A Dark and Distant Shore (3 page)

‘No,’ Vilia agreed.

‘One begged him, most earnestly, to permit one to review his affairs with the object of setting them in order, but for one reason or another the moment was never opportune, and Mr Cameron, being by nature – er – sanguine, was persuaded that the question was of no great urgency. He had every hope of being able to bring himself about. But Providence, alas, decreed otherwise.’ It was clear that Providence had slipped up badly.

‘Yes,’ Vilia said.

The lawyer placed his fingertips together and surveyed them appraisingly.

‘The task of discovering the full extent of your lamented parent’s obligations has been no light one. Indeed, it has presented problems of some complexity. But I believe one might sum up by saying that the state of his affairs has proved to be...’ Vilia waited, holding her breath, while Mr Pilcher tasted his next word to make sure it wasn’t poisonous. ‘...unfortunate,’ he concluded.

Curbing a powerful desire to throw something at him, Vilia rose to her feet and moved to one of the tall windows overlooking Brook Street, busy as always at this time of day with bright yellow curricles, bottle green phaetons, and mulberry red barouches making their fashionable way to or from Bond Street or the Park. After eight years, the London scene was as familiar to her as her own reflection in the glass. Her mind elsewhere, she watched old Lady Watermere’s landau draw up outside the house opposite, and saw her ladyship being helped solicitously up the front steps by the usual bevy of daughters and granddaughters. Three doors along, the Honourable James Prendergast emerged for his afternoon constitutional, the quarter-mile stroll that took him from home to the card room of his club. Vilia craned her neck to see who he was bowing to. The Misses Norwood, as she might have guessed, mincing along – rather young and very self-conscious – as if the October wind were only a June breeze. Vilia was reminded of her own first winter in London, when the peevish woman her father had employed to look after her had taken her, every day, for a half-hour’s well-bred saunter along hard gravel paths. It had been listed in her schoolroom timetable as ‘Fresh Air And Exercise’. For many long months, Vilia had wept herself to sleep for the loss of her dear Meg Macleod and all the scampering freedom of the past. Sometimes, weakly, she still did, although she was almost sixteen now and should have grown out of it.

She turned back into the drawing-room, with its Cameron family portraits staring down their collective noses at the hired furniture, and scowled at Mr Pilcher. He had risen to his feet when she did, and she thought she detected the merest trace of martyrdom in his expression. It annoyed her. Also, she was tired of behaving like a demure little miss with no more brain than a pea-goose. She was almost grown up, and had been virtually managing the house in Brook Street ever since the day, eighteen months before, when she had discovered that the butler was emptying almost as many brandy decanters as his master.

Politely, she said, ‘I am not sure that I understand you, Mr Pilcher. What precisely do you mean by “unfortunate”? Did my father make no financial provision for me? Must I starve, or will the exchequer run to bread and cheese?’

With satisfaction she saw the half-closed lids fly open. For a moment, he looked almost human.

Gesticulating vaguely with the wad of papers in his hand, he said, ‘Uhhh! My dear Miss Cameron! One trusts one has not conveyed the impression that you will be reduced to such – er – dire straits. Dear me, no. The situation is not as unfortunate as that.’ He blinked. ‘On the other hand...’

She sat down with a thud and fixed her eyes on him, luminous and darkly green above the uncompromising black gown. Maliciously, she refrained from waving him back to his chair and waited to see whether he would resume it of his own accord.

He didn’t. After a moment, he said, ‘Er, yes. That is to say, no. But one has to accept that, considering the state of your late father’s affairs, one can see no alternative.’

She said tartly, ‘No alternative to
what
?’

There was a twitter of remonstrance from her governess, present in the role of chaperone, but Vilia ignored it. She knew she was behaving badly, and she didn’t care; in fact, she was enjoying it. For six months Mr Pilcher had been adding and subtracting and calculating and contriving, and never once had he deigned to tell her how he was getting on. If she had not insisted, he would not even have been here today, reluctantly revealing – or failing to reveal – what Fate had in store for her. Simmering, she reflected that he probably thought fifteen-year-old orphaned schoolgirls should wait meekly until it suited their trustees to enlighten them. And that they should then do, without question or comment, what the pompous old idiots told them to. If so, he was in for a shock.

She glowered at him again.

Astonishingly, he gave a snort, and then readjusted his features into what she took to be a smile. It didn’t make him look any less like a walking Law Report; just like a dog-eared one.

‘May I sit down?’

She surveyed him doubtfully and then, in a voice that sounded hollow in her own ears, said, ‘Please do.’

‘Thank you.’ He was still smiling. ‘You must forgive me, Miss Cameron. Your self-possession is such that I had forgotten what a very
young
lady you are. I am sure that, while I have been prosing on forever about your father’s affairs, you are far more anxious to know what arrangements I have been able to make for your own future.’

As an olive branch, it left something to be desired, especially the ‘very young’ bit. Austerely, Vilia said, ‘Not at all. I am grateful to you for having told me so much. It has all been extremely interesting. On the other hand...’ It was out before she realized, and suddenly, irresistibly, she began to giggle.

He didn’t see the joke at first, but then he said, a little stiffly, ‘One finds it a most useful phrase, and I believe it to be preferable to some. I have, in fact, a colleague who prefaces a great many of his remarks with
audire alteram partem,
which means...’

‘Very much the same,’ she interrupted. ‘I should perhaps tell you, Mr Pilcher, that although I may not be rich, I am
very
well educated. In the Highlands, where I was born, they use the Bible as a reading primer – rather as Homer and Hesiod were used in Classical Greece.’ She paused for a moment to allow that piece of well-educated information to sink in, and then resumed, ‘My first nurse taught me to read at the age of three, starting with chapter ten of the Book of Genesis.’

The lawyer’s face was perfectly blank.

‘You know!’ she said kindly. ‘The generations of Noah. “And Cush begat Nimrod. And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim. And Canaan begat Sidon, and Heth, and the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgasite, and the...”’

‘Gracious me! Yes of course,’ said Mr Pilcher. ‘How
could
I have forgotten?’

They beamed at each other.

‘Would you care for some refreshment?’ Vilia asked.

‘That would be delightful.’

Vilia tugged the bell-pull.

After that, the conversation went more easily. The house had been rented annually, fully furnished, when Vilia and her father had first come to London, and Theo Cameron had never troubled to look for anywhere more permanent. Vilia deduced, although Mr Pilcher was reticent about it, that after the first two or three years her father could not, in any case, have afforded to buy any house he would have been prepared to live in. Perhaps it had all turned out for the best, the lawyer said without much conviction, because it meant that Brook Street could be given up without further expense next month, when the annual agreement came up for review. ‘You cannot keep the place on,’ he said, ‘or it would eat up every penny of your inheritance in less than three years. And it would, of course, be grossly improper for you to live here with only your governess and the servants for company.’

‘I’ve been living here with only my governess and the servants ever since my father died,’ Vilia objected.

‘That was different,’ the lawyer said primly. ‘Now, once the house has been disposed of and the servants paid off, enough will remain to guarantee you a small annual income. One has no doubt that you will marry some day, perhaps quite soon...’ He broke off, and then resumed in a tone not far removed from the waggish, ‘though I must warn you that, as your trustee, I should feel compelled to scan – very carefully indeed! – the credentials of any young gentleman who applied to me for your hand. We cannot have you marrying just anyone, you know. Or not, at least, before you are twenty-one and able to snap your fingers at your stuffy old trustee!’

She smiled dutifully. ‘And in the meantime?’

‘Hah,’ he said, and looked at her with the air of a man who, if he had worn spectacles, would have been peering over the top of them. ‘You do realize that the responsibility rests entirely with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘That it is solely mine?’

‘Yes.’

He sat back, crossing his black-clad knees, and sighed. ‘It is a responsibility I would willingly have abrogated – most willingly! – if it had proved possible to trace any member of your family. But despite the most earnest endeavours, my agents have had no success. On your late father’s side, of course, there were no close relatives, but I can only regard it as unfortunate –
most
unfortunate! – that he did not choose to keep in touch with your mother’s people in Scandinavia. His own maternal relatives appear to have been – er – scattered by the – er – exigencies of the revolution in France...’

By which, Vilia supposed, he meant that he suspected they had gone to the guillotine.

‘...and, of course, in the present state of Europe, it would have been of little advantage to have found them. We could scarcely export you to France, while we remain at war with Napoleon. It would never do to have you shot for a spy!’

Gritting her teeth, Vilia said, ‘My French is excellent. My father made sure of that.’

Mr Pilcher ignored this caveat. ‘What I have decided, therefore, is that you must make your home with some genteel family, with whom you may live until you are of an age to be your own mistress.’

‘No!’ Her reaction was instinctive, but, seeing the lawyer’s frown, Vilia forced herself to think coherently. She couldn’t understand, at first, why the idea was so repellent. It wasn’t as if she disliked the human race. It was a question of being forced to become involved, perhaps. Independence had been a part of her almost since birth, and Meg Macleod had been the best nursemaid she could have had, very strong, very loving, and quite undemanding. Meg’s love was of the rare kind that was complete in itself, and, because she had asked and expected nothing in return for it, Vilia had loved her far more dearly than she would have done if there had been any hint of compulsion. To give generously, even extravagantly, of one’s own free will was very different from giving under coercion. In London, Vilia had soon learned that Meg was unique. As a result, she had kept her distance from the succession of nurses and governesses who had supervised her upbringing, and they, in turn, had recognized that little Miss Vilia was not to be bullied or cajoled into doing anything she didn’t want to do.

But this was different. To be welcomed into the bosom of some ‘genteel family’ would mean being fussed over, and cared for, and persuaded to do this, or join in that. Without discourtesy, there would be no possibility of resisting. For someone who, through all the years of her short life, had been accustomed to call her mind and soul her own, it was an appalling prospect.

The nerves fluttering in her diaphragm, she stammered, ‘When you said there was no alternative, was
that
what you meant?’

He nodded.

‘Couldn’t I – couldn’t I just find some small apartment and live there with my governess?’

‘When you are only fifteen years old?’ Mr Pilcher was shocked. ‘I would be failing utterly – utterly! – in my duty if I were to countenance such a suggestion. Most improper,
most
improper.’ His voice softened a little. He had, after all, three daughters of his own; shy daughters, diffident daughters, but young and female just the same. ‘I know what it is. You are afraid that I might send you to someone you dislike. Let me relieve your mind, my dear Miss Cameron. Everything is arranged, and you are to go to a charming family in St James’s Square. A young couple with a small son, and admirable
ton.
Nothing could be more eligible.’

He watched her rather tentatively, wondering whether she would put her finger on the weak point in all this. Not weak, precisely; but the point from which an unsympathetic observer might be led to ask whether Mr Pitcher’s professional ethics had been quite as unimpeachably pure as the Society of Gentlemen Practisers of the Law would have wished. The truth was that for the last five years Mr Pilcher had been accepting a small annual retainer from someone who wanted to be kept informed about the affairs of Mr Theophilus Cameron, formerly of Kinveil. Nothing confidential, of course. Mr Pilcher wouldn’t have entertained such a suggestion for a moment. But he had seen no harm – except from the standpoint of a legal pedant – in passing on what was common knowledge. That Mr Cameron continued to live in a hired house, spent most of his time at Brooks’s or White’s, had no apparent intention of remarrying, appeared to be generally liked, and was dipping into the wine flask with increasing depth and frequency, although he carried it well and was never less than the gentleman. Mr Pilcher had, of course, reported Mr Cameron’s demise, and had been mildly surprised to receive in return a letter asking what would happen to Mr Cameron’s daughter.

Vilia said frowningly, ‘St James’s Square? They must be very rich. They can scarcely need to take in lodgers!’

It was true enough. St James’s Square was not the kind of place inhabited by the
hoi polloi.
Mr Pilcher felt more than a little ill-used that this fragile, ethereal-looking child should have fastened so quickly on the point he would have preferred not to explain – or not just at the moment. He took a breath and said, ‘The gentleman is the son of – er... You may not recall the name, but it was his father, Mr Mungo Telfer, who bought Kinveil estate from the late Mr Cameron, and...’