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
