“You cannot insult Lord Dewhurst for my sake,a thaisce,” her father said the following day when she was released to join him on the grounds.
“He is not a good man.”
“He is not a kind man, no. But we are both here now and must make the best of it. In this house you can learn to be a well-bred lady, like your mother. There are opportunities for a girl like that.”
“At least in Manchester, we were free to be ourselves.”
He took Mouse in, her hands on her hips and her face screwed upin a furious scowl. He smiled, his teeth glinting white behind his mustache, but the smile did not meet his eyes. They walked in silence for a long time through the gardens, with their towering topiaries and grand statues.
“We cannot be free anywhere,a thaisce, not when we have no money and no home. Even a wild rose cannot grow from a stone. Your uncle will take care of you and Roger, even if he does so out of duty. Once you are older, you will taste freedom you would never have in the city.”
Here was the freedom her father spoke of, written out for her on paper, although it came at a towering cost. A war and two dead bodies had paved the way between her and this freedom.
Beckett cleared his throat. She shifted, focusing on the task at hand. John gripped the chair behind her. The upholstery coughed out dust between his fingers and down around her head.
“Forgive me. You were saying?” Mouse asked.
“I am impressed by your change in accent, Lady Dewhurst. It is certainly more refined, more befitting a lady.”
Less like her father’s. Mouse felt the outline of the insult in the air like chalk dust. Even after years, the posh accent she’d adopted still sat like a horse’s bit on her tongue: restrained, uncomfortable. The vowels always rebelled against her, muddying in her mouth into something unnatural. Every word felt like a small betrayal of her father.
“Yes, well, elocution is an important aspect of nursing,” Mouse said. “At least, that’s what the doctors believe.”
Beckett sniffed, opening his crisp leather briefcase with the precision of someone who had practiced in front of a mirror. Bertie would have laughed at that, and Roger’s eyes would have flashed with something bright, even as his lips stayed level. Mouse kept her expression still and grave.
Beckett drew a set of papers from the briefcase and laid them onthe desk. “He left the house and all assets to you, of course, as his last close living relative.”
The “close” almost made her laugh. She might have if John hadn’t tightened his hold on the chairback in warning. Beckett knew as well as she did that the likelihood was slim that her uncle would leave her anything out of affection. She had fully expected him to burn the Hall to the ground before he left a penny to her, purely out of spite.
And besides, Roger was not dead, only languishing in a hospital bed.
Beckett sorted through the new stack of papers before descending on a crisp sheet toward the bottom. “Ah, yes, here we are. Lord Dewhurst left everything to you, but there are…conditions.”
“Conditions?” Her uncle would have the last laugh, after all, a final dig. “Well then, I can waive my rights to the house. I’m unlikely to agree with any conditions he’s left for me. I will be frank with you, Mr.Beckett. I planned to sell Thistlemarsh. Barring that, perhaps to set it up as a convalescent home.”
That surprised the man, Mouse was glad to see. He swallowed before looking down at his papers. “You may choose to waive your rights. However, Lord Dewhurst wanted you to know that, if you reject the house and the title or attempt to give them away, everything will go to the Honorable Anthony Carlyle. That includes the money supporting your brother in the French hospital.”
Mouse’s teacup clattered in its saucer.
“Carlyle?” Mouse croaked, her throat abruptly raw. She continued, trying to regain control of her emotions. “You must be mistaken. That is impossible. My uncle would not leave anything to him.”
“I am afraid that Lord Dewhurst did indeed name Carlyle as his third heir. Your brother is the first, of course, but given his condition…” Beckett trailed off at Mouse’s glare. “Anyway, if you refuse Thistlemarsh, it will go to Mr.Carlyle.”
“Why?”
“As you are aware, this is a Faerie-blessed house, so there are certain untraditional rules that apply. In hundreds of years, this is the first time that the Hall has not passed to a direct Dewhurst heir. The Faerie rules specify that the nearest heir must win the house in a trial or forfeit it to the next in line.”
“And this rule was meant to weaken the power of the human owners, I assume. But the Faeries are gone. Why should their laws still apply here? And again, why Carlyle? He’s a distant cousin, at best. There must be a closer relative. Carlyle has an older brother, for goodness’ sake!”
Beckett grimaced. “The covenants protecting Faerie-blessed houses are codified into English law, and we take them very seriously. As to why Lord Dewhurst chose Carlyle specifically, I have no idea. But it was within his rights to choose one alternate heir if you cannot fulfill the stipulations, regardless of rank.”
The thought of Carlyle inside Thistlemarsh made Mouse feel physically ill. The sound of his shoes hitting the floor while he swanned through the halls where Mouse, Roger, and Bertie spent their last happy days together rang in her skull like the dreadful tick of a clock.
She wondered if her uncle had gone completely mad before his death. Lord Dewhurst knew that he was dying. The extent of his illness was clear even before Mouse left for the Front. Cancer of the lungs, the doctors had said. At first, it seemed as though he wanted to fight it, but as soon as Bertie died, he stopped looking for treatment. John wrote to her of her uncle’s decline, so when his death came, it was not a surprise.
Clearly, he gave as much weight to his own health as he did to the survival of Thistlemarsh.
Mouse had suspected her uncle might threaten to keep moneyfrom Roger, the bastard. She even planned for it, squirreling away her meager nursing salary to save enough for a few months in a hospital. However, the shock of her uncle gifting the house to Carlyle was a dagger in the gut. She could stand anyone but Carlyle. And that was the point, Mouse thought. Her uncle would rather have Carlyle inherit Thistlemarsh than her, despite everything he had done to Bertie.