Lone Wolfe Read Online Free PDF Page B

either.’
                 ‘Why
do you use it, then?’ Mollie asked. Her voice sounded strange and scratchy.
                 Her
father had been asking for money, she remembered. He was a proud man, and even at
her young age Mollie had known he didn’t like to do it.
                 I haven’t been paid in six months, sir .
                 William
Wolfe had been impatient, bored, scornful . He’d
refused at first, and when Henry Parker had doggedly continued, his head
lowered in respect, he’d thrown several notes at him and stalked from the room.
Still holding her hand, Henry had bent to pick them up. Mollie had seen the
sheen of tears in his eyes and known something was terribly wrong. She’d
completely forgotten the episode until now, when it came back with the smells
and the sights and the churning sense of fear and uncertainty.
                 She
looked at Jacob now; he was gazing around the room with a dispassionate air of
assessment. ‘It’s good for me,’ he said at last, and Mollie wondered what that
meant. She decided not to ask.
                 She
moved into the room, stepping gingerly across the thick, faded Turkish carpet,
her notebook clasped to her chest as if she were a timid schoolgirl. The memory
still reverberated through her, made her realise—a little bit—what Jacob and
his siblings had endured from their father. She’d experienced only a moment of
it; they’d had a lifetime. Annabelle had never really spoke of her father to
Mollie, never wanted to mention the terrible night that had given her the scar
she was so self-conscious about.
                 Mollie
was starting to realise now just how much she didn’t know.
                 ‘Here.’
Jacob held out a folded piece of paper. ‘This is yours, I believe.’ Mollie took
it automatically, although she had no idea what it could possibly be. Nothing
of hers had ever been at the manor. ‘I had the water and electricity turned
back on at the cottage,’ Jacob continued. ‘So you should be comfortable there
for however long the landscaping takes.’
                 Mollie
barely heard what he’d said. She had opened the paper he’d given her, and now
gaped at it in soundless shock. It was a cheque. For five
hundred thousand pounds.
                 ‘What
…?’ Her mind spun. She could barely get her head around all those noughts.
                 ‘Back
pay,’ Jacob explained briefly. ‘For your father.’
                 Ten
years of back pay. Her fingers clenched on the paper. ‘You don’t—’
                 ‘Whatever you may think of me, I’m not a thief.’
                 Mollie
swallowed. How did Jacob know what she thought of him? At that moment, she
didn’t even know herself. And she was beginning to wonder if the assumptions
and judgements she’d unconsciously made over the years about Jacob Wolfe were
true at all. The thought filled her with an uneasy curiosity.
                 ‘This
is more than he would have earned,’ she finally said. ‘A lot
more.’ Jacob shrugged. ‘With interest.’
                 ‘That’s
not—’
                 ‘It’s
standard business practice.’ He cut her off, his voice edged with impatience.
‘Trust me, I can afford it. Now shall we discuss the landscaping?’
                 What
had Jacob been doing, Mollie wondered, that made half a million pounds a
negligible amount of money? Stiffly she sat on the edge of the chair in front
of the desk. She slipped the cheque into her pocket; she still didn’t know if
she ever would cash it.
                 ‘Thank
you,’ she said, awkwardly, because how did you thank someone for giving you a
fortune, especially when it seemed to matter so little to him?
                 Jacob
shrugged her gratitude aside. ‘So.’ He folded his
hands on the desk