Bronwyn Scott - Tempted By His Secret Cinderella

‘It’s the bank’s provision, Mr Keynes,’ Barnes explained. ‘The bank your uncle’s funds are invested with requires that all accounts be resolved within four weeks of the account holder’s death.’ But the rest of it, the marriage condition, was all his uncle’s. In order to be a legitimate beneficiary of those funds, his uncle, not the bank , required him to be married first. It made sense now. Four. The square of two. Husband and wife. Completion. Two parts of a whole.

‘And if I refuse to follow my uncle’s dictates?’ He watched Barnes’s bushy grey eyebrows go up. It wasn’t every day a man considered turning away a fortune handed to him.

‘Then the fortune reverts to your cousin, Baxter Keynes.’ Mr Barnes peered over his thick-rimmed glasses meaningfully.

‘Of course. Bax.’ Sutton gave a derisive chuckle. Bax was the one factor that could compel him to take up his uncle’s challenge. There was much he would do to keep that amount of money out of Bax’s control. What an unreasonable game this was becoming. He wasn’t only being forced to marry, he was being forced to step into the metaphoric ring and compete against his cousin, his uncle’s only child. ‘Are you acquainted with my cousin, Mr Barnes?’

Barnes fixed Sutton with a strong stare. ‘Yes, indeed I am, Mr Keynes. He was here this morning, in fact. He didn’t stay long enough to have tea.’ The man’s tone was sharp, his gaze intuitive. For the first time since Sutton had entered the dingy office, the solicitor appeared to be more intelligent, more sane than Sutton had given him credit for. Most sane people struggled to do business with his uncle.

Baxter knew, then. That would make things interesting in a dangerous sort of way. Sutton picked up his tea and pondered that piece of information. ‘Angry, was he?’ His cousin had been left with nothing, although it couldn’t have come as a surprise. Sutton’s uncle had been threatening for years to pull something of this nature. The old man’s title wasn’t hereditary. The only thing he could leave Bax was his fortune and he hadn’t. Instead, he’d left it to his nephew.

‘Positively furious.’ Barnes grimaced, nodding towards the cracked window pane.

Sutton offered a tight smile. ‘If you’ve met him, you know there’s not a choice. It’s not a question of if I want to claim the fortune. I must. Baxter is not the sort of man to whom a fortune of that magnitude can be entrusted.’ His cousin wasn’t just reckless, spending money frivolously, although some of the fortune would indeed be squandered on harmless pursuits. Bax liked a good silk waistcoat and a fast horse as much as the next man. It wasn’t the harmless pursuits Sutton was worried about. It was the more harmful ones; Bax was mixed up with slavers, the type that sold white women into the harems of the east in order to gain the favour of the Ottoman pashas, and arms dealers who sold guns for profit regardless of the cause, regardless of the side. In short, Bax played a deep game with powerful men. His involvement, of course, was most certainly not well known. For all intents and purposes, Bax, son of the eccentric Sir Leland, was a typical gentleman. But only on the surface. Beneath that surface, Bax inhabited a dark, dangerous world.

Barnes’s old eyes sharpened for a moment over the rims of his glasses. ‘We see each other plain, Mr Keynes. I assume you’ll be marrying shortly, then.’ It was not a question. Barnes tapped his papers into place and reached for another set of documents.

‘I suppose I shall be.’ Shortly. Quickly. Without the study necessary to make a quality decision. It was antithetical to his nature. Anabeth Morely had taught him that in his youth. He’d jumped into love with her head first only to find shallow water and grave disappointment. He’d not ventured forth since.

As a result, marriage was the last thing on his mind, right there at the bottom of the list of his priorities including his uncle’s fortune. Whenever he thought about marriage, and that was hardly often enough to even qualify as seldom, it was as an amorphous something to pursue in a nebulous future, perhaps five years from now, once his camel dairy was firmly established in Newmarket. But not this summer. The summer was half over. He had his prized mare due to foal next month, he had next year’s breeding programme to look over, bloodlines to study, the camel’s milk studies to continue. The Newmarket Breeders Club would be expecting his report on the subject at the September meeting. He absolutely could not get married this year, not when there was so much to do.

It was bad enough his uncle’s death had pulled him away from Newmarket this week. He’d be there now if it wasn’t for the details of his uncle’s will to sort through. In fact, he’d thought to leave for home as soon as the will was read, but today’s revelations had put paid to that. Signing papers and looking over deeds would keep him in town another few days.

He far preferred the clean, straightforward living of Newmarket to the bustle and social politics of the London Season. He far preferred his animals to the matchmaking biddies of the ton and their feather-headed daughters. Some might consider him reclusive. They wouldn’t be far wrong. He liked to think of himself as ‘selective in his attentions’. He simply didn’t have time for nonsense and London was notoriously full of it. He’d had plenty of its shenanigans when he’d first come up to town.

Now, however, his uncle’s will threatened all that selective attention on a more permanent level. It didn’t need to, though. Surely if there wasn’t a way around the will, there was a way through it. His logical, scientist’s mind turned itself to his options. He could make his marriage a temporary arrangement. Once the will was satisfied and the fortune was out of Bax’s hands, they could separate.

‘Ahem, Mr Keynes, are you listening?’ No. He wasn’t, in fact. He was too busy looking for loopholes. ‘There are conditions attached to your marriage.’ The solicitor raised his bushy brows again. ‘I would listen closely if I were you. No sense in sacrificing oneself in marriage just to get it wrong.’ Barnes had his attention now and he knew it. The old man smiled in satisfaction. ‘If I may continue?’ He cleared his throat. ‘First, the bride must be from a noble family. Second, the marriage must last. It cannot be annulled or divorced or discontinued in any manner or the fortune is forfeit.’

Damn. Sutton had been counting on that—bear out the marriage for a couple of years and then cut his wife loose. Surely he could find a woman who would agree to those terms if she was handsomely paid. Sutton rethought his options. If divorce was out of the question, there was still a chance at informal separation, an ‘open’ marriage, as distasteful as the idea was to him. He had expectations, after all, loyalty and fidelity being two of them. His uncle’s mandate, however, was playing havoc with those ideas along with everything else.

Sutton had no sooner contemplated the idea of the open marriage than the solicitor continued. ‘Third, no separate lives, which means no separate residences and you may spend no more than a third of the year apart.’ Well, so much for the wiggle room. That took care of it. The noose was tightening.

Sutton shifted in the hard wood chair and crossed a leg over his knee. His blasted teacup was empty again. ‘It seems that I am well and truly roped into this, then.’

‘Some would say you are well compensated for your sacrifice. All men marry in the end anyway,’ the solicitor offered in an attempt to soften the blow.

‘It’s not the marriage I mind. It’s the haste with which it must be done and the parameters placed on who it must be in order to claim a prize, a fortune I don’t want except that it must not go to Bax. I have wealth of my own,’ Sutton replied drily. That was the complete irony of the situation. His uncle had given a wealthy man a fortune, knowing full well the fortune itself held no allure. ‘My uncle is blackmailing me from beyond the grave.’ The dead bastard was getting everything he wanted: his fortune protected from his unscrupulous son and his nephew wed, the best his uncle could do to ensure the Keynes line continued, having all but officially disinherited Bax.