Page 18 of The Inheritance At Bourton

Meg brought the pot, poured, and set down a plate of teacakes neither of them had ordered. Then she pulled out the chair across from them and sat down herself.

"Well," Meg said. “What’d she do now?”

Leah explained it bit by bit. The estate was hers. It always had been, and now there was proof. Madeline's solicitors would get a letter from Whitfield before the week ended.

Meg's eyes filled, and she pressed her hand over her mouth. A tear slid down her cheek.

"Oh, thank God," Meg said. Her voice was thick. "Oh, thank God. Your father would have—" She stopped and shook her head and wiped her face with a napkin from the dispenser, laughing at herself. "Look at me. I don't cry.” She waved a hand. "Oh, Leah, love. I am so glad."

And that, of course, set Leah off again. She reached for a napkin when she noticed Dorothy and Pat were standing there.

"What's happened?" Pat demanded, looking between their faces. "Someone tell us this instant. Are you all right? Is it Madeline?"

"It's good news, for once," Meg said, wet-eyed and smiling. "Sit down, both of you, before you fall down."

They sat down. Leah had to tell the whole story again from the start, and this time she made it further before her voice shook.

"Madeline is going to be absolutely furious,” Pat said with a great deal of satisfaction.

Dorothy laughed. “Oh, yes, she is."

"She'll have to stop," Meg said. "There's nothing left to fight. It was always going to come out, whatever she thought she knew. Your father was too careful a man to leave it any other way." She looked at Leah for a long moment. "He'd be so glad you're here. I hope you know that. He'd be so glad it's you."

Leah hoped so.

The news would be everywhere by morning.

Let it spread, she thought. Let it reach the big house with the iron gate.

She and Rowan walked back to his truck. Rowan took her hand as they walked.

She had once told him she didn't know what it felt like to be settled. That she had never felt it, not even once.

She knew it now.

She belonged here. It had taken forty years, but she belonged here.

Chapter Eight

The house had been empty all afternoon, and it felt like it. Rowan went straight to the fireplace and knelt at the hearth to build the fire while Leah turned on the space heater and stood in the doorway of the library, looking at the wreckage.

The books had been on the floor for three days. She'd walked past them a dozen times on her way to and from the solicitor’s drama, and each time they'd looked like failure. She couldn’t bring herself to put them away—just in case.

"We don't have to start tonight," Rowan said.

“I’m sick of looking at it.”

“I’ll help,” he said.

All the little treasures were put to the side. Leah planned on putting them in a scrapbook. She didn’t know what any of it was, but it felt wrong to throw any of it away.

By nine, the far wall was done. By ten, they'd cleared the desk and most of the floor. The fire had warmed the house to something almost comfortable.

"I want to talk about the lantern walk,” she said while working on a shelf.

He turned to look at her, a book in each hand.

"All right," he said.