Page 42 of Fortune’s Final Folly

She slipped her finger under the wax seal and removed the letter.

The same hurried script covered the page from edge to edge as if its writer had needed to fill every available inch with words to be shared.

Katherina,

If you are receiving this missive, you have either reached a certain age, and your bequest has run dry, or you’ve figured out far more than was expected. Either way, the Bank of England has not been foolish enough to go against my wishes. I may be old, but I am still a duke. This letter is to inform you, Miss Katherina Elliott, that a new account with the Bank of England can be accessed in your true name, Lady Katherina De Vere. The money was always to be yours, despite the many people who attempted to re-write the past.

Your mother, Layla, was wed to my wretched son. He was a rogue among rogues, and I must take the blame for his insolence. Though no one can deny that you and your mother were punished in the severest, cruelest manner, something I wouldn’t wish on my enemies. Pierce was—perhaps remains so to this day, only time will tell—a scoundrel, an abuser of women, and a deceiver. He broke his mother’s heart, my precious Henrietta, and cast her into her dying role as a fiend. My dear girl, please know she was not always the heartless, cold, calculating woman Pierce turned her into. In the end, she could not bear to look upon your mother or you and think of the son who’d forsaken her, betrayed her, and felt no remorse. Henrietta thought to punish our son, but it did no good. He cared for nothing and no one except for perhaps himself.

I am not writing to make excuses for the cruelties forced upon you and your mother. No, I am here to make amends for it all in the only way an old, tired, lonely man can. I shall die alone, that is my cross to bear, and I am resigned to that fate.

For you, dear girl—despite my weakness in your infancy—I can at least provide a better fate.

Even back then, I attempted to do right by you. The vicar and his wife were good people, never blessed with a family of their own. I knew they would provide well for you and give you a home and a future away from Shrewbury, outside the reach of your father and my wife.

Kate folded the letter in her hands, unable to go on. She’d wanted to believe that it hadn’t been as awful as her mother had explained. That perhaps A’laya had misunderstood something or misremembered everything.

Kate straightened her shoulders and unfolded the letter once more, finding where she’d left off.

I implore you, Katherina, do not be angry with your parents, the Elliotts. They took you in when Henrietta would have seen you thrown on the streets and forgotten. I could not allow that to happen, not to you, my precious granddaughter.

I was—am—a weak man.

I can only think that it is a common trait of the Shrewbury men.

It is far too late, as I well know. However, I must try to make amends before it is too late for me. After you were sent away to live with the vicar and his wife, nothing more than a tiny babe, I set up your trust with my solicitor with instructions that you were to be given this letter when you reached twenty-two, or in the event that you came looking. To you, I give everything within my power to give. The Shrewbury coffers in their entirety. Anything not entitled to the dukedom.

It is all yours, my dear Katherina.

Though I wish I had been strong and could have given you more.

My final request—if an old man of my debauched nature has any right to ask it—is that you please find your mother, Layla.

A’laya.

Kate turned the paper over in her hands, longing—searching—for more.

There was nothing else.

The letter was signed simply, Walter.

A tear slipped down her cheek, dripping onto the paper, causing the ink to smear and the final words to blend into a swirl of black.

Walter De Vere, the Duke of Shrewbury.

Her grandfather.

She and Joshua had learned enough about the people mentioned in her family’s file to know that the old duke and his wife, Henrietta, were both long deceased. What Kate hadn’t known was who had set up the trust that gave her the stipend and why. Now that she knew, she realized it didn’t make the situation any clearer in her mind.

Kate and her mother had been pawns in a family feud that had started well before Kate had been born. Even before her mother had met and married Pierce De Vere if her mother’s story about Pierce using his marriage to her as a way to thwart his mother were true.

Joshua sat on the lounge next to her. His familiar presence calmed her, not because she did not want to cry in front of him, but because she knew she could be weak with him. He would not judge her, nor would he turn away from her; he would not leave her to muddle through the mess others had made for Kate.

The urge to lean into Joshua and allow him to surround her with his warmth was nearly more than Kate could take.

“This was also in the parcel.” He held another paper in his hand…a single sheet.

This one was clearly written by a meticulous hand, a steady quill, someone with some semblance of organization—unlike the letter from her grandfather.