Mistress of Night and Dawn by Vina Jackson

and offered his hand. He was medium height and wore glasses and his grey hair stood in sharp contrast to the rest of his appearance, halfway down to his shoulders, lustrous, combed back, studiously inappropriate for his profession and age.
    ‘Gwillam Irving,’ he said, his hand firmly shaking hers. His palm was unusually cool to the touch.
    ‘Aurelia . . .’ she answered. ‘Aurelia Carter.’ She had chosen to use her godparents’ name a few years back, and not her birth name. They had brought her up and been so kind to her it had felt like both an acknowledgement and a vote of thanks.
    ‘I know,’ the lawyer said and, with his extended arm, indicated for her to follow him.
    His office was across from the reception area and so much smaller than she expected, crowded with piles of dossiers, papers and law magazines attracting dust on every surface. He bid her to sit down, after clearing some stray folders from the old leather swivel chair facing his cluttered desk. There was a quaint, benevolent kindness in his smile as he sat and faced her.
    He cleared his throat and gazed at Aurelia. ‘I have been instructed to contact you and make you an offer, Miss Carter,’ he said. ‘However, I regret to advise you I will be unable to answer any of the obvious questions that, I am sure, you will wish to ask later, and I apologise in advance. My instructions are quite clear.’
    Aurelia, puzzled, remained silent.
    ‘You have a very generous benefactor,’ Gwillam Irving said, sitting ramrod in his own chair.
    ‘A benefactor?’
    ‘I think that’s the best way of putting it,’ he answered.
    ‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ Aurelia replied.
    ‘Irving, Irving and Irving, of which I am a senior partner, have been retained to set up a trust fund to be established in your name, which runs to a not inconsiderable sum, if I may say so. The principal will be available to you in full on your twenty-first birthday, although adequate amounts can be disbursed to you beforehand on certain conditions pertaining to your continuing your higher education.’
    Aurelia sat silently, processing the information.
    As she was about to open her mouth and begin asking a litany of questions, the grey-haired lawyer continued.
    ‘I am unable to reveal the identity of our client who has requested to remain anonymous.’ He awaited her reaction.
    Her mind was in a whirl. There was just no one she could think of who could have come up with such a scheme. Her godparents were always careful with money, but they only had a small pot of savings, and she had no other relatives she was aware of.
    ‘How much?’ she queried.
    The sum he quoted silenced her for a moment.
    Seeing her lost for words, Gwillam Irving added, ‘The interest alone, and we will be careful to arrange for the best possible interest to accrue until your twenty-first, will suffice to cover your cost of living through university and much more, I can assure you.’
    ‘This is crazy,’ Aurelia protested.
    ‘There are two important conditions attached, I am obliged to point out – and I will of course provide you with a written copy of the proposed arrangements before we part – and they are that you begin your university education, in a place of your choice, before the aforementioned twenty-first birthday and also that you . . .’ He hesitated. Aurelia stared hard at him. ‘. . . that you should not enter into marriage before that date.’
    Aurelia felt her throat tighten. This was all so absurd. Not that she had any intention of entering into wedlock for the foreseeable future; there was not even a man, a boy, anywhere in her life.
    ‘Were any of those conditions broken, the trust fund set up in your name would automatically be rescinded, I must make it clear.’
    Her mind was crowded with questions but she already knew each and everyone of them would be pointless and that the lawyer would not prove forthcoming.
    Irving talked her through the minutiae of the fund that would now