Women Have Hearts. Barbara Cartland
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your uncle live?”
“I don’t care where he lives,” Yvette said petulantly. “It will be beastly, like him, and I shall loathe every moment of it!”
“It might be better than you think,” Kelda suggested. “Tell me where he lives.”
“You can see the address for yourself,” Yvette replied and flung the letter she held in her hand onto the floor.
Kelda bent down and picked it up.
She realised that both the envelope and the writing paper were of the thickest and most expensive quality and both bore an impressive crest.
She did not like to make Yvette think that she was prying by reading the letter, but as she looked at the address, noting that it was in Dakar, her eye also caught the first line on the writing paper written in a strong upright hand.
“My dear niece – ” she read.
It struck her as being an unnecessarily formal manner of addressing Yvette, but aloud she said,
“I am sure there will be much in the books about Dakar and I am certain that it is under French administration. So there will be French people living there and you will not feel as lonely as you anticipate.”
“I want to stay in France,” Yvette insisted. “I want to be in Paris where I can dance and go to all the lovely balls that are to be given for me when I leave the school at Christmas.”
Kelda had thought it likely that, as Yvette would be eighteen at the beginning of next year, she would leave Miss Gladwin’s either at Christmas or at Easter.
Because she was fond of the French girl, she had known that she would miss her and at the moment there was no other pupil to take her place in her affections.
“I just don’t know what I shall do without you,” she observed with a deep sigh.
“If I asked if I could stay here for another six months,” Yvette said suddenly, “do you think they would let me?”
Kelda looked down at the letter she still held in her hand.
Somehow she did not know exactly why, but she felt as if there were vibrations of power coming from it and an unmistakable aura of authority.
“I think, if your Guardian says you are to leave, then you will have to do so,” she said quietly.
Yvette sprang to her feet.
“Why should I live with someone I hate? Why should he order me about, not even asking me if there is anything else I would prefer to do?”
She paused for a moment before she added angrily,
“I presume you know the answer to that. I would rather live in a garret in Paris than in a Palace in Dakar!”
“Is that what he owns?” Kelda asked curiously.
“I imagine that is what it will be,” Yvette replied. “As he is so rich and so pompous, he obviously lords it over the wretched natives.”
Kelda put the letter down on the table, resisting an impulse to ask Yvette if she could read it.
‘There is really nothing I can do to help her,’ she thought sadly.
She was just about to say how sorry she was when there was a knock on the door which made both the girls start.
“Who is it?” Yvette enquired.
“Madam wants to see you in her study, m’mselle,” one of the maids replied.
She went away without waiting for an answer and they heard her heavy footsteps going down the passage.
Yvette looked at Kelda.
“The dragon will have received a letter as well and I bet she is drooling over it because Uncle Maximus has a title!”
Mrs. Gladwin was a snob who fawned on the parents whose names appeared in Debrett’s Peerage and it was a joke that never ceased to amuse her pupils.
Yvette was not smiling now.
Instead she carried on,
“You can be sure that the dragon will make me do exactly what Uncle Maximus wants.”
“You had better go down the stairs and find out what she has to say,” Kelda said, “but you should wash your face first.”
“Let her see it as it is,” Yvette replied. “I shall try and persuade her to write to my French relatives and protest at my being sent off to some outlandish place, although I doubt if she will do so.”
“I think it very unlikely,” Kelda agreed, “and even if they do protest, they will not have any authority under the Law.”
“Uncle Maximus has not taken any interest in me until now,” Yvette wailed. “He has not written to me at Christmas or even sent me a card. Why should he want me to live with him? Why this sudden interest?”
“It does seem strange,” Kelda agreed. “Perhaps he feels lonely.”
“Lonely? Uncle Maximus? According to Cousin Jacques, recluse though he may be, he always has a mistress.”
Kelda looked shocked.
“I cannot believe your cousin told you that!”
“Not exactly,” Yvette admitted, “but he visited Uncle Maximus when he was on his way to Cape Town and he told his brother when he did not know that I was listening, that when he called on him, he had a glimpse of a beautiful woman.
“‘Mind you.’ he added, ‘I have a suspicion that she was a métise.”
Yvette wrinkled her brow.
“What is a métise? I asked Aunt Jeanne-Marie, but she would not tell me.”
Kelda knew it meant the offspring of a white Company employee and a local woman, but she was not going to explain that to Yvette.
Instead she replied,
“I will look it up in the dictionary and let you know.”
“I have done that already, but it was not there, unless I had the spelling wrong.”
“You must hurry to Madam,” Kelda insisted. “You know how cross she gets if one keeps her waiting.”
“Why should I care if I am leaving?” Yvette retorted.
Kelda was tidying her hair and then she found her another handkerchief.
“I will wash these,” she said, picking up the two tearstained ones. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Nothing, nothing unless you can cast a spell on Uncle Maximus so he will fall dead!”
She walked across the room and, as she reached the door, she stopped.
“That is quite an idea. I believe there is lots of Black Magic in Africa. I shall try to find a witch doctor as soon as I get there and see if he can dispose of my uncle for me!”
Kelda gave a little cry of horror.
“That is a wicked thing to say! I know you will do nothing of the sort.”
“Don’t be too sure,” Yvette answered sharply and flounced down the passage.
Kelda sighed and began automatically to tidy the room. She was sorry for Yvette. At the same time she wished that she had the opportunity of travelling to Senegal or anywhere else in the world as she had done so often when her father had been alive.
She knew now that the one thing that had been harder to bear than anything else was the feeling of being so restricted and restrained first by the drab dark walls of the orphanage and then by the Seminary.
When her father and mother were alive, they had never stayed for long in any one place.
Even