“You cannot expect me to accept such an enormous sum,” Devona said. “All I want, if I am to have any at all, is enough to keep me from starving and to stay if possible here on this estate.”
She saw that the Earl was looking at her with some surprise and she went on quickly,
“Perhaps I could rent the Dower House where my mother stayed when she first came to The Hall.”
“Of course it’s a possibility if it is what you want,” the Earl said. “But you are very young and, as I expect you know, extremely beautiful.”
He saw the astonishment in Devona’s eyes and then he went on,
“Yes, of course you are! You must have looked at yourself in the mirror. I am sure that if you appeared in London a great number of young men would tell you how much they admire you.”
“I am too – frightened to go to London and, as I have said, I only want a little money. The rest should go – to the family where it should have gone in the first place.”
For a moment it seemed that the Earl was finding it difficult to reply.
And then he said,
“Do you mean it? It’s the most generous and kind thing I have ever heard. At the same time I have no wish for you to think later that I have pressurised you into doing anything for the family you do not know and they have no idea of your very existence.”
“Equally,” Devona replied, “they should have had a great deal – of this money over the years. And, although we cannot help those who are dead, I feel sure that you will be able to make some of those who are living very happy.”
“Of course I can do that,” the Earl said, “just as my mother and I were trying to do with the only money we had. But I don’t want you to feel that you are being pushed into doing anything you may regret later.”
Devona did not answer and after a pause he added,
“I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams that something like this would happen. Nor did I think it at all possible to find anyone looking like you living in this dilapidated house all alone and, incredible though it seems, with no friends.”
Devona thought that she had one good friend in Mr. Alton, but there was no point in mentioning him now.
However, she made a mental note in her mind that the first person to benefit from her money would be him.
“What I am trying to reason out in my mind,” the Earl was now saying, “is that, if it is taking too much upon myself to allow you to be as generous as you want to be, we should perhaps ask the advice of someone who could arbitrate for us.”
Devona gave a little cry.
“No! No!” This is something we must decide for ourselves. It would be wrong for people to talk about it. I think it would be wise and most sensible if we kept what we are doing a secret from everyone.”
The Earl looked at her.
“Is that what you really want?” he asked. “Most women would be dancing on the housetops and planning how they could spend at least a part of the one million pounds on clothes and jewellery.”
Devona gave a little laugh.
“I must certainly buy some new clothes. I am well aware that what I am wearing now are a complete disgrace and you have been kind enough not to comment on them.”
“I thought,” the Earl replied, “that they were rather like my pictures, beautiful, valuable and irreplaceable. At the same time they need a good clean and a new frame.”
“That is a very polite way of putting it, my Lord. But you are quite right, I do need a frame, but I have no idea where to buy it.”
“Have you really never been into the town?”
“Your uncle would have been horrified at the mere idea,” Devona replied. “And, as he gave Mama no money, it would not have been much use us going there when we could not afford to buy anything.”
“The whole story is incredible,” the Earl exclaimed. “It is so difficult to understand how any human being could behave in such a monstrous manner.”
Devona did not speak and he went on,
“It’s no use you making excuses for him. He was watching you starve. I have already said you are much too thin and dressed in rags. He apparently expected to live for ever while everyone around him died!”
“He certainly killed Mama,” Devona said in a low voice. “She had pneumonia and it was so cold in her room, but he would not send for a doctor.”
The Earl’s lips tightened.
“Forget it. It’s all over now. If you keep the one million pounds you are entitled you to, you will be a great heiress as well as being able to wear the most beautiful clothes London can provide. I promise you that you will have every man at your feet including the fortune-hunters.”
Devona gave a little cry.
“That is the last thing I want!”
She gave a little smile before she added,
“Please don’t frighten me. Shall I tell you what I really want?”
“Yes, tell me.”
“Because I am fearful of going away from the only place I know, I want to stay here. I want to have wonderful horses to ride and, of course, to dress so that you are not ashamed of my appearance. And I will be very happy in the little house Mama and I lived in.”
“By yourself, alone?” the Earl asked.
“Perhaps sometimes I could see you, my Lord, and once I have a carriage to travel in I might be able to meet people in the County. Your uncle would never allow them through the lodge gates.”
“I think they would be delighted to meet you,” the Earl said. “But I would say that you need a chaperone.”
Devona looked away from him.
“I think a chaperone,” she said, “would make me do things I don’t want to do. Perhaps go to big parties which would intimidate me and then, if she was older, she would undoubtedly be bored just being in the country.”
“As you have never known, Devona, anywhere but the country,” the Earl remarked, “I think that you should at least give London a chance.”
He paused to smile at her before he carried on,
“As you are my cousin, you can stay at my house in Berkeley Square and I can introduce you to some charming gentlemen, who I promise are not fortune-seekers.”
Devona considered this and then she said,
“Perhaps I would not be so scared if you were there and I did not have to go to parties where I would know no one.”
“I can see that we shall have to start at the very beginning,” the Earl said. “Before all this can happen you must realise that, as your father is to be buried tomorrow, you will be in mourning.”
Devona had forgotten this and she remembered that people would undoubtedly be shocked if she wore anything but black.
Whatever the Earl might say, she would have to sit quietly at home in the country, at least until three to six months had passed.
The Earl was watching the expression on her face.
“I have an idea,” he said. “You must be very frank and say if you dislike it. But it has occurred to me that it might solve your problem.”
“What is it?” Devona enquired a little nervously.
“I was just wondering,” the Earl said, “how many people know that you are my uncle’s daughter?”
Devona looked at him nervously.
She wondered why he asked the question and what had she said that made him suspicious?
“I have the feeling that, as your servants have run away,” he went on, “and you were here alone, that no one has any idea, like my family, that he had been married and produced a child.”
Devona was trying to understand what the Earl was getting at and it all seemed a little complicated.
“As it is at the moment,” he continued, “you, aged eighteen, are my cousin and I know that my family will be amazed that my uncle married and they will find it difficult to believe that he produced anyone as beautiful as you.”
“What are you trying to say to me?” Devona asked.
“I just thought that it would be much easier for you in the future if t
he Brookes thought that you were someone living here in the house with my uncle because you were an orphan and you had, and this is quite truthful, no friends to look after you.”
He was silent for a moment as if he was collecting his thoughts and then he added,
“We will say that in his old age, realising that he was going to die, he did one kind act before he passed into Heaven or Hell, whichever one would take him.”
Now Devona was listening intently and her eyes were on the Earl.
“He left you in his will, which we have between us found in his writing desk, a sum of three hundred thousand pounds. The balance is to go to the family he neglected for so many years.”
As he finished, the Earl threw out his hands in a most explicit gesture.
“What do you think of that for a clever idea? It means that you need only be in mourning for a week or two. Then, as you are no relation, you would be free to enjoy yourself as I want you to do.”
“Do you really think it is possible to do that?”
“It is not only possible, but if you agree we will do it,” he replied. “Remember you are being overwhelmingly kind to the Brookes and I will never forget what you have done for them. So I promise you that I will do everything in my power to make you happy.”
Devona thought that this was very bright of him.
It would prevent her being stared at and criticised for being the daughter of a man they all hated so fervently.
She had hated him herself and now he seemed to be sinking into insignificance.
The money was there and, although she had lied to obtain it, she had the power to give it away to whomever she wished.
The Earl was waiting and after a moment she said,
“I think that it is brilliant of you to find what I see is a way out. I would be scared to meet your family and I would expect them to hate me as they hated your uncle.”
“I have thought of that and I agree with you. They would undoubtedly, although it would be most unkind, be suspicious that sooner or later you would become like him, simply because your blood was his.”
“I can understand that. Perhaps we can just say that my father helped your uncle with his horses and that was why we were living in the Dower House.”
“Yes, that sounds very reasonable,” the Earl agreed.
His eyes twinkled as he added,
“I want to see you on a horse. I am quite certain that you are an excellent rider if you have the right sort of animal beneath you.”
“Now I can buy some really good horses – that is, if you will let me put them in your stables.”
The Earl laughed.
“Everything I possess is yours. I was just thinking when I went into the town that it would be impossible for me to live here and repair the house as it should be because it would all prove too expensive!”
He looked up at the damaged ceiling and continued,
“Now, if I am to have some of the money that your father spent his life collecting, you know as well as I do that you will have to help me. We will put the place back into its former glory and you must share it with me.”
“That sounds very exciting, but, if you are going to do all that, it would be best if I took a little less money for myself so that you will have more to spend.”
“I am not going to argue about it, Devona. You will have plenty of money so that when you get married or, if you are bored with living here and want to go to another part of England, it will be quite easy for you to afford it.”
Devona made a little murmur but he continued,
“If you allow me to have the rest of the money, I promise you that a great deal will be spent on the house and the estate. That in itself will give employment.”
He paused before he said in a different tone,
“I was horrified when I went into the village this morning. The cottages that have not fallen down all need repair and I can understand why there is no shop.”
“Many people had to move away because there was no work for them on the estate during the War,” Devona explained. “But maybe when they hear what you are doing they will come back.”
“If they do not, there are plenty of men who fought extremely well at Waterloo who are finding it impossible to find any employment. As you know, they were given no pension after they were dismissed from the Forces.”
There was now a sharp note in his voice and it told Devona how much he minded the suffering of the men and the Government had been continually reproached about it.
“The farms are empty,” Devona said, “but I am sure that they can be repaired. Perhaps you would like to ride over to see them.”
“I would like to very much. That is what we will do tomorrow. My horses should have arrived by now and also the staff who have come down from London. But first of all, we have to bury your father and then forget his very existence.”
He paused for a moment before he added,
“Now remember that from this moment on you are not a Brooke. You are someone who in the last year of his life made my uncle a more human person. My family will find it hard to believe, but money talks louder than words.”
He smiled at Devona as he said,
“It was you who persuaded him to leave in his will that, when you were provided for, the rest of the money would go to the family he had hated and neglected.”
Devona laughed.
“Now you are giving me a halo. I am worried that I shall not be able to live up to it.”
“You will,” The Earl reassured her. “Now I must compose this will which the Bank will require to see before they hand over the money and I must be clever to copy my uncle’s signature.”
“You will find,” Devona said, “that he has signed some of the notebooks in the writing desk.”
She stood up, walked across the room and pulled open the top drawer of the writing desk.
On one side were the notebooks that the late Earl had entered the money into he brought each month from the Bank.
They were only cheap books, which could not have cost him much more than a few pence and yet he had signed his name on the covers as if he was afraid someone might steal them away from him.
The Earl joined her at the desk and, as she handed one of the notebooks to him, he said,
“Excellent! Now sit down while I write out the will which I will take to the Bank tomorrow after the funeral.”
He paused for a moment and asked Devona,
“First you must have a name.”
“As you know my Christian name is Devona,” she answered, “and perhaps I could have Mama’s name when she married, which was Campbell.”
“That sounds excellent,” he said and wrote it down.
“Now I will need a witness. As your writing will be different from mine, I would suggest that you write the names of two servants who were here some years ago.”
Devona looked worried.
“If they have left,” the Earl explained, “it will be unlikely anyone will want to find them. Anyway there is no reason for us to worry because the will is everything we want and there will be no reason for anyone to oppose it.”
Devona could see that this was sensible.
The Earl wrote out the Last Will and Testament and in it he gave her three hundred thousand pounds.
All other monies in the Bank on his death were to go to his successor and any members of the Brooke family who were in need.
The Earl dated it a year earlier and then he showed Devona what he had written.
“I think it is clever of you,” Devona said, “to put in the last part. Even if people are rich they always seem to want more. Now you will be able to give more money to those who really need it.”
“That is exactly what I thought myself,” the Earl said. “Now sign it under where I have put ‘witnesses’.”
Devona thought that she was quite safe in writing Hitchin’s name and Mrs. Hitchin’s.
They had been at The Hall for a great number of years and, although they
had escaped with all the silver, the Earl would obviously make no effort to pursue them.
She signed it twice as she thought they would have written their names.
The Earl seemed satisfied and now he was looking at the clock.
“It is time for us to dress for dinner. As I know tomorrow will be a rather tiring day for you, I think we should go to bed early.”
He was walking to the door and then he stopped.
“Remember,” he said, “nothing that has happened in this room in the last hour is to be related to anyone.”
“No, of course not!” Devona agreed. “I promise even if I had someone to talk to I would not say a word.”
“I think in the future there will be a great number of people who will want to talk to you, but we have much to do before that happens.”
She looked at him enquiringly.
“We have to buy you clothes and especially a smart riding habit.”
He gave a sudden exclamation,
“I have only just thought of it, but, because you are now no longer a blood relation of mine, you must have a chaperone.”
Devona held up her hands.
“Oh no!” she cried. “Please no! I don’t want a chaperone who will find everything wrong and who will want me to do things I don’t want to do.”
“I think that is inevitable,” the Earl said. “But we can talk about that later. Let’s get the funeral over with and tomorrow you shall show me the farms and whatever else is dilapidated on this very pretty estate.”
“I was thinking the other day how lovely it could be if it was properly looked after,” Devona told him.
There was a distinct softness in her voice and, as the Earl gazed at her, he thought again just how incredibly beautiful she would be if she was well dressed.
He still found it hard to believe that she had lived alone in this vast house with just his uncle.
Yet he realised that she was extremely intelligent and from their conversations he was aware that she knew a great deal of history.
‘She is completely unique,’ he thought, ‘and it is just like finding a precious gem in the middle of a desert.’
A Golden Lie Page 8