Page 64 of Baron in Check
“I beg your pardon?” Hermy blinked.
“You’re here to claim the title, are you not?” David asked.
“He is,” List went to David’s side and gave him a strong pat on the back, then massaged his shoulder.
The young man flinched and stepped aside. “I’ve come for the title, but not that of the Earl.” His eyes locked with List.
“I heard that Lady Hermy’s guardian is Baron Gregory Stone.”
“That’s me,” Greg said.
“The Black Knight,” the man said in awe. “I’ve long waited for a chance to play you.”
“Play me?”
“You see, the young gentleman here has gambled away his rights,” List said with a self-indulgent grin. “To me.”
“Which rights?”
“The inheritance. His claim to the Earldom and the heiress.”
“Did you sidestep English law to get to me, List?” Greg asked.
List’s icy blue eyes lightened even further, making his face look hollow as his pupils shrank to tiny dots of black. But there was no hiding his dark soul. “Or did you lose to him and this is your revanche?” List wasn’t merely trying to stop Hermy and Greg’s union, he wanted the earldom for himself. And Sofia was ready to spread the word that she’d be a Duchess then. It all made sense now and why she’d informed the newspapers.
“Must I remind you that conspiring against a Peer of the Realm is an offense?” Greg said.
“You need not remind me, it’s none of my concern. His fortune has nothing to do with me,” List spoke in a stronger German accent than usual. He was nervous.
“And yet, you swooped right in to seize the only man with a claim on an Earldom?” Arnold took a wide stance next to Greg.
List shrugged.
“At the ideal and opportune moment,” Arnold added. “When Greg’s engagement announcement was in all the newspapers in Town.”
List tilted his head.
“Why the inventory then?” Hermy ventured.
“I lost it to him,” David said.
“You don’t even have it yet. The laws of abeyance set it aside until I marry,” Hermy said as she took the paper from the solicitor.
“The deadline ends tomorrow,” List sputtered. “But now that you’re here, there won’t be time to manage a wedding before theFristende… I just cannot remember the correct word for it in English.”
Arnold narrowed his eyes. “You set a trap.” The residency complication had been a decoy to lure Greg and Hermy away from the Archbishop, so it would take longer to marry and List had time to secure his alleged claim to the earldom. Ever the cunning strategist, List had thought of everything.
“You are all the same, baptized Jews or not. I hung a piece of cheese out and the vermin storm the fortress.”
David nodded. “He did predict you’d follow, like the Pied Piper.”
“Who did you call a rat?” Greg shouted, balling a fist.
“Nobody, Baron. It was you who felt addressed by the insult.” List smiled venomously.
“It’s his Jewish blood; it’ll soil his line forever,” David said. “You were right, it’s best to split the earldom from the heiress.”
Arnold seethed in the background, but Greg stepped forward before Arnold could speak. “How dare you insult me and my friends in my fiancée’s home?”
