“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.
She had deliberately not shown Lord Ronald her manuscript before it went to the publishers.
He was such a good-humoured gentle person that she felt he might have protested against the picture she had drawn of his brother, even though there was no reason for him to defend any member of his family.
They had certainly treated him as if he was a pariah, an outcast and yet, although he often laughed about their various eccentricities, he had never been unkind.
“I cannot understand,” Tamara’s sister, Maïka, had once said to her, “how they could bear to lose Ronald. He is so charming, so kind and so sympathetic you would think that he must have left a great void in his family that no one else could fill.”
“They are stiff-necked, autocratic and altogether contemptible!” Tamara had answered, but Maïka had merely laughed at her.
“I don’t mind being outside The Castle gates,” she answered. “It’s just that sometimes I hate to think that Ronald cannot afford the horses he ought to ride or the clothes he ought to wear or to be able to attend the races at Newmarket and Ascot.”
“I have never seen anybody so happy as Ronald,” Tamara answered. “It does not matter what clothes he wears down here and I believe he is just as amused by racing the children on the sands as he would be watching a jockey come in first carrying his colours at Newmarket.”
Her sister had kissed her.
“You are such a comfort to me, Tamara,” she said. “Sometimes I feel it is wrong that I should have deprived Ronald of so much, but as far as I am concerned in him I had the whole world and Heaven in my arms.”
Tamara had only to see her brother-in-law and sister together to know that Mr. Lawson was right when he said that it would be impossible for two people to be happier than they were.
There seemed to be a light in their eyes when they looked at each other that held a radiance that was not of this world.
If Ronald had been away from her for a few hours, Maïka would be waiting for him when he returned, to throw herself into his arms and pull his head down to hers.
They would kiss each other closely and passionately as if they had only just fallen in love and the wonder of it was irresistible.
But now they were both gone and Tamara knew, as if it was a sacred trust, that the children were in her care and there was no one else to love them or to look after them except herself.
‘Mr. Lawson is right,’ she thought. ‘The Duke must think of me as the children’s Governess and, as he will surely not wish to be bothered with finding anyone else, he will be content to keep me on in such a position.’
Mr. Lawson came back into the room.
“Here is the letter to your publishers,” he said. “It is quite brief and to the point and I have asked if they will send the manuscript to this office. It will be safer here. If you left it lying about at Granchester Castle it might be uncomfortable for you.”
Tamara turned and slowly walked to the desk and, as he saw the expression on her face, Mr. Lawson said,
“I am sorry. I know this represents a lot of wasted work for you, but it is really the only thing you can do.”
As Tamara picked up a pen, he went on,
“You must write another book and perhaps you will find something pleasant to write about at Granchester Castle. Even its owner!”
“If wishes were horses, beggars might ride!” Tamara answered and laughed.
She signed the letter and put the big quill pen back in the pen-holder.