Inheriting

That makes Juniper my third cousin on paper, but it’s more complicated than that. The story goes, the old rich patriarch took in a girl, the product of a distant female relative’s affair. To bring the branches of the family closer, and to make Agnes a legitimate Hawthorn, he planned for his son Adam to marry her when they came of age. (Talk about keeping it in the family.) Contrary to expectations, or maybe exactly as expected, the siblings each married for love after Charles croaked. The Hawthorns stayed close, and the male heir let his sister help manage the estate.