Someone To Love

by Mary Balogh

  He had persisted with a dogged determination and endless additional practice time until he turned some invisible corner early in his second year by winning another of what he had privately dubbed the amusement rounds in boxing by knocking down an opponent two years older and a foot taller and several stone heavier than he in the second round. Admittedly it had happened when the boy was striking a pose for his friends and grinning like an idiot, but it had happened nevertheless. The boy had even had to be carried off to the infirmary, where he had watched stars from dazed eyes for the next few hours.

  The great change, though, had come when Avery was in his next-to-senior year. He was walking back to school from some unremembered errand and had taken an unfamiliar route for some variety. He had found himself walking past an open plot of waste ground between two old, shabby buildings and witnessing the strange sight of an old man in loose white trousers and tunic moving about barefoot in the middle of the lot with exaggerated steps and arm gestures, all of which were strangely graceful and slow, rather as if time itself were moving at less than half its usual speed. The man was about Avery’s own height and build. He was also Chinese, a relatively unusual sight.

  After many minutes the movements had ended and the old man had stood looking at Avery, seemingly quite aware that he had been there for a while but unembarrassed at having been observed behaving in such a peculiar manner. Avery had stared back. He was the one who had broken the silence. He doubted the old man ever would have.

  “What were you doing?” he had asked.

  “Why do you wish to know, young man?” the Chinese gentleman had asked in return—and he had waited for an answer.

  Just curious, Avery had been about to say with a shrug. But there had been something about the man’s stillness, about his eyes, about the very air surrounding him that had impelled Avery to search his mind for a truthful answer. Two, even three minutes might have passed, during which neither of them moved or looked away from each other’s eyes.

  The answer when it came was a simple one—and a life-changing one.

  “I want to do it too,” Avery had said.

  “Then you will,” the man had said.

  By the time he finished school two years later, Avery had learned a great deal about the wisdom of the Orient from his master, both philosophical and spiritual. He had learned too, not just about certain martial arts, but also how to perform them. The most wonderful discovery of all had been that his small stature and whip-thin body were actually the perfect instruments for such arts. He practiced diligently and endlessly until even his unrelentingly stern and demanding master was almost satisfied with him. He had made of himself a deadly human weapon. His hands could chop through piled boards; his feet could fell a not-so-very-young tree, though he proved that to himself only once before falling prey to remorse at having killed a living thing unnecessarily.

  He had never practiced the deadliest of the arts on any human, but he knew how if he should ever need to use his skills. He hoped that time would never come, for he had also learned the corresponding art of self-control. He rarely used the weapon that was himself and never to its full potential, but the fact that he was a weapon, that he was virtually invincible, had given him all the confidence he would ever need to live his life in a world that admired height and breadth of chest and shoulder and manly good looks and a commanding presence. He had never told anyone about his meeting with the Chinese gentleman and its consequences, not even his family and closest friends. He had never felt the need.

  His master had had only one criticism that had never wavered.

  “You will discover love one day,” he had told Avery. “When you do, it will explain all and it will be all. Not self-defense, but love.”

  He had not explained, however, what he meant by that word, which had more meanings than perhaps any other word in the English language.

  “When you find it,” he had said, “you will know.”

  What Avery did know was that men feared him even while they believed they despised him. He knew they did not understand their fear or even openly admit it. He knew women found him attractive. He had learned to surround himself with the weapon that was himself like an invisible aura, while inside he observed his world with a certain cool detachment that was not quite cynical and not quite wistful.

  Lady Anastasia Westcott, he suspected, did not find him either fearful or irresistibly attractive, and for that he admired her too. She had even called him absurd. No one ever called the Duke of Netherby absurd, even though he frequently was.

  “When a gentleman walks with a lady,” he said as they approached the park, “they make conversation. Shall we proceed to do so?”

  “About anything at all?” she asked. “Even when there is nothing to say?”

  “There is always something to say,” he said, “as your education will soon teach you, Anna. There is always the weather, for example. Have you noticed how there is always weather? It never lets us down. Have you ever known a day without weather?”

  She did not reply, but around the hideous brim of her hideous bonnet he could see that she was almost smiling.

  Carriages and riders were making their way in and out of the gates. Their occupants glanced Avery’s way and then returned for a harder look. He turned off the main carriageway to cross a wide expanse of green lawn in the direction of a line of trees that hid the streets beyond from view. He did not intend exposing her to the curiosity of large numbers of the fashionable world today. There was a path through the trees where one could expect a measure of solitude.

  She did not choose the weather, even though there was weather happening all around them in the form of sunshine and warmth and very little breeze. Those three subtopics could have kept them chatting for five minutes or longer.

  “You must have known my father,” she said.

  “He was the duchess, my stepmother’s elder brother,” he said. “And yes, I had an acquaintance with him.” As little as he possibly could.

  “What was he like?” she asked.

  “Do you wish for the polite answer?” he asked in return.

  She turned her head sharply in his direction. “I would prefer the truthful answer,” she said.

  “I suppose in your world you can conceive of no other, can you, Anna?” he asked her.

  She was small with a minimum of curves. She was small breasted. Her hair, even without the bonnet, was severely styled and heavy. Yet something came into her eyes for a moment, a certain awareness that he did not believe was fear, and somehow it flashed from her eyes into his body, and for a brief moment it did not seem to matter that the only physically appealing thing about her was her Madonna’s face. It was an extraordinary moment. It was almost sexual.

  “Why ask a question,” she said, “if one does not want a truthful answer?”

  Ah. Now he understood. He liked her. That was extraordinary enough, but it was easier to understand than sexual awareness.

  “Anna,” he said by way of reply to her question, “have you never asked a man if you look beautiful? No, foolish question. I do not suppose you have. It would not occur to you to go on a fishing trip for a compliment, would it? Women who ask that question certainly do not want the truth.”

  She was still looking directly as him. “How very absurd,” she said.

  He suspected that was going to become one of her favorite words in the days and weeks to come.

  “Quite so,” he said. “I believe the late Riverdale to have been the most selfish man of my acquaintance, though admittedly I did not know him well. He was, or so I have heard, wild and expensive as a young man. He married the lady his parents had chosen for him when his debts were such that he had no choice but to do whatever it took to restore the flow of funds from which he had been cut off. Apparently that included bigamy and the hiding away of his legitimate daughter. When his father died not long after his marriag
e and he became the earl, he continued his profligate ways for a while, and then suddenly saw the light, so to speak, and changed completely. It was not a religious epiphany that had assailed him, however. No divine light struck him down and made a penitent of him. According to my father, who knew him well, though reluctantly so as a brother-in-law, he had some extraordinary luck at the gaming tables, invested his winnings in a wild and improbable scheme, made a fortune from it, and turned suddenly and eternally wise. He found himself a brilliant financial adviser and became obsessed with making and hoarding money. He was extremely successful at both, as I discovered when I became Harry’s guardian, and as you will have discovered from your consultations with Brumford.”

  “I suppose, then,” Anna said, “it was his dire need for funds that drove him to marry someone else when my mother was still alive. I wonder why she allowed it. Though she seems to have been living with her parents and apart from him at the time. And she was dying.”

  “If someone you had met in Bath disappeared from your life and came to London and married and had children,” he said, “would you know about it? Ever?”

  “Probably not,” she said after giving the matter some thought.

  “Your mother and her parents lived in a rural vicarage,” he said. “It is unlikely they would know of the bigamy unless they had acquaintances who frequented London and were familiar with the aristocracy and knew of the connection between your mother and the man who soon became the Earl of Riverdale. It is even possible he did not ever use his courtesy title in Bath.”

  “No,” she said. “They probably did not even know, did they?”

  “I would say,” he said, “that your father felt quite safe in contracting an illegal marriage.”

  “Why did he never revoke the old will?” she asked. “Why did he never make another? Is that unusual?”

  “It is,” he said, “to answer your last question first. My father had a will that must have been twelve pages long, all written in such convoluted legalese that I daresay even his lawyer did not fully understand it. The will was unnecessary, of course, since I was the only son and the settlements upon my stepmother and half sister had been well taken care of in the marriage contract. One is left with the intriguing possibility in your father’s case that the continued existence of the old will and the absence of a new one was deliberate on his part.”

  She thought about it. “His joke upon posterity when he could no longer be called to account?” she said. “If that is so, he was being extraordinarily cruel to the countess and her children.”

  “Or kind at last to you,” he said.

  “There is no kindness in money,” she said.

  They had reached the line of trees and turned to walk along the rough path among them. There was a nice sense of seclusion here. The harsher sounds of horses’ hooves, vehicle wheels, children’s shrieks, hawkers’ cries, and adult chatter and laughter from the park on one side and the street on the other seemed muted, though it might be only imagination. Here one could hear birds singing and leaves rustling overhead. Here one could smell wood and sap, the fragrances of the earth and various trees. Here one could ignore the artificiality of town life.

  He looked at her while her words rang in his head. She was not delighted by her incredible good fortune, was she? He wondered if she had dreamed of it all her life and now found the reality a bit empty, because along with the fortune came the knowledge that her father had been a bounder of the first order and her half sisters had fled with their mother rather than meet her again or accept her offer to share her fortune. That Harry was off somewhere drinking deep until he touched bottom and some sort of rescue could be effected. That her family considered her impossible. She may never be ready were the last words her grandmother had spoken before they left the house. He wondered if she had friends back in Bath. A suitor, perhaps? Someone the family would not consider eligible for her.

  “Now, there is a memorable saying,” he said. “It ought to be a quotation from some famous sage—there is no kindness in money. I suspect, though, it is an original Anna-ism. To most people the motive would not matter. It would be enough that your father wanted you to be wealthy at last.”

  “I hope it was not deliberate,” she said. “I hope he merely forgot that will and was too lazy to make another. I hope he was not deliberately malicious to us all—to his wife and children and to me. I found my family yesterday. Do you understand, Avery, what that means to someone who has grown up in an orphanage not knowing who she is, not even certain that the name by which she is known is her real name? It means more than all the gold and jewels in the world. And yesterday I lost my family, the part of it that means most to me, anyway. Today they are gone. They have fled rather than see me again. Oh, I am grateful for what remains. I have a grandmother, aunts and an uncle, cousins away at school—and your half sister is my cousin too, is she not?—and second cousins. They are all a treasure that was beyond my dreams just a few days ago, but perversely my heart is too sore to appreciate them fully just yet. Yesterday I learned that my mother is long dead and my father, a selfish, cruel man, is recently deceased. Yesterday I saw his second wife and his other children—my half siblings—crushed and their world destroyed. I am wealthy, probably beyond belief, but in some ways I am more impoverished than I was before—because now I know what I had and have lost.”

  The one word that had registered most upon Avery’s mind was his own name—Avery. Almost no one outside his family called him that. Even his mistresses called him Netherby.

  But the rest of what she said did register too, and he stopped walking and steered her off the path and set her back against a tree trunk so that she could recover herself before they moved on. She was very upset. She had recently discovered that she was one of the wealthiest women in England, and she was upset—because family meant more to her than riches. She had never known either—family or money—and family meant more. One never really considered the matter when one had always had both. Which was the more important?

  He braced one hand against the trunk beside her head and gazed into her face.

  “No,” she said, “there is no kindness in money, Avery, and there was absolutely none in the late Earl of Riverdale, my father.”

  His name again—Avery. It was something else that had been against him from the start—his name, which suggested flowers and pretty birds and femininity. He could not have been Edward or Charles or Richard, could he? But somehow this woman, this Anna, made a caress of his name, though he had no doubt it was entirely unintentional.

  “I wrote yesterday to my dearest friend in Bath,” she said. “I reminded him of something our former teacher was fond of saying—that one ought to beware what one wishes for lest the wish be granted. All orphans have the grand dream of discovering just what I discovered yesterday. I told him Miss Rutledge had been quite right.”

  Him. Avery only just stopped himself from asking the man’s name.

  There were other people coming along the path toward them. He drew her arm through his again and turned toward them. There were two couples. The men inclined their heads and touched the brims of their hats. The ladies half curtsied.

  “Netherby,” Lord Safford said. “This is a fine day for May.”

  “Your Grace,” both ladies murmured.

  But all eyes, Avery was fully aware, were upon his companion, avid and curious.

  “Yes, is it not?” Avery agreed with a sigh, his quizzing glass in his free hand.

  “It is warm but not overhot,” one of the ladies said. “It is perfect for a stroll in the park.”

  “And there is no wind,” the other lady added, “which is most unusual and very welcome.”

  “Quite so,” Avery agreed. “Cousin, may I present Lord and Lady Safford and Mr. Marley and Miss James? Lady Anastasia Westcott is the daughter of the late Earl of Riverdale.”

  “How do you do?” Anna sai
d, looking directly at each of them in turn.

  The gentlemen bowed and the ladies curtsied—to her, not to Avery this time.

  “This is a great pleasure, Lady Anastasia,” Mr. Marley said as Miss James’s eyes moved over her from head to toe. “I hope we will see more of you during the Season.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I have no firm plans yet.”

  Avery raised his glass partway to his eye, and the two couples took the hint and moved off after some murmured farewells.

  “You do realize, Anna, I hope,” Avery said as they resumed their own walk along the path in the opposite direction, “that you have just made their day.”

  “Have I?” she said. “Because I am so dowdy? Because I am impossible?”

  “For precisely those reasons,” he said, turning his head and regarding her lazily. “You can continue being dowdy if you wish or allow yourself to be decked out in all the latest fashions and finery. And you can remain impossible or prove that to a lady of character all things are possible. You may even, the next time you are bowed and scraped to, choose to acknowledge the homage with a gracious inclination of the head and a cool glance along the length of your nose.”

  “How absurd,” she said.

  “Quite so,” he agreed. “But behaving thus helps keep pretension and impertinence at bay.”

  “Is that why you do it, then?” she asked.

  Ah.

  “I do it,” he said, “because I am Netherby and am expected to be toplofty. Your relatives, Anna, will urge you to become Lady Anastasia Westcott to the exclusion of all else. The ton will certainly expect it of you. The four persons who just passed us have probably broken into a trot by now in their haste to spread the word about their first encounter with you. Their listeners will be fascinated and envious and scandalized and desperate to see you for themselves. The choice of whether you change and how much you change will be yours to make.”