Page 24 of The Book of Lost Stories

She turned, eyes sparkling and her square chin tilted in a manner that Lord Rayven would have instantly recognized.

‘Sir, I am not at your beck and call or, indeed, at anyone’s beck and call.

While I must give you what respect is due to your age and our relationship, I beg leave to depart from here.

Nothing is to be gained by my remaining longer. ’

‘You are wrong, for you might have much to gain – and do not fly into the boughs again,’ he added in more reasonable tones, ‘but sit down and talk to me for a while. I accept your sincerity in wishing to return the jewel, but you must be a fool indeed not to see the advantages you could have got from it as a bargaining tool.’

‘But I should have been a very great blackguard to have done any such thing.’ She looked at him curiously.

‘Still, I expect your suspicious nature arises from having spent your life in politics, which is a sad reflection on the state of government. Let me assure you that I am at a loss to think of anything I should need that you might be able to give me.’

‘Then you are an even greater fool than I thought. I know your father’s circumstances. He had little money, and I dare say that what was not secured was gambled away.’

‘He was a chronic invalid for many years; gambling was beyond him,’ Alys said, not mentioning that latterly he had tended to drink away their money rather than gamble it. ‘He has left me in reduced circumstances, that is true, but there is sufficient for my needs.’

‘Ha! It is as I thought: you have drawn on what meagre sum is left to fund this season in London staying with your friend, in the hopes of catching a rich husband.’

‘No, indeed! After this visit to Mrs Rivers I intend setting up home elsewhere with my companion, Miss Grimshaw. I have no real taste for the sort of life Mrs Rivers enjoys. My interests are far otherwise.’

‘Every young woman wishes to marry, and although you must be quite three or four and twenty, you do not look it. You think to pull the wool over my eyes, but I know better: what other security could there be for you?’

‘Fortunately I have resources enough to live comfortably, if modestly, and I ask for no more than that. You may believe me or not as you choose, but I have no desire to marry. That was not my purpose in coming to London.’

He looked at her closely. ‘I cannot see where the money to maintain you is to come from. Do not think that I did not have your father’s affairs investigated thoroughly, when he ran off with my daughter! But perhaps some of his relatives are franking you?’

‘No, both my father’s cousin and his wife, who showed us many kindnesses and on whose estate we lived, are dead. But I am able to support myself, and that is all you need to know. In fact, more than you need to know.’

‘I am your grandfather , girl!’

‘By blood, it is true, but you cast off my mother entirely and have never made a push to know me. You are a stranger to me and I neither need nor want anything from you.’

‘You are very proud! But what if I acknowledge you ? You cannot gainsay me.’ He sat back and regarded her assessingly. ‘What a pity it is that you were not a boy!’

‘So my father often remarked,’ Alys said coldly, ‘although who would have nursed him all these years if I had been, goodness knows.’

‘Still, you are a young woman of character and with a dowry and the right connections, could make a good – possibly even a splendid – marriage.’

‘I am sure, had I any such desire, that would be very gratifying to hear,’ Alys said politely.

‘If you came to live under my roof, were accepted into the family, I could make you a good match. Lavinia, my sister-in-law, is launching her daughter, Bella, this season and there would be nothing easier than for you to make your debut under her aegis at the same time.’

‘I thank you for your offer, for I expect it is kindly meant, but having become my own mistress I do not ever intend to submit to anyone else’s authority again.’

He looked at her, baffled. ‘You are a very singular young woman! Pray, I suppose you have been reading A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and have taken all sorts of silly fancies into your head.’

‘I have read it,’ she admitted, ‘and found most of it to be no more than common sense.’

‘But if you do not marry, do not have children, what status will you have then? What security? What guidance?’

‘I do not need guidance. Think me strange if you will, but I believe I must decline your kind offer,’ she said with resolution.

‘I am not used to being gainsaid, and I am your grandfather, your nearest male relative: I could have you constrained, should I wish it.’

She rose to her feet. ‘You abandoned any such rights along with your daughter. And these threats do not impress me, for you would have nothing to gain but opprobrium if you behaved in such a tyrannical manner! I do not think we have any more to say to each other and, once I have disposed of my London property and purchased another in the North, you will see and hear from me no more.’

‘A property?’ he snapped, pouncing on the information she had not meant to let drop.

‘I have a small house in Town, which is let,’ Alys said reluctantly.

His eyes narrowed. ‘I am very sure your father did not have any property. There seems to be much you are holding back.’

‘Perhaps, but I see no reason to tell you all my personal affairs. They are not your concern.’

‘But now the season is starting, you are bound to meet Lavinia and Bella, not to mention my heir, Nathaniel Hartwood, who is a friend of George Rivers.’

‘I suppose I will.’

‘Indeed you will. In fact, I will tell Lavinia to call on you.’

‘As you wish, sir.’

‘Pull that bell rope,’ he ordered, and when the servant answered, he summoned his family to meet her.

Mrs Lavinia Hartwood was plump, fair and foolishly amiable. ‘Only fancy,’ she said when the introductions were made, ‘we had no notion of your existence until yesterday. Imagine our surprise.’

‘Not, I hope, an unpleasant one,’ Alys said. However, she thought she detected some resentment in the look Miss Arabella Hartwood directed at her when she had entered the room.

‘La, how tall you are, Miss Weston,’ exclaimed Bella, who was a youthful version of her mama, her prettiness marred only by a faintly rabbity look about the teeth and nose.

She had all the airs of a beauty, but Alys supposed if you had a wealthy childless uncle who clearly doted on you, you could think yourself as beautiful as you pleased.

‘I do not think I am so very many inches above the common height, Miss Hartwood. Perhaps it is that you are so very small .’

‘You girls need not stand on civility, I suppose, for you may call each other cousin,’ Mr Hartwood said. ‘Lavinia, Alys is staying with the Rivers – you are to send them cards for Bella’s ball.’

Lavinia blinked. ‘Of course, Titus, if you wish it.’

‘What fun, Uncle Titus, to have a new cousin!’ Bella cried, clapping her hands together girlishly, although another sharp sideways look at Alys belied the words.

They all sat down together, but after a few minutes of laborious conversation about how she liked London and what she had found to amuse her so early in the season, Alys began wondering whether she might make her escape.

Then the door opened and any such desire left her, for in walked the most handsome man she had ever seen.

Her heart seemed to skip about in her breast when her eyes met his smiling cerulean blue ones …

But after blinking a few times, she regained her senses enough to recognize him as the golden youth of Harrogate grown up, the mirror image of so many of her heroes: in fact, her handsome cousin, Nathaniel Hartwood.

His guinea-gold curls were brushed into a modish style, his snowy cravat fell like a crisply frozen waterfall and the exquisite fit of his coat and pantaloons proclaimed him a very pink of the ton .

‘You must excuse me, sir,’ he said to Mr Hartwood. ‘I called to see my mother and sister, but when I heard who was above-stairs, I could not resist making the acquaintance of my cousin, if I may call her that, for second cousins at least we must be.’

‘You might as well meet her now as later, I suppose,’ Titus Hartwood said, ‘for she is making a stay in Town.’

‘I am certainly more than happy to do so.’ His eyes sparkled delightfully as he took her hand in his, and smiled with such charm that Alys felt oddly breathless.

‘She’s staying with the Rivers for the season,’ Titus Hartwood said. ‘George Rivers is a friend of yours, is he not?’

‘That is so, and had I already been in Town I would have had the pleasure of meeting you that much the sooner, Cousin. But you must allow me to call on you tomorrow and make up for lost time.’

‘I am sure Mrs Rivers will be happy to see you, sir.’

Seeing that Mr Hartwood was suddenly looking tired, leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, she rose to go. His hooded eyes snapped open again. ‘You will come to see me on Wednesday,’ he said, more in demand than request.

Her chin went up. ‘Should my kind hostess not have any previous engagements she wishes me to attend with her, then I will do so.’

Nat suggested that she should send Mrs Rivers’ carriage away and instead take a turn in the park with him and Bella before going home.

‘Oh, do let us, we can all get to know one another,’ Bella said. ‘How much we will have to talk about, to be sure!’

And so it was arranged, although once away from her uncle’s presence Bella, sitting bodkin between them, fell silent and it was left to Nat to entertain Alys.

This he did in so lively and entertaining a manner that the time passed in a flash and she could not afterwards remember where they had driven. She had not been so entirely dazzled, however, as not to notice that he drove in a rather neck-or-nothing way that seemed ill-suited to the London streets.

*

‘Well, you appear mightily taken with our new cousin,’ Bella snapped, as her brother returned her home.

‘Of course, for the old man seemed as determined on acknowledging her back into the family as he was before to cut her dead, and neither of us can afford to get his back up.’

‘So you were not really taken with her?’

‘Not I,’ he said, ‘but we must move carefully, for our cousin could well cut us both out of the unentailed property if she gains her grandfather’s favour.’

Behind his handsome face he was thinking furiously, for he had long assumed that he and Bella would inherit their uncle’s wealth.

Indeed, he had borrowed on the expectation, and of late his debts were becoming so pressing that he had begun to wonder about making a show of settling down, preferably with some biddable heiress, which would both please his uncle and revive his finances.

But now Miss Alys Weston had come into the equation, Titus’s very own granddaughter, and it was clear to Nat that he had taken to the girl. He had not smiled at her indulgently, as he did at Bella, but instead had eyed her with a great deal of respect and interest.

‘We must be careful, Bella. If she worms her way into his affections, there goes your dowry, and how could I keep up the estates without any money? No, we must be as nice as pie to our new cousin, but watch for means to discredit her in our uncle’s eyes, or to frighten her away.’

‘Oh, Nat, can it be done? You know I will do anything I can to help.’

‘Keep your ears open. After all, if you had not overheard a few words of his conversation with Lord Rayven, you would not have known that Miss Weston was coming to visit today, and sent me word in advance, would you?’

‘No. Nat, you did not think her pretty, did you?’ she asked jealously.

‘What, afraid she will steal all your beaux as well as your fortune?’ he teased with brotherly cruelty.

‘Not in the least, for she must be quite on the shelf at three or four and twenty!’

‘True. Clearly she is at her last prayers.’

‘Yes, and she has such odd ideas that she must be a bluestocking, which the gentlemen hate. Do you know, she told me that she amused herself by rising early and taking her pug for a walk, and then setting off to see monuments .’

‘Does she? Well, that is just the kind of thing I need to know, Bella. We will soon send her to the right-about,’ he said confidently.

*

Titus Hartwood sat alone penning a letter to Serle Rayven, who had proved to be right in saying that Titus would find his granddaughter quite out of the common way.

She appeared to be a young woman of dignity, composure and some originality of mind, and while he could not condone her wilful, unfeminine independence, yet he could admire her spirit and intelligence.

In fact, it was a great pity that she was not a man, for she possessed many of the qualities that he had long sought in his heir.

She and Nat had seemed pleased with one another and he wondered if Alys might have backbone enough for the two of them? It could be a solution. He had long intended Bella to be heiress to half of the unentailed property, but there was no reason why it could not be divided between the three of them.

If he let fall a hint or two, he had a shrewd notion that Nat would quickly see which way the wind was blowing and pay court to his cousin … and as for Alys, he did not believe all her talk of staying single could hold against Nat’s charm.

But first, he must know what she was hiding, for the source of her mysterious income might be some shameful secret he could hardly guess at.