Page 15 of The Inheritance At Bourton

"Hi, Edith."

Edith fell into step beside her. "Heard you've been having trouble with Madeline's solicitor."

Of course she had. It was a small village. Everyone knew everything.

"It's being handled," Leah said carefully.

"I'm sure it is." Edith adjusted her scarf against the wind. "But if you're looking for proof that your parents' marriage was properly registered, you might try the church records in Cheltenham."

Leah stopped walking. "What?"

"The parish records. St. Mary's, I think it was." Edith looked at her directly. "Your father was old-fashioned. Even after a Vegas ceremony, he would have wanted it blessed and registered locally. It's the kind of thing he would have done. I'm almost certain of it."

"How do you know that?"

"I don't know it. But I knew your father. And I knew your grandmother. She believed in following the rules. I would imagine your father would want to appease her after what he’d done. And I remember he went to Cheltenham a few times that first year your mother was here.” She shrugged. "Could be nothing. Could be something. Worth a look, anyway."

Leah felt something like hope blossom. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. I could be wrong." Edith patted her arm. "But I don't think I am."

She continued toward the green, leaving Leah standing on the pavement with her bread and a lead she hadn't had five minutes ago.

She went straight to Rowan's cottage.

He answered with a dish towel in his hands. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. I need you to drive me to Cheltenham. Please."

"When?"

"Now."

He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. "Let me get my keys."

They were in the truck five minutes later, pulling out onto the road that led away from the village. Leah told him what Gerald had said, then what Edith had told her. He listened without interrupting, nodding along.

"Do you believe Gerald?" he asked when she finished.

"I don't know." She looked out at the fields sliding past. "But it makes sense. Madeline's not stupid. A court case would be public. People would talk. She'd have to justify why she's trying to take a house away from a woman whose family owned it for generations. It's not a good look. And again, what’s she going to do with it? She looks greedy."

"She is greedy.”

“But she pretends to be a saint,” Leah spat. “I almost wish she would take me to court so I could expose her.”

He chuckled. “I think there would be plenty of people who’d like to see that.”

"What if it's there?" Leah asked quietly. "What if the registration is there and this whole thing just... ends?"

"Then it ends."

"And if it's not?"

He didn't answer right away. "Then we figure out what comes next."

The road curved through a stand of bare trees, and beyond them, the town began to appear. Stone buildings and church spires rose out of the dreary fall landscape. Rowan took the turn toward the town center, and Leah felt her pulse kick up.

This was it. One way or another, they were about to find out whether her father had done what Edith thought he'd done. Had a young man in love, four decades earlier, taken his American bride to a parish office and made sure their marriage was properly registered in the country he called home?