Garden of May - Chapter 125
She understood instinctively. This was the limit of what she could obtain from Benjamin Dawson through goodwill alone. Pushing beyond the line he had drawn would accomplish nothing except earning his displeasure.
So, standing before that invisible boundary, Vanessa quietly stepped back. She gathered the will from the table and carefully tucked it back inside her hat for safekeeping.
“Thank you for listening to me.”
“…I’m sorry I couldn’t be of greater help.”
“No. You’ve already helped me more than enough.”
By all rights, she had just been denied the very thing she wanted most.
And yet there was hardly any disappointment visible on her face. If anything, she even had a faint smile, as though trying to ease his discomfort instead.
Benjamin hesitated for a moment at her composed response.
Just then, Vanessa began searching through the inside of her sleeve as though looking for something. After fumbling briefly, she bit her lip with an embarrassed expression before glancing at him hesitantly.
“Could I possibly borrow a fountain pen or a pen for just a moment?”
“That’s hardly a problem.”
Benjamin readily took a fountain pen from inside his coat.
Ever since earlier, the image of a delicate five-year-old girl had kept overlapping with the young woman before him, and compared to the unease sitting in his chest, this was such a small and harmless request.
After a lifetime spent signing documents, he still carried a fully inked fountain pen out of habit, even years after retirement.
Vanessa accepted the pen carefully and began writing something across a napkin on the table. Her handwriting was unexpectedly elegant and practiced for someone so young.
Benjamin had just finished thinking that when Vanessa capped the pen again and looked up.
“It’s embarrassing, but this is the best offer I can make.”
As she slid the napkin toward him, her clear eyes shone with unwavering determination.
“I need legal counsel regarding my inheritance. And I would like to hire you, Mr. Dawson.”
Written neatly across the napkin were concise employment terms and a proposed fee. It was not an enormous amount. But neither was it insultingly small.
It was the sort of proper market rate someone would arrive at only after thoroughly researching legal fees beforehand. Benjamin suppressed a helpless laugh. Despite her gentle appearance, she was far bolder and sharper than he had expected.
“You want to hire an old man who’s been retired for over five years?”
“Are the conditions insufficient?”
“They’re ordinary enough. Aside from the fact that payment appears to depend on a rather distant future.”
Vanessa met his gaze directly.
“I need someone experienced in inheritance law. Especially a lawyer skilled and trustworthy enough to begin investigating without alerting my uncle.”
“…”
“As I said earlier, I believe the will was altered somehow. And the more I look into it, the more I feel as though I’m missing something important.”
Vanessa clasped her hands tightly together in her lap.
The more she examined the will, the stranger it felt.
Her father had been far more meticulous than she remembered. When it came to the businesses he managed, the will described even the smallest details with painstaking precision.
And yet, within that enormous document, the only thing that had been omitted was her.
The moment her parents died, everything in Gloucester—from every blade of grass to every brick—passed directly into her uncle’s hands.
In Ingram, which inherited the laws of the ancient Salic Empire, women were forbidden from inheriting titles or family lines. But even so, it made no sense that she had been completely excluded from everything unrelated to land or nobility.
Even the white pony she had received as a birthday present had not been allowed to remain hers. The pony she had boarded at Delta Ranch had eventually been sold off to another stable without so much as a word.
She still remembered how devastated she had been when she first learned that.
“When I checked the will, every company name my father personally included had been erased. I heard that could happen if investment relationships were formally dissolved at the request of the other party. But when I examined the financial ledgers from that period, there were no records of large sums changing hands.”
“…”
“So I searched through old newspapers and tracked down the five companies Somerset had invested in.”
- Protected: Garden of May Chapter 152 - Jun 16, 2026
- Protected: Garden of May Chapter 151 - Jun 16, 2026
- Protected: Garden of May Chapter 150 - Jun 16, 2026
