“Thank you, but I—”
“You must have a taste of something fortifying, Miss Steele, for I fear I may shock you. There are a few solicitors, you will find, who are actually aware their clients possess sensibilities. Sherry?”
“Please,” I said rather faintly, “though . . .”
“Brandy, then,” he curtly suggested. “Considering your background, it must have been administered as a restorative at one time or another, and once having had brandy, one ought not go backwards.”
The man, for all his resemblance to your more affable variety of fungus, was riveting. I drew my soft blue cloak, which I had neglected to shed, closer about my frame as Mr. Cyrus Sneeves planted a brandy snifter before me; he deposited half as much before himself and resumed his place behind the desk.
I soon came to understand from his complete silence that I was expected to make an overture.
“Mr. Sneeves, thank you for seeing me—you must have wondered at my letter’s contents.”
“Heavens, no.” Mr. Sneeves took another great pinch of snuff, making my own eyes water. “No, Miss Steele, I only wondered who told you about me.”
Faltering, I removed my gloves. “My mother left a few letters—”
“May I see them?”
Turning over my mother’s letters felt a strangely intimate act, for all that my solicitor would learn nothing he did not already know; I had so little of Mamma left that all my relics were magical, more talismans than mementoes. At last, finished, Mr. Sneeves scrubbed a hand over his mottled pate.
“Miss Steele,” he questioned, “do you know more of your legal standing beyond what I have just read?”
When I shook my head, he rapped his desk, as if signalling the start of a race. “I was first recommended to your father in Paris, where Englishmen often preferred to do business with a firm operating upon both sides of the water. His concerns had to do with his status as a landholder. Highgate House was in good repair, but your father desired to settle minor liens and generally ascertain whether keeping the manor was feasible; I am happy to state that he was doing very well indeed in Paris, no less than were his partners in London, and so my advice was, if the property gave him pleasure, to keep it. It was not only matters of his estate upon which he consulted me, however.”
Mr. Sneeves waited as my heart pounded a brisk martial beat.
“And these other matters?”
“Were matters to do with your mother.” His voice softened, and he smoothed errant grey wisps behind his ears. “Mrs. Anne-Laure Steele was such a woman as you do not meet twice in life, Miss Steele—beautiful, charming, and artistic. Sadly, not long after your first birthday, your father fell prey to an inflammation of the lungs, and your parents wished to know your precise legal standing in Britain should the worst happen. I was tasked with setting measures in place to ensure both you and Mrs. Steele were protected. You remember your aunt, Mrs. Patience Barbary?”
“Naturally.”
Mr. Sneeves, dappled head bobbing, made quick work of gathering papers. “She was very strongly against your and your mother’s residing at Highgate House—and your father proved to be ill with consumption at an advanced and virulent stage, so your parents were forced to act quickly. Here is the marriage license between Anne-Laure Fortier and Jonathan David Steele; here also is a special contract they devised to be signed by your aunt as a dowager, stating that Highgate House should be your sanctuary for life.”
I examined the documents. Rather than clearing the mists, however, the atmosphere thickened—sanctuary for life did not mean inheritance. For the first time, I examined my mother’s statements against the backdrop of what I knew to be true as an adult woman. Unmarried females scarce ever inherited, particularly when wills were disputed; my mother had assured me of my place time and again, but had never explained the whys or wherefores.
Meanwhile, supposing it was mine, why should Mamma and I have lived in the cottage, why not the main house, why should not Aunt Patience and Edwin have lived in—
“Miss Steele, do you know the man in this picture?”
I found myself holding a sketch from a French newspaper describing a series of audacious trades enacted at the Palais de la Bourse.
“Of course—this is my uncle,” I answered readily. “Richard Barbary.”
“That is your father,” Mr. Cyrus Sneeves said, “who for a time—when courting your mother in the guise of a rich gentleman of leisure—went by the name Jonathan Steele.”
“No, no.” The words emerged before I even had thought them. “That’s impossible.”