A Dark and Distant Shore by Reay Tannahill Read Free Book Online Page B

Magnus still remembered his years at Eton, and he’d been told that Harrow was just as bad. ‘I’ll make inquiries. But I don’t see how we can arrange to have a rest from the pair of them. We could leave them here, I suppose, when we go to Ramsgate in the summer.’
    He sounded doubtful, and Lucy gave his doubts a few moments to solidify before she said, delicately, ‘I have been thinking. You know how much Luke enjoyed his visit to Kinveil? And Vilia loves it very much. I wondered whether we might not send them there. I’m sure it would go far towards restoring Vilia’s spirits.’
    Magnus, though not in general a very quick thinker, always displayed a creditable turn of speed when it came to finding reasons for saying no to any idea he hadn’t thought of himself. ‘I don’t agree. It might well restore her spirits, but it is not her home now, and she must be encouraged to forget it. She is a charming girl, but she’s not one of the family.’
    ‘If you say so, my love,’ his wife replied equably. ‘I merely wondered whether visiting it again, now that she knows something of the world, might not serve to show it to her in a different light. You yourself have told me that it has little to offer an educated person who is acquainted with the richness and variety of life in London.’
    Magnus shifted his ground adroitly. ‘You may be right, my dear, but I am afraid she cannot go this year, and neither can Luke. They can’t travel without a responsible escort, you know, and I don’t intend to pay my usual visit to father this summer.’
    ‘Not going to Kinveil? Not at all?’ Lucy exclaimed, surprised. And then she realized why. ‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Charlotte?’
    Three years earlier, George Blair had stolidly ignored a chest cold and it had turned to pneumonia. ‘Typical,’ Magnus had said. He had never cared much for George. Everyone had assumed that the widowed Charlotte would stay at Glenbraddan with five-year-old Edward and baby Georgiana, and dwindle into a solitary middle age. But in September last year she had gone off on a visit to Edinburgh, met the Honourable Peregrine Francis Egerton Randall – who had been passing through en route for a shooting party in Perthshire – and married him, without so much as a by-your-leave, three months later.
    Lucy knew that a letter had come from her father-in-law at Kinveil this morning, but not what was in it. Now it transpired that he had been making some inquiries, and had discovered that Mr Randall had been cast off by his family for being wild, irresponsible, and fatally addicted to gaming.
    ‘Just as we suspected,’ Magnus said heavily. ‘Earl’s son though he may be, he’s a scoundrel of the worst sort. It was obvious, of course, as soon as we knew that he was ten years younger than Charlotte. One didn’t have to look far to discover why he should have married her.’
    Lucy sighed. ‘How distressing! I always thought it a pity for Charlotte to be tied to such a tedious man as George Blair, but one wouldn’t have wished her to go to the other extreme.’ She looked on the bright side. ‘Perhaps he isn’t as bad as he is painted. After all, if he’s only twenty-one, he can’t really have had time to sink very far into depravity, can he? He may turn out to be quite charming in spite of everything.’
    ‘One assumes he must be attractive, or Charlotte wouldn’t have made such a cake of herself. Indeed, I suppose most rakes must have some such quality to recommend them or they wouldn’t succeed in the role. But that has nothing to do with it. I am only grateful that my father has made sure the fellow won’t have the opportunity to squander any Telfer money. He’s giving Lottie an allowance, but no marriage settlement. Her dowry when she married George was swallowed up by Glenbraddan, and that’s in trust for Edward, of course, but the steward seems to be making the place pay well enough – better than George ever did, by all accounts. If