Page 1 of The Inheritance At Bourton

Chapter One

Leah hadn’t slept.

She'd drifted off somewhere around two in the morning. It had been the kind of sleep that left you more exhausted than when you closed your eyes. She tossed and turned, replaying snippets of conversations and images. Mostly, she lay in the dark with her hands folded on her chest like a person in a coffin, staring at the ceiling and thinking.

Her thoughts had flitted between the relationship with Rowan, which was unexpected and amazing. She felt seen. Heard. Cared for. Rowan was the first man in a long time that she’d considered having a real relationship with. They already had a friendship. He was different from any man she dated in the US.

Rowan made her smile. He was smart. Witty. The highlight of her day was being in his presence. The night before had been wonderful. She felt settled and connected for the first time in her entire life.

But Madeline Hargrove was also real, unfortunately.

Ask him what he knows.

It was like the universe caught a glimpse of Leah finding true happiness and sent Madeline to interrupt. No happiness for Leah. Nope.

Madeline said it like she was doing Leah a favor. Like she was the one person in the entire village finally willing to tell William Ellsworth's daughter the truth. Leah had turned around and looked at Rowan, who had dropped his head.

That had been enough. His face had told her everything before he'd said a word. Everything she thought she had learned about her late father and the sordid story that landed Leah and her mother in the United States alone and impoverished had yet another layer of mystery.

She gave up on sleep before five.

She padded across the cold floor to the closet and pulled out the sweater she'd found weeks ago in a box of her father's things. Heavy wool, oatmeal colored, enormous. She'd taken to wearing it in the mornings when the house was at its coldest. She pulled it over her head and pushed the sleeves up past her wrists and went downstairs.

The kitchen was dark. The garden beyond the window was darker. She could see the fog sitting heavy over the grass, the hedgerows reduced to shapes, and the stone wall bordering the property barely visible. Out here, this far from the main road, the silence was endless and all-encompassing. It had been a little nerve-racking at first.

But she’d settled into the quiet.

She filled the kettle and set it on the stove. Tea now, coffee later. Her nerves were still fried.

She remembered last night in fragments. The lantern walk had been beautiful in a way she hadn’t expected. She recalled the procession to the river, the lanterns shining in the Windrush. Rowan's hand rested on her back. The lanterns floated into the night as she stood next to him, wishing for something she couldn't quite name. His hand found hers. When she turned to look at him, he was already watching her.

She'd thought, standing there in the water meadow, that it was the first time in a very long time she'd felt like something good was about to happen to her. Her whole life had been spent waiting for the next bad thing: the next eviction, the next car breakdown. Her life had consisted of getting by and hoping there wasn’t another catastrophe before she recovered from the last.

She’d rarely had time to recover. It wasn’t until she arrived at Bourton-on-the-Water that she finally got a chance to rest, heal from her car accident, and think about her future.

Then Madeline Hargrove had materialized out of the dark like a bad omen in designer wool.

The kettle began to rattle. She poured her tea, stood at the window, and stared at the fog.

She thought about what Madeline had said. A clause concerning legitimate heirs. She turned the phrase over. She was the legitimate heir. William Ellsworth was her father. He'd put her name in the deed himself, sent for her himself, and left her a plane ticket, a trust fund, and forty years’ worth of apology. He hadn't done any of that for someone he wasn't sure about.

But Madeline's voice had been very certain.

And Rowan had dropped his head—a sure sign of guilt.

She turned away from the window.

Normally, she would go to his cottage for breakfast.

She couldn’t right then. Rowan knew there was a question about her parentage and never said a word. He’d spent countless hours helping her go through her father’s library in search of the truth.

And the whole time he’d known there was another shoe that was about to drop.

She made a second cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table. Her gaze fixed on the garden emerging from the evaporating fog. The place she had such grand plans for. Plans that might not even be possible if the estate was not hers.

She thought about her mother, who had never really understood the family she married into. She remembered how young her parents looked in that Las Vegas chapel. The woman in those photos, beautiful and smiling, was not the same mother Leah had known growing up.

They were happy once.