pushing open the stiff door of Greystones Farm, Tatiana collapsed on the ugly, brown sofa feeling exhausted and depressed.
It had been a pretty devastating two days.
Unable to afford a decent London lawyer, she’d retained a local, Chichester man, Raymond Baines of Baines, Bailey & Wilson. Their meeting yesterday had been less than Tati had hoped for.
‘To be perfectly honest with you, Miss Flint-Hamilton, I don’t believe you have a case.’
Short and bald, with thick, owlish glasses and a distinctly passive, mild-mannered, absolute-opposite-of-a-go-getter-lawyer demeanour, Ray Baines looked at his would-be client steadily.
‘But I already have half the village behind me,’ Tati protested. ‘The tide of local opinion is definitely turning. Nobody wants some upstart Australian installed at Furlings. I made good headway running the fete committee, and by the time it comes to court I’m sure I can—’
‘It won’t matter,’ Raymond Baines cut her off, not unkindly. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’
‘Are you saying you are unable to act for me, Mr Baines?’ Masking her disappointment with anger, Tatiana bristled with aggression.
‘No, Miss Flint-Hamilton. I am able to act for you. And technically speaking you are correct. We could mount a challenge based on the premise that Furlings was subject to an ‘effective’ entailment which your father had no legal authority to break. However I am advising you that it is my legal opinion that such a challenge will fail. With or without local support.’
‘Yes, but you don’t know that. You only think it.’
‘I think it very strongly.’
Tatiana knew she was clutching at straws. But drowning as she was in a sea of shattered hopes, she had no choice but to clutch on regardless.
‘What are your fees, Mr Baines?’
Raymond Baines told her. The number was modest, a tiny fraction of what Tati’s godfather’s firm would have charged for the same service. But it would still represent a dent in Tati’s meagre savings that she could ill afford.
‘Savings’ was perhaps the wrong word for the few thousand pounds remaining in Tatiana’s bank account. Having split from Piers, her latest wealthy lover, and moved out of his Belgravia flat, Tatiana had taken the jewellery he’d given her, along with any other gifts from former paramours she suspected might be of value, and auctioned the lot at Christie’s. The resulting windfall had been enough to pay off her debts, rent Greystones for six months, and leave a modest sum to fund a legal battle with the Cranleys.
Unfortunately, she would need a lot more than a modest sum. At a minimum, she would need full access to the pittance of a trust fund her father had deigned to leave her. That would mean crawling cap-in-hand to St Hilda’s new headmaster, Harry Hotham’s replacement, to beg for a job. So far Tati’s pride had prevented her from availing herself of this much-needed source of funds. It was bad enough having to leave London and return to Fittlescombe, but that was a necessity. Ending it with Piers meant she’d lost the roof over her head, and rents in any part of London where she might actually want to live were astronomical. Still, if the court case dragged on as long as Raymond Baines seemed to think it might, the fact was she was going to need a job of some kind. And as the school job was the only one that unlocked her trusts, this was the obvious path to take.
The prospect terrified her. Tatiana Flint-Hamilton had never worked a day in her life. As for teaching, she wished she shared her godfather’s faith in her abilities. Or her father’s, for that matter. The simple truth was that she no more knew how to control a class full of children than she knew how to mill flour or discover a cure for cancer.
She’d hoped that going back to Furlings today and seeing the new owners installed there might revive her fighting spirit and boost her courage. Remind her that the fight was worth it.
It had been a pretty devastating two days.
Unable to afford a decent London lawyer, she’d retained a local, Chichester man, Raymond Baines of Baines, Bailey & Wilson. Their meeting yesterday had been less than Tati had hoped for.
‘To be perfectly honest with you, Miss Flint-Hamilton, I don’t believe you have a case.’
Short and bald, with thick, owlish glasses and a distinctly passive, mild-mannered, absolute-opposite-of-a-go-getter-lawyer demeanour, Ray Baines looked at his would-be client steadily.
‘But I already have half the village behind me,’ Tati protested. ‘The tide of local opinion is definitely turning. Nobody wants some upstart Australian installed at Furlings. I made good headway running the fete committee, and by the time it comes to court I’m sure I can—’
‘It won’t matter,’ Raymond Baines cut her off, not unkindly. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’
‘Are you saying you are unable to act for me, Mr Baines?’ Masking her disappointment with anger, Tatiana bristled with aggression.
‘No, Miss Flint-Hamilton. I am able to act for you. And technically speaking you are correct. We could mount a challenge based on the premise that Furlings was subject to an ‘effective’ entailment which your father had no legal authority to break. However I am advising you that it is my legal opinion that such a challenge will fail. With or without local support.’
‘Yes, but you don’t know that. You only think it.’
‘I think it very strongly.’
Tatiana knew she was clutching at straws. But drowning as she was in a sea of shattered hopes, she had no choice but to clutch on regardless.
‘What are your fees, Mr Baines?’
Raymond Baines told her. The number was modest, a tiny fraction of what Tati’s godfather’s firm would have charged for the same service. But it would still represent a dent in Tati’s meagre savings that she could ill afford.
‘Savings’ was perhaps the wrong word for the few thousand pounds remaining in Tatiana’s bank account. Having split from Piers, her latest wealthy lover, and moved out of his Belgravia flat, Tatiana had taken the jewellery he’d given her, along with any other gifts from former paramours she suspected might be of value, and auctioned the lot at Christie’s. The resulting windfall had been enough to pay off her debts, rent Greystones for six months, and leave a modest sum to fund a legal battle with the Cranleys.
Unfortunately, she would need a lot more than a modest sum. At a minimum, she would need full access to the pittance of a trust fund her father had deigned to leave her. That would mean crawling cap-in-hand to St Hilda’s new headmaster, Harry Hotham’s replacement, to beg for a job. So far Tati’s pride had prevented her from availing herself of this much-needed source of funds. It was bad enough having to leave London and return to Fittlescombe, but that was a necessity. Ending it with Piers meant she’d lost the roof over her head, and rents in any part of London where she might actually want to live were astronomical. Still, if the court case dragged on as long as Raymond Baines seemed to think it might, the fact was she was going to need a job of some kind. And as the school job was the only one that unlocked her trusts, this was the obvious path to take.
The prospect terrified her. Tatiana Flint-Hamilton had never worked a day in her life. As for teaching, she wished she shared her godfather’s faith in her abilities. Or her father’s, for that matter. The simple truth was that she no more knew how to control a class full of children than she knew how to mill flour or discover a cure for cancer.
She’d hoped that going back to Furlings today and seeing the new owners installed there might revive her fighting spirit and boost her courage. Remind her that the fight was worth it.
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