A Touch Of Love

CHAPTER ONE 1820-2

“Do you really think I would do that?” Tamara asked. “That I would humiliate myself and them to ask favours of a man who has behaved so abominably to his own brother?”

“What is the alternative?” Mr. Lawson asked.

“There must be something – something we could – do,” Tamara said desperately.

She walked back towards the desk and sat down in the chair where she had been sitting before, almost as if her legs would no longer support her.

“If there is, I have no idea of it,” Mr. Lawson said. “Quite frankly, Miss Selincourt, I think it only right and just that the Duke should be made responsible for his brother’s children.”

Tamara did not speak and after a moment he went on,

“Mr. Trevena says that he will take over the house and pay enough money to rid you of the mortgage and all Lord Ronald’s other debts, provided he has possession immediately.”

“I suppose he wants it for his son who is getting married,” Tamara said dully.

“That is right,” Mr. Lawson replied. “He is a difficult man and, if we put him off, he may buy a house elsewhere.”

Tamara was silent, realising that to sell a house of the size of The Manor in that isolated part of Cornwall was not easy.

They might go for months, if not years, without finding another buyer and it would be impossible to feed the children let alone provide them with clothes and education.

“Is the Duke aware that his brother is dead?” she asked after a moment.

Mr. Lawson looked slightly uncomfortable before he said,

“I have not yet informed His Grace.”

Tamara looked at him.

Then suddenly there was a little light in her eyes.

“I know why – because you were waiting for Ronald’s allowance to come in. That was kind of you – very kind.”

“And strictly unethical!” Mr. Lawson added with a smile.

There was silence for a moment before Tamara asked,

“Must we tell him – now?”

“I am afraid so,” Mr. Lawson replied. “You would not wish me to behave in such an illegal manner that I should no longer be allowed to practise as a Solicitor.”

“No, of course not,” Tamara answered, “and you have been so kind already. I am sure that my brother-in-law never paid your firm for the endless times he had to consult you over the many documents appertaining to the estate and, of course, the boat.”

“It is not of any great consequence,” Mr. Lawson replied. “As I have said, I valued your brother-in-law’s friendship and I don’t think that anyone could have known your sister without loving her.”

“It is a pity the Grant family could not hear you say that,” Tamara observed.

“Would you think me very impertinent, Miss Selincourt, if I suggested that when you meet the Duke of Granchester you do not fight old battles?” Mr. Lawson asked. “Content yourself with trying to make him interested in the three orphans and accept them as his sole responsibility.”

“Supposing he refuses to do anything for them?” Tamara asked. “It’s quite likely, considering they are my sister’s children.”

“I cannot believe that the Duke would allow anyone with the name of Grant to starve,” Mr. Lawson replied. “Furious though the old Duke was with Lord Ronald, he continued his allowance all these years.”

“The same allowance he made him when he was an undergraduate at Oxford,” Tamara said scornfully.

“It was nevertheless a substantial one,” Mr. Lawson insisted, “and the Duke could in fact have cut off his son with only the proverbial penny.”

“If you think I am going to be grateful to the family – I am not!” Tamara said in a hard voice. “As for the present Duke, from all I have heard about him – ”

She gave a sudden cry and put her fingers up to her lips.

“What is it?” Mr. Lawson asked in astonishment.

“I have just remembered – I did not think of it until now, but I cannot – I cannot take the children to the Duke of Granchester. If they go, they must go – without me!”

“But why?” Mr. Lawson asked.

“Because I have – based my – novel on him!”

“On the Duke?”

Tamara put her hand up to her forehead as if she was trying to think clearly.

“You remember my first book, which, although it was a Fairytale, it was also slightly satirical?”

“Indeed I thought it very amusing and original,” Mr. Lawson commented.

“Well, this book, the one that is being published at the moment, is a novel about a spiteful, unkind, wicked Duke, who is in fact the present Duke of Granchester!”

“But you have never seen him and you know nothing about him.”

“I know all that Ronald has told me and, because I was interested, I always looked for anything written about him in the newspapers and magazines.”

She looked at Mr. Lawson in consternation as she went on,

“When Ronald’s friends whom he had met at Oxford came to stay with us, they always told us stories about the Duke and I stored them up in my memory.”

“And you think that the Duke would recognise himself?” Mr. Lawson asked. “In which case your book might be libellous.”

“I don’t think that he would care to acknowledge the portrait as a true one,” Tamara answered. “I have no reason to think he would even read it, but – ”

She was silent and after a moment Mr. Lawson said,

“Exactly what have you said that could identify His Grace as being the character portrayed in your novel?”

“Well, for one thing the book is called The Ducal Wasp and the Duke is the villain who goes about making everybody miserable and unhappy. He drives phaetons and curricles that are always black and yellow and his servants wear a black and yellow livery!”

“Which are the Grant family colours,” Mr. Lawson said.

“Exactly!” Tamara answered, “And, oh, there are lots of other things about him that Ronald told me and about The Castle. There are also incidents I have invented like a Race Meeting where the villain pulls the favourite so that he can make a lot of money by betting on another horse from his stables, which, of course, wins.”

Mr. Lawson put his hand up to his forehead.

“Why did you not let me read it before you sent it to the publishers? You will undoubtedly be prosecuted for libel and ordered to pay enormous damages.”

Tamara laughed.

“That’s easy, at any rate. If I have no money, I cannot pay!”

“Then you may go to prison.”

“Then I will plead that every word I wrote was true and therefore justified.”

Mr. Lawson groaned.

“That is something which cannot happen! You will sit down, Miss Selincourt, here and now and write to the publishers withdrawing your book!”

“Withdraw my book?” Tamara cried. “I shall do nothing of the sort!”

“You must! You must see it is the only possible course for you to take,” Mr. Lawson insisted.

He saw the light of defiance in Tamara’s eyes and added quietly,

“You have to think of the children. Knowing what you believe the Duke to be like, could you bear to send them alone to Granchester Castle? I know that they would be unhappy without you.”

There was a long silence.

Then Tamara capitulated.

“No, you are right. I will send the letter.”

“I will draft it for you,” Mr. Lawson suggested. “In the meantime I will despatch a letter tomorrow morning to the Duke, informing him of his brother’s death and telling him that the children will arrive at the beginning of next week.”

“As soon as – that?”

“We have to remember Mr. Trevena.”

“Y-yes – of course.”

Once again Tamara rose to walk to the window.

“I am thinking,” she said, “that if I must – go with them and I realise that Vava is too young to go without me, then it might be best not to go as – Maïka’s sister.”

Mr. Lawson considered for a moment.

Then he said,

“No, of course not, I should have thought of that. It would be best to say that you have looked after them as – ”

“ – as a Governess,” Tamara interposed. “At least then he will have to give me my wages so that I shall not be entirely dependent upon him.”

Mr. Lawson looking at her and seeing the sunshine touch the dark red of her hair to a flaming gold, thought that she would look very unlike the usual run of Governesses to be found in charge of small children.

He did not, however, express his thoughts, he only asked aloud,

“What name shall I call you?”

“Does it matter?” Tamara asked. “No, wait, it had better be something that the children can remember.”

“Why not ‘Miss Wynne’?”

“Excellent. I will tell them that is what we are going to do.”

“But I hope that you will not try and win a battle against the Duke,” Mr. Lawson said. “It is important, Miss Selincourt, that he should like the children. He is a very rich and powerful man and there is nothing he could not do for them if he takes a fancy to them.”

“I think he is far more likely to fling us all into a dungeon and keep us there on bread and water until we die,” Tamara said dramatically.

Mr. Lawson laughed.

“I think if that was discovered it would cause a scandal that would reverberate throughout the whole country! I assure you that from what I have heard of the Duke he does not like scandals.”

“No, of course not,” Tamara agreed. “That is what his father thought Ronald was causing by marrying an actress.”

There was no mistaking the bitterness in her tone and Mr. Lawson said quickly,

“I do beg of you to try to forget the past. As close relatives of His Grace, the children cannot only have everything they have ever desired, but also a unique opportunity for happiness in the future.”

Tamara did not speak and after a moment he said,

“It seems strange that we should be talking about it now when Kadine is only ten, but in seven years’ time she will be a debutante and a very beautiful one. The whole Social world will be open to her and her sister as the nieces of His Grace the Duke of Granchester.”

Tamara looked at him in surprise and then with a quick change of mood which Mr. Lawson knew was characteristic of her, she said,

“You are right! Of course you are right and I must think of the girls. They will both be very beautiful, as you say, and perhaps they will be able to pick and choose the right sort of husbands – men who are rich but whom they also love.”

There was a sudden softness in her dark eyes that made Mr. Lawson think to himself that long before Kadine and her little sister Validé were grown up, their aunt would be married or at least she would have had the opportunity of it not once but a hundred times.

He rose from his desk.

“If you will wait a few minutes, Miss Selincourt, I will draft a letter for you to write to your publishers and also a letter from myself to His Grace telling him to expect you.”

“I will wait,” Tamara sighed.

Mr. Lawson smiled at her and went to the outer office where there were several clerks sitting at their high desks, their white quill pens moving busily over the books and documents that made Lawson, Cresey and Houghton one of the busiest Solicitors in the town.

Tamara rose from the chair and once again walked to the window.

She felt as if everything that had happened this morning was going round and round in her head in a manner that made it hard for her to think straight.

For one thing it was more of a blow than she was willing to express to Mr. Lawson to know that she must withdraw her novel.

She had had such high hopes of making quite a considerable sum of money from it, considering how much she had made with her first book.

That had been a very slim volume, but the publishers had sent her several reviews, which had been complimentary.

She thought that a novel might capture the imagination of the smart Social world that had made a hero out of Sir Walter Scott and a great financial success of Lord Byron.

Hers combined adventure, villainy and a certain amount of romance in what she had thought was an agreeable mixture that should please almost everybody’s taste.

Living so quietly in Cornwall, she had had little opportunity of meeting Social celebrities.

But her imagination had been excited by the tales of the cruel unpleasant Duke of Granchester who had ostracised his brother as his father had done before him.

Tamara had adored her brother-in-law and every time she dipped her pen in the ink to write something scathing and vitriolic about the villain in her novel, she felt that she was somehow paying back the Duke for his unkindness.