Page 40 of The Book of Lost Stories
‘No, and I most virtuously resisted the impulse to press them for an opinion on the works of Orlando Browne.’
‘So I should hope!’
‘I did not have to,’ Alys said with an impish smile. ‘Miss Berry confessed that she thought them quite shocking but could not forbear reading them, and her sister agreed. They said they had not the least idea who Orlando Browne might be, but apparently there has been a rumour spreading that it is a young man called Daniel Coalport.’
‘Daniel Coalport? Why, he is the youngest son of one of my Aunt Becky’s friends and the idlest, most foppish young man you ever saw in your life! He fancies himself a poet, and his mama paid to have a volume of his verse printed,’ Nell said, ‘only it did not take.’
‘Miss Agnes said that he did not deny being the author whenasked, just shook his head and smiled. But she was sure he was not, and just putting on airs to be interesting. It was all I could do not to tell her that he was not the author, but myself!’
‘Oh, do say you did not!’
‘No, but I think perhaps I will go with Mr Grimshaw to deliver the next manuscript to the Minerva Press, so that they at least will know who the real author is.’
‘If you think it best,’ Nell said doubtfully. ‘How very surprised they will be, to be sure.’
*
Although outwardly self-possessed, Alys felt nervous, wondering what her reception would be, as the carriage drew up at the door of her grandfather’s imposing mansion. Then the servant knocked for admittance, the steps were let down and she was ushered into the marble-flagged hallway and conducted to Mr Titus Hartwood’s own apartments.
‘Miss Weston,’ announced the manservant, opening a pair of doors on to a gloomy, lofty-ceilinged chamber, and she advanced into the room with more assurance than she felt.
Crimson brocade curtains shut out half the light and the room was hot, for a fire roared in the grate. Seated before it in a large, carved chair was the hunched figure of an elderly man, regarding her intently from under bushy eyebrows drawn into a ferocious frown.
‘Come here, girl!’ he rapped out. ‘I cannot get up. This damned rheumatism has me twisted into knots.’
Alys walked forward, dropped a slight curtsy and said, ‘Good day, sir.’ Then she stood, regarding him with undisguised curiosity.
‘You resemble your mother,’ he said, after a moment or two, and she thought she detected some flicker of emotion in his voice, although his stern face remained inflexible.
‘Do I? I have never seen a portrait of her, so I have no means of knowing, although both my father and my uncle said that she was small and delicately made, which I am not, as you see.’
‘No, but your face – your eyes especially – are similar … although Rayven tells me you are not such a fool as your mother.’
‘Rayven? Do you mean Lord Rayven?’
‘Of course. His family and the Hartwoods have been long associated with each other. I saw him the other day and he said he had made your acquaintance.’
Alys said nothing. However, she would dearly have liked to have known what else Lord Rayven had said about her.
‘You may sit down.’
Alys did so, calmly folding her hands in her lap. Her grandfather was a little alarming, it was true, but unlike her papa appeared to be unlikely to throw his snuffbox or any other missile at her head.
‘So, miss, you say you have the golden Poseidon jewel in your possession?’
‘Is that what you call it? I have been thinking of the figure as Neptune, but I suppose it is much the same. But, indeed, I do have it and will be happy to return it to you.’
‘I should certainly be interested in hearing yourtermsfor parting with it.’
‘Terms? I am afraid I do not understand your meaning, sir. Thereareno terms. You may have it back directly.’ Taking it from her reticule, still wrapped in the old bit of silk in which she had originally found it, she handed it to him.
His gnarled hands closed around it. Then, with fumbling, dry fingers that rasped against the material, he unwrapped it so that the gold and jewels gleamed dully in the firelight.
‘I thought your father might have disposed of it,’ he said slowly, ‘for he was a fool of a gambler as well as a fortune-hunter, and this was all the fortune he gained by running off with my daughter. But I suppose he knew that if he tried to sell something so distinctive, I would hear of it.’
‘You do my father an injustice in thinking so, for it was concealed in a secret compartment in my mother’s jewel box, and it is clear he did not know she had it. I discovered it only when he gave me the box many years later.’
‘He did not know? But the letters I sent him, demanding its return …’
