Page 20 of A Duchess Worth Stealing (Saved by Scandal #2)
Chapter Eighteen
“ I ’m afraid it’s not the news we were hoping for,” said Mr. Greeley, his spectacles slipping slightly down the bridge of his nose as he looked between Cordelia and Mason.
Cordelia blinked. “I… what?”
Mason stiffened beside her, but she barely noticed. Her eyes were fixed on the solicitor, her fingers tightening around the golden compass in her hand as though it might somehow help her navigate this moment, too.
Mr. Greeley cleared his throat. “It appears your guardian, Lord Vernon, has located an overlooked clause in your late father’s will. One that was, frankly, poorly worded. And… unfortunately… potentially binding.”
Cordelia stared blankly. “What kind of clause?”
The solicitor glanced down at the papers, flipping through them with the quiet precision of a man who had no desire to deliver such news but had no choice but to do so.
“There’s language that, if interpreted unfavorably, suggests your inheritance is released fully at six and twenty as previously thought, but only under the condition that your guardian believes you are ‘capable of managing the responsibility without undue influence or reckless decisions.’”
She sat back in her chair, the air seeming to rush from her lungs.
“That’s not fair,” she whispered, trying to steady her voice. “That’s not… He’s trying to steal it from me.”
“He is attempting to challenge your legal independence, yes,” Mr. Greeley said with a grave nod. “He believes he has a fighting chance, and I… regret to say he might not be entirely wrong.”
Cordelia’s heart dropped like a stone in her chest. All morning, she’d tried to push back the grief of goodbye with bright smiles and cake and jokes. All morning, she had held onto the shining thread of freedom, of possibility. And now… that thread was fraying.
Her hands trembled in her lap, and she pressed her palms into the folds of her skirt to hide it. “So, what happens now?”
“We fight him by any means necessary,” Mason said immediately.
Cordelia glanced at him. He was leaning forward with that fire in his eyes. He was the perfect picture of control, of a man ready to go to war. She, meanwhile, felt like she’d been cracked open.
“But he might win,” she said, voice smaller than she wanted it to be. “And if he does, I’ll have to?—”
“You won’t,” Mason said sharply, cutting her off. “I won’t allow it.”
Cordelia looked away before her eyes could betray her.
She had been so close to standing on her own two feet, and now, all of it was being pulled from under her, not because she had failed but because someone else had twisted the rules.
And what stung more than anything was the bitter truth blooming at the back of her mind: she had no power over anything, not even her own life. She would never be free.
The solicitor droned on about legal procedures, next steps, the earliest court dates possible, but she barely heard it.
Her head buzzed. Her fingers had gone cold.
Her shoulders ached from holding herself upright.
It wasn’t until she felt Mason’s hand brush hers that she realized she’d been holding her breath.
Cordelia said nothing as Mason helped her down the front steps of the solicitor’s office and toward the waiting carriage. The small golden compass he’d given her earlier still sat nestled in her palm, warm now from the heat of her skin, but it felt heavier than it had that morning.
Mason’s grip on her arm was steady but not forceful. She imagined he must have wanted to say something or perhaps she did, but the words never came. The carriage door opened, and the Dowager Duchess leaned out.
“There you are! That was quick,” she said, bright-eyed. “Did everything go smoothly?”
Cordelia hesitated, but Mason answered for her, “No. Vernon’s trying to challenge the will.”
The Dowager’s face dropped. “That despicable?—”
Mason held up a hand. “It’s being handled, Mother. But I need you to take Cordelia home. I’ll return shortly.”
Cordelia blinked, startled. “You’re not coming with us?”
“I have a few things to sort out,” he said simply, turning to help her into the carriage. “You’ll be safe. And better with my mother for now.”
She didn’t know why that stung. Perhaps it was the way he said for now, as though she were something temporary, just a guest again.
The Dowager Duchess took her hand the moment she sat beside her, giving it a comforting squeeze. “I’m so sorry, darling,” she murmured. “But I must say, I am rather delighted to have you back with me, if only for a little while longer.”
Cordelia smiled faintly, trying to look grateful, even as her chest tightened. She didn’t want to cry. She glanced out the window just as Mason stepped back from the carriage. Their eyes met for a brief moment then he waved quickly, and the wheels began to roll.
She was going back to the place she hadn’t wanted to leave, and yet, it didn’t feel like returning. It felt like drifting, like being untethered again.
Mason sat in the deep leather armchair of the reading room at White’s.
The scent of pipe smoke clung to the air despite the posted No Smoking Indoors signs the steward routinely ignored.
The club was quiet for once, most of the members either out shooting or drunk elsewhere, leaving Mason with nothing but a lukewarm scotch and his own thoughts, which was a dangerous combination, especially now.
He hadn’t intended to leave Cordelia like that.
But the look on her face when Greeley read those words aloud…
he could still see it. She hadn’t cried.
Cordelia never did the expected thing. But she had gone very still, still in the way a candle might go out, not all at once but flickering and sputtering away.
He raised the glass to his lips, took a slow sip, and set it down again, untouched by the fire’s warmth. The clink of crystal was soft against the polished wood table.
Damn Vernon. Capable of managing responsibility without undue influence, Mason thought bitterly, the words echoing in his skull. What nonsense.
Cordelia had more grit and character in her fingertips than half the bloody men in this room. And still, she was being punished for being young and female and inconvenient to control.
He leaned back in the chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin. He had already sent for a copy of the original will, unedited and unspoiled by Vernon’s interpretation. If he was fortunate, Greeley’s assistant would deliver it by nightfall.
The fire had burned down to embers when the devil himself appeared.
“Well, well,” came the oily voice behind him. “If it isn’t His Grace, brooding over a brandy. Or is it a woman?”
Mason didn’t turn. He didn’t have to in order to know whom the voice belonged to. It had the same hollow smugness it always had, as if its speaker had mistaken cruelty for wit and arrogance for authority.
Lord Vernon swept into the reading room with all the subtlety of a foghorn.
“I must say,” Vernon continued, strolling over with all the entitlement of a man who’d never been told no, “I do appreciate the theatrics. Quite protective, aren’t you? As though she were yours.”
Mason’s grip tightened on the glass.
“She’s not of course,” Vernon went on, taking a seat in the chair across from him, one leg crossed leisurely over the other. “But soon, she’ll be mine to manage once more. Poor little Cordelia. So impressionable, so dreadfully… alone.”
Mason stood. The movement was quiet and too smooth to be threatening which somehow made it worse.
Vernon blinked. “Leaving already? We were just beginning our chat.”
But Mason simply downed the last of his drink and set the glass down, perfectly centered, on the polished table.
“I don’t engage in conversations with cowards,” he said with a voice like steel wrapped in velvet. “And I have better things to do than listen to insects buzz.”
Vernon rose too quickly, his smirk cracking.
“You think you can stop this?” he snapped. “You think a little posturing will frighten me off? I know the law. I have the clause.”
Mason met his eyes with calm, deadly precision. “And I have the truth.”
Then, with neither haste nor hesitation, he walked out. Vernon called something after him. It was a taunt, a threat, perhaps a last gasp of self-importance, but Mason didn’t hear it. In fact, he didn’t care.
His coat swirled at his ankles as he stepped out into the dusk. The cold bit at his jaw, but he barely noticed. The solicitor would have the will to him soon, but Mason already knew what had to be done.
He wasn’t a man who believed in fairy tales and especially not in fate. Certainly not in happy endings. He had seen too much of life’s cruelness. With that said, he was the last man deserving of a wife.
But Cordelia Brookes was not the kind of woman one stood by and watched be taken apart. And if the only way to protect her was to tether her to him… then so be it.