Lord of the Far Island (33 page)

y mother went to her mother and then I went to a cousin of hers when she died. I shouldn have been so very difficult to find.

t may be that they are looking for you. It only just a year since your father died and mills of the lawike those of Godrind slowly.

ell, I am quite bewildered.

ou must be to find yourself such an heiress.

t is not that so much although I have yet to consider what it will mean. It is the fact that I knew nothing.

He looked at me covertly. erhaps Jago had his reasons for not telling.

I felt myself flushing. I was seeing Jago on the Sanctuary Island and remembering the manner in which he had kissed me. Why, of course he wanted to marry me! The Island would be mine, and I fancied he loved the Island with a passion he might not be able to give to anythingr anyonelse.

My chief feeling was one of hurt bewilderment. But the scene was falling into place. How wise had I been to come to Mr. Fenwick. He was telling me too much for my comfort.

our father was generous to me,he said. e left me enough money to live on in comfort for the rest of my life. It is not settled yethese things take so long; but I had savings of my own and I bought a market garden which was a going concern. But I realized it was not the life for me, so I quickly sold it at a profit and bought this place.

ou have settled down very quickly in a short time.

He had risen and gone to a bureau in the corner of the room. He sat down at this and wrote on a piece of paper, which he handed to me. On it was written erry, Fair and Dunn and there was an address.

our father solicitors,he said. hy don you pay them a call. They will be delighted to see you if they have been trying to contact you, which they must have been since you are the main beneficiary of your father will. They will confirmr denyll that I have told you. All I can say is that your father discussed his intentions very thoroughly with me and I remember the representative of Merry, Fair and Dunn calling at the castle. That was about a year before he died.

ow strange that, having made such a will, he made no attempt to find me.

e said he didn want his life complicated at that stage.

nd when did Silva disappear?

nly a few months before his death.

idn he care that she had gone?

e didn express an opinion.

ow cruel he was to her!

ememberhe always reminded him of her mother unfaithfulness. Perhaps if she had been a different child, more attractive, more normal, he might not have disliked her so much, but he often asked me why he should bother with her and once he said that only the fear of scandal made him keep her at the castle.

id Silva know that he doubted she was his daughter?

don think so. Few people did. I knew because he confided in me a great deal. He was too proud to speak of his doubts to anyone.

wish she were here now. I should so much have liked to know her.

he was wild always. Once she threatened to throw herself down from the top of the castle tower. The governess of the moment said: ll right. Do it.And that made her change her mind. So no one took her threats seriously after that. I think she probably went out in that boat as a gesture, hoping to alarm people, and that it got out of hand. You can play tricks like that with the sea.

nd her body was never found, though the boat was washed up.

he was obviously drowned.

t strange that her body wasn washed up somewhere.

t doesn always happen. There must be hundreds of people whose bodies have never been found.

hat a sad, tragic life! It is indeed a case of the sins of the parents being visited on the children. I am so grateful to you, Mr. Fenwick. You have told me so much more than I could have hoped to discover.

t information which you should know. But with regard to the will, you must see the solicitors whose name I have given you. As a beneficiary I was not present when the will was signed, but I feel sure that your father told me of his true intentions.

I said I would go to the solicitors that day if it were possible and when Michael returned and I showed him the address he said he would take me there right away. The small town in which the offices were situated was only a few miles out of our way and Michael knew the quickest route.

And so in the offices of Merry, Fair and Dunn, I learned that I was indeed the heiress to a considerable fortune which I should inherit when I was twenty-one and until that day this was held in trust, and that Jago Kellaway had the power to manage the Island estate and that my father had strongly advised me to allow him to continue to do so.

There was something else. It was true that in the event of my death without heirs, Silva Kellaway was to inherit the Island.

Since she was undoubtedly dead, it was explained to me Jago Kellaway was the next in the line of succession to the Island crown.

This last piece of news had set the alarm bells ringing in my mind since I had first heard it; but I didn want to listen to what they were trying to tell me.

More than anything I was eager to confront Jago. I must know what he had to say when he heard what I had discovered and what excuses he would make for not enlightening me.

I was still bewildered and it seemed strange that the thought which was uppermost in my mind was not that I was going to be very rich but that Jago had kept me in the dark, and most insistent of all was the thought that if I were not there and since Silva was presumed to be dead it would all belong to him.

It was frustrating that he was not in the castle when I returned. Jenifry told me, when I asked if he were there, that he would not be back until dinnertime.

Impatiently I went to my room. I washed and changed, but it was too early to go down. I sat down and nervously leafed through the sketchbook. Inevitably I came to the picture of Jago.

I kept thinking of that moment when I had discovered the hole in the boat through which the water had slowly seeped. He had given me the Ellen. ou should have a boat of your own,he had said, when he had taken me down to the shore and proudly shown me the jaunty little craft with my name painted on her side. How delighted I had beenot only with the boat but because he had given it to me. Why was I thinking of all that now?

I could hear the cool voice of Mr. Dunn. hould you die without heirs the estate would go to Jago Kellaway.

There were long shadows in the room. An air of menace had crept in. But perhaps it had always been there.

At last it was time to go down to dinner and my heart beat uncertainly because he was there.

ave you had a good day, Ellen?he asked.

ery interesting, thank you.

Gwennol was watching me closely, her eyes cold and hard. She was wondering whether I had been with Michael.

went to the mainland,I said.

hat? Deserting our Island again!

Our Island, Jago, I thought. You mean my Island. At least it will ber should be in a few monthstime.

I wished we were alone. I could scarcely wait to speak to him. How long the meal seemed, how difficult it was to make conversation with my mind running on one theme.

As soon as it was over I said: ago, I want to talk to you.

Lights of speculation leaped up in his eyes. Was he thinking that I had come to a decision? And being the man he was, who could not imagine he could ever be defeated, he would be thinking that I could no longer deny the fact that I wanted to marry him.

I faced him in the parlor.

oday,I said bluntly, have made the most extraordinary discovery. It was a shock to realize that I am heiress to great riches.

He did not seem in the least embarrassed. ou were certain to discover it sooner or later,he said easily.

hy was I not told?

ecause you would know all in good time.

had a right to know.

t was better that you shouldn.

hose idea was that?

ine of course.

feelheated.

y dear Ellen, what a strange thing to say. No one shall cheat you while I around to protect you.

ou told me that my father had made you my guardian until I am twenty-one.

hat true.

ut you didn say what would happen to me when I became twenty-one.

hat was to be a pleasant surprise.

don like it, Jago.

ou don like the idea of inheriting the Island?

don like being kept in the dark. Will you please tell me what all this is about.

thought you had discovered that. Tell me who was your informant.

have been to see my father secretary, Mr. Fenwick, and he gave me the address of Merry, Fair and Dunn. Mr. Dunn explained to me the terms of my father will.

ell, then you know everything. How did you find Fenwick?

ichael Hydrock found him for me.

h? Is he interested in your inheritance?

hat do you mean?

meant that he goes to a great deal of trouble to do what you ask.

t was a friendly gesture. You aren suggesting that he is interested in my inheritance, are you? He is very rich, I should imagine. He would not want what I am likely to get.

on be too sure. Often those who appear to be rich are in urgent need of money. The richer one is, the more disastrously one can accumulate debts.

I thought: He is sidetracking me. Attacking when he should be on the defensive, which of course is what I would expect of him.

ou knew all this when you came to London,I accused.

llen, let us not be melodramatic. It is not very long since your father died. All the formalities concerning his estate have not yet been resolved. I was appointed your guardian. That was why I took matters in my own hands. I wanted to see you and inspect the man you were proposing to marry. His death made it possible for me to ask you here. I wanted you to see the Island, to get to know it, to love it before you knew it would one day be yours.

hy?

ecause, my dear Ellen, if you had heard that you were to inherit a remote island which could, if sold, represent a great deal of money, what would you have done?

should have come to see it, of course.

nd very likely have sold it at once. Some unknown person might have bought Kellaway Island. That was something I dared not risk. I wanted you to come here, to see it for yourself, to grow to love it while you remained in ignorance of your father will.

nd you thought I would marry you before I knew that the Island was mine.

hat has nothing to do with our marriage except that it will be convenient for you to have me here to look after it and work with you to make it an even more desirable spot than it is now.

I looked full into those heavy-lidded eyes; they held secrets, I knew. And I felt wretched because I could not trust him and it was becoming more and more clear to me that whatever he had done, my life would be dull and meaningless without him.

h Jago,I began, and he came swiftly to me and put his arms about me, holding me so tightly that I thought he would break my bones.

His lips were on my hair. on fret about it,he said. l look after you, Ellen. Youe nothing to fear with me beside you.

I broke away from him. t all so unnecessary,I said angrily. hy did you have to make it so mysterious? Why did you come to London without saying who you were and then come to that house in Finlay Squarewhy?

wanted to see you to get to know you before you knew who I was.

can see the reason for it,I insisted.

wanted to know about this family you were marrying into, and what would have happened if I had presented myself to you? You would have introduced me to them, would you not? I did not want them to know that I was around, because, Ellen, I was making inquiries about them.

bout the Carringtons? They are a well-known family not only in England but internationally.

xactly. Then why should they be so happy about their son marriage with a girl who was, as far as it seemed, penniless?

hey had so much money it was not important.

l tell you this, Ellen. Money is about the most important thing in the Carrington manage. I believe they knew of your inheritance and that was why they were so eager for the marriage. They wanted that money. The Island would have been sold and the proceeds would have very comfortably and conveniently backed up the Carrington Empire.

his is wild speculation.

o. I leave that to the financiers of this world. Things are not always what they seem, my darling. Il admit I love this Island. It true I did not want to see it pass out of my hands. It was the greatest joy I had ever known when I met you and loved you on the spot.

our joy would have been slightly less intense if I had not been the heiress to the Island.

f course. But it would have made no difference. I was determined to have you for my own and I would have found some means of saving the Island too.

My common sense was telling me not to accept what he was saying, but common sense had no chance against that magnetism which was no less potent than it had ever been.

He went on: ow, my dearest Ellen, you will look at the Island through different eyes. I will initiate you into the bookkeeping. The archives go back over a hundred years. Youl be fascinated. Wel work together. Wel have children, and wel bring them up to love the Island as we do.

ou go too fast. I have not yet said I will marry you.

his is perverse of you because you know as well as I do that you are going to.

think at times you believe you are not a man but a god.

t not a bad idea to have a high opinion of yourself. If you don no one else will. Where is the Kellaway necklace?

t in my room.

hy don you wear it?

he clasp is weak. I shall have to get it repaired.

like to see you wear it, Ellen.

will,I said, and thought how weak I was with him, I who had always felt myself to be strong and self-reliant! I had come demanding an explanation and because he had given me one, which I knew when I considered it alone I should find far from plausible, he had somehow talked himself out of a difficult situation.

What had happened to me? I wanted to accept what he said. I wanted to be with him.

It would be different when I was alone.