Page 2 of Her Impeccable Scoundrel
Chapter One
April 1824
“I’m afraid there’s a challenge to the will, my lord.”
Graeme Blatchfield, new Earl of Chilcombe, suppressed a shudder. He wasn’t yet used to this elevated rank, and the news the solicitor’s clerk imparted was more than an unhappy wrinkle in his plans.
The young clerk, Mr. Emory, couldn’t be much more than twenty. He had the pale skin, gaunt look, and ink-stained fingers of a conscientious fellow who spent too much time at his desk, and he was visibly nervous about bringing a client bad news.
Summoned by duty, Graeme had just arrived in England. HMS Phoebe had rescued him from an anticipated long delay in Cape Town and cruised into Portsmouth without fanfare, delivering him months earlier than expected. At the port’s busy Keppel’s Head Hotel, he’d had his first hot bath, hearty meal, and comfortable bed in many weeks.
Mail had awaited him. The College of Arms’s letter confirmed his title; the King’s writ summoned him to take his seat in the Lords; and the Foreign Office’s directive required an in-person report on his last assignment.
Aside from the official demands, there was a letter from the earl’s steward reporting that his homes and estates were in better order.
Better than what? That information went unmentioned.
The letter from the Chilcombe solicitor, Mr. Fleming, had been cryptic as well. Though his late cousin, Archie, had slipped this mortal coil over a year ago, his will had unexpectedly not been settled.
Restless after so many months on ship, Graeme borrowed a horse in Portsmouth and rode most of the way behind the chaise hauling his trunk, traveling as far as Kingston Upon Thames. Stiff and sore from a day spent on horseback, he’d decided, in his first exercise of aristocratic privilege, to summon Mr. Fleming to his private sitting room at the inn.
Mr. Fleming hadn’t appeared, being away in Suffolk on some important business. Emory had come in his place.
So much for the new Lord Chilcombe’s noble power in summoning the solicitor.
“It may be some time before it can be resolved,” the young man said.
Graeme tethered his temper. The long journey had given him months to stew and speculate, and to remind himself that the career he wanted was not in Parliament. His plan to arrange for management of the Chilcombe estate and be off to a new diplomatic assignment might have hit a sizeable obstacle.
“Go on, Emory,” he said.
“It is rather complex, I’m afraid. It has to do with a new will containing changes, the principal of which pertains to a cottage and property called Bluebelle Lodge. The late earl’s will, executed at the time of his marriage… well, it was a complicated arrangement hammered out as part of the marriage settlements with the previous owner of Bluebelle Lodge, Mr. Davies, who was also Lady Chilcombe’s guardian. The gist of it was that the property was to go to the countess in lieu of any of the normal support she would receive by means of dower or jointure.”
Lady Chilcombe. Blythe. He felt a rush of longing and quickly suppressed it.
There’d been a letter waiting in Portsmouth from her as well, brief and more formal than a diplomat’s missive. He’d been wondering whether she’d taken up residence in a dower house, if there was one at Risley Manor.
“Someone is contesting her claim to the property?” he asked.
“It’s more complicated than that. There apparently was a dispute about boundary lines. Mr. Davies’ widow predeceased Lord Chilcombe, leaving the property to the Chilcombe estate. It has been alleged that Bluebelle Lodge was not the previous owner’s or his wife’s to bequeath. Nor, subsequently, Lord Chilcombe’s.”
Graeme remembered Davies, a genial older man, and his affectionate wife, who’d once been Blythe’s governess. The childless couple had welcomed Blythe into their home when her parents both took ill and died, leaving her orphaned.
“What a bloody mess,” he said. “Go on.”
Emory blinked and sat up straighter.
“As a means to easily settle the matter of the disputed property—the earl being quite ill at the time—a new will was purportedly executed, leaving the property to the claimant instead of Lady Chilcombe.”
“And so, Lady Chilcombe is left with… what?”
A long pause ensued. “It seems that she will receive the small dowry she brought to the marriage—five hundred pounds—as well as her wardrobe and the jewels that are not part of the estate.” His voice sounded tight and he cleared his throat. “As I mentioned, in the marriage settlement, she waived her right to dower or jointure. This fact is acknowledged in the putative new will in which the late earl left her…” Mr. Fleming paused, his color rising. “One pound.”
One pound.
Blythe had been disinherited.
Why?
