He nodded and slipped past her toward the dim hallway. Only once he was inside the sanctuary of the study, the door closed firmly behind him, did he reach into his pocket and draw out the bundled letters. He laid them on the desk, smoothing the creases where they had bent against him. The first he opened was from the bank. The next from a supplier with whom he had never been in arrears before. A third—another refusal from Manchester.
He set them aside grimly. Then he reached the final envelope.
He recognized the seal immediately:Heneage & Wilberforce, Solicitors. Oxford.
Bell’s solicitors. That would be news of his new contract.
Without sitting, he broke the seal.
“Sir,
You are requested to attend our London offices on the twenty-third instant at eleven o’clock, in connection with the estate of the late Mr. Bell…”
He read it twice. A third time.
The words did not alter. They only settled more heavily—as though the paper itself had gained weight.
London?At Christmastime? For what, the reading of the will?
He let the letter fall to the desk.
This was no lease renewal. No ordinary formality. What possible business could require him in London?
The mill was Bell’s property, yes, but tenants were seldom summoned halfway across the country merely to be told their rent would rise. Unless—his jaw locked—unless Bell’s heirs intended to examine every inch of his accounts before deciding whether he was worth keeping on.
In his present condition…
God help him.
The fire snapped softly in the grate. The house around him was silent—too silent. A month ago, he would have scoffed at the notion of being summoned by strangers to justify his stewardship of the mill he had built with his own hands. Now, he could not afford such pride. Not when the cracks in Marlborough Mills were becoming visible to every eye in Milton.
He folded the summons carefully, though his fingers trembled.
A journey to London in two days’ time. In the most precarious winter of his life. To answer for matters he did not understand.
Whatever awaited him there, it would not be comfort.
And it would not be mercy.
The hansom deposited herat a narrow street just off Chancery Lane, the kind of place where black-coated clerks scurried in and out of tall, solemn buildings. Margaret stepped down, drew her cloak close against the biting wind, and looked up at the discreet brass plate beside the door:
Heneage & Wilberforce, Solicitors.
The moment she entered, the dim hush of legal business settled around her like a chain. A clerk—very young, very earnest—rose from his stool at once.
“Miss Hale? This way, if you please.”
She followed him down a carpeted passage into a small, dignified office where a single fire crackled in the grate. The senior solicitor, Mr. Harcourt, rose from behind a broad mahogany desk as she entered.
“Miss Hale,” he said warmly, bowing. “We are delighted to receive you. Pray sit. We shall begin in just a moment—we are, ah—waiting on one final party before we conclude the necessary formalities.”
Margaret paused mid-curtsy. “Waiting?” she echoed.
“Merely a technical requirement in Mr. Bell’s will,” he assured her, gesturing her toward the chair opposite his own. “Nothing to give you the slightest concern.”
She sat. “Of course.”
“May I offer you tea, Miss Hale?” Mr. Harcourt asked.
