by Mary Balogh
And then, long before she was prepared for it, they arrived in what looked to be a small, sleepy, picturesque village. Wensbury. There was almost no one outside—except a young boy who was bowling a hoop along the street until he spotted the carriage. He stopped then, yelled something in the direction of the thatched, whitewashed cottage beside him, and gawked at them, his mouth at half-mast, while a young woman came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron. A small dog a little farther along the street took exception to their invasion of its territory and barked ferociously, waking with a start the elderly man who had been sleeping on a bench outside his cottage, the dog at his feet, and setting him to staring after them, his hands clutched about the handle of the cane planted between his legs. Two women gossiping across a garden hedge stopped, probably midsentence, to stare in open amazement.
Anna doubted Avery had noticed any of it.
“It is a pretty church,” he said, looking across the village green. “Many country churches are. I wonder if there is a bell in that tower. I would wager there is.” Then he turned to look at her and, seeing her expression, said, “Anna, Anna, no one is going to eat you. I will not allow it.” He took her hand in a firm grasp.
“If they do not wish to see me,” she said, “we will just leave, Avery. At least I have come.”
“It sounds to me,” he said, “as though you are about to say you will be content.”
“Yes,” she admitted.
He squeezed her hand to the point of pain as the carriage turned sharply about the green.
And then they were drawing up outside what must be the vicarage beside the church, and an elderly gentleman with white, bushy hair and eyebrows and no hat was stepping out through the . . . oh, through the lych-gate from the churchyard and turning their way, an amiable smile of welcome on his face. As Avery descended from the carriage and turned to hand Anna down, the vicarage door opened and an elderly lady, tiny and birdlike, gray hair more than half hidden beneath a lacy cap, stood there looking out with placid curiosity. Not many grand carriages passed through Wensbury, Anna guessed, and even fewer stopped outside the church.
“Good morning, sir, ma’am,” the gentleman said. “May I be of assistance to you?”
“The Reverend Isaiah Snow?” Avery asked.
“I have that pleasure, sir,” the gentleman said as the lady came along the garden path toward the gate. “And vicar of the church here for the past fifty years. Some of my younger parishioners believe I must be almost as old as the church. And this is my good wife. How may we be of service to you? Is it the lych-gate that caused you to stop? It is a fine example of its type, and has always been kept in good repair. Or the church, perhaps? It dates back to Norman times.”
“Is that a bell tower?” Avery asked, his quizzing glass in his hand.
“It is indeed,” the Reverend Snow said. “And there are four faithful bell ringers in the village who duly waken all sleepyheads on a Sunday and ring them to morning service.”
“Isaiah,” his wife said, “perhaps the lady would care to step into the house for a glass of lemonade while you show the gentleman the church. You have started him on his favorite subject, sir, and will not get away from him within the hour, I predict.”
“Allow me to introduce myself,” Avery said, while Anna’s hand turned cold in his warm clasp. “Avery Archer, Duke of Netherby.”
“Ah,” the vicar said, “I knew when I saw the crest on the door of the carriage that you must be somebody of importance, sir. We are honored that you have seen fit to stop here.”
“And may I present my wife, the duchess,” Avery continued, “formerly Lady Anastasia Westcott, though she has been known through most of her life as Anna Snow.”
The lady’s hands crept up to cover her cheeks and her face grew as pale as her name. She swayed, and it seemed to Anna that she would surely fall. But she clutched at the fence before it could happen.
“Anna?” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “Little Anna? But you died twenty years ago. Of typhoid.”
“My dear God,” the vicar said, and it did not sound like a blasphemy. “Oh my dear God, he lied to us, Alma, and we believed him. But look and see and tell me if I am right. Could this not be our Anna standing before us here?”
His wife merely moaned and clung to the fence.
“Gramma?” Anna said. She did not know where the name came from—it just came. “Oh, Gramma, I did not die.”
Twenty-one
Avery always felt more relaxed in the country than he did in London. It was as if he took off an armor he unconsciously donned for society and allowed himself to be the person he had always wanted to be. He had never blamed his parents for the child he had been. He had never even really blamed the boys and masters at school for spotting the weak one among them and pouncing upon him to make sport of him. Everyone had his own path to follow in life. And they all—the negative forces in his life, and the positive too—had had a hand in directing him to his own path. He would have things no different. He rather liked his life. He liked himself. But he liked his country life best of all.
He had undertaken this journey for Anna’s sake. But he had found himself relaxing as soon as London was behind them, despite the fact that traveling long distances usually made him restless and irritable. He had found himself not wanting the journey to end, for he had feared there might be disappointment awaiting his wife and perhaps real pain. He could not do anything to shield her from whatever was to be, however. He could only be there with her. She needed to do this.
Those who knew only his public self might have expected him to feel nothing but disdain for the small, pretty village where her grandparents lived, and for the humble vicarage beside the old Norman church, and for the elderly, slightly stooped, amiable vicar and his small gray-haired wife with her overlarge cap, whose one servant worked in the mornings only—except Sunday, which was a day of rest for all workers.
“Except the vicar,” that gentleman observed with a chuckle.
As it happened there had been no disappointment lying in wait for Anna, though there was plenty of pain to go around. The truth had been instantly apparent to Avery even before they all stepped inside the vicarage and disposed themselves about a cozy square sitting room generously decorated with crocheted doilies and china figurines and pottery jugs. Only the details of the story needed to be filled in.
To the Snows, Riverdale had only ever been known as Mr. Humphrey Westcott. He had said nothing of his courtesy title or of the fact that he was heir to an earldom. They were amazed—and perhaps unimpressed—to learn that their daughter had been Viscountess Yardley, not simply Mrs. Westcott. They were quite sure she had never known it herself. Avery exchanged a glance with Anna and knew that she was remembering their wedding a few days ago—Miss Anastasia Westcott to Mr. Avery Archer.
“Alice went to Bath to be a governess,” the vicar explained. “She met and married Westcott there before we even knew of him. All was rosy for a while. They had rooms there, and then Anna was born—Anastasia they christened her, but Alice always called her Anna and so did we. Then her husband started disappearing for weeks at a time, and she got sick with what turned out to be consumption, and the rent was in arrears and the landlord was after her for it because Westcott was never at home, and there was not enough money for food. Finally she begged a ride with some people she knew and came back here, bringing little Anna with her, and he made no more than a token protest. He came here once and blustered a bit—we never warmed to him, Alma and I—but he did not stay. He never sent her any money and only one or two letters, which always came through a solicitor in Bath. Never any gifts for the child. After Alice died, we talked it over, my wife and I, and decided the decent thing to do was let him know, though we did not expect it would matter much to him. It mattered to us. Our daughter, our only child, was gone, and little Anna was wandering all over the house, looking
lost and asking where Mama had gone and when she was coming back.”
He stopped to blow his nose loudly into a large handkerchief.
“But he came,” he continued, “and he insisted upon taking Anna away with him even though we begged him to leave her here. She was all we had left, and Alma had been more mother than grandmother to her while Alice was ill. He took her anyway, and he never wrote. It was thirteen months before he finally did—just a brief note regretting to inform us that his daughter, Anastasia, had died of typhoid fever. He did not reply to the letter I wrote in reply.”
“He took me to Bath,” Anna told them, “and left me at an orphanage there as Anna Snow. He never came back, but he did support me all through my childhood and right up to his recent death. He had already remarried before my mother died. They had three children, my half brother and half sisters. The marriage was bigamous, of course, and the children illegitimate, a fact that has caused endless anguish since the truth came out after his death. His title and entailed properties have passed to my second cousin and his fortune to me. I suppose he feared to leave me here with you lest somehow you discover and expose the truth.”
“If we had not written after Alice died, Isaiah,” his wife said, “perhaps he would have forgotten all about us and left us alone. Perhaps Anna would have grown up here where she was loved. Oh, what a dreadful wickedness. I grieved for you, Anna, dead so soon after Alice, until I took to my bed and would have stayed there if I had not suddenly realized that if I died too I would leave your grampa with a burden too heavy for any mortal shoulders to bear. But in my heart I have grieved ever since. You were such a . . . lovely little child. And you grew up all alone in an orphanage? So close to here? Only in Bath? Ah, my heart aches.”
Anna was sitting on a crochet-covered stool beside her chair, holding her hand. “But at least,” she said, “I am not dead. And at least I now know that you did not turn me away because you did not want me.”
Her grandmother moaned.
“Sir.” Avery turned to the old gentleman, who was blowing his nose again. “If it is not too much trouble, I would like to have a closer look at that lych-gate and the church. I am sure my wife will enjoy a comfortable coze with her grandmother.”
The vicar got so quickly to his feet that it seemed to Avery he was relieved. There was only so much sentiment a man could take.
“And you are a duke,” he said, shaking his head with incredulity, “and Anna a duchess. Your marriage must be of recent date?”
“Three days ago, sir,” Avery said. “We married quietly by special license rather than wait for the banns. Anna wanted to come here as soon as my secretary discovered where you were, and I wanted to make it possible for her to do so without unnecessary delay.”
“You are an angel,” Mrs. Snow said. “You even look a bit like one. Does he not, Isaiah?”
“It is the hair, ma’am,” Avery said, deliberately grimacing. “The bane of my existence.”
“Never say so,” she said. “It is your halo. Come into the kitchen, Anna, and I will brew us some tea. You must tell me everything about your life and more than everything. Oh, please do not let anyone pinch me. I am still afraid I am going to wake up any moment. You are so pretty. Is she not, Isaiah? Just as your mother was before her illness. Come.”
And she got to her feet and drew Anna to hers as the vicar led Avery outside.
And the thing was, Avery thought over the following hour or so, that he was not merely being polite, showing a feigned interest in what was clearly the vicar’s pride and joy. He enjoyed examining the structure of the lych-gate and poking around in the dark, dank little church and climbing the tightly winding stone steps to the platform in the tower from where the bells he could see above his head were rung on Sundays and for weddings and funerals—though only one of them was tolled on those last occasions, the vicar explained. Avery enjoyed listening to the history of the church, which the Reverend Snow clearly enjoyed telling in great detail. And he allowed himself to be led slowly about the churchyard while the vicar pointed out a number of the headstones, which bore the names of families who had lived in the area for centuries. He was shown the grave of Anna’s mother: Here Lies Alice Westcott, Beloved Only Daughter of the Reverend and Mrs. Snow, Devoted Mother of Anastasia, Sorely Missed. And the dates, showing that she had been twenty-three years old at the time of her death. Younger than Anna was now.
Avery turned his head toward the vicarage and could see that Anna and her grandmother were at an upstairs window looking out. He raised a hand, and Anna raised hers in return. He would bring her out here afterward. Though perhaps her grandparents would want to do that.
A short while later Avery sent his carriage back to the inn where he had taken rooms for the night and the rest of his entourage was already ensconced. He sent word that they were to remain there until further notice, including his valet and Anna’s maid, though each was to pack a bag of essentials and send the two bags—no more—back to the vicarage.
When two elderly people had looked at him with anxious, pleading eyes, and one young lady had gazed at him with eager trust in his answer, he had agreed they would stay for a few days. Those who knew the Duke of Netherby would have been filled with amazement bordering upon incredulity. But the duke himself was fast discovering that wherever his wife was or wished to be was where he chose to be too, even if it happened to be a vicarage surely no larger than the entrance hall at Morland.
The realization was somewhat alarming. It was also novelty enough to be explored. Perhaps being in love was what his soul had long yearned for.
Or perhaps he was merely mad.
* * *
They stayed for eight days. Anna weeded flower beds with her grandmother and cut off faded flowers and gathered bouquets for the house. She sat with her grandmother in the sitting room, talking endlessly, dusting all the little knickknacks and the surfaces under them, learning how to crochet, one form of needlework in which she had never before felt much interest. They spent time in the kitchen during the afternoons, baking cakes and tarts, mixing big jugs of lemonade, and brewing tea. They went visiting a few neighbors and wandered the churchyard together. On one hot afternoon they sat for a while on a stone bench inside the lych-gate and laughed over how Anna had been both fascinated and frightened by it as an infant.
She spent time with her grandfather too, but it was usually when all four of them were together. Avery spent most of the time with him. Even when Grampa was shut up in his study composing Sunday’s sermon, Avery sat in there with him, reading. The two men seemed really to enjoy each other’s company, to the wonder of Anna. Sometimes she looked at her husband and remembered him as she had first seen him. It was hard to believe he was the same man. He dressed similarly, except that his quizzing glass, his snuffbox, and most of his jewelry were lying neglected in a china bowl in the small bedchamber they shared. And his neckcloth was tied with a simple knot, she noticed, and his boots lost some of their sheen, and he seemed unconcerned about it. His manner too was more relaxed, less languidly affected. He treated both her grandparents with warm respect and no hint of condescension. He conversed openly and sensibly, with none of the verbal affectations that had half irritated, half amused her in London.
Her grandmother could not be shifted in her opinion that he was an angel.
“And he worships the ground you tread upon, Anna,” she said. “The good Lord has looked after you, my love, without any assistance from your gramma and grampa. That will keep me humble. However, I shall have a bone to pick with him over it when I come face-to-face with him in heaven. I assume that is where I am going. Indeed, I will not take no for an answer.”
She laughed heartily, and Anna was struck, as she was over and over again during those eight days, with a wave of . . . not memory exactly. She remembered precious little of the years she had spent here. But there were sometimes snatches and whiffs of familiarity, nothi
ng definite enough to be captured by the mind, but real enough to prod at the heart and linger there. The only real memories were the lych-gate—though why that she did not know—and the window seat in what she learned had been her mother’s room, with its view down over the churchyard and the church. But there were Gramma’s laugh, the doilies, the big round china teapot with its faded painting of an idyllic rural scene and the small, triangular chip in its lid, Grampa’s way of always seeming to get the many small buttons of his waistcoats into the wrong buttonholes, and his quiet, affable smile. There was a feeling in church on Sunday too that she had once gazed upon her grandfather in his role as vicar and wondered if he was God. And the feeling—or was it a memory?—that she had asked Gramma once in the middle of the service and been shushed with a hand over her mouth and a whispered assurance that indeed he was not.
Her grandmother laughed heartily when Anna asked her about it after the service, as they were walking home, each of them with an arm linked through Avery’s.
“Indeed it did happen,” she said. “At the time I felt I could have died with embarrassment, for you chose the very quietest, most solemn moment in which to pipe up in your little voice, which must have carried right up into the bell tower. But I have held it as a fond memory since.”
“You thought perhaps your grandpapa was God, Anna?” Avery asked. “But how very foolish of you. God is far sterner, is he not?”
Gramma moved her arm sharply and caught him in the ribs with her elbow as she laughed.
It was an idyllic week in too many ways to count. Anna and Avery went for walks in the countryside, along lanes and cart tracks wherever they led, her arm drawn through his or sometimes hand in hand, their fingers laced, or sometimes, when there was absolutely no one in sight, with their arms about each other’s waist. Occasionally he stopped to kiss her and revert to his old manner.
