Love by the Lake

CHAPTER ONE - 1873-1

CHAPTER ONE

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1873“The Master wants to see you, my Lady,” the maid called, putting her head round the door.

Lolita looked up and sighed.

She knew this meant a row.

Her stepfather had come into the room at the moment when Murdock Tanner was trying to kiss her. She was struggling violently against him and as her stepfather entered she had struck him in the face.

She had managed to escape and ran out of the room upstairs to her bedroom.

She was fully aware that now there would be an explosion.

Murdock Tanner was enormously rich and of great importance to her stepfather, Ralph Piran, an exceedingly successful shipping magnate. He had made a huge fortune from the steamers now sailing daily across the Atlantic to New York and to other parts of the world.

Yet because he was greedy he wanted still more. He had found it very convenient to marry Lolita’s mother after her father the Earl of Walcott and Vernon had died unexpectedly.

The Earl had been in an accident late at night when the drivers of two chaises had dined over well and were travelling too fast and the one driven by the Earl had overturned.

One of the horses rolled on him and if he had survived he would have undoubtedly been a cripple for life, which was something he would have loathed.

Lolita could only think it was in a way a blessing that he had died without realising what had happened to him.

He had however left her and her mother penniless.

The Earl had been a gambler all his life and because he was very much in love with her mother, she had in many ways been a good influence over him, but she could not prevent him taking a chance on a card, a horse race or anything else which offered a sporting gamble.

After the funeral the Countess had sat down with her daughter Lolita and they had tried to work out what they could do.

The answer of course was nothing.

During the years she had been married, the Countess had gradually lost touch with her family as they lived in the North of England and her husband claimed hardly any family relations.

The Earldoms of Walcott and Vernon had been united three hundred years ago, but the present Earl had dropped the double name because he found it so cumbersome. He arranged that the family would use the name of Vernon while he was the Earl of Walcott only.

Apart from the ancient name and a history which spoke of noble deeds and distinguished statesmen, the Earl boasted no possessions and a very small income.

It just enabled him and his wife to live in a house in an undistinguished street in London. Because they saved and he was occasionally successful at the card tables, they managed to take a holiday abroad every year.

Unfortunately the Earl enjoyed going to Baden-Baden and Monte Carlo and visiting their casinos. Inevitably they returned home poorer than when they had started.

There were, however, times when he won and then because he loved his wife and his daughter he insisted on buying them expensive presents, which later had to be sold.

At the same time they loved him, because apart from everything else he was a great gentleman.

But that was something Lolita could not say about her stepfather.

It had, however, been impossible for her mother to refuse Ralph Piran. He was quite presentable although not of the same class as the Earl.

His father had been Captain of a ship and this meant he was engrossed with the sea from the moment he was born. His mother had been the daughter of a Solicitor, who had taught his grandson everything he himself knew about money and as soon as Ralph could think he was determined to be rich.

He had a very shrewd brain and by the time he was twenty-five he had accumulated an income which was the envy of his contemporaries.

He soon decided that his friends and acquaintances were not good enough for him.

He wanted to shine in the Social world as well as among those who admired his business prowess and when by chance he met the Countess of Walcott, she was the answer to many of the ambitions that had driven him since he had left school.

The Countess was extremely unhappy after her husband’s death, but that did not deter Ralph Piran. If riches could make her happy that was what he was prepared to give her.

He also wanted a son who would carry on his ever-expanding business, but here, however, he was disappointed.

But it gave him some satisfaction that Lolita at seventeen was outstandingly beautiful and he could say to those he met in the business world,

“I must introduce you to my stepdaughter, Lady Lolita Vernon.”

This year Lolita was eighteen and he was determined that the Social world should help him celebrate the occasion.

He had already bought a large and impressive house in Berkeley Square and he was planning a ‘coming out’ ball for Lolita. He was determined it would be more sensational than any other ball given throughout the Season.

Then at the end of April, when her mother was making all the necessary arrangements for Lolita to be presented at Court, she suffered a stroke.

Not even the doctors could explain why it had happened. The stroke sent her into a coma from which the most skilled and the most expensive of the medical practitioners could not rouse her.

This of course upset the plans for Lolita as a debutante, as it was quite impossible for her to stage a ball in the same house where her mother lay unconscious.

It also meant that Ralph Piran had to find hostesses amongst his wife’s friends who would chaperone Lolita when she appeared in public.

He was determined that she should continue with her Season as it helped him not only socially but in his business.

It was still considered vulgar by the Social hostesses for a gentleman to be in trade and Ralph Piran was determined to be accepted.

He was rich enough, he believed, to buy himself a position in the Social world which he was so determined to achieve.

Apart from his money his greatest asset was his stepdaughter.

He himself was actually quite presentable, being tall, dark-haired and good-looking. Dressed by the most expensive tailors in London he was able to mingle with members of White’s Club and Boodles without anyone questioning why he was amongst them.

It was however a different problem when it came to invitations. A large number of Social hostesses had been very fond of the Countess of Walcott.

Distressed by her illness, they had invited Lolita to luncheon and dinner and a ball when they gave one, but they did not invite her stepfather.

It made him angry, but he kept his feelings to himself and he made sure, when it was at all possible, that he was at parties where among the other guests were the hostesses who had barred their doors to him.

Lolita was well aware of the presents which passed from her stepfather to the mothers of her friends and she knew they could not afford to offer such generous hospitality unless, to put it bluntly, it was subsidised.

Ralph Piran was exceedingly jealous and by the end of May he had attended a number of balls to which he would not have received an invitation earlier in the year.

He got what he wanted cleverly and tactfully.

Men clapped him on the back and told him he was ‘a good fellow’. At the same time they borrowed a thousand pounds from him and he gave it to them willingly.

He was not so foolish, however, as to neglect his business because of his social ambitions.

He was in the middle of pulling off a deal that would make him the owner of a whole fishing fleet which he had always wanted to buy.

It was, however, such an expensive purchase that he was obliged to accept help from some of his friends, who were as interested as he was in multiplying their money and increasing the number of ships they possessed.

Murdock Tanner had for some years been the most important and most successful entrepreneur in the shipping industry. If he and these friends of his became partners, Piran knew they would take control of the seas and oceans which covered nearly three-quarters of the world.

Murdock Tanner was growing old and like Ralph Piran he had no son. He had already hinted when they were negotiating with each other that Ralph would be his heir.

Ralph Piran entered the hall of his house in Berkeley Square and strode towards his study.

As he did so he heard Lolita scream.

He could not imagine what the matter was until he opened the door and saw her fighting savagely with Murdock Tanner.

Even as he stood transfixed in the doorway, she slapped Murdock on the face.

As he recoiled from the blow, she managed to twist herself from his arms and ran past him through the door.

He could hear her footsteps gather speed as she crossed the hall and tore up the stairs.

Ralph Piran hurried forward with apologies and hastily provided his guest with a glass of champagne.

Lolita reached her bedroom, slammed the door behind her and sank down at her dressing table. She looked in the mirror at her dishevelled hair.

‘How dare he try to kiss me?’ she fumed. ‘If Mama had been here she would have been furious.’

Before she fell ill, Lolita’s mother had told her over and over again how to behave correctly as a debutante.

“You must be quiet, modest and polite, darling,” she had said, “and of course never do anything that would get you talked about.”

“What do you mean, Mama?” Lolita had asked her.

Her mother hesitated for a moment before she replied,

“Some girls, I am told, allow men to become too familiar with them. You must of course never go into the garden or into an empty room alone with a man.”

“You mean, Mama, that he would try to kiss me?”

“It is something a gentleman should not do,” her mother answered. “At the same time I am told girls encourage men in a way that in my day would have been considered very fast and badly behaved.”

She smiled before she went on,

“I want you to marry someone charming and of course as well bred as your father.”

Lolita was intelligent enough to realise that her mother was warning her and it was against the sort of men who Ralph Piran was bound to associate with in his business.

She had met some of them because her stepfather always wanted to show her off.

She had thought them rather coarse and what her mother would have considered too familiar.

The older men chucked her under the chin and told her she was pretty enough to break the hearts of all the men in town.

The young men held her hand too tightly and she was sure if she had danced with them they would hold her too close.

This, in fact, did not happen because they were not invited to the balls given by her mother’s friends and neither were those who accepted a little help secretly from her stepfather.

She enjoyed all the balls she attended and yet she thought they would be far more interesting if her mother had still been with her.

Lolita was aware that because her stepfather was so rich, the Dowagers sitting round the walls whispered whenever she appeared.

Quite a number of gentlemen who would otherwise have ignored her and preferred to dance with older women partnered her in waltzes.

She had enough brains to realise what was going on when a young man had been told how rich her stepfather was. He paid her fulsome compliments and made pointed suggestions that he should be invited to their house in Berkeley Square.

Now that her mother was so ill, Lolita found herself acting as hostess to her stepfather’s friends.

She thought in the past they would have met him in the City, but for the last three days Murdock Tanner, who had, Lolita learned, come to London on business, had been continually with them at the house.