that what Freddie Jennings told you?’ he asked. ‘I assume you have taken legal advice?’
‘Freddie offered to take Counsel’s opinion but, since Grandpa had several opportunities to remove the Codicil but chose not to, I don’t have much of a case.’ She lifted her shoulders in a gesture of utter helplessness. ‘It makes no difference. The truth is that there’s no cash to spare for legal fees. As it is, I’m going to have to sell a load of stuff to meet the inheritance tax bill. Even if I won, the costs would be so high that I’d have to sell the house to pay them. And if I lost…’
If she lost it would mean financial ruin.
Well, that would offer a certain amount of satisfaction. But nowhere near as much as the alternative that gave him everything he wanted.
‘So you’re telling me that the only reason you can’t take care of Nancie is because you’re about to lose the house? If you were married, there would be no problem,’ he said. He didn’t wait for her answer—it hadn’t been a question. ‘And your birthday is on the second of December. Well, it’s tight, but it’s do-able.’
‘Do-able?’ she repeated, her forehead buckled in a frown. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘A quick trip to the register office, a simple “I do”, you get to keep your house and I’ll have somewhere safe for Nancie. As her aunt-in-law, I don’t imagine there would be any objection to you taking care of her?’
And he would be able to finally scratch the itch that was May Coleridge while dancing on the grave of the man who’d shamed and humiliated him.
But if he’d imagined that she’d fling her arms around him, proclaim him her saviour, well, nothing had changed there, either.
Her eyes went from blank to blazing, like lightning out of a clear blue sky.
‘That’s not even remotely funny, Adam. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a house full of guests who’ll be expecting lunch in a couple of hours.’
She was wearing shabby sweats but swept by him, head high, shoulders back. Despite her lack of inches, the fact that her puppy fat hadn’t melted away but had instead evolved into soft curves, she was every inch the lady.
‘Mouse…’ he protested, shaken out of his triumph by the fact that, even in extremis, she’d turn him down flat. As if he was still a nobody from the wrong side of the tracks. ‘May!’
She was at the door before she stopped, looked back at him.
‘I’m serious,’ he said, a touch more sharply than he’d intended.
She shook her head. ‘It’s impossible.’
In other words, he might wear hand stitched suits these days instead of the cheapest market jeans, live in an apartment that had cost telephone numbers, be able to buy and sell the Coleridge estate ten times over, but he could never wash off the stink of where he’d come from. That his sister had been a druggie, his mother was no better than she ought to be and his father had a record as long as his arm.
But times had changed. He wasn’t that kid any more. What he wanted, he took. And he wanted this.
‘It would be a purely temporary arrangement,’ he said. ‘A marriage of convenience.’
‘Are you saying that you wouldn’t expect…?’
She swallowed, colour flooding into her cheeks, and it occurred to him that if Michael Linton’s courtship had been choreographed by her grandfather it would have been a formal affair rather than a lust-fuelled romance. The thought sent the blood rushing to a very different part of his anatomy and he was grateful for the full stiff folds of the dressing gown he was wearing.
She cleared her throat. ‘Are you saying that you wouldn’t expect the full range of wifely duties?’
Not the full range. He wouldn’t expect her to cook or clean or keep house for him.
‘Just a twenty-four seven nanny,’ she continued, regaining her composure, assuming his silence was assent. ‘Only with more paperwork, a longer notice period and a serious crimp in your social life?’
‘I don’t have much time for a social life these days,’ he assured her before she could gather herself. ‘But there are formal business occasions where I would normally take a guest. Civic functions. But you usually attend those, anyway.’
Nancie, as if aware of the sudden tension, let out a wail and, using the distraction to escape the unexpected heat of May’s eyes, he picked her up, put her against his shoulder, turned to look at her.
‘Well? What do you say?’
She shook her head, clearly speechless, and the band holding her hair slipped, allowing wisps to escape.
Backlit by the sun, they shone around her face like a butterscotch halo.
‘What have you got to lose?’ he persisted, determined to impose his will on her. Overwrite the Coleridge name with his own.
‘Marriage is a lot easier to get into than it is to get out of,’ she protested. Still, despite every advantage, resisting him. ‘There has to be an easier solution to baby care than marrying the first woman to cross your path.’
‘Not the first,’ he replied. ‘I passed several women in the park and I can assure you that it never crossed my mind to marry any of them.’
‘No?’
He’d managed to coax the suggestion of a smile from her.
‘Divorce is easy enough if both parties are in agreement,’ he assured her. ‘You’ll be giving up a year of your freedom in return for your ancestral home. It looks like a good deal to me.’
The smile did not materialise. ‘I can see the advantage from my point of view,’ she said. ‘But what’s in it for you? You can’t really be that desperate to offload Nancie.’
‘Who said anything about “offloading” Nancie?’ He allowed himself to sound just a little bit offended by her suggestion that he was doing that. ‘On the contrary, I’m doing my best to do what her mother asked. It’s not as if I intend to leave you to manage entirely on your own. I have to go away tomorrow, but I’ll pull my weight until then.’
‘Oh, right. And how do you intend to do that?’
‘I’ll take the night watch. The master bedroom is made up. I’ll pack a bag and move in there today.’
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