The Heir's Bargain

Julian Carroway is not funding a retrospective of his mother's work because he loves her paintings. He is funding it so that every eligible heir in Arondale learns the Carroway estate is solvent, cultured, and marrying. He has counted out this negotiation the way he counts out all of them. Three seconds for surprise, five for consideration, seven for capitulation. Wentworth is at four and holding when a voice from the doorway calls the late Countess's work sentimental trash. Nathaniel Cross has paint-stained fingers, a coat gone shiny at the elbows, and a mend at the collar in thread that does not match. He knows exactly who Julian is, and says so out loud in front of the curator: an heir bleeding money since his father died, who must marry before the year is out or watch his cousin take everything. Julian steps forward with his hand rising. Nathaniel flinches and covers his face, in a motion so quick and so practised that Julian's fist opens on its own. Then Benedict Carroway arrives in the same gallery with a document. A codicil to Julian's father's will, dated three days before his death, yellowed and sealed and final. What neither Benedict nor Julian counts on is that a painter studies hands for a living. Nathaniel has seen the signature for a matter of seconds and can already say what is wrong with it: the flourish on the J is missing, the letters cramped, written by somebody who had to think about the shape. So they make a bargain, and then a marriage, standing in a studio with turpentine in the air, a reverend who does not approve, Lydia on Julian's left and Mira on Nathaniel's right, and a licence spread out across a worktable. It is legal. That is all it is supposed to be. What follows is a forger, a hidden compartment behind a drawer, a solicitor bought by the wrong side, a magistrate, a courtroom, and a young man named Thomas who has to decide whether to say out loud what he knows. A historical MM romance of inheritance law, forged documents and public scandal, in which the fraud is on the page and the feeling is not. Closed-door, ending in a small cottage with uneven floors, lavender in the garden and a copper moon overhead.