“Preposterous!” Selwyn said again. “That cannot be the correct document!”
“I assure you, it is,” Mr. Walcot said.
“And I’m telling you it is the wrong one, man!” Selwyn said heatedly, all pretense of joviality gone. “I saw it before—and it named Tarquin, I saw it!”
“It used to,” Mr. Walcot agreed. “But the late earl instructed me to amend this line only a fortnight before his death.”
Selwyn’s puce face turned white.
“Your quarrel,” Lady Selwyn whispered.
“We were discussing a loan—it was just business,” Selwyn breathed. “He cannot have, he would not have—”
Ah, so that was why they had argued: Selwyn had requested a loan. Eliza could have warned him against such foolishness—indeed, Selwyn must have been desperate for he would most certainly have known that the incurably frugal and exceedingly proud late earl considered appeals to his purse the very height of impertinence.
“I assure you that on this—and every other matter—the late earl was quite clear,” Mr. Walcot said calmly. “The lands are to go to Lady Somerset.”
Selwyn rounded upon Eliza.
“What poison did you whisper in his ear?” he snapped.
“How dare—” Mrs. Balfour was swelling with indignation.
“Selwyn!” Somerset’s voice rang out, cold and remonstrative, and Selwyn took a step back from Eliza.
“My apologies—I did not mean . . . A—a regrettable lapse in manners . . .”
Lady Selwyn was not cowed. “What of the morality clause? Did my uncle give any other elaboration—any indication of what kind of behavior was meant?”
“I do not see how that is relevant,” Mrs. Balfour said, “given my daughter’s reputation is unimpeachable.”
“Given that my uncle felt it appropriate to include in his will, it feels very relevant, Mrs. Balfour,” Lady Selwyn said sharply.
“We intend no disrespect,” Mrs. Courtenay interjected. “Lady Somerset knows we are very fond of her.”
Lady Somerset very much did not know this.
“All the late earl specified is that the interpretation of the clause is at the discretion of the eleventh Earl of Somerset—and no one else,” Mr. Walcot said.
Selwyn, Lady Selwyn and Mrs. Courtenay all opened their mouths to argue, but Somerset interrupted.
“If the bequeathment was my uncle’s wish, I certainly do not have an issue with it,” Somerset said, voice firm.
“Of course, of course,” Selwyn had clawed back some geniality. “But, my dear boy, I think it would behoove us to discuss what sort of behavior would constitute—”
“I disagree,” Somerset said, speaking in a quietly confident manner and seeming not at all bothered by the glares of his family. “And unless Lady Somerset has changed a great deal since I was last upon British soil, she is incapable of causing even a raised eyebrow.”
Eliza looked down, her cheeks reddening. In times past, while she had admired Somerset’s conviction, in her he had bemoaned the opposite.
“Exactly,” Mrs. Balfour agreed, her voice satisfied.
“But given the unusual nature of such a clause,” Somerset went on. “I think it ought to remain amongst us, only. None of us would want to cause any gossip, after all.”
There were nods of agreement from around the room—the Balfours enthusiastic, the Selwyns reluctant, while Mrs. Courtenay looked about to cry again.
There was a long, long pause.
“How much income do the estates yield yearly?” Selwyn asked.
Mr. Walcot made a brief reference to his notes.
“On average,” he said, “they yield an income of just above nine thousand pounds a year. With her jointure, altogether it is an income of ten thousand annually.”
Ten thousand pounds a year.
Ten thousand pounds. Every year.
She was rich.
She was very rich.
Richer than Lady Oxford or Lady Pelham, those celebrated heiresses, the diamonds of their respective Seasons; richer than many of the lords in Whitehall. Could it really be true? Her husband had never given any indication that Eliza was anything other than a perpetual disappointment to him. Inferior to his first wife in every way, and yet similarly unable to give him a son. And yet now, his spite—his displeasure at Selwyn’s behavior—had caused him to show Eliza a generosity that she had never felt in his lifetime. Ten thousand pounds a year. He had made Eliza a very wealthy woman.
Eliza felt as if the thread tying her to normalcy had just been cut, and she was spinning away and away. She could not have repeated a single thing else that happened in the rest of the reading, only registering its conclusion when everyone began to stand and, mechanically, she too followed suit. The refrain of “ten thousand pounds a year” was rebounding around her mind like the loudest of echoes, preventing her from thinking of anything else.
“Ten thousand pounds!” Margaret whispered excitedly in her ear, as they filed out. “Do you understand what this means?”
Eliza twitched her head, whether in a nod or shake, she did not know.
“It will change everything, Eliza!”
2
The following afternoon found Eliza standing upon Harefield’s front steps, ready to bid her guests farewell. Only Margaret, who had acted as Eliza’s companion since the earl’s death and would continue to do so for a fortnight longer, was to stay, and Eliza could hardly wait for Harefield to be their own again. Eliza heard her parents before she saw them, Mr. Balfour barking commands to the footmen, Mrs. Balfour reprimanding the maids, and as they appeared through the oak front doors, she took in a fortifying breath.
“You can do it,” Margaret whispered in her ear. It had been plain, in the hours since the will reading, that Mr. Balfour fully expected to hold the purse strings of Eliza’s new fortune. This would be Eliza’s final chance to disabuse her parents of this notion.
“We shall see you in a few weeks, of course,” Mrs. Balfour said.
“You mustn’t tarry, the roads will only worsen,” Mr. Balfour instructed.
“I wondered if—” Eliza began tentatively.
“By then, all your most pressing financial business will be managed,” Mrs. Balfour said. “Won’t they, husband?”
“Yes, I have already spoken to Mr. Walcot.”
This being the most heartfelt farewell Mr. Balfour could muster, he gave Eliza a sharp nod and disappeared down the steps, leaving Eliza with her mother—the more forbidding opponent.