Page 30 of A Convenient Fiction

“You didn’t.”

“Teddy…does it mean so very much to you to gain control of things?”

“You know it doesn’t. I was going to drop it all in your lap. But this is different. Weatherwax isn’t family. He’s an encroaching buzzard. God knows what state our finances are truly in.”

“If my brother were alive…” Aunt Charlotte wrung her hands. “He can’t have meant for any of this to happen.”

Laura ignored her. “It seems to me that we have three options, none of them very good.”

Teddy and Aunt Charlotte both fell quiet, their gazes settling on Laura in silent expectation.

Laura took a steadying breath. “First, we can permit Mr. Weatherwax to maintain control of our finances and our property.”

Teddy exploded with anger. “How can you even suggest—”

Aunt Charlotte’s voice rose to match his. “That man can’t be trusted an inch—”

“Yes, yes.” Laura held up a hand. “But we must consider, if Mr. Weatherwax maintains control, we shall go on—I assume—much in the same way we have been since Papa died. Things will be tight, but we shall rub along well enough as long as no catastrophe befalls us. If circumstances become too grim, we can always consider selling one of the properties.”

Aunt Charlotte’s lips thinned. “I cannot like it, Laura.”

“Nor I.” Teddy folded his arms. “What’s our second option?”

Magpie chose that moment to uncurl himself, stand up, and perform a languorous stretch. When he’d finished, he jumped from the bed, landing on the wood floor with a thump. The door creaked on its hinges as he let himself out of the room.

Laura rubbed her forehead. She could feel the beginnings of a megrim. “We can hire another solicitor to challenge Mr. Weatherwax. We’d have to borrow the money to pay him somehow. Perhaps from Henrietta? She’s never been tightfisted. And then…we’d just have to hope that the new solicitor would prevail. For if he didn’t…”

“If he didn’t,” Aunt Charlotte said grimly, “then we’d have made an enemy of Weatherwax to no good purpose.”

Laura nodded. “Exactly. And I don’t like to say so, but…I sense a vindictiveness in Mr. Weatherwax. If we fought him and lost, I suspect he would show us no mercy.”

Teddy’s narrow face had gone a shade paler, the blue shadows under his eyes becoming more pronounced. “And our third option?”

Laura’s stomach clenched into a knot. “That’s a bit trickier.” She hesitated, her mouth suddenly dry. “By rights, a half interest in Hayes’s Perfumes should be mine.”

“Only if you marry before your twenty-fifth birthday, my dear,” Aunt Charlotte said. “And even then, the half interest would belong to your husband, not to you. My brother didn’t believe in ladies involving themselves in the family business. Foolish man.”

“I daresay Papa thought he was being fair and equitable. He didn’t allow for the fact that I’d be a spinster, and Teddy would be an invalid.”

“It hardly matters now,” Aunt Charlotte replied. “With you unmarried, the whole of it goes to Teddy. And since Weatherwax is going to claim Teddy is too frail to take control—”

“But if you marry—” Teddy looked at Laura, his gaze burning with a new intensity. “You would have a half share.”

Laura gave her brother a rueful grimace. “My husband would, anyway.”

“Husband?” Aunt Charlotte looked between the two of them in confusion. “What husband?”

“And therein lies the difficulty.” Laura leaned back in her seat. “Who would I marry? Or—more to the point—who in the world could be prevailed upon to marry me?”

Aunt Charlotte stopped pacing and turned to face them. “Why, it must be George Wright, of course! Heaven’s above, I don’t know why I didn’t see it straightaway. You’ve always worn the willow for him. And now he’s returned—”

“Not George,” Laura said, a touch sharply. “Even if he did wish to marry me—which he doesn’t—”

“How do you know—?”

“I know. I also know that I’d never marry him. Not if he were the last gentleman on earth.”

Aunt Charlotte’s face fell. “But then…what other choice is there? Single gentlemen aren’t in abundance in Lower Hawley. Certainly none who would be willing to marry into a family such as ours.”