Bury the Ex, Wed the Heir novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Widow's Lover

Linnet dressed in four minutes.

She pulled her hair back, put on a black coat over yesterday's dress, and left Silvan asleep with the curtains drawn.

Madam Ravenscroft waited at the foot of the stairs with a tablet in her hand.

She turned the screen toward Linnet without a word.

It was a photograph taken from the road with a long lens.

A tall man stood at an upstairs window in the gray light with his shirt open, one hand braced on the glass.

His face was in shadow, and his cut brow was just visible.

Under the picture ran a headline in thick black type: "THE WIDOW'S SECRET LOVER."

"By nine o'clock every paper in Freverland will have it," Madam said. "The reporters have been at the gate since five."

"Anselm sent it."

"Of course Anselm sent it."

Madam's voice was calm, and her knuckles were white around the beads.

"If they get a clear look at that face, my grandson is dead twice," she said. "And you, child, have been careless."

"I know," Linnet said.

She did not apologize.

She did not feel sorry.

Madam studied her for a long moment, and the corner of her mouth moved very slightly.

"What will you do?"

"I'll go and talk to them," Linnet said.

"You'll lie to them."

"I'll tell them the truth they can use."

She walked out through the front door into the cold, and the gate swarmed.

There were thirty of them at least, with cameras, microphones and shouted questions.

"Mrs. Ravenscroft! Who is the man in your window?"

"Are you seeing someone, Mrs. Ravenscroft?"

"Did you marry the Ravenscroft heir for his money?"

Linnet walked to the gate and stopped with her hands in her coat pockets.

She waited until the shouting thinned.

"The man in that window is my husband's cousin," she said. "He has been ill for a month, and he sleeps in the east wing so a doctor can reach him."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Bury the Ex, Wed the Heir from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.