Friday,” Lord Hanford replied. “I will call here at about two o’clock after you have finished luncheon.”
Ivana did not wait to listen any more.
On tiptoe she crept away from the door of the study, hearing, as she did so, Lord Hanford saying,
“Now we have settled all that, let’s have a drink on it.”
She well knew that he was a hard drinker and wondered if there was anything left in the decanters for them to drink.
She was afraid that her stepfather might emerge from the study and then see her.
She started to move as quickly as she could. She crossed the narrow hall and then ran up the stairs.
Since her mother had died, Nanny had slept in the room next to hers and now she burst in through the door.
As she expected, Nanny had taken off her bonnet and the shawl she had worn when they had gone for a walk in the Park.
She was sitting as usual at the table by the window and sewing something.
Ivana closed the door behind her and then stood still for a moment with her back against it.
“Nanny! Nanny!”
It was a desperate cry of anguish, the like of which Nanny had not heard since Ivana was a little girl.
She put down her sewing and rose to her feet.
“What's happened? What’s upset you, dearie?” she asked.
Ivana ran across the room and, kneeling beside Nanny’s chair, hid her face against her.
“Nanny! Nanny!” she cried again. “What am – I to – do? What – am I to – do?”
Nanny held her close.
She had loved Ivana ever since she was born and the doctor, ignoring the midwife, had put the baby into her arms.
“Whatever’s upset you now, dearie?” she asked Ivana again.
Hesitatingly, her words tumbling over themselves, Ivana repeated to Nanny what she had just heard through the study door.
“I hate – Lord Hanford – I hate him, Nanny!” she cried. “When he – stares at me with that – look in his eyes, it – makes me feel sick! He has – only to – touch my hand to make me want to – scream!”
“It’s the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever heard!” Nanny exclaimed. “And your poor dear mother’d turn in her grave, that’s what she’d do.”
“I know – but Step-Papa is – my Guardian.”
“He’s a wicked man. He’s no right to think of acceptin’ anythin’ just so horrible and so degradin’!” Nanny snapped.
“It’s – the money – you well know it’s – the money,” Ivana said. “He spends everything we possess – and now there is little left – to sell.”
Nanny knew that this only too true.
Just yesterday she had ruminated tartly,
“If much more goes from this house, I’ll wake up to find my bed’s been taken from under me!”
All the pretty objet d’arts that Ivana’s mother had collected so diligently over the years had been sold off long ago and the pictures, the Dresden china and even the Persian rugs on the floor had gone as well.
Ivana knew that for weeks the Bank had been demanding that something must be done about the overdraft, which was continuing to grow week after week and month after month and the Bank was becoming more and more aggressive.
The tradesmen’s bills came in regularly with endless urgent messages attached to them demanding payment at once.
Ivana raised her head.
“I know what you are – thinking Nanny,” she said, “and I will – die rather – than become the m-mistress – of any man, let alone Lord Hanford.”
She stumbled over the word ‘mistress’ and then burst into floods of tears.
Nanny held her close.
“We’ll find some way out of this,” she said soothingly, “but only God knows what it can possibly be.”
“How can God – let this – happen to me?” Ivana asked. “How – can He?”
Nanny was silent for a moment and and then she suggested,
“You’ll have to run away, that’s what you’ll have to do!”
Ivana raised her head again.
She was so surprised at Nanny’s advice that she had stopped crying, but the tears were still wet on her cheeks.
Her eyes widened as she asked,
“R-run away? But – where to – Nanny?”
“That’s what I’m tryin’ to figure out,” Nanny answered. “You knows as well as I do that there’s no money for us to travel North to what relatives you have left and there’s few enough of them at any rate.”
Ivana knew only too well that what Nanny was saying was indeed true.
She had known when her mother had died that there were practically no relatives at the funeral.
Now that she was an orphan, she was very much alone.
Her beloved father, the Honourable Hugo Sherard, had been tragically killed at the Battle of Salamanca fighting against Napoleon in the Peninsula.
Her mother had been broken-hearted and for a year she had hardly spoken to anyone or taken any interest in anything that was going on around her.
Then Keith Waring had come into her life.
Although Ivana despised him, she had to admit to herself that he had made her mother, if not happy, comparatively content.
The Sherards came from Penrith in the North of England and her father’s brother, who was a good deal older than Hugo, had succeeded to the title of Lord Sherard.
He had written her mother a letter when her father had been killed and he had written to Ivana when he had learned of her mother’s death.
He had not, however, suggested that she should go to the North and live with him and his family.
She knew that he had a wife and children of his own and he doubtless had no wish to house an impoverished relative, besides which, it was a very long way to drive up to Penrith in the County of Cumberland.
At the moment anyway it would be impossible for her and Nanny to pay the fares they would be charged by one Post-chaise after another on the way North.
Ivana
