The Making of a Princess. by Lorrie Mae.

A JOYOUS REUNION Part 10

The sound of a trolley and the smell of something sweet and warm drifted into the main room where all of the family were gathered, along with the Duke and his friend Anthony. room was made for the two maids to place a nice cup of tea in each persons hand along with warm scones with jam and cream, which smelt and tasted so good, many a face was smiling, not a sound was heard as they all enjoyed a moment of peace.

The whole family were sitting together for such along time, as they chatted among themselves, the Duke stood up and said, "I am so glad to see you are all here at this time, Anthony and I have a lot to discuss with you all, so I will first of all ask Anthony to have his part and then I will finish, we won't be long, thanking you for the chance to be here. Anthony stood up holding some papers in his hands, "I would like to explain what we are doing here, as we all know what has been happening in this family, re your daily dealings, the duke would like for me to be your man who will personally take over the running of this hose's expense account, it is too protect the home for you all, it is still your home of comfort, I will just be handling the monies side of things, and this is to take place from today, as the Duke has taken all of your debts and they will be paid from today if you all agree with this one time offer, to get you all out of place you are all in now." he stopped and looked around at the family, who were all looking from one to the other, "Are things that bad with us, could we loose the house for instance," asked Grace the eldest daughter, she looked straight at her father, "Please tell me father, that it's not this bad," she asked her father, who just sat there with his head in his hands, "Daddy look at me, how bad are things, you must tell us, how could you afford to send us away to finishing school, if things are so bad."

The Duke stepped forward and looking at all before him, " I have a solution here for this family and if you all accept together today, no more need to be said about any of this, please so as to join your family together, let me help you, I ask for nothing in return, my friend Anthony here will be also looking after you all, so any of you can come and speak with us privately or together on anything you might want to know, but this has to be settled now, today, and then we no more need to speak of it again, we will part now and leave you as a family to talk things through, can we meet again in an hour, thank you all," and with that the two gentleman left to sit outside and wait .

Everyone started talking at the same time, and Grace and Roslyn were both kneeling in front of their father, "Daddy please talk to us, let us know we are family and we should be able to talk as one," but their father just sat with his head in his hands, muttering so quietly, "I am so sorry, I am so sorry," and that was all he said , so then the girls looked at their mother, who was sitting there, twisting her handkerchief in her hand, it was what she did when she was upset, Daphne could see that neither her father or mother were going to talk to the girls, so she sat down next to both of them, asking her sisters to please sit down and she would talk to them, "You see daddy has had a very bad problem with gambling and he has sold a lot of things on us, and he kept going until he got to owe some money to some awful people, Mr. Aspen being one of them, and that is why I went to live there, I couldn't leave until the debt was paid off, I could not come home to see any of you, as he thought I would run away, it was a hard 10 years that I never want to do again." she stopped talking to have a sip of her drink, then went over and gave her father a kiss on the head and said, "It will be alright father, you have your family with you and we will help you, won't we mother", she said softly. Both of the girls went to their parents and said that they will help as much as they can., and so they sat talking to each other, explaining what had happened lately to Daphne and the girls while they were in school, also they came back to a decision to give the Duke and Anthony when they met up again.

Penelope had been returned to the mansion, and was to watched by the head person of the day, they were to know where she should be all of the time, but there were breaks in between when the tea breaks left her alone, and so she had been hatching a plan to get at Daphne, after all she knew where she was at the moment, and in her mind she had to do what Mr. Aspen had asked her too, she just wanted the money that was promised, she knew where he had hidden his money, as she had watched him just recently without his knowing, so as soon as she did the job she will get the money and move away from here, and with the knowledge that she could get away quickly she would wait until she was back at the mansion, she had heard that she was coming to help to do the girls hair, so she waited around until she knew that Daphne would be here, she decided to ask her carer of the day, 'Excuse me Mrs. Hertford, do you know when Daphne will be here, I would like to apologize to her." "Well that is nice Penelope, maybe that would make you feel a lot better." And so she was ready to set her plan into action.