The Lorimer Legacy by Anne Melville Page B

exclaimed.
    â€˜Who sent you here?’ asked Lord Glanville. ‘My brother mentioned a Mr Lorimer.’
    â€˜Yes, he sent me. He was supposed to look after me, but he sent me here. And he knew, he must have known, what was going to happen. It’s unthinkable that I should return there.’ Even at the time Alexa – well aware that William Lorimer had never particularly liked her – had felt surprised that he should be so helpful. It was easy for her now to assume that everything which had happened was part of a deliberate plot.
    Lord Glanville put his money back in his pocket and came right into the room to sit in an arm-chair. He stared at her with a serious expression on his face.
    â€˜I take it that Mr Lorimer is not your father, then,’ he commented.
    â€˜No, my lord. My father died when I was a baby, and my mother a few years later. I was adopted into the Lorimer family. But Mr Lorimer is no relation of mine at all, and I never want to see him again.’
    â€˜Where else could you go, then, if you are unwilling to return to your guardian?’
    Lord Glanville’s natural enough mistake in assuming that William Lorimer was her guardian was hardly noticed by Alexa. There was an answer to his question, and she would have to give it – because of course she could goback to Margaret, who was expecting her return, although not at any precise moment.
    And that, Alexa realized, would be the end of all her dreams. Only an hour earlier she had imagined herself persuading her guardian that an opera singer could live a life untouched by scandal, whether rumoured or real. She would have described herself as the protégée of a family which was above reproach. How could she honestly do that now? And if she told the truth, Margaret could hardly be expected not to point out that the incident confirmed all her previous warnings about the immorality of a stage career. There would never be another chance.
    The disappointment of knowing her hopes to be dashed so soon after they had been raised caused Alexa to let out a groan of anguish.
    â€˜I want so much to be a singer!’ she cried, with all the passion of her unhappiness. ‘But I’m only eighteen, and I don’t know what I should do. There’s no one to help me. Except your brother; but I’ve been brought up to believe that what he expects of me is wrong.’
    â€˜You are quite right to think so, and your attitude does you credit. No, don’t start crying again.’
    He was too late. Alexa was no longer frightened, but she wept from self-pity – for the collapse of her hopes, the defeat of her ambitions, the loss of her lover, the dismal future which lay ahead. Lord Glanville stood up again.
    â€˜Wait a moment,’ he said. ‘Someone had better prepare you a hot drink. It will help you settle to sleep.’
    He was gone longer than the giving of an order would have necessitated – so long, in fact, that Alexa began to feel she had been abandoned. Desperately she searched her mind for some alternative to the dullness of a country life, some plan which would meet Margaret’s standards of respectability.
    Her most immediate thought was the most impossible. Once before, when she was only nine years old, she had performed for a few months in music halls in order to earn money for her dying mother. Alexa had never forgotten those months, and her feeling of power and pride every time she had managed to reduce a noisy audience to silence, forcing them to listen to her singing and to love her. Even with no more experience than that, it was likely that her voice and appearance would gain her employment of the same kind again now. But not even Alexa could argue that a music hall was a respectable environment. And how hurt Margaret would be to learn that her ward preferred such a way of life to the one offered by herself and Robert. It was impossible. Of course it was impossible. But she must