This Wicked Gift by Courtney Milan Read Free Book Online Page B

eyes—predator’s eyes, or at least, a
predator in training. Like any wolf cub caught in a trap, he snapped in anger
at anything that came near.
    “He’s holding the purse strings, you idiot.”
He straightened and wiped his hands on his sleeves. “My grandfather is sacking
you, yes?”
    “He’ll get around to it.”
    Gareth Carhart, Viscount Wyndleton, picked
up the valise. He nodded sharply. “Excellent,” he said, and then he walked out
of the room.
    T HE END OF THE DAY ARRIVED,   but Lord Blakely
and his grandson still had not returned. This meant that William had still not
been sacked.
    Winter struck directly through William’s
coat as he left his place of employment. Yes, he’d had a reprieve—albeit a temporary
one. He knew the marquess’s tactics. Once he got a man in his sights, he did
not let up. Today William survived. Tomorrow…It was going to be another damned
cold night, one in a string of damned cold nights stretching from this moment
until death.
    “Mr. White.”
    William turned. There, in virulent yellow
waistcoat, burgeoning over an ample belly, his locks pomaded to glossy
slickness, stood Mr. Sherrod’s solicitor. The corner of William’s lip turned up
in an involuntary snarl.
    “Do you have another taunt to deliver on
your late employer’s behalf?” William pulled his coat around him and started
walking away, brushing past the unctuous fellow. “As it is, I must be on my
way.”
    The solicitor’s hand shot out and grabbed
his wrist. “Nonsense, Mr. White. I’ve come to a realization. A   profitable   realization. I wanted to…to
share it with you.”
    William stared at the chubby fingers on
his cuff, and then carefully picked them off his sleeve, one by one. The digits felt greasy even through his
gloves.
    “Adam Sherrod,” the man said, “left the
bulk of his fortune in his final testament to the serious little stick of a
woman who served as his wife. Given the informal agreement he made with your
father, you might contest the disposition of his estate. I had, in point of fact,
hoped that you would. You accepted your fate with surprising grace the other
day.”
    “Is there any chance of overturning the
testament? I assume the document was valid and witnessed. And it was only an
informal agreement between the two men, after all. I’ve heard that excuse often
enough.”
    “Hmm.” The
man looked away and rubbed his lips. “To speak with perfect plainness, you
could claim he was not in his right mind. You see, before he married, he
actually had intended to keep his word. He’d left you half his fortune, five
thousand pounds. It would be easy to argue that he did not see sense. After
all, he did marry   her . Overturn his latest version of the will, and
you stand to win a great deal.”
    In William’s experience, any time someone
claimed to speak perfectly plainly, his words were rarely plain and never
perfect. First, Adam Sherrod had been merely despicable, and not mad. Even
setting aside this tiny detail of reality, the solicitor’s suggestion felt as
oily as his hair. It took William a moment to pinpoint why he was uneasy.
    “You’re his solicitor,” he accused.
“You’re the trustee of the estate, are you not? This advice of yours cannot be
in the estate’s interest. Why are you giving it?”
    The man licked his lips. “Mr. White. Must
you ask? I don’t like to see an upstanding young man deprived of what ought
rightfully to be his. It doesn’t sit well with my conscience.”
    The solicitor bounced on his toes and
lifted his chin, unburdened by anything so heavy as a sense of right and wrong.
William kept silent, staring at the man. The man   rubbed the back of his neck uneasily.
He shifted from foot to foot.
    That dance of guilt was all too familiar
to William. He’d felt that itch. The knowledge that he’d made an irretrievable
error had nestled deep in his stomach all day. He’d   known   what he’d done to Lavinia had been
wrong as he was doing it.