had in fact been her teacher at Oxford who had secured her position for her and seen to it that she was given a salary that far exceeded what she might have expected as an amateur with no experience.
The Opera Company was not the usual impecunious Company that toured from City to City, but was financed privately by a committee of benevolent music lovers who thought it important that people outside London should have the opportunity to hear good music.
It was when they were performing at Oxford that one of the leading ladies was taken ill and Maïka had the chance to take her place.
She not only sang outstandingly well but she also looked so lovely that it was obvious to the Producer and the Manager that she was just the person to fill the gap in their Company.
For the Duke of Granchester to speak of her as being ‘a common actress and little better than a prostitute’ was a gross insult and completely inaccurate.
All the ladies in the Company were in fact models of virtue and the committee who watched very closely over the affairs of their performers would not have tolerated licence of any sort.
Maïka, who sang at places like Bath, Tunbridge Wells and some lesser Cities, was as untouched and unaffected by what was spoken of as a louche theatrical life as if she was a closely chaperoned debutante.
Whenever she was not actually performing, she returned home and it was in her father’s house at Oxford that Lord Ronald met her and fell immediately head-over-heels in love.
That he was not yet twenty-one was sufficient excuse for his father to deprecate such an early marriage.
But the Duke, in trying to break off the attachment, was so tactless and so unnecessarily unpleasant that it achieved the very effect he wished to avoid of precipitating Lord Ronald into marriage.
Faced with the ultimatum of ‘never speak to that woman again’, no young man with any spirit could have accepted it without besmirching his own honour and self-respect.
The Duke had stormed back to London and Lord Ronald had married Maïka the following month.
She finished her contract with the Opera Company, then, as Lord Ronald had taken his final examinations, they left together to seek a place where they could live.
Because they found that they both had a passion for the sea, it was obvious that their home must be at the seaside and someone had told them that Cornwall was cheap.
They had gone there to find it, as Lord Ronald had said, the Eden that they both desired and no Adam and Eve could have been happier.
The Manor was certainly very attractive, Tamara thought as she arrived home, and she felt a pang of distress to think that they must leave it as well as all the memories she had shared there with her sister and brother-in-law.
As the sounds of her horse’s hoofs clattered outside the front door, the children came running out.
Sándor was first, running to the horse’s head and saying as he did so,
“I will take Firefly round to the stables, Aunt Tamara.”
“You are very late, Aunt Tamara,” Kadine said, while Validé, who was five and who was always called ‘Vava’, standing at the top of the steps, merely cried,
“I want my tea! You are late! I want my tea!”
“You shall have it in a moment, pet,” Tamara said, picking her up in her arms. Then followed by Kadine she went into the kitchen.
There was an old woman there who helped in the house with the children and with everything else that was required.
“You’re back, Miss Tamara,” she said as Tamara entered carrying Vava in her arms.
“Yes, I am back, Lucy,” Tamara answered. “Can we have tea? As Vava said I am late.”
“They wouldn’t eat without you, miss,” Lucy answered, “even when I tells them there were hot scones and cream for you all.”
“It would have been greedy not to wait for you, Aunt Tamara,” Kadine said.
At ten she showed promise of a beauty that would undoubtedly make dozens of young men’s hearts miss a beat once she had grown up.
Strangely enough, Tamara thought, none of the children had the dark red hair of their mother, which had been a crowning glory handed down from their Hungarian grandmother.
They were all fair like their father, but Kadine and Vava had eyes with long dark lashes that made people look at them and then look again in astonishment.
Sándor’s hair was more brown than gold, but he had his father’s clear-cut features and was undoubtedly an extremely handsome little boy.
Looking at him when he came in from having taken the horse to the stables, Tamara thought how closely he resembled his father and wondered if there was also a resemblance to his uncle.
In which case, if the Duke of Granchester was outstandingly handsome, the portrait of him in her novel had been incorrect.
It was impossible for her to allow the villain to be too good-looking. He had to have a sardonic cynical expression that proclaimed his wickedness at first sight.
‘Anyway, I shall soon be able to judge for myself what he really looks like,’ Tamara thought.
She felt her heart sink at the news she had to tell the children as soon as tea was finished.
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