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.”
“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
