The Wedding Wager (Scandalous Miss Brightwells Book 3) by Oakley Beverley

Author:Oakley, Beverley [Oakley, Beverley]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Sani Publishing
Published: 2017-08-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

The servants had rustled up as much seating as could be managed in the tiny parlour, with its green sprigged curtains and borrowed furniture. It was a pretty outlook from a simple country cottage which made it all the more astonishing when the sum of Aunt Montrose’s assets was finally revealed. Three times as much in the four per cents as anyone had ever speculated. It seemed Aunt Montrose had been in receipt of a bequest far in excess of anything she’d hinted at and, not being one to flaunt her wealth for fear of fortune-hunters, she’d told Eliza, she’d even kept it secret from her sisters and two nieces.

It was as if the old woman were in that very room, enjoying the anticipation with which her surviving relatives waited to hear how they’d been favoured. It positively crackled about them.

Eliza was glad of the fashion in bonnets which enabled her expression to be screened from the rest of the company, as she listened to Aunt Montrose’s cousin receive a cow and a pig, Dr Rutledge a rather fine silver-topped cane that had belonged to her father, and Dora, the porcelain tea service. Aunt Montrose had been at pains to bequeath individual items to a great many, but after half an hour, there was still no mention of the bulk of her assets, and nothing for Eliza, or Susana, who fidgeted beside her cousin and darted increasingly anxious looks at her.

Susana had a comfortable home and a father ready to provide a reasonable dowry. She’d be disappointed to receive nothing, but she’d never be destitute as Eliza would, should her aunt exclude her.

As the sun dipped low on the horizon, the lawyer, at last, came to the division of Aunt Montrose’s greatest holdings. He wasn’t the dry, aged partner, Mr Cuthbert, who generally advised Aunt Montrose, but rather the junior, and he displayed the theatricality of David Garrick himself, pacing his words and holding his breath for the final pronouncement.

Now, here was what they’d all been waiting for.

Eliza’s skin prickled; her mouth felt dry, and she heard Susana’s quick breathing beside her.

The lawyer cast his gaze about the room, looked pointedly at Aunt Montrose’s two nieces, and declared that the cottage was to go to Eliza, while Miss Anabelle Montrose’s fortune in the three and four per cents was for Susana, to be held in trust until her twenty-fifth birthday, three years hence.

There was a collective gasp though the greatest came from Susana herself who held her hands to her cheeks and, thought Eliza, was about to cry out in pleasure until she heard her cousin’s plaintive: “Must I wait so long?”

Eliza darted a look at Mr Bramley, but he turned his head away. No sympathetic, even understanding glance of the torment she must be enduring. His interest was purely pecuniary. She’d thought at one stage he found her moderately attractive; that he was anticipating the fact she’d be his wife for more than just her money. The idea

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