Hiding from the Fortune-Hunters

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1877-1

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1877Colena pulled off the black hat she had worn at her father’s funeral and then threw it onto a chair before she sat down in front of the mirror to tidy her hair.

She had tried not to cry at the funeral and somehow she had succeeded.

But now she felt tears coming into her eyes and it was difficult to see her own reflection.

The funeral for Sir Arthur Dalton had taken place at the English Church in Paris and because they were in Paris his death had not filled the newspapers, which Colena knew it would have done in London.

Sir Arthur had made himself one of the richest and most acclaimed men in the whole country and, because he was so shrewd as well as lucky, he had become one of the wealthiest men of the times.

Colena knew that his death would be headlines in almost every English newspaper.

It was because of this that she had deliberately had him buried very quickly after his death.

Only his relatives and close friends were aware that he was no longer with them.

It was three years ago that Sir Arthur, on one of his trips abroad from which he usually came back richer than he was already, had caught a strange and frightening fever, which developed into a disease that had affected his whole body.

Because he had been in Paris when it had occurred, Colena had not returned to England, but stayed so that she could see her father every day and she had been told by the doctors that it was only a question of time before he was back on his feet.

He was, in fact, only sixty-five when he died.

It was something no one expected or anticipated.

Colena herself had been dreadfully shocked when she had called to see her father after his afternoon rest to be told that he had died in his sleep.

“But you were so sure,” she had said to the doctors, “that he would recover from this dreadful Oriental disease which has lingered – on and on. I did not believe – that it would kill him!”

The tears had come into her eyes at the last words.

One of the doctors, who was French, bent forward to put his hand on her arm.

“You must be very brave, mademoiselle,” he said in French, “as you have been all the time that your father has been so ill. To be absolutely frank with you, none of us had the slightest idea that it would eventually kill him.”

“You have been so kind, doctor,” Colena sighed, “but I too thought that he would soon be back to being as energetic and as clever as he has always been.”

There was nothing more that the doctor could say.

She had gone back to the house that her father had bought in Paris, which was just off the Champs Élysées.

Her cousin, Elizabeth, had been waiting there for her and she knew, as soon as she saw her that something terrible had happened.

Colena had rushed forward and thrown her arms around her cousin.

“Papa is – dead,” she sobbed, “and they were – so sure that he would get well.”

She was weeping copiously and there was nothing her cousin could do but hold her closely.

“You have to be brave,” she told her, “as your dear father must have been brave when your mother died.”

“You are the only person who I have left,” Colena wailed. “Now I feel all alone in the world and there is no point in thinking – that there is anything for me to do.”

Elizabeth thought this to be true, but was too wise to say so. She merely comforted Colena as best she could.

When she became calmer and stopped crying, they started to plan what they would do.

“I don’t want to stay in Paris,” Colena said. “It will always remind me of Papa and how he enjoyed taking me to see the sights when he was not busy.”

“You are not the only person who will miss him,” Elizabeth replied. “He is renowned for the brilliant way he has helped so many people become almost as rich as he was himself.”

“I know that,” Colena answered, “and I know how much he will be missed in England. I would rather be at home when they will all come saying, over and over again, how wonderful he was.”

“Then we will certainly go back,” Elizabeth assured her. “After all, the house is waiting for you and you never expected when you came away that we would be here for so long.”

“It must be nearly two years,” Colena said. “I was seventeen when I left and had just finished my schooling.”

Elizabeth nodded and Colena went on,

“But, of course, I wanted to come to France with Papa. As he knew that he had a big job to do, he wanted me to be with him rather than leave me in England.”

“And, of course, you enjoyed Paris,” Elizabeth said. “It was a year later when I came to join you. I was thrilled at the invitation, but then I never expected that it would last over two years.”

“None of us did,” Colena replied, “but when Papa became ill there was no point in moving. So here we are now without him.”

Tears ran down her face again.

Her cousin held her very closely.

“You have to be brave,” she said. “Just think how wonderful your father was and how many people will miss him. You are so lucky to be his daughter.”

“Of course I am,” Colena agreed. “I thought that he was the most fabulous man there ever was even though I really saw very little of him.”

“He was always so incredibly busy. And everyone wanted him because he was successful in everything he undertook.”

Elizabeth then took Colena upstairs and insisted on her lying down.

“If you want to cry, then you must cry,” she told her. “But you must not let everyone else see you because they will want to cry too.”

“I think a lot of people will be missing Papa more than they realise,” Colena said. “He was so brilliant that he succeeded in everything he did and then everyone wanted to copy him or be associated with him in some way.”

Her cousin had agreed.

At the same time she thought that going on and on about just how marvellous Sir Arthur had been would only make Colena unhappier than she was already.

She therefore started to pack up all the things they would take with them to London.

Elizabeth took out her pen and drafted a letter that she thought Colena should read, before she sent it to the house in London, saying that they were returning.

‘The sooner we leave here,’ she thought, ‘where everything reminds Colena of her father, the better.’

She started thinking who they had to inform of her uncle’s death, the most important naturally were the people who had looked after his money and his possessions while he had been so ill.

Luckily, Mr. James Armstrong, the Solicitor who paid the servants and everything that was needed was due to come back to the house later that afternoon.

When he did arrive, he was as horrified as they had been at Sir Arthur’s death.

The man who had always seemed to him and a great number of others to be the very spirit and Master of everything around him was no longer there.

“What we have to do now,” Mr. Armstrong said to Elizabeth when her cousin was not there, “is to make Miss Colena feel at home in London. She has not lived in the house for any length of time and therefore has very few friends in England.”

“The family will rally round her,” Elizabeth replied.

She was twenty-four and one of Colena’s cousins, who was not married or involved with any man when Sir Arthur had realised that he had to be in France for some considerable time.

He had therefore asked her to be a companion to his daughter.

Sir Arthur had been more grateful to her than she expected and she had actually given up a great deal to do as he wanted.

She had only recently been a debutante for one year and had been a great success and she was invited to parties almost almost every night.

However, because her uncle was so influential and admired by everyone she knew, it was a great compliment that he was offering her this position of trust.

She had therefore accepted it without hesitation and she had thought, of course, that they would only be in Paris for three or four months at the outside.

But, when it extended year after year, she had too kind a nature and was too fond of Colena to say goodbye and return to London alone.

She was well rewarded by being given the most beautiful clothes that only Paris could provide.

She had also received at birthdays and Christmas the most expensive and beautiful jewellery from the Rue de la Pays.

At the same time she had greatly missed her friends in London and was only too well aware that she was now no longer a debutante.

In fact, as a friend wrote to her, if she had been in London she would doubtless be married by now.

‘I don’t regret it in any way,’ she thought to herself as she wrote to the different people who had to learn of her uncle’s death.

One thing that she was sure of was that Sir Arthur would be little mourned here in Paris except by those who actually did business with him, but in London there would be many people who would be distressed at losing him.

Perhaps the Prime Minister himself and Members of the Cabinet would appreciate better than anyone that they had lost a man of outstanding merit who had helped and advised them in good times and bad.

There was no one to take his place in London or for that matter anywhere else.

What Elizabeth now saw as a difficulty more than anything else was that, as Colena had been at school in the country and abroad so much, she had no friends in London.

In the holidays her father had invariably taken her either to their home in the country or on a trip to Scotland or Ireland where he would be working on business deals.

Colena was therefore returning to London and, as her cousin saw it, with few people to welcome her and no one who had worked with her father would be likely to find a place in their busy lives for her.

‘Now I will have to ask someone in the family to chaperone her,’ she thought. ‘I cannot think who that could possibly be.’

It seemed strange, but actually their family was a small one.

Sir Arthur had been born in Scotland although his family were not Scottish.

He had won a Scholarship to Oxford University and had emerged with such an outstanding and brilliant brain that everyone in London had held out their arms to him.

It had never struck him that he should return back to Scotland to his own relations.

As the years passed and he travelled all over the world growing richer and richer from every country that he visited and, being politically involved in the Empire, which was growing year by year, there had been no opportunity for him to look up his relatives.

And, as far as Elizabeth knew, because they were her relations too, most of them were dead.

Elizabeth’s mother had died in childbirth when she was only fifteen and her father, of whom she saw very little because he was a constant traveller, had an accident a year and a half ago.

The carriage he had hired was overturned in a road accident and he had died shortly after receiving extremely serious injuries to his head.

By this time, because she had been with Colena in the holidays, she had been quite happy to make her home her own and to think of herself as a part of the magnificent entourage that Sir Arthur surrounded himself with.

What she had liked more than anything else was that he talked to her as if she was older than she actually was and she believed that she had learnt more from him than she had ever learnt at school.

Now it seemed horrifying that she and Colena were two young people travelling on a great sea of money, but with few companions and no one to tell them exactly what they should do on their own.

When Sir Arthur had been alive, it had always been a question of obeying him as quickly as possible.