by Mary Balogh
Why, you may well ask, when I was his legitimate daughter and a lady? Well, partly, perhaps, it was because he had been estranged from my mother for a few years while her health declined. And partly—no, MAINLY, Joel—it was because a few months before her death he married the lady who was in the room there today as his widow, the countess—I believe an earl’s wife is a countess, is she not, though I am not absolutely certain. And he proceeded to have three children with her—the son and two daughters I mentioned above.
Can you guess what is coming? I daresay you can since you certainly do not lack for wits and it would not take much intelligence anyway to understand. That second marriage was bigamous. It was not a legal, valid marriage, and all children of the union are therefore illegitimate. The countess, who has recently lost the man she thought to be her husband—my father!—is not the countess after all and never was. And the very young man, her son, is not the earl. Her daughters are not Lady So-and-So. I must have heard their names but foolishly cannot remember them—my own sisters! I believe the young man is Harry. I am, in fact, my father’s only legitimate child.
Today I found the family for which I have always longed—my half brother and half sisters—and today I lost them again in the most cruel fashion. Can you just imagine the bewilderment and anguish in that room, Joel, when the truth was revealed? And since every sufferer needs a scapegoat, someone to blame, and my father, the real culprit, was no longer available, then of course all their hostility was turned upon me. The man who has now become the earl since my half brother does not qualify might have been their choice as scapegoat, but he was wise enough to declare himself quite averse to his change in status, though to do him justice I believe he meant it.
It did not occur to me to declare that I would really rather not be my father’s only legal child, though I did protest having been left the whole of his fortune while my brother and sisters have been totally disinherited. Oh yes, there is that too. Some parts of my father’s property were entailed and go to the new earl. Other parts are not entailed and come to me because my father’s only will was made just after my birth and left everything to me—and presumably to my mother if she had lived.
How could my father have behaved as he did, Joel? I do not suppose I will ever know the answer, though one lady there today said that he had always been a toad. I think she may have been his sister and therefore my aunt. Oh, how very dizzying this all is. I have not fully comprehended it yet. Can you tell? And can you blame me?
This is turning into a very long missive, but I had to write to someone or burst. And you were my obvious choice. What are best friends for, after all, but to burden with all one’s woes? Some people would not call them woes, would they? I have no idea how much I am now worth, but it must be something, do you not think, or the word fortune would not have been used. I hope it will be enough, anyway, to allow me to send this very long letter. It will cost the earth.
I hope you do not become horribly bored and fall asleep in the middle of it. And surely there will be enough to get me back to Bath in a little more comfort than the stagecoach is said to provide. Perhaps there will be enough to enable me to take some modest rooms outside the orphanage and thus acquire more independence. How lovely that would be!
But oh dear, I do feel bruised and battered. For I have found my parents and they are dead, and I have found a family that is mine—I do believe most of the people there in that room, if not all, must be related to me in some way—but they hate me with a passion. The elder sister—my half sister—in particular yelled the most horrible things at me. The boy—my half brother—could only seem to laugh and look dazed and talk about it all being a lark, poor thing. Oh, poor thing, Joel, and he is my BROTHER! The younger sister looked dazed and bewildered. And the dispossessed wife wrapped herself in dignity and looked like a stone monument about to crumble. I fear she will indeed crumble when the reality of it all hits full force.
My fingers are sore, my wrist is aching, and my arm is about to fall off. Mr. Brumford sent me back here even though I wanted to return to Bath without further delay. He convinced me to stay until he has had a chance to come and talk business with me. I expect him any moment.
I will come home soon, though. Oh, how I long for my schoolroom and my children, even the naughty ones. How I long for you and Miss Ford and Roger and—oh, and my little room in which I would not be able to swing a cat even if I had one—another of Miss Rutledge’s sayings. Maybe I will come tomorrow. Almost certainly I will come no later than the day after.
Meanwhile, you have my permission to share the contents of this letter if you wish—everyone will be longing to know why I was summoned here and will be vastly entertained by my story. You will be the most popular man in Bath.
Thank you for reading so patiently, my dearest friend—I trust you have read this far! What would I do without you?
Your ever grateful and affectionate
Anna Snow (for that is who I am!)
Anna blotted the final sheet of the letter, folded it neatly—it was indeed fat—and sank back in her chair, exhausted. She had had luncheon with Miss Knox soon after her return from that mansion, though she could not remember either what had been served or how much she had eaten. All she wanted to do now was crawl into the large bed in the bedchamber that was hers, pull the bedcovers over her head, curl up into a ball, and sleep for a week.
But there was a knock upon the door, and she sighed and got to her feet while Miss Knox strode past her to open it.
* * *
When Avery entered the drawing room, he found it much as he had expected. It was full of variously distraught Westcotts—with the apparent exception of the Countess of Riverdale, who was no longer the countess and actually never had been, and Camille and Abigail, who were sitting in a row on the sofa, silent and motionless.
The dowager countess was seated on an adjacent love seat, her eldest daughter beside her.
“Do not fuss, Matilda,” she was saying in obvious exasperation. “I am not about to swoon.”
“But, Mama,” Lady Matilda protested with an inelegant hiccup of a sob. “You have had a severe shock. We all have. And you know what the physician said about your heart.”
“The man is a quack,” her mother said. “I do not have heart palpitations; I have a heartbeat, which I have always thought a good thing, though today I am not so sure of it.”
“Swallow this down, Mother-in-Law,” Molenor said as he approached from the sideboard with a glass of brandy.
Mildred, Lady Molenor, looked as though she needed it more. She was seated beside her sister, the duchess, her head thrown back, her handkerchief spread over her face and held there with both hands, while she informed anyone who cared to listen that the late Humphrey had been every nasty beast and insect the world has ever produced, and that was actually an insult to the bestial and insect kingdoms. The duchess was patting her knee but showing no inclination to contradict her. She was looking like thunder.
Mrs. Westcott—Cousin Althea—was hovering behind the sofa, gazing down in obvious concern at the backs of the heads of the three seated there and assuring them that all would be well, that everything always turned out for the best in the end. For a sensible woman—and Avery had always considered her sensible—she was talking a pile of rubbish. But what else was there to say?
Alexander Westcott—the new Earl of Riverdale—was standing with his back to the fireplace, his hands clasped behind him, looking elegant and commanding, though his face was a bit waxy. His sister, standing a few feet away from him, was telling him that it was impossible, he could not refuse the title, and even if he could, it would not revert to Harry.
Of Harry himself there was no sign.
“Harry would not stay,” Jessica announced in tragic accents just as Avery was noticing his absence. She was standing in front of the sofa, literally wringing her hands and the thin handkerchief clutched in th
em and looking like a youthful Lady Macbeth. “He laughed and then ran away down the servants’ stairs. Why would he laugh? Avery, it cannot be true. Tell everyone it is not. Harry cannot have been stripped of his title.”
“Jessica,” her mother said firmly but not unkindly, “come and sit quietly here beside me. Otherwise you must return to the schoolroom.”
Jessica sat, but she did not stop twisting her hands and pulling at the handkerchief.
“I certainly wish it were not true, Jessica,” the new earl said. “I would give a great deal to find that it was not. But it is. I would return the title to Harry in a heartbeat if it were possible, but it is not.”
And the devil of it was, Avery thought as he strolled farther into the room, that he meant it. He was genuinely upset for Harry’s sake and just as genuinely without ambition for himself. It was actually difficult to find a good reason to dislike and despise the man—an irritating realization. Perhaps perfection was inevitably irritating to those who were themselves imperfect.
The three on the sofa looked rather as if they had been bashed hard on the head but not quite hard enough to render them unconscious. Cousin Althea had stopped talking in order to listen to her son.
“Has that dreadful woman gone back to Bath where she belongs?” Camille asked Avery. “I wonder she did not come up here with you to gloat over us.”
“Cam.” Her mother laid a hand over hers.
“Oh, how she must be rubbing her hands in glee,” Camille said bitterly.
“I thought her the most vulgar of creatures,” Lady Matilda said. “I wonder that Avery allowed her inside the house.”
“She is my granddaughter,” the dowager said, handing the empty brandy glass back to Molenor. “If she is a vulgar creature, it is Humphrey’s fault.”
“Whatever are we going to do, Mama?” Abigail asked. “Everything is going to change, is it not? For us as well as for Harry.”
That was probably the understatement of the decade.
“Yes,” her mother said, laying her free hand over Abigail’s. “Everything is going to change, Abby. But pardon me, my mind is rather numb at the moment.”
“You will all come to live with Matilda and me, Viola,” the dowager announced. “The only good thing Humphrey did in his life was to marry you, and he could not even get that right. You are more my daughter than he was ever my son.”
“You can come here to live, if you would prefer,” the duchess said. “Avery will not mind.”
“Abby is coming here to live?” Jessica brightened noticeably. “And Harry? And Camille and Aunt Viola?”
Would he mind? Avery wondered.
“Uxbury is to call at Westcott House this afternoon,” Camille said. “We must not be late returning home, Mama. I shall put off my mourning before receiving him, and I shall inform him that we no longer need wait until next year to celebrate our nuptials. He will be delighted to hear it. I shall suggest a quiet wedding, perhaps by special license so that we will not have to wait a full month for the banns to be read. Once I am married, it will not matter that I am no longer Lady Camille Westcott. I shall be Lady Uxbury instead, and Abby and Mama may come and live with us. Abby may be presented next year, even perhaps this year, under my sponsorship. She will be the sister of the Viscountess Uxbury. You are quite right, Cousin Althea. All will turn out well in the end.”
“But what about Harry?” Abigail asked.
Camille’s forthright, almost cheerful manner visibly crumbled, and she bit her upper lip in an obvious effort to fight back tears. Her mother clasped both sisters’ hands more tightly.
“I could kill my brother,” the duchess said. “Oh, how dare he die when he did and escape retribution. How dare he not be alive now at this very moment to face my wrath. Whatever was he thinking? I had never even heard of this Alice Snow woman before today. Had any of you? Mildred? Matilda? Mama?”
None of them confessed to any knowledge of the late Humphrey’s first wife—his only wife, actually. Lady Molenor, Cousin Mildred, wailed briefly into her handkerchief.
“But he was married to her and had a daughter with her,” the duchess continued, sawing the air with the hand that was not patting her sister’s knee and almost elbowing Jess in the eye. “And then he abandoned her and married Viola as though that first marriage could just be ignored when it was no longer convenient to him. Of course, it was common knowledge that he never had a feather to fly with while Papa still lived, but was as wild and expensive as sin. We all knew that the last time Papa paid off his mountain of debts, he also told Humphrey never again to expect one penny more than his quarterly allowance, which was a great deal more than the pin money we girls had to be content with, let me tell you. I suppose he was in desperate straits by the time Mama and Papa chose a bride for him and married her in order to get the funds flowing again. I suppose he assumed no one would ever find out about his dying wife and their daughter—and no one ever did during his lifetime. I could kill him.”
“That daughter is my granddaughter,” the dowager said as though to herself, spreading her hands on her lap and examining the rings on her fingers.
Lady Matilda still hovered with the vinaigrette.
Jess was sobbing into the thin confection of a handkerchief she had twisted almost beyond recognition, and Avery toyed with the idea of sending her off to the care of her governess. But a chapter in her family history was being written here today—no doubt it would be a starred chapter—and he supposed it was wiser to allow her to experience it for herself in all its raw emotion. Besides, he rarely imposed his authority upon her, partly because he assiduously avoided exerting himself unnecessarily, but mainly because she had a mother who was reasonably sensible most of the time. And who could blame her today for wanting to murder a dead man? He was not feeling kindly disposed toward the late Earl of Riverdale himself and was selfishly glad he was not related by any tie of blood.
Bigamy was not, after all, a mild offense that could be attributed to wild oats.
“I had never heard of that woman either until today, Louise,” the former countess said, “though I did know of the girl Riverdale was keeping at an orphanage in Bath. I assumed, quite wrongly, that she was his natural daughter by a former mistress. I even felt a grudging sort of respect for him for taking financial responsibility for her. I wonder if the truth would ever have come out if I had not commissioned Mr. Brumford to find her and make a settlement upon her. It was not out of the goodness of my heart that I did it, I must add, but because I did not want her making any future claim upon Harry. I had hoped he and Cam and Abby need never know of their father’s indiscretion.”
She laughed without humor and patted her daughters’ hands briskly before continuing.
“Your idea is a good one, Cam,” she said. “We will all cast off our mourning today. What an enormous relief that will be. We will wait and see what you arrange with Lord Uxbury this afternoon and move to a hotel if the wedding is to be within the next few days. Thank you all for the offers of hospitality, but it really would not be appropriate for us to stay with any of you. If the wait for the wedding is to be longer than a few days—Uxbury may well insist upon having banns called—then we will remove to the country and supervise the packing up of all our personal belongings while we wait. Either way we have a busy time ahead of us and must waste no more of it sitting here.”
“Pack our belongings?” Abigail looked bewildered.
“But of course,” her mother said. “Neither Westcott House in town here nor Hinsford Manor in Hampshire belongs to Harry any longer. They belong to . . . her.”
“But where will you and I go after the wedding?” Abigail asked. “I do not believe Lord Uxbury would like it if we imposed ourselves upon him permanently no matter what Cam says.”
“I do not know where we will go, Abby,” her mother said irritably, showing the first crack in her composure. “I shall take you
to your grandmother—my mama—in Bath, I suppose. She will surely be happy to give you a home despite the disgrace, for which you are not even the slightest bit at fault. She adores you and Cam.”
“And you, Viola?” the duchess asked sharply.
“I do not know, Louise.” The countess flashed her a ghastly smile. “I am Miss Kingsley again, you know. It would not do for me as a single lady to remain in Bath with my daughter. It would not be fair to my mother, and it would be potentially disastrous for any hope Abby may have of making some sort of eligible connection. I shall probably go to my brother. Michael is a clergyman in more than just name, and he has been lonely, I believe, since the death of my sister-in-law last year. We have always been fond of each other. I shall stay with him, at least for a while, until I decide upon something more permanent.”
No, Avery decided, this was definitely not a morning of boredom. His stepmother, he noticed, had not even remembered to send for the tea tray.
