drained away, and Spangler’s brows flew up. “Refuse? One doesn’t refuse an inheritance. No. Can’t be done.”
