Page 74 of Ties of Legacy

Corbett’s expression of concern deepened. “Even if my original letter went astray, what about the other ones? When you didn’t return after your father’s death, we sent letters through all six kingdoms, following in your mother’s wake. I made sure to re-explain the situation in every one of them, just in case. Surely at least one of them reached you? Isn’t that why you’re here now?”

“I haven’t seen my mother in more than three years,” Elliot said shortly, still struggling to understand the rest.

Corbett’s eyes widened. “Then why didn’t she write back and say so?” he exclaimed hotly.

Elliot sighed. “You do remember my mother, don’t you? When did she ever expend energy on something for the benefit of someone else?”

Corbett bit back a curse, but Elliot’s own fury was rising as he began to grasp the fullness of his mother’s perfidy.

“You needn’t hold back on insulting her for my sake,” Elliot said darkly. “She and I have parted ways completely. Butapparently we didn’t do so soon enough. You say you wrote me a letter explaining everything and asking me to return? All I received was an unsigned note and a pouch of coins.”

“Unsigned?” Corbett asked sharply. “Impossible. I wrote that letter myself, and of course I signed my name.”

“You wrote it to me?” Elliot asked, needing direct confirmation. “Not my mother? And you asked me to return to take my father’s place and claim my inheritance?”

Corbett’s eyes tightened slightly. “Of course. I realize it didn’t follow strict procedures, but I calculated that you would likely have turned eighteen before my letter found you, and I preferred to deal with you directly rather than involve Opaline in any way.”

Elliot groaned, his anger burning almost as brightly toward his own past foolishness as toward his mother. Why hadn’t he insisted on reading the full letter—the one she had claimed was addressed to her? He had been so shocked by the news of his father’s death, and so shaken by his apparent rejection, that he had blindly accepted her claims. He should have known better.

“I only ever saw the first page of the letter,” he admitted, feeling fresh shame as he related his foolishness to his father’s steward. “It ended abruptly after mentioning coin for travel expenses, and she told me it had been a note enclosed within her own letter. Since I was a minor when my father died, it seemed—” He cut himself off.

He shouldn’t have tried to excuse his foolishness. He had known the inherent selfishness of his mother’s nature, and he should never have assumed she would consider inheritance sacred.

“Are you saying you never received the rest of my letter?” Corbett asked, his own tones full of anger. “I know Opaline was always a heedless, selfish woman, but why would she go to such lengths to conceal my plea for you to return?”

Elliot tried to remember back. He had been in such a haze of shock and pain at the time that he could barely recall the couple of days following his receipt of Corbett’s note. “I think she thought that with my father dead, I would stay with her,” he said slowly. “She must have known that if I left, she would never see me or a single one of my coins again. But why would she have lied about my inheritance?”

“Your inheritance?”

Elliot nodded, his thoughts still on that long ago interaction. “Surely she would have liked to get her hands on the whole of my father’s wealth and not just the pouch you sent to me?”

“You were young,” Corbett said in a dark voice, “and vulnerable. I know my duty, and I certainly wouldn’t have allowed Opaline to siphon off any of your estate’s wealth.”

Elliot nodded. “Yes, she must have known she wouldn’t be welcome in Bolivere. If I’d still been a boy with stars in my eyes for my charming mother, it might have been a different story. But I was utterly disillusioned by then. She must have guessed that her only hope of gaining anything was to cut me off completely and keep me chained to her.”

“Cut you off completely?” Corbett sucked in a breath. “Are you saying she denied you your inheritance? What did she claim was in my letter?”

“She told me that my father had changed his will and cut me out almost completely. She claimed that pouch was the full amount of my inheritance while the rest had been left to Bolivere. I understood you actively wished me to stay away and was imagining the town in a state of prosperity. But it didn’t look that way when I came in.”

“Prosperity?” Corbett winced. “We’ve been barely keeping everything together since your father passed.”

“I only discovered the true state of things when Avery told me the truth about your situation.”

Corbett gave a dark laugh. “She doesn’t know the half of it.”

Elliot’s eyes shot to his, his eyebrows rising.

Corbett hesitated before shaking his head. “Not here. I’ll tell you everything, of course, but let’s continue for now.” He gestured ahead into the manor grounds.

As they began walking again, he couldn’t stop shaking his head. “I think I need a moment to recover from this revelation. How could she do something so terrible to her own son? It’s beyond villainous.”

“She no doubt found some way to excuse it in her mind,” Elliot said with a hard edge to his voice. “She always does.”

Corbett’s face tightened. “Your father was a very wise man, but I never understood what he saw in her.”

“He saw her beauty, I think,” Elliot said as they walked side by side through the outer edges of the estate. “And her charm and affection. I have enough memories of my very early years to remember she used to be affectionate—back before she grew bored of playing the pampered mistress of the manor. Even now she’s good at charming acquaintances—although their opinions always change in the end.”

He shook away the memories that crowded his mind. “My father would have done well to look for signs of her character rather than her charm. But she was always his greatest blindness.”

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