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Elizabeth frowned. “Understand from whom?”
“Mr. Shaeffer’s clerk’s recovery was a long and slow one, but he did recover,” Stanley assured. “He is now back at work and one of my nephew-by-marriage’s closest friends. Because of the circumstances of the accident and those months of nothing todo but think as he recovered, the clerk clearly remembers the existence of your husband’s will.”
“Thomas did not mention…” Elizabeth swallowed, her expression becoming one of indulgence. “He had been recovering for the previous two months from a wound he received at Waterloo. I remember that the doctor had also called that morning and given Thomas permission to go out riding his horse again. Thomas was so excited that he went to the stables immediately after the lawyer’s departure. He made no mention to me before he went riding of having made a new will, and I—I never saw him alive again.”
Stanley shot Sterling a pointed glance, alerting him to the fact that what he was about to reveal was going to be either a shock or be deeply hurtful to Elizabeth, or both.
“The clerk also remembers the contents of the will,” the older man stated softly.
“Which were?” Elizabeth prompted curiously.
It sounded more and more to Sterling as if there was a possibility Whitlow might have killed his own son and the family lawyer so that he might purloin his son’s inheritance and cover up the crime. After which he had made his daughter-in-law’s life a living hell for the following ten months, perhaps with the ultimate goal of killing her too. He had certainly begrudged her every morsel of food which passed her lips. Plus he had merely stood and watched a week ago as she fell down the stairs after he had hit her.
Stanley was correct in that it could indeed prove fortuitous that Whitlow was back in London if it became necessary to arrest him for the murder of Thomas Marshall and the lawyer, along with his attempted murder of the law clerk and Elizabeth.
Sterling crossed the room to stand beside her. Whether she wished for his support or not, she had it, and always would.
Elizabeth’s head was awash with all the information Mr. Stanley had just imparted to her.
It did not seem possible…
Butifthese things were true, then…
She gripped her hands together in front of her to prevent anyone from seeing how much they were trembling. “Please continue, Mr. Stanley,” she invited gruffly.
After the briefest of glances in the Duke of Bristol’s direction, the ex-valet duly did so. “Lord Thomas Marshall inherited one hundred thousand pounds on the event of his fifth-and-twentieth birthday. A veritable fortune,” he acknowledged when Elizabeth gasped. “In his will, he left the sum of forty thousand pounds to his widow. The rest of his fortune of sixty thousand pounds was to be invested and put in trust for his son, Christopher. Mr. Shaeffer was named as trustee. Once Christopher reached the age of one and twenty, the bulk of the fortune would continue to accrue interest, and Christopher would receive five thousand pounds annually from the profit of those investments.”
Sixty thousand pounds for Christopher.
Another forty thousand pounds for her.
Itwasa fortune.
More money than Elizabeth had thought existed, let alone ever thought to possess.
She reached out blindly to clasp the back of an armchair to prevent her shaking knees from buckling, even as she continued to tremble.
“Elizabeth!” Bristol voiced his concern.
“Please do not.” She held up her other hand to stop him coming any closer, afraid she might shatter and break altogether if he touched her in anything remotely resembling tenderness.
She was desperately trying to come to terms with the possibility that for all these months, she had been living in misery and completely under her father-in-law’s cruel thumb, when all the time, Thomas had left her the funds by which she could have set up her own household and remained completely independent of Whitlow’s charity.
Those funds would have given her the means to legally fight any attempt Whitlow made to take Christopher away from her.
Christopher would have been a very wealthy young man by the time he reached his majority.
Most important was that Thomashadmade provision for both of them after all, even if he had not taken the time to tell her as much before he went out riding that day.
The reason why Elizabeth and Christopher had not received that inheritance was perfectly clear.
The personwhohadprevented that from happening patently obvious.
She looked searchingly at Sterling, seeing only compassion and understanding in those pale green eyes. “The earl took possession of Thomas’s will and stole those funds for himself.”
“Yes,” Sterling agreed.
“Do you think he—he might have killed Thomas as well as the lawyer?” Such a thought was abhorrent to her. But she no longer believed her father-in-law incapable of performing any atrocity.
