My Fiancé Stole My University Acceptance Letter novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Harriet's Price

"I'll stand," I said.

Harriet looked at me through the open window.

Then the driver got out, opened her door, and she stepped onto the sidewalk with her cane, in her pearls, in front of forty students on the lawn.

Nobody on that lawn knew who she was.

"You took a bus two hours to hear a stranger say no," she said. "Brendan has been telling me for a year that you are sensible."

"I'm sensible. That's why I'm here."

"Let's not be tiresome." She opened her handbag and took out a check already written in blue ink. "Fifty thousand dollars. It's yours the morning after the wedding."

I didn't touch it.

"The lease on the shop, I'll renew for ten years at the present rent. Your father will not be bothered again."

"And Westmere?"

"A Sutcliffe wife sits on boards. She does not draw houses on receipts."

I stared at her.

I had never told anyone about the receipts.

"Brendan found your drawings in your father's desk drawer," she said. "He thought they were charming."

"He went through my father's desk?"

"He went through a great many things, dear. It is how a man learns what a woman wants."

She said it pleasantly, and I felt my hands go cold.

"Why me?" I asked. "You could have anyone."

"No." Harriet's voice dropped. "That is the difficulty."

She stepped closer.

A girl on the grass looked over her book at us and looked away.

"My late husband left a rule in his will," Harriet said. "Brendan inherits this house and the Sutcliffe Trust only if he is married to a Marlow Falls girl of good name before his twenty-sixth birthday."

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