He Dropped Three Women in One Night, Then We Took His Estate novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: The Dowager Calls

Hildegarde Voltraine came into the dower house kitchen.

She did not wait to be asked.

She walked past Calista on the threshold, tapped the flagstones once with her cane, and sat in the best chair, the one with the arms.

"I won't take off my gloves," she said. "I don't expect to stay."

"Then why come?" said Calista.

"Because I am an old woman, and one pays a call on neighbours."

"We are not neighbours," Calista said.

"We are the same family still. Whatever the lawyers say."

The footman stood in the door, rigid.

The Dowager waved him out.

The kitchen was full of people.

Ottilie stood against the dresser with her arms folded.

Elowen had gone white and still beside the stove.

Evander sat at the end of the table with his notebook closed and his spectacles in his hand, a man who has been asked to be a witness and means to be a good one.

The Dowager looked at him once, without interest.

"The Crown," she said. "I had been told there was a lodger."

"I pay a crown a night," said Evander.

"Then you are less trouble than my son."

She took her time looking at each woman in turn.

It was the look of a dealer at a horse fair.

She looked at Ottilie's scarlet shawl and at Elowen's borrowed cardigan, and at the chalk-scrawled stove door behind them.

She did not trouble to hide that she found it absurd.

"I have come with a proposal," she said. "For all of you. Separately. I would not be so crude as to bargain with three at once."

"We'd rather you did," said Calista.

"As you like."

The Dowager folded her hands on her cane.

"You have put your heads together over some papers. I will not ask what they say. I have no interest in your hysterics. What I want is a statement, signed before a notary, that two of you forged the petitions that parted you from my son, to wound the third. It does not matter which. I leave you to arrange it."

"Why would we?" Ottilie asked.

"Because I will pay for it."

She turned her pale eyes on Elowen first.

"Miss Tarn. You are nineteen. You have a trust, and a name, and nothing to keep you warm. I can find you a husband. Not an old man. A man of thirty, of rank, with an estate, who will let you keep your money and your cabinet and your books. Say the word, and I will have him at your door before the thaw."

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