Miss Mary’s Daughter

by Diney Costeloe

  As he sat down, the solicitor looked at Nicholas Bryan with interest, recognizing his face, but not knowing why.

  Charles, seeing this, said, ‘May I introduce Dr Nicholas Bryan, Mr Staunton, my cousin Sophie’s fiancé? He is also the family’s physician who attended my grandfather in his last illness.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ the solicitor said, and standing up again he extended his hand for Nicholas to shake. ‘How d’you do, sir?’ Now he remembered why the man was familiar; he was one of the witnesses to Thomas’s signature. As he sat down again Mr Staunton opened his briefcase and removing the will, laid it on the desk in front of him. A quick glance at the last page confirmed his memory: Nicholas Bryan, Physician, Port Felec.

  Looking up again, he cleared his throat and said, ‘Ladies, gentlemen. We’ve come together to hear the wishes of Thomas Jocelyn Penvarrow of Trescadinnick. I shall read the will to you and if there are any questions you wish to put to me, I shall be happy to answer them when I have finished. Mr Penvarrow made a new will recently and there are specific instructions relating to some of the bequests, which I will explain if explanation is required.’

  He looked at those gathered, waiting; but as no one spoke, and receiving a nod from Charles, he put on his spectacles, picked up the will and began to read.

  ‘I, Thomas Jocelyn Penvarrow of Trescadinnick in the county of Cornwall declare this to be my last will which I make this eleventh day of November 1886.’

  He continued to read, naming the executors as Charles and himself. Then followed specific legacies, annuities for his daughters, for AliceAnne and for Charles; fifty pounds to the Paxtons provided they were still in his service at the time of his death, ten pounds to each of the other servants. There was nothing unexpected in all this. Everyone knew that Thomas had changed his will in favour of Sophie, though Nicholas kept his expression neutral, as if he had no such knowledge.

  ‘And now,’ Mr Staunton set down the document and looked up, ‘we come to the main part of this will. When Mr Penvarrow made it, he included some Trust clauses and Mr Charles Leroy and I are joint trustees of the Trust which is established by those clauses. In the way that we lawyers like to deal with such things the clauses are somewhat technical, so forgive me if I paraphrase. The essence of the Trust provisions is as follows. All the estate not otherwise given away is to be held in trust for Mr Penvarrow’s granddaughter, Sophia Alice Ross, until she shall attain the age of thirty years. Under the terms of the Trust she may receive an agreed income from the capital, but will only have access to the capital itself with the consent of the trustees.’

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Nicholas, but Mr Staunton continued without pause. ‘Similarly, she may have access to the capital necessary to the running of the estate, but again, only with the consent of the trustees.

  ‘The trustees shall appoint an estate manager, who will be paid by the estate and who, in consultation with the trustees, shall deal with the day-to-day running of the estate and any other affairs of business until the Trust is terminated. Miss Ross may live at Trescadinnick whenever she wishes, as may those people already living there when Mr Penvarrow died. However, if there should be any dispute about this while the house is in trust, the dispute will be resolved by the trustees, who have absolute discretion in the matter of occupancy.

  ‘Should circumstances change, by common consent and entirely at their discretion, the trustees may terminate the Trust.’

  The family listened in stunned silence to these conditions. None of them, not Thomas’s daughters, not Charles, had expected anything other than a straightforward will, naming Sophie as heir. Running true to character, Thomas had not consulted Charles before naming him executor and trustee, and it was with amazement and dismay that he realized he was now, in all but name, Sophie’s guardian.

  Sophie was trying to understand the conditions that had been dictated by her grandfather, but before she could ask any questions, it was Nicholas who spoke.

  ‘So, Mr Staunton,’ he asked, ‘what does all that mean?’

  All eyes turned on him and then back to Mr Staunton, who replied, ‘It means, sir, that Miss Ross is the heir to the Trescadinnick fortune and the estate that goes with it, but that she is unable to take the reins of her inheritance into her own hands until she attains the age of thirty.’

  ‘Not for another ten years?’ Nicholas was incredulous.

  ‘No, indeed,’ agreed Mr Staunton. ‘But, as is often the case, such Trusts are set up for young ladies to protect them from anyone unscrupulous enough to prey on them and their inheritance. Many fathers... and in this case grandfathers... feel that young ladies do not reach the years of discretion until they are much older than twenty-one.’

  ‘And does it mean she can’t marry until she’s thirty?’ Louisa asked, flashing a look of triumph at Nicholas.

  ‘No, ma’am, it doesn’t,’ replied Mr Staunton patiently. ‘She can marry without consent once she reaches her majority, but that doesn’t give her free access to her capital. However, in that case, no doubt the discretion of the trustees could be invoked.’

  ‘And the house?’ Louisa asked anxiously.

  ‘It is her house, and she may live in it if she chooses to, but the trustees may use their discretion with regard to anyone else.’

  Nicholas said nothing else. Louisa had asked the questions to which he wanted answers, but the answers she had been given didn’t please him at all.

  Silence descended on the room again and as there seemed to be no further questions, Mr Staunton gathered up the papers and replaced them in his briefcase. ‘I’ll keep the will to register in the Central Court of Probate,’ he said, ‘but my clerk will make a copy for your family records. As executor and trustee, I shall also keep a copy in my office.’ He looked round at the gathered group before getting to his feet. ‘Is there anything anyone else wants to ask?’

  ‘If I choose not to act as executor and trustee?’ asked Charles. ‘What happens then?’

  ‘Then it will fall to me to act alone as both,’ replied the solicitor. ‘But as I pointed out to Mr Penvarrow at the time, it is considered better to have two signatures required... it avoids the suspicion of venality.’ He looked across at Charles. ‘If you are seriously considering refusing to serve as executor and trustee, Mr Leroy, I shall be happy to discuss the matter with you in my office.’

  ‘Thank you,’ replied Charles. ‘I will certainly give it some thought and then, perhaps after the weekend, I shall call upon you and we can talk everything through.’

  ‘I shall look forward to seeing you either way,’ said Mr Staunton. ‘Indeed, if you do decide to remain a trustee we should have a meeting in any event. There is much to be discussed and decided upon, particularly with regard to the future of the estate.’

  The two men walked out to the front hall where they shook hands, before Mr Staunton left and Charles went into his office.

  Nicholas had listened to this exchange, his face impassive, but inside he was boiling with rage. He understood exactly what Thomas Penvarrow had achieved. He, Nicholas, or indeed anyone, could marry Sophie as soon as she was twenty-one. But unless Charles and that solicitor used their discretion, which he was certain they would not, he could not touch a penny of Sophie’s money for another ten years. He knew that marrying a woman no longer meant that her property automatically became his. The Married Women’s Property Act had changed all that only four or five years ago, but he had, nevertheless, intended that Sophie should sign her property over to him. He would have persuaded her with professions of love and promises to protect her inheritance, to get control of it, but now? Now Leroy would control everything for the foreseeable future, and pompous fool though he was, even he wasn’t fool enough to allow Sophie to sign away her fortune. And if Charles actually refused to be executor and trustee, there was still the solicitor, Staunton, standing firmly between Nicholas and what he had come to think of as his rightful inheritance.

  ‘So you can’t get your hands o
n Trescadinnick as easily as you hoped.’ His thoughts were interrupted by Louisa Leroy, who stood looking down at him with triumph in her eyes. ‘Even if you do marry the chit, her inheritance will be protected.’

  ‘I love her and I have every intention of marrying her,’ Nicholas said, getting to his feet and towering over Louisa. ‘Heiress or otherwise!’

  She looked up into his face, unintimidated. ‘Really? You haven’t even given her a ring yet. No settlements have been made. As far as I and my family are concerned there is no engagement between you.’

  ‘As far as I am concerned there is.’ Sophie appeared at Nicholas’s side and slipped her arm through his. ‘Ring or no ring. We love each other, Aunt, and whether it pleases you or not, we intend to be married.’

  ‘More fool you,’ said Louisa. ‘Everyone else can see that it isn’t you this man loves, but what you bring with you. It’s time you saw it too.’ And with this parting salvo, Louisa turned on her heel and stalked out of the library and up the stairs to the privacy of her own room.

  ‘What a sad old woman,’ Nicholas remarked as he watched her go. ‘Bitter against you simply because she thought her son should inherit and your grandfather didn’t agree.’

  ‘Well, he should have,’ Sophie said. ‘It’s been he who has kept the place going over the past few years.’

  ‘But he’s not a Penvarrow,’ Nicholas reminded her, ‘and your grandfather wanted a true Penvarrow to have Trescadinnick. A Penvarrow of the blood.’

  ‘Well,’ said Sophie as they walked towards the front door, ‘at least I can ask Charles if he’ll continue looking after the estate. There’ll be no change there even when we’re married.’ She smiled up at Nicholas. ‘And of course they can stay in the house; it’s their home.’

  This brought Nicholas up short. ‘They’ll all live with us?’

  ‘No, of course not!’ laughed Sophie. ‘We shall be living in your house. You’ll need your surgery and your dispensary close at hand. Hannah and I will be perfectly happy there.’

  ‘Hannah?’

  ‘Of course Hannah!’ exclaimed Sophie. ‘Oh, Nicholas, I’m so happy! Aren’t you?’

  ‘Happy?’ said Nicholas. ‘Of course I am, my dearest girl!’

  Nicholas strode down the drive. As he passed the home farm Will Shaw waved a greeting, but it went unacknowledged, and Will said to his mother as they sat down to their supper, ‘Did you see Miss Sophie on Dr Bryan’s arm in the church, Ma? Something happening there maybe, but my, the doctor was in bad humour as he passed by later. Maybe things are not well up at the big house.’

  When Nicholas slammed his front door behind him and threw off his coat, his humour had not improved. He went into his sitting room and having stabbed the fire viciously with the poker to bring it back to life, he poured himself a large measure of brandy and dropped into his chair. The anger he had felt as Mr Staunton read the terms of the will had not dissipated; rather, it had built inside him and he had been glad to get away from the house so that he no longer had to wear the mask of concerned love.

  How Thomas Penvarrow had tricked him! How he was manipulating everything from the cold depths of his tomb! How even from the grave he’d been able to wreck all Nicholas’s carefully laid plans.

  Nicholas had listened with growing fury as the solicitor had read the terms of the will. Sophie was indeed Thomas’s heir, but there were so many caveats and conditions that she had nothing, could do nothing, without the consent of Charles Leroy and that stick of a solicitor, Staunton.

  Leroy’s not the heir, thought Nicholas bitterly, but he might as well be. He will control her money, the estate’s money, and even decide who may live in the house. That means, without a doubt, he, his mother and that child with the stupid name will continue to live there as if nothing’s changed. And nothing will... not for ten years!

  If he married Sophie, no, when he married Sophie, they would not be able to evict her family from the house unless Charles Leroy decreed they could.

  ‘And Sophie expects us to live in this hovel,’ he shouted to the empty room, ‘when Trescadinnick is hers!’

  28

  Dolly looked surprised and not particularly pleased to see him when she opened her door to Nicholas a few days later.

  ‘Bad penny,’ she said, barring his way into the house. ‘You can get lost, ’less you’ve brought the money.’ She stared him straight in the eye. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Not all of it,’ he admitted. ‘It’s a lot to find all at once. Bit to keep you going.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Twenty-five quid.’

  ‘A pony! You’re not getting nothing for that, I can tell you. Where’s the ’undred you promised?’

  ‘Coming, Dolly! Coming! I’m getting it.’

  ‘Well,’ Dolly said, ‘you ain’t even gonna see them marriage lines till I see that money on the table... all of it.’

  ‘Getting that much money, Doll, takes time, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I dunno, Nick, do I? Come on,’ she sighed. ‘Better come in. Luke’ll be round for ’is tea in a minute, and I can tell you, he’ll be disappointed, an’ all.’

  ‘Luke?’

  ‘Well, he knows what you’re suggesting. He’s my brother, ain’t he?’ No harm, Dolly thought, to let Nicholas know that she wasn’t the only one who knew of his offer. She stood aside to let him in. When she’d fed the three of them and Luke had gone again, Nicholas took her to bed.

  Later, as they lay there, Dolly asked, ‘So, when am I gonna to get my money?’

  ‘Soon as I’ve got it, Doll. I promised, didn’t I?’

  ‘So why you bothered to come to London without it? All that way from...’ She caught herself in time. Luke had followed Nicholas to Paddington and heard him buy a ticket for Truro, which they had discovered was in Cornwall. ‘From the country, just to tell me you ain’t got it?’

  ‘And to see you, Dolly,’ said Nicholas, reaching for her again. ‘And to see you.’

  *

  Nicholas hadn’t seen Sophie since the day of the funeral and she’d been disappointed when she received a note from him, delivered by one of the fisher boys from Port Felec, telling her that he had been called away to London and would be in town for a day or two.

  I’ll be back to you as soon as I can, my dearest, he wrote. But I shall be away at least three days. I shall miss you every minute of every day.

  She was disappointed that he had not called in person to tell her he was going away, but at least she had the note. She said nothing to anyone else in the house. Since the reading of the will the atmosphere had been strained. Mrs Paxton had enquired whether she should be consulting Mrs Leroy about the housekeeping, or Miss Ross.

  Sophie said at once, ‘Mrs Paxton, please do carry on as usual and speak with my aunt. She has the running of the house.’ Though they had a sort of unspoken truce, Louisa still only spoke to Sophie when she absolutely had to. Charles was distantly polite and Matty, after another night in the house, packed up and went home. Sophie was sad that Matty had returned to Treslyn House; she felt in Matty she had some sort of ally.

  ‘Now, come and visit me,’ Matty said as she gave Sophie a quick hug. ‘Bring the child with you, bring AliceAnne. It’s time she was going out and about.’

  ‘Yes, Aunt, I will,’ replied Sophie, wondering if Aunt Matty had ever thought of inviting AliceAnne to her house before. ‘We’ll come and see you before the week’s out.’

  Sophie resumed the piano lessons she was giving AliceAnne and helped the child with some of her lessons, but still much of the time she felt out of place. The house was hers, but she didn’t feel at home in it and there were times when she longed to be back in the little house in Hammersmith.

  After the weekend, Charles rode into Truro and went to see Mr Staunton. The solicitor greeted him. ‘I wish you the compliments of the season, Mr Leroy,’ he said as he led Charles into his office, ‘and every good wish for the New Year.’

  Charles replied with the same, thinking
, as he said it, that the incoming year could hardly be worse than the last one, but fearing that it might.

  Mr Staunton sat down behind his desk, waving Charles to a chair opposite. ‘I’m glad you have come to see me,’ he said without preamble. ‘Whatever you have decided, we have a good deal to discuss.’

  ‘I have come to a decision, Mr Staunton,’ Charles said. ‘I have given the position I find myself in careful consideration. My grandfather has left us with a very difficult situation.’

  ‘He was doing his best to protect Miss Ross’s interests.’

  ‘I realize that,’ replied Charles, ‘but would he not have done better to appoint you as sole trustee?’

  ‘He could have done so but, as I explained the other day, it is usual to have two trustees and he had great faith in your judgement. I am sure you know that he was hoping that you and Miss Ross might marry, and then there would be no question of the Trust being necessary. What he did not want to happen was for Miss Ross to find herself pursued by fortune-hunters.’

  ‘I’m not sure how much fortune there is to hunt,’ said Charles wryly. ‘Of course, I haven’t seen the estate finances in detail, Mr Penvarrow kept those to himself, but I know that the income has dropped substantially over the last few years with the closing of the mines.’

  ‘Indeed it has, but even so, there is a fair amount of money in the funds. The point I am making is that if you are not going to marry Miss Ross yourself, and it would appear that you are not, her inheritance must be protected.’

  ‘I agree,’ Charles said firmly.

  ‘And I think as her trustee you would be in the best position to do so. You will be seeing her daily and will be able to judge what she needs herself. She must have an income, and live in comfort. Did your grandfather know that she was engaged to be married? Had he approved the engagement before he died?’

  ‘No,’ replied Charles. ‘None of us knew of the engagement until after his death. Sophie said they had been going to ask for his blessing after Christmas.’