Extract from A Disgraceful Affair
CHAPTER ONE
- Sylvie Delamare blinked at the letter in astonishment, then read it again. Slowly her numbness gave way to fury, she cast the bank draft down on the bed, jumped up and began to stride back and forth in the tiny room. Two steps one way from bed to the small window, swing round, three steps to the door, two steps back to the bed. Oh, if only she could sprout wings, she would by now be on her way to Norfolk and the curmudgeonly skinflint who was her great-uncle.
- Reaching the door of the room again she leant against it, resting her head on her arms, and tried to calm down. She had to plan sensibly. Another wave of fury swept over her and she banged her fists against the door.
- 'Sylvie? What is it? Why are you making this noise? Can't you open the door?'
- Sylvie gave a stifled laugh. 'Celia? I'm sorry. Did I disturb you?'
- 'Not really. But what's the matter?'
- She stepped back and opened the door. 'Come in. My only surviving relative has condescended to write to me and, belatedly, congratulate me on my coming of age!'
- Celia Mannering, a delightfully pretty, fair-haired, blue-eyed, fragile-looking girl, her best friend at the Bath seminary, came in looking worried.
- 'Your uncle? Sir George? Well, the posts are unreliable. You can't blame him.'
- 'I can! Sir George Clayton is a despicable, miserly, crooked, fraudulent knave! I won't recognize him as connected to me!'
- 'Sylvie, calm down and tell me what he's done to put you in such a pother.'
- She pushed Sylvie who collapsed onto the bed. Celia sat beside her, and picked up the discarded bank draft.
- 'Here, don't tear this up. It looks important.'
- Sylvie thought for a moment of doing exactly that, then her sense of humour returned.
- 'Oh, no, I mustn't do that. Celia, that twenty pounds is precisely half my total inheritance, according to that – that worm!'
- Celia stared at her. 'Twenty pounds? But you always told me your mama had been an heiress, with a London town house and a big estate in Cambridgeshire. And your father was a wealthy jeweller. What has happened to all the money?'
- 'That, Celia, is what I mean to find out. Great-uncle George wasn't my only trustee, but first I mean to go and confront him and find out why my inheritance has dwindled to almost nothing. And what's more,' she added, growing heated again, 'he has the kindness to inform me that this half is mine, to help me become established as a governess, and he will retain the other half either until I marry and have a husband able to control it for me, or he dies. How he expects me to marry respectably if I do become a governess, I haven't the slightest notion!'
- Celia looked shocked. 'Oh, no, you simply can't be a governess. Though Mrs Shaw would employ you, you've been teaching French to the girls here for years.'
- 'Which is one very good reason why I won't contemplate doing it for the rest of my life. Oh, I've been grateful to her, keeping me on as a teacher so that I could earn my keep when that old skinflint refused to pay my school fees after I turned eighteen, but not any longer.' She shuddered. 'Can you imagine such a tedious life? Never going to London, no parties, dull schoolmistressy gowns, endlessly reciting irregular verbs to chits who couldn't care less whether they spoke correctly or not?
- 'What will you do?'
- 'Go to Norfolk and demand to know where my inheritance is. I'd better go through London. At least with this money he's sent me,' she waved the draft, 'I can afford the fare on the public stage, and to pay for a night's lodging in London. What was that hotel your aunt said was the only respectable one for ladies on their own?'
- 'I don't think she meant it was suitable for young unmarried ladies,' Celia said doubtfully. 'But why don't you come and stay with me? Aunt Augusta is sending her coach and her maid to escort me to London next week. She'd love to have you stay in Berkeley Square.'
- Sylvie hesitated. It would be far preferable to travelling on her own. 'It seems rude, to inflict myself on her without so much as an invitation,' she said slowly.
- 'You've stayed with me before, and she loves having guests. Oh, do come, Sylvie!'
- 'I've stayed with her in Oxfordshire once, during the summer holidays, four or five years ago, when you'd just come to Mrs Shaw's and were homesick. Your parents had just gone to India. That was different.'
- 'No it wasn't. She liked you, and said you were to come with me at any time.'
- 'I'm sure she didn't mean to London when the Season's just about to begin, and she's bringing you out.'
- 'Why not? You could come to some parties and perhaps a very rich man would fall in love with you and then your lack of fortune wouldn't matter!'
- Sylvie laughed. 'Celia, you are a romantic! Besides, I will not even consider marrying a rich man just for his money. When I marry it will be for love, and I intend to bring my own fortune into the marriage.'
- 'You're the romantic. Most marriages are business arrangements, to bring estates together, for instance. But it would be nice to love your husband,' she added wistfully.
- Sylvie grinned at her. 'I'm not going to look for a husband, but I'll stay just one or two nights until I can buy a seat on the mail to Norfolk. Thanks, Celia. I'd better go and tell Mrs Shaw she'll need to find a new French mistress.'
- Copyright © 2008 Marina Oliver