A Touch Of Love

CHAPTER ONE 1820-1

CHAPTER ONE 1820“I am afraid, Miss Selincourt, that I have bad news for you!”

“Oh, no! I was hoping you would not say that!”

“I assure you I have done everything in my power and spent many sleepless nights worrying as to how I could have something different to report, but it’s hopeless.”

Mr. Lawson, the Senior Partner of Lawson, Cresey and Houghton, had a note of sincerity in his voice that was unmistakable.

The girl he was speaking to gave a deep sigh and sat down in the chair opposite him, her eyes large and worried in her oval face, as she asked,

“Are things really – bad?”

Mr. Lawson gave her a look of sympathy before he replied,

“You shall judge for yourself.”

A grey-haired man of about fifty, he had to put on his spectacles before he could find the paper he wanted amongst a number of others on his desk.

Then he held it in front of him, obviously reading it over to himself as if he hoped by doing so that he might find some salient point he had missed.

Finally he laid it down and said,

“You know, Miss Selincourt, that I had a great admiration for your brother-in-law, Lord Ronald, and I was very proud that he extended his friendship to me.”

Tamara Selincourt nodded and he went on,

“I begged him on numerous occasions to make some provision in the event of his death, but he merely laughed at me.”

“But why should he have expected to die?” Tamara asked. “After all, he was only thirty-three and my sister was just six months younger.”

“Thirty-three!” Mr. Lawson repeated to himself. “You are right, Miss Selincourt, at thirty-three one does not think about death.”

“And their new boat was considered to be especially seaworthy,” Tamara cried. “After all, it cost a great deal of money.”

“I am well aware of that,” Mr. Lawson answered, “and it is one of the things that now have to be paid for.”

“Ronald thought that he might make a little money out of her, perhaps taking a cargo from one harbour to another.”

Tamara spoke almost as if she was talking to herself and unexpectedly she laughed.

“That was really nonsense, as we both know! Ronald and my sister just loved the sea. They were only happy when they were sailing over the waves, setting out on what seemed to them an exciting adventure and – leaving us – behind.”

Tamara’s voice dropped on the last words.

Then she added hardly above a whisper,

“What will – become of the – children?”

“That is what has concerned me,” Mr. Lawson replied. “After all Sándor is nearly twelve and should soon be going to school.”

“He is a very bright boy,” Tamara said. “In fact they are all unusually intelligent, which is not surprising when you remember how clever my father was.”

“I have always regretted that I never had the pleasure of meeting him,” Mr. Lawson answered.

“He was brilliant!” Tamara exclaimed. “And, although his books did not make very much money, they will always be reprinted for the use of scholars.”

“I am sure of that,” Mr. Lawson agreed, “and, because I am also sure that Sándor has inherited his grandfather’s brains, he must be well educated. There is only one way that can be accomplished.”

“How?” Tamara asked.

She raised her eyes to Mr. Lawson’s as she spoke and he thought, as he had thought many times before, how lovely she was.

She certainly had a beauty not usually found in a small Cornish village.

‘She is like an exotic orchid,’ he told himself and wondered how many young men, if they had the opportunity, would think the same.

Tamara certainly did not look English.

Her red hair, such a dark rich auburn that it could only have come from South East Europe, framed the perfect oval of her face and gave her skin a translucent whiteness that again was very un-English.

Her eyes were so dark as to be almost purple and yet Mr. Lawson could not help thinking that, despite her exotic appearance, there was something very young and very innocent about her.

“How old are you, Miss Selincourt?” he asked unexpectedly.

She smiled at him.

“I thought that was a question you should never ask a lady,” she replied. “To be truthful I am nineteen, thirteen years younger than my sister, Maïka, but then there was a brother in between us, who died when he was only a child.”

“Nineteen!” Mr. Lawson repeated to himself. “You are too young, if I may say so, to have so much responsibility thrust upon you.”

“But I have to look after the children. Who else is there?” Tamara asked. “And anyway I love them and they love me.”

She looked at the worried expression on Mr. Lawson’s face and added,

“I am prepared to work for them, to do anything that is necessary – but I was hoping that you would tell me that there is enough money left so that in the meantime we should not starve.”

“I know that is what you hoped, Miss Selincourt,” Mr. Lawson replied, “but, unfortunately – ”

“I made forty pounds out of the first book I wrote,” Tamara interrupted. “It seemed a lot at the time, but I am very hopeful that my second one, which is now in the publishers’ hands, will make me a great deal more.”

“When is it to be published?” Mr. Lawson asked.

“Any day now. They did not give me an exact date, but they told me that it would be some time in June.”

Mr. Lawson looked down at the piece of paper that was in front of him, before he said,

“Supposing you make another forty pounds or even double that amount, you still could not keep yourself and three children on such a small sum.”

There was silence.

Then Tamara said,

“Are you telling me that there is no other money?”

“That is the truth.”

She stared at him incredulously.

“But how – I don’t understand?”

“The allowance that your brother-in-law, Lord Ronald Grant, received every quarter ends with his death and I am afraid that the last amount which arrived a week ago has already been anticipated.”

“To pay for the boat!”

“Exactly!”

“But the house – ?”

“The house, as I expect you know, is mortgaged and you are extremely fortunate in that there is a purchaser ready to buy it.”

Tamara looked at the Solicitor in a startled manner.

“But – I thought we could – stay here.”

“You must see that is impossible,” Mr. Lawson said. “The house was always too big and too expensive for Lord Ronald’s means, but he and your sister fell in love with it and believed that they could make ends meet.”

Tamara was silent.

She knew only too well how both her sister and her brother-in-law were always prepared to leave everything to chance, good luck or just hope.

She had had a suspicion for some years that they were running more and more hopelessly into debt.

But Lord Ronald had insisted on building a new boat because their old one was unseaworthy and he blithely ignored the question of how he was to pay for it.

Now a storm had brought catastrophe and tragedy to them all.

Lord Ronald Grant and his wife had been drowned when a sudden and unexpected tempest had burst out of what had seemed a cloudless sky.

The Sea Lark had been swept away to be wrecked, they learnt later, on the rocks.

The shock had been all the more terrible because it was two days before Tamara could learn what had happened.

She only felt within herself that the worst had occurred when her sister and her husband did not return.

Some fishermen had gone out as soon as the storm had abated, but all they had discovered were fragments of The Sea Lark floating on the waves and pathetically a little woollen cap that had belonged to Lady Ronald.

It had all happened so unexpectedly, so suddenly that it was hard for Tamara to realise that her good-tempered charming brother-in-law was dead and that she would never see her sister again, whom she adored.

Now, as if her thoughts went back to what Mr. Lawson had been saying a little earlier on, she said aloud,

“They gave me a home after Papa died. I was so happy with them and you know, Mr. Lawson, if it’s the last thing I do, I have to repay that debt.”

There was a note in Tamara’s voice that showed she was not very far from tears and after a moment Mr. Lawson said,

“I understand only too well what you are feeling, Miss Selincourt, and that is why you will appreciate that the only sensible course for you to take is the one I am about to suggest to you.”

“What is that?” Tamara asked curiously.

“It is,” he said slowly, “that you should take the children to their uncle, the Duke of Granchester!”

If he had exploded a bomb in front of her, Tamara could not have looked more astonished.

“Take them to the Duke?” she repeated, her voice incredulous. “How could you suggest such a thing?”

“Who else is there?” Mr. Lawson asked. “As far as I know your brother-in-law has not kept in touch with any member of his family and the children are undoubtedly, now they are orphans, His Grace’s responsibility.”

“It’s impossible!” Tamara protested. “Surely you are aware of the manner in which the Duke has treated his brother – and my sister?”

There was an unmistakable note of hostility in her voice and Mr. Lawson said quietly,

“I know the story only too well, but we cannot entirely blame the present Duke for his father’s attitude when Lord Ronald wished to marry your sister.”

“It was inhuman! Barbaric!” Tamara stormed and now her dark eyes were flashing. “Do you know what happened, Mr. Lawson, when Ronald wrote to his father to say that he wanted to marry Maïka?”

Mr. Lawson did not reply and she went on angrily,

“He tore down to Oxford where Ronald was in residence and told him that if he married Maïka he would never speak to him again!”

“You must understand,” Mr. Lawson said mildly, “that the Duke, who was a very pious man, had a horror of anything connected with the Playhouse!”

“He said because Maïka appeared on the stage that she was an actress. But in fact she was nothing of the sort!” Tamara’s voice seemed to ring out as she continued, “Maïka was a singer and because at the time my mother was desperately ill and my father could not afford the high fees asked by the best doctors, she sang in an Opera Company.”

Mr. Lawson was about to speak, but Tamara went on,

“In two years she made enough money to pay for all the treatments my mother required.”

“Surely this was explained to His Grace at the time?” Mr. Lawson murmured.

“Do you suppose he would listen?” Tamara asked furiously. “He would not even allow Ronald to speak in my sister’s defence.”

She drew in her breath before she said,

“Ronald told me that he spoke as if Maïka was a prostitute, a woman beyond the pale, whom he had picked up in some gutter! He would neither meet her nor hear about her. He just repeated his ultimatum!”

She paused before she added,

“When Ronald told him that, whatever he said, he intended to marry my sister, the Duke walked out and never spoke to him again!”

She threw out her hands as she asked,

“What sort of father was that? What sort of man is it who would repudiate his own son without allowing him even to speak a word in his own defence?”

“The Duke has been dead for some time,” Mr. Lawson remarked quietly.

“The present Duke is no better,” Tamara snapped. “He is only a year older than Ronald and you would think that he might have understood and perhaps sympathised! But he slavishly accepted his father’s decision that the family should sever all connections with the – ‘black sheep’.”

Her voice broke on the last word.

She rose and walked to the window to stare out fighting her tears before she said,

“You know how sweet, gentle and wonderful in every way my sister was. Actually she hated the stage and everything to do with it.”

“She once told me so,” Mr. Lawson replied.

“As soon as she made enough money to save my mother,” Tamara continued as if he had not spoken, “she left the theatre just to be Ronald’s wife, as she had always wanted to be, and they were blissfully happy.”

“I don’t think I have ever known a couple who were so happy,” Mr. Lawson agreed almost enviously.

“And they died together,” Tamara murmured. “I don’t believe that either of them could have gone on living alone.”

Mr. Lawson adjusted his spectacles.

“Now to get back to where we started, Miss Selincourt,” he said briskly, “and that is the financial position of you and the children. The only possible thing to do is to take them where they belong.”