“I have things to do before noon. Webb and I have things toattend to.” He inclined his head, slightly more stiffly than he intended. “Grandmother. Megan.”
“The pike was an excellent pike,” Megan said, her voice perfectly composed except for the way it wasn’t.
He left before either of them could say anything further.
* * *
The walkto Carmichael’s offices in Gray’s Inn took rather longer than it should have, because Oliver walked there directly instead of taking the carriage, and he used the time to think.
Megan had smiled. Not the careful, managed expressions she usually deployed, the ones that communicated what she wanted without giving anything away, but an actual smile, involuntary and entirely unguarded, the sort that began behind the eyes and arrived on the face before the person wearing it had decided whether it was permitted. He had seen it for approximately four seconds before she caught herself.
It occurred to him that he had no idea how often Megan had the opportunity to laugh over the past fourteen years. He suspected the answer was very rarely and only when it was sanctioned, and the thought of it sat in his chest like a coal, small and burning.
He arrived at Gray’s Inn in a state of mind he would not have described to anyone who asked.
Carmichael’s office smelled of coal smoke and old paper in roughly equal measure, a smell that had not changed since Oliver had first come here as a young man to review the terms of his majority. The solicitor himself had changed considerably less than the room. He was a compact, careful man somewhere in his fifties with a precise manner and the ability to deliver catastrophic information in exactly the same tone he used to discuss the weather. Oliver had always found this quality both useful and profoundly unsettling.
“My lord.” Carmichael rose, gestured to the chair, waited until Oliver had settled before resuming his own seat. He had a folder open before him on the desk, and the way he looked at it before looking at Oliver told Oliver most of what he needed to know before a word was spoken. “I’m glad you came directly. I’ve been waiting to reach you.”
“What’s happened?”
Carmichael opened the folder and turned it, sliding it across the desk. Oliver looked at the document without picking it up. Penharrow’s solicitor’s mark was at the top. The language was dense and formal, but the shape was legible within seconds.
He read it twice.
“He’s filed guardianship papers,” he said.
“Filed and, as of three days ago, formally submitted to the relevant court.” Carmichael’s voice was even. “The petition claims that the young woman known as Megan—he gives no surname, notes that none is established—is the daughter of one Thomas Bryce, formerly Penharrow’s man of business. Bryce died in the spring of last year. According to the petition, Bryce entrusted his daughter to Lord Penharrow’s care before his death, with no surviving family to take her in. The document describes the arrangement as one of charitable protection.” A pause. “That is his word. Charitable.”
Oliver looked up.
“The timeline,” he said.
“The timeline,” Carmichael agreed, “does not hold together under scrutiny. If Bryce died in the spring of last year, his daughter would have only been in Penharrow’s keeping for approximately eighteen months. If she is, as you described her to me in your letter, approximately twenty-one years of age, and she was taken as a child of seven, then this is fraudulent.” He folded his hands on the desk. “Nothing aligns. If Bryce only died last spring, then Megan would have only been placed with Penharrow last spring. Not fourteen years ago.”
“Exactly.”
“The difficulty,” Carmichael said carefully, “is that I cannot prove the discrepancy without evidence. Penharrow’s documentation is—” he paused in a way that suggested he was choosing his words with great precision “—thorough. A death certificate for Thomas Bryce. A letter, apparently in Bryce’s hand, expressing his wishes regarding his daughter’s welfare. A record of Penharrow’s household accounts showing expenditure on a ward from the time in question.”
“From last year.”
“From last year. Yes.” Carmichael met his eyes. “The records begin from when they would need to begin to make the story consistent. Not from fourteen years ago, because the story does not require them to go back that far. A ward taken in out of charity a year and a half ago. Quite unremarkable. Quite legal.”
Oliver was quiet for a moment.
He had known, intellectually, that Penharrow would not simply allow Megan to vanish. A man of his standing did not hold a prisoner for fourteen years and then watch her walk out without attempting to reclaim her through whatever means available. But there had been a part of him—a part Oliver would not now examine too closely—that had assumed the legal complexity would fall on his side of the equation. That the simple fact of the thing, what had been done to Megan, would be sufficient to anchor his position.
Now there was no choice. Megan would be required to tell her story. Publicly. In detail. Before men who would weigh her word against Penharrow’s documents, a peer, and find it…
“Which court?” he asked.
“Court of Chancery. The petition was filed on the grounds of concern for the welfare of the ward, who has been separated from her guardian’s protection. Guardianship cases of this nature are typically resolved in a matter of weeks. He’s claiming you kidnapped her.”
“Weeks.”
“Three to six, depending on the court’s calendar.” Carmichael’s voice had not changed. It never changed. “My lord, I want to be direct with you. The petition is, on its face, legitimate. The court will look at the documents, and they will appear to be in order. Unless you can present evidence that contradicts Penharrow’s account—evidence of a documentary nature, not simply testimony from a young lady—then the court is likely to find in his favor and order the return of his ward.”
“Megan’s testimony isn’t evidence?”
