Sir Augustus Albert Lacey, always called Bertie, was born at the end of May 1883 in Yattendon Hall, in the county of Berkshire, where he was to live all but two years of his life.
Iain McFarlane, as executor, had devoted a considerable amount of time converting his friend’s estate into wise and secure investments for the son he would never know.
It had not been easy to secure the child’s inheritance as they had had to fight the finest in the Law Courts but, with unexpected assistance from men in the government, it had been seen through to a satisfactory conclusion. From the moment he was born, Gussie’s son was Sir Augustus, fourth Baronet of Oakridge and, as his father’s rightful heir, inherited everything that had been his father’s.
*
Bertie’s childhood was lived in a perpetual state of boredom.
His early years were governed by Lady Mary, his father’s mother, who held sway in the extended household until her death, when Bertie was ten years old. Despite disliking her grandson for reminding her in many and different ways of both her son and her husband she insisted Bertie not be sent away to school. A series of lacklustre tutors was employed, not one of whom succeeded in inspiring their charge to achieve anything but the most elementary levels of learning. One, employed when Bertie was fourteen, encouraged the young man to write a daily diary, and that he did from that day on.
As he approached his majority he had expressed an interest in assisting in the running of the Swann Estate, but his mother insisted it was perfectly well administered by agents and there was no need for him to become involved. He had no need to work for a living, the moneys left in trust to him by his father provided more than enough income for his needs and the Swann family was a wealthy one. He had no interest in politics, local or national, nor did express any interest in travel. By the age of twenty-one he had not been further from Berkshire than a summer’s expedition to Shanklin on the Isle of Wight.
Through his twenties he became increasingly frustrated with his mother’s many and varied reasons for not allowing him to leave her side. He began to read The Times every morning and came to understand that he should strive for a degree of independence but every time he suggested any activity he could undertake that did not allow the presence of his mother she told him it would be impossible and he gave up on the idea.
“You allow me no purpose in life,” he would occasionally argue. But Lady Lucille would respond by asking whether looking after his mother was not purpose enough in life.
“How I envy those who trudge into their offices and factories every day. They have, at the very least, something to achieve and may feel satisfaction at a job well done. What have I ever accomplished?” he asked at dinner one evening in the spring of 1913, knowing that he could not hope to get a satisfactory answer.
“You are not trade.” Bertie was stunned by the cold venom of his mother’s tone. “People of our standing in society do not work for a living.”
He thought she spoke as if work was only for the lowest in society. “But my father worked.”
“He most decidedly did not!”
“He had a job. He was in the Army as you tell me often enough, as was your father.”
“The Army is not ‘work’. The Army and the church are not ‘jobs’, they are vocations.”
“Well I would like a ‘vocation’. I am thirty years old and have achieved absolutely nothing.”
“Your vocation is to do as I say and your accomplishment is in causing me no concern.”
Bertie had no resources in his personality to counter his mother’s strong will.
“Why do you want to leave?” she asked, deceptively gently, as they were taking tea that summer under the shade of a tree in their beautifully tended garden. “Do you dislike your life here so much, Bertie dearest?”
“I wish to travel because I should not, at my age, still be tied to my mother’s apron strings. Not that you ever did anything so practical as wear an apron.”
“You cannot possibly set yourself up in a separate household Bertie, how would you cope with the staff?”
“I’ll find a wife. I’m not sure how as you make it your business to ensure I meet no one of marriageable age but I’ll find a way.”
“That is unfair. I do not stop you being who you want to be.”
“No? It seems to be your only purpose in life.”
*
In 1914 when war in Europe became an inevitability Bertie thought he saw his chance to achieve a level of independence.
“The country may well be at war but you will not be,” Lady Lucille said in a tone that brooked no argument.
“You cannot stop me doing my bit.”
“It will be over by Christmas. Everyone says so.”
“I wonder that anyone can believe that.”
“If you insist on serving perhaps a place can be found for you, as it was for your father.”
“In South Africa, I know, Mother. But times have changed in a generation. This war will be very different from anything that has gone before.”
Bertie had read the newspapers and understood something of the reasons for the war and the entrenched positions of the protagonists. He also understood more than his mother cared to know about the developments in weaponry that had occurred since his father had served. “You have told me often enough of his time in South Africa when the nearest he got to fighting seems to have been watching the wounded embark on the sailing coffins called hospital ships.”
“That is an unfair and inaccurate assessment of your father’s service.”
“I don’t know about that. He was in South Africa in the most fraught of times yet he was never in the face of any enemy action.”
“Your father was a man of the highest integrity.”
“Yet he did nothing to worry the lists of casualties. He was an administrator, a man who pushed pieces of paper from one side of his desk to the other. Yet you consider him to be a hero? That is only because he died young. It is not fair that whenever I want to do something that interests me or may involve my leaving your side you veto it.”
“And with very good reason. Your ideas have never been thought through. You jump at an idea headlong without even approaching an assessment of the implications. You are so far from being your father’s son that I despair. Your father was a man of derring-do, he faced everything.”
“And I am nothing?”
“You are not your father’s son. He was brave and you are not.”
“Only because I am not allowed to be. I find myself almost imprisoned. I am barely allowed to leave the Hall and the estate.”
“You overstate your case. You will apologise.”
“What for, Mother? Describing things as they are?”
Lady Lucille knew she had an unreasonable attachment to her son. She did not like him but she did not want to lose him as she had lost his father, by letting him out of her sight for just one morning, by allowing him to walk alone through the streets of London.
*
Sir Bernard Lacey had dreamed, as he sat in his study in Oakridge Court, that his grandson, surrounded by his family, would read what he had written and would learn the secrets of their family.
But the date on the notebook was to pass unremarked.
The fifteenth day of July 1915, a Thursday, was a day like any other.
Bertie was woken by his valet with a tray of tea and the morning paper. He spent an hour preparing himself for the day, worrying, as he always did, that he was doing nothing for the war effort. He glanced at the lists of casualties and felt guilt, as he always did, for being a coward and staying at home in Berkshire living life as he always had done.
The household’s routine had not been changed one bit by the war as his mother kept up the charade she insisted on, that what was happening in France and the wider world was nothing to do with them.
He breakfasted alone in the dining room, hardly touching the plates of food laid out for him. He had long given up wondering what happened to the fruit, eggs, kedgeree and pastries that he could not eat, making the assumption that they were consumed below stairs.
He read the morning paper, which he found depressing, and then spent some time reading some of his childhood diaries that he kept in the wooden military-style chest Iain McFarlane had presented to him on his sixteenth birthday.
He went for his morning ride, telling himself it was important that he kept an eye on the estate though he had no say in its running. On his return he ate a light luncheon on his own as his mother had not yet left her apartments.
The weather that afternoon was fine and he was asked to join his mother to drink tea and eat delicate cucumber sandwiches in the garden. He was required to entertain the vicar and his wife by playing them at croquet. On his mother’s instructions, as always, he allowed his adversaries to win. After the guests had gone he spent some time alone in his rooms before dressing for dinner at six.
As he sat at his desk writing his diary, as he did every night, he had no thought of his father’s chest, so like his own, stored in the attic two floors above his room. It had not been opened since it had been brought, along with that of Sir Henry, to Yattendon in the months before he was born and he had never been told of its existence.
On the fifteenth day of July in the year 1915 no one read the letter or opened the notebook because no one knew of their existence. So no one questioned the meaning of the ciphers, no one found the note pressed inside, no one knew to what the words Josephine’s locket referred, no one found the locket and opened it to discover the words Mary Lettice and so no one could discover the existence of any diaries or seek to find out what they might contain.
*
It was over a year and a month later, August 1916, that Bertie’s routine was broken by the arrival of dinner guests.
The acquaintance was a slight one, the lady was the daughter of an old friend of Lady Lucille’s mother and her husband was connected with General Swann and had known Gussie in South Africa.
Dinner, Bertie knew, would be uncomfortable as unexpectedly included in the party was their son, on leave from the Western Front.
Bertie could not answer the spoken and unspoken questions about why he was not fighting for his country. He could give no defence when they accused him of shirking his duty. His mother was no support, simply repeating that, “Bertie really isn’t up to it.” The dinner party broke up early with the guests returning to their hotel impolitely soon after the meal had finished.
After they had gone Bertie said with the weight of a lifetime of resentment, “I am ‘up to it’ and I will do something.” The argument that ensued was the last between Bertie and his mother.
The next morning he took a train into London where he met with Iain McFarlane, who was also the only person to whom he could talk, confident that his words would not be relayed to his mother.
Bertie had known McFarlane all his life as his financial guardian whose formal role had ended twelve years earlier on his twenty-first birthday, but who continued to act for him on all matters of finance. They had met regularly when McFarlane visited the Hall but Bertie had never been to his offices and had never met him without Lady Lucille being a dominating presence.
After the usual pleasantries Bertie blurted out the reason for his unexpected visit. “I really must do something.”
Iain McFarlane did not seem surprised at the request. “Times are grim, indeed they are. Nothing seems to shift in France and we are all very weary of the lack of any breakthrough.”
“What can I do? Should I join up?”
The reply was not encouraging. “I wouldn’t think of joining up if I were you, Bertie. You would fail miserably as an officer I’m afraid, you have no command of what would be required and men would die because you would make mistakes.”
“I could enlist?”
“You would be torn to shreds by your comrades who would see you as a useless toff.”
“That’s a bit harsh.”
“But true. You would be set up as the first to go over the top and you wouldn’t last a day. And if you did last a day, through your incompetence you would have been responsible for so many deaths that you would not be allowed to last a day more. I speak as your friend, Bertie.”
“There must be something I can do? How about working on a farm? Or in a factory? Even women are working as conductors on trams. I must do something. Mother wants to keep me tied to her but I will not be. The country needs every man who can help. I will not stay at home surrounded by her ridiculous cocoon of protection.”
“Leaving out such suggestions as you have just made, what activities would you say your skills would allow?”
“I will do anything. I am not quite as stupid as my mother imagines. At least I sincerely hope not. I can at the very least read and write.” Bertie tried to smile.
“I will see what I can do. There are some who still remember your grandfather, and, of course, your father. He had no experience at anything but made himself very useful in South Africa, I remember.”
“Tell me something of my father. Mother never speaks of him other than in the most unlikely glowing terms.”
“We met in the Cape. We spent much time together…”
For half an hour Bertie learned more about his father than in all the previous years of his life. He listened as Iain McFarlane told him of the interests and enthusiasms of his father. He wondered how it was that he had inherited so little of his father’s energy.
“My life would have been very different had he lived.”
“Indeed it would. He was an interesting man, fascinated by new developments in science and geography.”
“And I could have learned from him. I would have done the things I dreamed of but never have had the wit to do.”
“ “You must remember it has been difficult for your mother. Your grandmother, Lady Mary, was a very imposing lady who set the rules of your life very early on and your mother never had the confidence to stand up to her. It was sad watching the lively, inquisitive, attractive young lady your mother had been turn into a carbon copy of her mother-in-law.”
As his father’s friend spoke Bertie detected a certain affection for the young Lucille Swann in Iain McFarlane’s description.
“Yes, your mother was a wonderful young lady and all of Society was in love with her. But she only had eyes for your father and then, when he was murdered, she was whisked away to Berkshire while the courts decided her future.”
“You were in love with her?” Bertie spoke with a confidence he wasn’t sure he possessed.
“I suppose I was. But that is a long time ago and I have done my best for you out of love for your father, not his wife.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pried. I had no idea.”
“Why would you? And there is never a need to apologise for something over which you have no control and about which you could have no knowledge. That is a lesson your father would have taught you.” Iain McFarlane straightened his back and twitched his neck as if to change not only the subject but also the mood. “But let us come back to the present. I’ve been concerned about you and felt the time had come to act.”
“Act?”
“You don’t think it’s a coincidence that an old acquaintance of your grandmother happened to call and invite herself to dinner, do you?”
“You?”
“Any move had to come from you and something had to jolt you out of your complacency.”
“You knew I would be shamed into coming to see you?”
“Let us just say I had hopes.”
“You have something in mind?”
McFarlane nodded. “If you trust that I have your best interests at heart you should return to Yattendon and tell your mother that you are moving to London and that you will take absolutely no notice of her histrionics.”
“I do, I will and I won’t.” Bertie smiled, believing for the first time that he might gain some control over his life. In a relaxation of tension Bertie and Iain McFarlane exchanged a conspiratorial smile that very quickly turned into laughter.
*
On the first Monday of September 1916 Bertie moved to London and a week later took possession of his desk at the headquarters of his father’s regiment. He was a happy man as he would now be able to live the life he had long envied, that of a man of purpose.
Every day he would walk from the house Iain had arranged for him to the offices housed in one of the less ostentatious buildings that lined Northumberland Avenue.
“Good morning Millie.” He was always careful to greet the young lady who every morning not only provided him with a cup of tea but also handed him a sheaf of papers. “A bad butcher’s bill today?” He had very quickly picked up the Napoleonic euphemism from his colleagues.
“It is not a good time Sir Albert.”
She always gave him an encouraging smile as she left him alone to face the details of men of the regiment who had died and the people who had claimed their outstanding pay and pension. His job, to prove the validity or otherwise of such claims, was sometimes straightforward but at other times was worthy of one of the detective stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that he loved to read. His days passed quickly as he immersed himself in his work.
It was some weeks before he acknowledged to himself how much he looked forward to the tea, the smile and the short chat he had with Millie each morning, and a further few weeks before he had the courage to say anything other than the most basic of pleasantries.
“I do wish you’d call me Bertie, Millie, there really is no need for all this formality,” he said one morning just before Christmas 1916.
“My father would kill me if he thought I wasn’t maintaining what he would call the common courtesies,” she answered with a grin that showed how much she believed in her father’s wisdom.
“He’s not going to know is he?”
One morning in early February 1917 Millie did not turn on her heel and leave him as she had done every previous day. Instead she sat down with as much confidence as if they were meeting in her mother’s drawing room. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. You are still young. Why haven’t you joined up?”
“You mean why am I not at the front being killed along with these poor young men?” He waved the bundle of papers she had just handed to him.
“Well yes. I suppose I do mean that.”
“I’m perfectly fit and well.” He spoke with a tone Millie thought was rather defensive.
“You look it.” He was a little disturbed at the look of appraisal she gave him. “Are you a conchie?”
“What a horrid term that is. No, I am not a conscientious objector.” He spoke circumspectly, wondering what she was leading up to.
“But you have chosen not to be one of the boys?”
“I did want to.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
He knew it would sound weak but he decided attack was the best form of defence. “Are you about to give me a white feather?”
“Do you think you deserve one?”
“I probably do. More so than those horribly wounded and honourably discharged who are being handed the wretched things in the street.”
“Then what are you going to do about it?”
“Why would you care whether I enlist or not?”
“I care about the reason you haven’t. I mean… Well… You come from a good family…”
“Yes, Millie, I come from a good family, and I am fit and well and the reason I’m not dead with all these poor men,” again he waved the sheets of paper, “is that my mother has always thought that I am not up to normal life. She didn’t allow me to go to school, I have never mixed with others of any station, I have no knowledge of how the world operates, I have no understanding of people, I have been told I would have made a most dreadful and dangerous officer and certainly I could not have been an enlisted man. So the short answer to your question is that I am inadequate. Every single one of these men is a far, far better man than I.”
They were both surprised at the bitterness in his voice.
“Oh,” was all Millie could say as they sat in embarrassed silence. She was wondering how she could help this rather gauche and vulnerable yet attractive man, and he was wondering how he could have spoken to Millie of things he had never admitted to himself.
Bertie collected himself first. “When one of those ladies accosts me in the street asking me, usually in a withering tone and with a superior manner, why I am not in uniform doing my bit for my country I try to explain but it always seems a little weak.”
“What do you tell them?”
“I try to look them directly in the eye and speak with something approaching authority. I tell them that there are sometimes more important things to do for one’s King and Country than to die for them.”
“Well, I would agree with that. But this…” She pointed to the papers on Bertie’s desk.
“I believe this job to be important, I really do. Certainly it is to the people we trace. What would some of these people live on if we couldn’t confirm their right to a grant or a pension? They have to deal with the death of one close to them, a brother, a husband, a son, the very least we can do is help them avoid penury and starvation.”
“You are right, sometimes it is easy to forget the living in the face of so much death.”
That she seemed to understand touched Bertie to the core.
“Would you like to take me to tea on Sunday?” she asked with a deceptively demure smile.
“I would. But,” he smiled conspiratorially, “I wouldn’t have the first idea of where to take you. The Savoy?” He ventured the place he had heard others of his colleagues mention.
“Definitely not.”
“So where?”
“In the interests of welcoming you to the real world I suggest the Corner House, opposite Charing Cross Station.”
“Very stylish.”
“Also a lot of fun.”
*
That first Sunday he had approached the Strand Corner House with some trepidation and had been welcomed by a table of smiling female faces. He thought that everyone seemed very jolly. He knew he would never remember their names but he did remember how much he enjoyed that afternoon.
As the grim winter months of the war passed and the war news of the early months of 1917 was as depressing as that of 1916, the Sunday teas became a regular and necessary recreation. Some afternoons he would sit back, listening to the conversation of the young ladies, and occasionally younger gentlemen, who had been educated at schools and read newspapers and had views, some of which he agreed with.
Sometimes, when he went to the Corner House during the week, he would sit alone and watch couples together and found himself making up their lives for them. That man is not married to that woman, he would speculate. They are in love but she is married to an older man who probably beats her. Their story will not end happily. On those occasions he began to wonder at how little he knew about his own family.
All his life he had been surrounded by members of the Swann family. The portraits of generations of Swanns lined the corridors and staircases of the Hall they had occupied over a period of three hundred years. But what did he know of his Lacey heritage? He knew nothing other than that he was the last of the line. He had been told that it was his duty, as fourth baronet, to marry and to have a son and continue the line. But if he did not, would there be a fifth? Perhaps he had a distant cousin desperate for the line to pass to him. He telephoned Iain McFarlane and asked him to investigate who his current heir might be. But he never had the opportunity to hear the results of McFarlane’s enquiries.
Three days later he was walking Millie home when they heard the sounds of an air raid.
“Don’t worry, it’s undoubtedly another false alarm.”
“No, Bertie, there’s definitely something.”
After a few moments listening to dull thuds and then sharp gunfire he put his arm around her. “I think you’re right, come on, let’s find somewhere to shelter.”
The driver of the motorcar was distracted and didn’t see them in the gloom of the blackout.
He drove for only a short distance on the pavement, but that distance was sufficient to take the two lives.
*
Lady Lucille accepted the news with resignation.
She had done her best to keep her son safe but that had not been enough. However, faced with the enormity of war losses, she felt unable to make too much of her son’s death. To be run over by a motorcar seemed, to her, too ignominious an end.
“I did my best to protect him,” she told Iain McFarlane after the funeral, “but he insisted on doing his bit for his country.”
McFarlane thought it best not to explain his role in Bertie’s move from Berkshire. “He was a good man, he simply needed a father. Perhaps you should have considered marrying again. You could have had your pick of any number of men.”
“Perhaps I should have. But who would have taken on another man’s son?”
“There are such men. Believe me.”
He knew she would never have considered him as eligible and he knew also that she had no inkling that he would have ‘taken on’ Gussie’s widow and son in an instant.
“Well it’s not too late for me now I no longer have Bertie to worry about.”
“You have plans?”
“I believe I shall make a new life for myself. I am not yet an old woman.”
“Indeed, because of this bloody war there are many tens of thousands of women facing life alone.”
“You can arrange someone to lease the Hall? It should not be difficult to find an occupant, someone respectable. I do not want to see it become a hospital or convalescent home, it is not meant for that.”
“I will certainly attend to that, if that is what you want, but are you sure you want to make a decision at this time? Bertie has been gone less than a month.”
“I am certain, McFarlane. You will, no doubt be dealing with Bertie’s estate but perhaps you would find time to also arrange for me to rent somewhere respectable, by the seaside I think. I am attracted to Shanklin on the Isle of Wight. Bertie and I spent a summer there once.”
Iain McFarlane took his leave of the woman he had once loved. He would have some work to do in clearing Bertie’s estate but then he would see no more of her. Perhaps, he reluctantly told himself, that would be for the best. She clearly saw him as a man of business rather than what he was, an old friend of her husband who had done his best for the family for years. She had never, and would never, consider him her social equal.
*
Two months later he returned to the Hall.
“My errand is not an easy one, Lady Lacey.”
“No?”
“In fact I’m afraid it is going to be very difficult.”
“Well you had better get on with it then.”
“What do you know of Gussie’s family?”
She was surprised by the question. It was not what she had expected. She had rather assumed that he had made the appointment to see her because he had had some difficulty in finding a tenant for the hall. She had imagined that he had failed in her demand that it was not to be commandeered for the war effort. She didn’t see how her husband’s family could have any bearing on anything.
As she was about to admonish him for referring to Sir Augustus as ‘Gussie’ she remembered that the man she had always treated with some disdain had, in fact, known her husband better than she had done.
“Very little.” It was the only answer she could give.
“You have had no contact with the Lacey family?”
“As I understood it no such family existed. My husband was an only child.”
“What about Gussie’s father, Sir Henry, the second baronet?”
“I never met him but I believe he was also an only child. At least Lady Mary never said anything about her husband having had any family.”
“Did Gussie never tell you that his father had a brother, William Lacey, and that he had spent time in York making investigations into his Lacey heritage?”
“Of course not. What are you getting at?” she answered sharply, but she knew there was something in her memory of Gussie talking about the Isle of Wight. Perhaps that was why she had spent the few holidays she had had with Bertie on that island.
“So you have never heard of William Lacey?”
“William? No. Never. Who is he?”
“He was Sir Henry’s brother, Gussie’s uncle.
“You must be mistaken. Surely Lady Mary would have said something.”
“Perhaps she never knew. I must tell you he did talk about it when we were in South Africa. He felt his father to have been unusually secretive about his life and in what time he had on his return to England he made some investigations.”
“He said nothing to me. Surely it can be of little or no interest?”
“I’m very much afraid it has everything to do with you and your future.”
“How?”
“There is more to the Lacey family and you must listen carefully.”
Iain McFarlane spoke clearly as he quoted the papers he had read and re-read over the previous weeks. “On the sixth day of July in the year of our Lord 1822 Constance, Lady Lacey, wife of the first Baronet, Sir Bernard Lacey, gave birth to twin sons, Henry and William.”
“Sir Henry had a brother. So?”
“Sir Henry having a brother opens up a complete avenue of the family.”
“Perhaps William died young and that is why he was never mentioned.”
“William is indeed deceased, but at the age of fifty-eight, interestingly enough within weeks of his twin brother.”
“Not an old man.” Lucille was beginning to see where the conversation was leading. “It is unusual that both twins survived in those times.”
“Unusual certainly, but not unknown. In this case the elder, by a matter of some minutes, stood heir to his father’s baronetcy.”
“How hard on the younger.” Lady Lucille did not sound sympathetic.
“And there is some evidence they fell out.”
“Which would explain why he was never mentioned.”
“Precisely so.”
“So what happened to that line?” Lady Lucille’s curiosity overcame her fear of what the answer might be.
“William Lacey Esquire, younger brother of Sir Henry, married and had a son.”
“So how old is this son?”
“Bernard Lacey is now just passed sixty years of age.”
“And still alive?”
Iain nodded before adding, “And he has two sons, confusingly called William and Henry, though in this generation the elder is William.”
“And what has happened to them? They would be of an age to be in France.”
“William lives in the family seat on the Isle of Wight but I believe his younger brother, Henry, is serving in France.”
“So what of William?” Lady Lucille was not interested in Henry.
“He was born in 1887. He runs his family’s businesses.” Iain noticed Lady Lucille’s raised eyebrow. “His mother was the daughter of a wealthy Welsh businessman.”
He heard, but chose to ignore, Lady Lucille’s bitter comment, ‘Trade.’
“The family, the de Burghs, have substantial mining, banking and farming interests. He is involved in the running of those businesses which are essential, as I’m sure you will agree, to the overall war effort.”
“All this talk of trade is very interesting but how does the fact that my husband’s father had a brother who survived and who had a son, who in turn had sons, hold any interest for me?”
“It should hold a great deal of interest. It means that Bertie’s title, his estate and all his property that is entailed to the baronetcy pass to this Bernard. Bernard is Gussie’s heir, as the nephew of his grandfather, his first cousin once removed.”
“His title?”
“Yes, Bernard Lacey is now Sir Bernard Lacey, fifth Baronet of Oakridge on the Isle of Wight in the County of Hampshire.”
“And his estate?”
“His title, his estate and all his property—”
“All his property? Surely that comes to me?” Lady Lucille interrupted, certain that there had been some mistake.
“Nothing comes to you.” Iain McFarlane’s face was grave.
“Nothing?”
“Everything that was Bertie’s is now Sir Bernard’s.”
“Not everything, surely?”
“Allow me to explain, and please understand that recounting this gives me no pleasure. Your father’s entire estate passed to you on his death as he returned to England from the Cape. You were at that time unmarried and as a spinster, under the laws of the time, you were entitled to inherit. On your marriage to Gussie, again under the laws of the time, everything that was yours became his. In your marriage you ‘endowed him with all your worldly goods’.”
“What do you mean, ‘under the laws of the time’?”
“I have gone into this in a great deal of detail, be assured of that. Matters have changed on the thinking of women’s rights to wealth and property, but rather too late to help you. Your marriage to Gussie took place in August 1882.”
“A lovely day, I remember,” she said bitterly.
“Indeed, I was there to witness your happiness.”
“Yes, I suppose you would have been.”
After a short, imperceptible, breath Iain continued. “The Married Women’s Property Act did not pass into law until the first day of January 1883 which means your marriage is governed by the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870. This was considered enlightened at the time because it enabled women to have property in their own right. Wages earned and investments made by a woman once married could be treated as her own property but anything by way of inheritance became and remained the property of her husband. As a result everything your father left you became Gussie’s on your marriage.”
“But when Gussie died surely it came to me?”
“You will not have forgotten all the trouble we had, at Lady Mary’s and your insistence, to persuade the courts that the title should pass to a male unborn child. We eventually won our case but it was not only the title that went to your unborn son, it was all his father’s estate which of course included all that had been yours before your marriage. You were made aware at the time, I have the papers here, that Bertie’s inheritance included all that you had inherited from your father.”
“I had not thought… The implications had not… So Bertie inherited everything Swann as well as everything Lacey? I have had nothing all these years?”
McFarlane nodded. “Since your marriage you have had nothing in your own right.”
“Everything was Gussie’s and then Bertie’s? Nothing was ever mine?”
McFarlane nodded again. “Not since the day of your marriage.”
Lady Lucille raised her arms in a gesture of helplessness and let them drop in her lap.
“You must understand that at the time we knew nothing of the Isle of Wight Laceys, but there is no argument, all that was Bertie’s now passes to his heir who happens to be the now Sir Bernard Lacey.”
“Everything?”
“After the not insignificant matter of Estate Duties.”
“Estate Duties?”
“I’m afraid the war and our debt to the United States of America has to be financed somehow, and Mr Lloyd George feels the aristocracy and landed classes should bear the brunt. Estate Duties on an estate of this magnitude run at a very high percentage.”
But Lady Lucille was not interested in Estate Duties. She was beginning to fear for her future.
“This cannot be right.”
“I’m very much afraid everything I have said is correct. I have looked for a way through but there is none.
“So I have nothing and I have no right to anything, not even that which has been in my father’s family for generations?”
“Unfortunately, that is what the law says.”
“Then the law is absurd.”
“Many have said that and one day it may change but this situation is the law as it stands today.”
Iain looked at the woman he had once, years before, thought to make his wife and sighed. Nothing he could say would make this easier for her.
“Where does this leave me?”
“An annuity will be determined, but even that is subject to the approval of Sir Bernard. Any income you may have is in his gift. He will, I feel certain, view any application you may make in a kindly and generous fashion. As I said, they are a wealthy family in their own right.”
“So I am to beg for an annuity? Beg for the charity of a pension? From a tradesman?”
“I am sure it can be done in the most pleasant of ways through lawyers, and I will do my utmost to advance your cause.”
“Will I have to meet the man?”
“That should not be necessary.”
“I think the very least this Bernard can do is show his face to me and explain how it is that my father’s house, the home of the Swann family since Tudor times, should become part of his obviously already vast estate. The very least he can do is tell me to my face that I am to be thrown from my home without so much as a penny to my name.
“I am sure it will not come to that.”
“I’m afraid your reassurance is empty. It appears the law is clear. I have one question and that is why, as his man of business and you say my husband’s friend, you allowed this situation to arise?”
“It is unfortunate that we had no knowledge of the existence of another branch of the Lacey family. Had we known that we would have arranged matters in a different manner.”
Lady Lucille could not take any more that afternoon.
“You should have known.”
She turned and pulled the bell rope.
“The gentleman is leaving.” It was all she could do to maintain some degree of calmness in her voice.
Iain turned as he left the room. “I will do everything in my power to make the transition as painless as possible.” But Lady Lucille had turned away and was staring out of the window.
As the door closed she sat down and looked around at the contents of the familiar room. Everything that had been her father’s had come to her on his death.
At the time she had considered herself the luckiest of women.
*
It was over a month later that William Lacey was ushered into Lady Lucille’s drawing room.
She had meant to stand her ground, be imperious and in control, she had intended to proffer her hand with disdain for him to take. She was the injured party in all this after all. But when she saw him she was overcome with the likeness to Gussie and forgot everything she was going to say.
“Your ladyship? Are you not well? Shall I fetch someone?” William was concerned as he saw all colour drain from the lady’s face.
“I am recovering,” she said weakly. “It is just that you are… you are so like my late husband.”
“My father extends his apologies. He is unwell and unable to travel.” William Lacey spoke stiffly.
Lady Lucille judged the man against her son. He seemed younger, he was taller, broader, and had more cold character in his face. Whereas Bertie had been a boy all his life, this Cousin William was a man.
“I must apologise Mr Lacey, you are so like my late husband and the son I have so recently lost. I find it difficult.” She resorted to a woman’s wiles and feigned a continued weakness she did not feel in order to gain time.
“The Lacey family genes appear to be very strong.” William relaxed as he decided he had the upper hand in the difficult conversation. “Both my brother and I look very like our grandfather, William. But our father resembles his mother I believe, at least from all the family portraits that seems to be the case.”
His general conversation was designed to allow Lady Lacey to recover her composure. It was as kind as he intended to be.
“Your family seems to lack nothing despite being descended through the younger son.”
William was unfazed by her bluntness. “We have not always been so lucky. The position we are in today has been won by a fierce determination to succeed against all odds.”
“A series of good marriages?” Her rudeness was intentional.
“Certainly. Good in many senses.” He was equal to her.
“So you have no need of my money?”
“As I understand it, Cousin Lucille,” he paused almost imperceptibly on the deliberate familiarity to see her reaction and was happy to see a flash of anger in her eyes, “you have none.”
“It is my family’s estate, my parents’ house, their money.”
“And under the law, the very clear law, of this land, it passes to my father.”
“Unjustly.”
“I am not here to argue, cousin, I am here to take away any documents you may have that belonged to your son, his father and his grandfather. They may relate to the title and you will appreciate that we have the right to them. What can be removed easily I will take with me. My father has also charged me with establishing how you would like him to assist you.”
“I should not be in need of his assistance.”
“I’m sure we both agree you are, and we offer it willingly. Our two branches of the family have been estranged long enough, we do not want to cause any more unpleasantness than is necessary.”
“But you imply some is necessary?”
William nodded slowly. “You are, after all, about to lose your home.”
“And also much that has belonged to my family for generations. You will know that very little of what you see about you came from the Laceys. There are few heirlooms that are not Swann heirlooms. I cannot understand why you would want those.”
“It is a question of the law. But I am sure my father would be happy that you keep one or two mementos.”
“Are you being deliberately provocative?”
“No, cousin, I am being deliberately precise.”
“Are you also to discuss an income?”
“We would prefer this to be handled by others. We should take their guidance.”
“Shall I have to present household bills to show how much I require for a comfortable life?”
“We will purchase a residence for your use and we will pay reasonable household and staff expenses.”
“I am allowed staff?” she interrupted acidly. “How generous you are that I shall not have to do my own laundry.”
William ignored her. “In addition we will arrange a generous pension for fripperies.”
“Fripperies?”
“Personal expenditure, clothing, entertainments and the like. You will be able to carry on living to much the same standard as you do now.”
“Much the same?”
“Of course your household will be smaller, but you will still be Lucille, the Dowager Lady Lacey. We will not allow you to live in penury but then nor will you live in luxury as every penny you spend is not yours.”
There was an uneasy silence as William sat back, content. He had said what he had been told to say and had rather enjoyed the saying of it. Lady Lacey, meanwhile, contemplated a bleak future and wondered briefly whether she was too old to find a rich American who wanted to marry into an established family to achieve social acceptance.
“You are harsh.”
“The law is harsh, cousin.”
“Who would be a woman?” She asked the question not expecting an answer.
*
Two hours later, when William left the Hall in his new motor car he had with him three military-style chests. Two, which had been retrieved from the attics, contained the papers of Sir Augustus Bernard Lacey and Sir Henry Lacey. The third had been hurriedly filled, to his mother’s dismay, with the contents of the desk in Sir Bertie’s rooms.
Within a day all three were locked away, unopened, in the attics of The Lodge.