Page 3 of The Truth About Lord Stoneville
Damned right he wouldn’t. She’d done the unthinkable. He could never forgive her for that. Or himself for letting it happen.
The door opened and their grandmother entered, followed by the family solicitor, Elias Bogg. They collectively sucked in a breath. The presence of an attorney boded ill.
As Bogg took a seat, Gran stopped at the head of the table, a look of utter weariness etching lines in her already fully etched face. A new sort of guilt stabbed Oliver. She looked even older than her seventy-one years these days, as if the weight of her responsibilities had stooped her shoulders and shortened her height.
He’d tried persuading her to step down as head of the brewery that their grandfather had founded. She needed to hire a manager, but she refused. She liked the work, she said. What was she to do, stay in the country and embroider? Then she would laugh at the idea of a brewer’s widow doing embroidery.
Perhaps she had reason to laugh. Hester “Hetty” Plumtree was what many would call “common.” Her parents had kept the tavern where she’d met her husband, and the two of them had turned Plumtree Brewery into an empire big enough to afford the finest schools for Oliver’s mother, Prudence. Big enough to enable Prudence to snare an impoverished marquess for a husband.
Gran always reveled in the fact that her daughter had managed an alliance with one of the oldest branches of English aristocracy. But she could never hide the taintof “trade” clinging to her own skirts. It crept out at odd moments—when she enjoyed a spot of ale with her dinner or laughed at a bawdy joke.
Still, she was determined that her grandchildren become what she could not: true aristocrats. Gran hated their tendency to outrage the society that regarded them as the ne’er-do-well spawn of a scandalous couple. Due to her struggle to move her family up in the world, she felt entitled to see the fruits of that labor in good marriages and fine great-grandchildren, and it angered her that none of her grandchildren were rushing to accommodate her.
Oliver supposed she had some right to feel that way. Though she’d often been absent during their youth, busy running Plumtree Brewery after her husband died, she was the closest thing to a mother the younger ones had ever had. That was why they adored her.
As did he, when he wasn’t fighting with her over money.
“Sit down, Oliver.” She fixed him with her sharp blue gaze. “Your pacing makes me nervous.”
He stopped pacing, but didn’t sit.
With a frown, she squared her shoulders. “I have made a decision about you children,” she said, as if they were still in leading strings. She scanned the room, her voice growing steely as she said, “It is high time you settled down. So I am giving you a year, during which matters will remain as they are. Then I mean to cut you off—every single one of you. You will be cut out of my will, as well.” She ignored their collective gasp. “Unless . . .” She paused for effect.
Oliver ground his teeth. “Unless what?”
Her gaze turned to him. “Unless you marry.”
He should have expected this. At thirty-five, he was well past the age when most men of rank took wives. Gran often bemoaned the fact that there was still no heir to the title, but who in their right mind would want to see this benighted line continue? His parents had married for money, and the result had been disaster. No matter how low Oliver’s finances sank, he wasn’t about to repeat the error.
Gran knew how he felt, and for her to use his siblings to ensure that he danced to her tune was a painful betrayal.
“You would leave my brothers and sisters destitute just to get me leg-shackled?” he bit out.
“You misunderstand,” she said coolly. “When I say ‘you,’ I mean the whole lot of you.” She turned her gaze to include his brothers and sisters. “You must all marry before the year is out, or say good-bye to your inheritance. What is more, I will let my lease on the town house lapse, since I only stay there because the girls are there. There will be no dowries for them, and I will no longer foot the bill for Gabe and Jarret’s bachelor quarters in London and the stabling of their horses. If you five do not marry, that is the end of my support. You will be Oliver’s responsibility and Oliver’s alone.”
Oliver groaned. The cumbersome estate he’d inherited scraped by, but it was far from self-sufficient.
Gabe shot up from the table. “Gran, you can’t do that! Where will the girls live? Where will Jarret and I live?”
“Here at Halstead Hall, I suppose,” she said with no apparent remorse.
Oliver scowled at her. “You know perfectly well that’s impossible. I would have to open the place up.”
“And God forbid he do that,” Jarret said, with a note of sarcasm. “Besides, he’s got the income from the estate to support him. So even if the rest of us do as you ask, he doesn’t have to, so we’ll be penalized when he refuses.”
“Those are my terms,” she said coldly. “They are not negotiable, my boy.”
No matter what Jarret thought, Gran had to know that Oliver wouldn’t let his siblings suffer. She’d finally found a way to make them toe her line: use their affection for each other, the one constant in their lives.
It was brilliant. It was diabolical. And probably the only scheme that would work.
Jarret might tell her to go to hell if it were only him involved, but he wouldn’t sentence his sisters to live as spinsters or governesses. Minerva, who made a bit of money from her books, might thumb her nose at Gran’s terms and attempt to live off her earnings, but she also wouldn’t sentence the others to poverty.
Each of them would worry about the others. Which meant they would all feel compelled to do as she commanded, even Oliver.
“You could make this place self-sufficient if you wanted,” she pointed out. “Perhaps if the five of you split the duties of running it . . .” She paused to shoot Oliver an arch glance. “Or if your brother took more of an interestin it, instead of leaving it to his steward and spending his days wenching and drinking, it might bring in enough to keep you all comfortable.”
Oliver suppressed a hot retort. She knew why he could barely stand the sight of the place. Father had married Mother for her money so he could save the precious family seat, and Oliver would be damned if he let this blasted estate and everything it represented destroy him as it had his parents.
