had left huge holes in his memory and he hadn’t been able to warn her. She swallowed as an aching lump formed in her throat, but she refused to let the tears fall. To weep. ‘People got married so much younger back then,’ she added.
‘Back then, there wasn’t any alternative.’
‘No…’
Her mother had been a beneficiary of the feminist movement, one of that newly liberated generation of women who’d abandoned the shackles of a patriarchal society and chosen her own path. Motherhood without the bother of a man under her feet was the way she’d put it in one of the many articles she’d written on the subject.
As for her, well, she’d had other priorities.
‘You have to admit that it’s outrageous, Freddie. Surely I can challenge it?’
‘I’d have to take Counsel’s opinion and even if you went to court there is a problem.’
‘I think we are both agreed that I have a problem.’
He waited, but she shook her head. Snapping at Freddie wasn’t going to help. ‘Tell me.’
‘There can be no doubt that this restriction on inheritance would have been explained to your grandfather on each of the occasions when he rewrote his will. After his marriage, the birth of your mother, the death of your grandmother. He could have taken steps then to have this restriction removed. He chose to let it stand.’
‘Why? Why would he do that?’
Freddie shrugged. ‘Maybe because it was part of family tradition. Maybe because his father had left it in place. I would have advised removal but my great-uncle, your grandfather came from a different age. They saw things differently.’
‘Even so—’
‘He had three opportunities to remove the entailment and the Crown would argue that it was clearly his wish to let it stand. Counsel would doubtless counter that if he hadn’t had a stroke, had realised the situation you were in, he would have changed it,’ Freddie said in an attempt to comfort her.
‘If he hadn’t had a stroke I would be married to Michael Linton,’ she replied. Safely married. That was what he used to say. Not like her mother…
‘I’m sorry, May. The only guarantee I can give is that whichever way it went the costs would be heavy and, as you are aware, there’s no money in the estate to cover them.’
‘You’re saying that I’d lose the house anyway,’ she said dully. ‘That whatever I do I lose.’
‘The only people who ever win in a situation like this are the lawyers,’ he admitted. ‘Hopefully, you’ll be able to realise enough from the sale of the house contents, once the inheritance tax is paid, to provide funds for a flat or even a small house.’
‘They want inheritance tax and the house?’
‘The two are entirely separate.’
She shook her head, still unable to believe this was happening. ‘If it was going to some deserving charity I could live with it, but to have my home sucked into the Government coffers…’ Words failed her.
‘Your ancestor’s will was written at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The country was at war. He was a patriot.’
‘Oh, please! It was nothing but an arm twisted up the back of a philandering son. Settle down and get on with producing the next generation or I’ll cut you off without a shilling.’
‘Maybe. But it was added as an entailment to the estate and no one has ever challenged it. There’s still just time, May. You could get married.’
‘Is that an offer?’
‘Unfortunately, bigamy would not satisfy the legal requirements.’
Freddie Jennings had a sense of humour? Who knew?
‘You’re not seeing anyone?’ he asked hopefully.
She shook her head. There had only ever been one boy, man, who’d ever lit a fire in her heart, her body…
‘Between nursing Grandpa and running my own business, I’m afraid there hasn’t been a lot of time to “see” anyone,’ she said.
‘There’s not even a friend who’d be prepared to go through the motions?’
‘I’m all out of unattached men at the moment,’ she replied. ‘Well, there is Jed Atkins who does a bit for me in the garden now and then,’ she said, her grip on reality beginning to slip. ‘He’s in his seventies, but pretty lively and I’d have to fight off the competition.’
‘The competition?’
‘He’s very much in demand with the ladies at the Darby and Joan club, so I’m told.’
‘May…’ he cautioned as she began to laugh, but the situation was unreal. How could he expect her to take it seriously? ‘I think I’d better take you home.’
‘I don’t suppose you have any clients in urgent need of a marriage of convenience so that they can stay in the country?’ she asked as he ushered her from his office, clearly afraid that she was going to become hysterical.
He needn’t have worried. She was a Coleridge. Mary Louise Coleridge of Coleridge House. Brought up to serve the community, behave impeccably on all occasions, do the right thing even when your heart was breaking.
She wasn’t about to become hysterical just because Freddie Jennings had told her she was about to lose everything.
‘But if you are considering something along those lines,’ he warned as he held the car door for her, ‘please make sure he signs a prenuptial agreement or you’re going to have to pay dearly to get rid of him.’
‘Make that a lose/lose/lose situation,’ she said. Then, taking a step back, ‘Actually, I’d rather walk home. I need some fresh air.’
He said something but she was already walking away. She needed to be on her own. Needed to think.
Without Coleridge House, she would not only lose her home, but her livelihood. As would Harriet Robson, her grandfather’s housekeeper for more than thirty years and the nearest thing to a mother she’d ever known.
She’d have to find a job. Somewhere to live. Or, of course, a husband.
She bought the early edition of the local newspaper from the stand by the park gates to look at the sits vac and property columns. What a joke. There were no jobs for a woman weeks away from her thirtieth birthday who didn’t have a degree or even a typing certificate to her name. And the price of property in Maybridge was staggering. The lonely hearts column was a boom area, though, and, with a valuable house as an incentive, a husband might prove the easiest of the three to find. But, with three weeks until her birthday, even that was going to be a tough ask.
Adam Wavell looked from the sleeping infant tucked into the pink nest of her buggy to the note in his hand.
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
