Page 4 of Echoes of the Sea (Storm Tide #2)

At last, she found the gate, but it was locked.

She peered through the iron posts keeping her on the wrong side of the one place she thought she might be able to pass a few pleasant moments.

The garden appeared to have once been a rather formal and traditional English knot garden, but now, it was in a state of complete overgrowth.

And yet she suspected it wouldn’t take much to put it to rights again.

Someone with know-how and a degree of time could do it.

Or that someone could just accept the inevitable: that the sea would swallow this entire island whole at any moment.

“Amelia!” Her cousin reached her, out of breath. Susanna had always liked to run, a tendency she didn’t seem likely to outgrow. “The solicitor is already here. We are to go to the drawing room.”

“Did he give you any indication of where the drawing room is?” Amelia asked.

Her cousin shrugged. “Inside the house?”

Inside the house. Amelia, as had been required of her for twenty years, kept to herself the response that had sprung to her lips.

Even when her cousin had been no more than two years old, babbling in the way children of that age did, and Amelia had been a seven-year-old, perfectly capable of conversation and intellect and discovery, she had been required to interact with Susanna without interrupting or putting herself forward.

In time, Susanna had decided she had little interest in spending time with her older cousin.

Sometimes, days would go by without Amelia having a conversation of any sort with anyone.

Yes, she understood this house. Neglected. Lonely. A little rickety.

Just as Amelia had expected it would be, the sound of the ocean was far, far quieter inside the house.

Not gone entirely, because that would have been far too pleasant an experience to be something her grandfather required of her—but softer and easier to ignore.

Though ignore didn’t actually feel possible.

“Pretend she couldn’t hear” hit closer to the mark.

They were able to find the drawing room. Susanna glided gracefully to a chair beside her parents. Amelia clunked in with the help of her cane and found a seat on the periphery of the room.

“You’re meant to be sitting up here, Miss Archibald.

” The solicitor indicated an empty chair directly beside her uncle.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had sat in a place of any significance.

Even at meals, she was placed a few seats removed from the family.

When guests ate at the house, Amelia took her meal in her room.

Amelia rose with her usual difficulty and crossed to the chair that was apparently going to be hers. She lowered herself with a degree of hesitation that likely was felt all the way back on the mainland, where she wished she were.

“This will not take long,” the solicitor said. “I was instructed that once Miss Stirling and Miss Archibald’s periods of mourning for the late Mr. Stirling were complete, we were to meet here at this residence for the reading of the last portion of the late Mr. Stirling’s will.”

“And he specified that Amelia had to come?” Her aunt had been hung up on that requirement from the moment it had been revealed.

Far from offended, Amelia thought the requirement every bit as ridiculous as her aunt clearly did.

The solicitor nodded. “Other than Mr. Stirling”—he motioned to Uncle—“Miss Archibald was the only person required to be here.”

That was strange, indeed.

“And this last portion of the will is addressed to the two of them, beginning with the late Mr. Stirling’s oldest granddaughter.” The solicitor picked up a piece of very fine linen parchment, cleared his throat, and read its contents to Amelia.

In the matter of my granddaughter, Amelia Archibald, only child of my late daughter: there is a portion of my estate which I am required to set aside for any heirs or heiresses which might have been produced by my daughter.

That was unexpected.

While I cannot directly refuse to leave the sum to Miss Archibald, I am permitted to attach caveats to the inheritance.

Now, that sounded like her grandfather.

I have been in deep consultation with solicitors and barristers and have made absolutely certain that the following requirements are both legal and binding.

It was such an odd combination of very direct legal formalities and vaguely barbed insults.

The amount that I have been required to set aside for the inheritance of Miss Amelia Archibald is not insignificant.

It is enough, in fact, that she could claim a degree of ease that most young ladies would envy.

She would no longer need to live as a perpetual guest in the home of her aunt and uncle.

As this is not a pittance, I feel it wise to make certain she is capable of seeing to her own affairs.

Thus, the following requirements must be met before she can inherit.

To prove herself able to look after an inheritance, one which might lead to the purchase of an estate of her own, I am requiring her to look after this estate for six months.

“ This estate,” Uncle repeated. “He means Guilford?”

The solicitor nodded. He continued reading.

I recognize how easy it would be for her to simply hire someone to do all the work and coordination in exchange for a portion of her significant inheritance.

Therefore, she will be required to live here, on Guilford Island, in this house, attend to it, see to any restorations that need to be made, and do so in person for the entire six months.

“Live here?” Amelia didn’t often let herself speak in public unless invited to do so, but her shock and horror pulled the question from her.

Again, the solicitor nodded and continued on.

For the entirety of those six months, Miss Amelia Archi-bald must never leave Guilford Island.

The small lighthouse on the island is manned.

There is staff on the estate. There is a village that must be passed through after taking the sea road back to the mainland.

Should she violate these terms, it would most certainly be noted and reported.

In fact, I have set up in this will a certain monetary reward should any infractions of these requirements be both reported and proven.

There is incentive to make certain she fulfills what is required of her.

She was to be held captive on this island, with spies all around, anxious to collect a reward should they catch her attempting to flee. It was a nightmare.

My solicitor as well as my son, Woodrow Stirling, will make regular unannounced inspections of the estate, to make certain it is being cared for, its needs are being met, and Miss Archibald has not left.

Uncle Stirling nodded but in that absent-minded way that indicated a person had heard something but only vaguely comprehended it. His mind was spinning, too, Amelia would wager.

Should Miss Archibald meet these requirements, at the end of her six-month sojourn on Guilford Island, she will be granted the entirety of her inheritance and the freedom to live her life in the way she chooses with the generous windfall she has been provided.

Should she fail, the entirety of her inheritance will be reverted back to the Stirling estate, with a portion of it designated as a dowry for her cousin Susanna Stirling.

Further, in light of this inarguable indication that Miss Archibald is incapable of looking after herself, a second equal portion of the inheritance will be set aside for Miss Archibald’s dowry to be delivered to a suitor of her uncle’s choosing after a marriage of his arranging takes place.

These are my instructions, and these are the terms of her inheritance.

Miss Archibald must choose within thirty minutes of the reading of this will whether she wishes to accept the challenge and remain on Guilford Island for six months, knowing that success means she has her full independence and failure means losing her inheritance and marrying a man of her uncle’s choosing, or forego the challenge altogether and return to being a poor relation with whatever future should happen to play out.

My solicitor will begin the thirty--minute contemplation period now.

The solicitor set down the paper and took up his pocket watch.

Thirty minutes to make a decision that would change the course of Amelia’s entire life. A curmudgeonly old grubber felt too generous for her selfish rotter of a grandfather.

She had an inheritance, one that, by her grandfather’s own reluctant admission, would give her freedom, give her control over her future.

She would have enough to live on, not just in comfort but with a degree of ease.

This was an opportunity she had never dreamed would come her way.

But attempting to claim it also meant taking the risk of making her situation worse than it already was.

Being a poor relation in the home of her aunt and uncle was not necessarily a joyous experience, but it was not entirely miserable either.

However, when her uncle undoubtedly collected “evidence” of her “lack of judgment,” he would feel it unnecessary to consider her wishes, and he would match her with someone horrendous.

And that someone would likely be marrying her for the dowry that would be bestowed upon her after losing her actual fortune.

Amelia might have gotten to her feet and paced, but her cane would have clicked loudly in the uncomfortably silent room.

She wasn’t ashamed of her walking stick nor of the twisted foot that necessitated it.

Her aunt, uncle, and cousin had never expressed annoyance or disgust over it.

But for reasons she never dug deeply into, the sound of her cane tended to put her more on edge when she was frustrated by other things.

And she was decidedly frustrated.

Her grandfather was dangling freedom in front of her but requiring that she torture herself in order to grab at it.

Six months on Guilford Island, surrounded by water, by an ocean. Six months in which the road back to land could disappear for hours, days, or even weeks at a time. Six months in which she was not allowed to leave.

Torture, pure and simple.

Her grandfather couldn’t have simply withheld her inheritance, which he most certainly would have preferred to do. Tormenting her under the guise of making her prove that she could be trusted with an estate and income was a very fitting thing for the miserly scoundrel.

So what was she to do?