What could she say?
‘He wasn’t the sort of man whose decisions you could question,’ she told him, knowing that, whilst her comment was the truth, it was only a tiny part of it.
To get off such a potentially dangerous subject she asked him curiously, ‘What do you intend to do about the Manor? Obviously you can’t keep it…’
‘No?’
It was more of a question than an agreement, and she looked sharply at him.
‘It would take a fortune to make it properly habitable,’ she reminded him, ‘and even without that, the rates and running costs alone…’
‘Mmm… You’re right of course. Don’t you feel any sentimental attachment to it at all, Lucy?’
Now it was his turn to be curious and this at least was something she could answer honestly.
‘Of course I do, but I’m afraid I’m also practical. During the last few months of my father’s life, I had to take charge of running the estate, paying the bills and so forth, and I’m afraid that cured me of a lot of my sentimentality. Besides, I’d grown up knowing that one day I’d have to leave.’
‘Yes, your father was very resentful of that entail, wasn’t he? I remember that summer I came over, he never stopped reinforcing how much he disliked the thought of it coming to me. Was he very disappointed when Tara was born?’ he asked her perceptively.
Lucy bowed her head so that he couldn’t see her expression. ‘A little,’ she responded guardedly. ‘Obviously you realised how he felt about the house—and the family. Up until the time my mother died I think I believed that somehow the Martins were immortal, inviolate, and way, way above the fate of other human beings. My mother’s death taught me differently.
‘So it wasn’t resentment that summer—just pain.’
She liked him for seeing that.
‘Yes,’ she admitted.
‘Well that’s all behind us now.’ He lifted his hand from the wheel briefly to cover hers, the contact warm and sure.
‘I haven’t seen you using the library since I’ve arrived. I hope that isn’t because you don’t think you’re welcome?’
Initially it had been; that and a stubborn, difficult pride, but now…
She shook her head. ‘I just haven’t had time to do any more work on my book. The draft of the first one is finished anyway and with the publishers. I’m going down to see them next week, and although I’ve been sifting through the diaries and letters for background information I don’t intend to start on the second in the series until the first one’s been passed and accepted.’
‘You must be very good to have got this far,’ Saul commented praisingly. ‘I know how difficult it is for a new author to get a first book accepted, especially when it’s fiction.’
‘Well I was lucky in that my uncle was able to give me a recommendation,’ Lucy reminded him modestly.
‘True, but if your work hadn’t been good enough, no amount of recommendations would have helped.’
Lucy knew that this was true, and it gave her a warm glow of pleasure to hear Saul’s praise.
That was what she had missed since her mother’s death, she acknowledged. Someone to share her ups and downs, no matter how small and trivial. Her father had never been interested in her writing, and Fanny, although kind-hearted, considered it a nonsense that any woman could actually want to work and become financially independent.
There was her uncle, of course, who she loved very much, but she didn’t see that much of him, especially now that he had retired, and the fact that she and Neville no longer saw eye to eye tended to make her visits to his parents less frequent. Neville had his own flat in London, but Lucy always tended to feel a little uncomfortable in her aunt’s presence, knowing how much she adored her only child. Her uncle, she suspected, saw his son more clearly, but he was a gentle, mild-mannered man, as far removed from his arrogant callous son as it was possible for a man to be.
‘Will the books follow the fortunes of the Martin family?’ Saul asked her, returning to the subject of her work.
‘Very loosely. I’m going to use the more scandalous bits—the Martin who cost the family a title by refusing to go to bed with the Prince Regent will probably feature in it, and of course the family’s trading connections, especially with the West Indies, make a very good background.
‘Although I’m not up to that point yet, I’m thinking about incorporating the anti-slavery act, probably by using two brothers… twins maybe, one for and one against. I’d like to see the diaries and papers, if I may.’