Someone to Love (Westcott #1)(14)
There was a stirring of interest from the family gathered there. The countess, though, Avery saw, looked as though she had been carved of marble.
*
Throughout her life Anna had cultivated one quality of character above all others, and that was dignity. She always tried to instill the importance of it in her fellow orphans too whenever they were under her care.
As an orphan one had so very little. Almost nothing at all, in fact, except life itself. Often one did not even have identity. One might know the name by which one had been christened—if one had been christened—or one might not. For everything else except life itself one was dependent upon the charity of others. It might be said, of course, that the same held true of all children, but most had families who cared for them and whose love was unconditional. They had a defined identity within that family.
It would be so very easy as an orphan to become abject and cringing, a nothing and a nobody, or else bold, demanding, and angry, asserting rights that did not exist. Anna had seen both types and could understand and sympathize with both. But she had chosen a different path for herself. She had chosen to believe that she was no better than anyone—and there were orphans who occasionally lorded it over others when they were sent gifts or were taken out for the day, for example. She had also chosen to believe that she was no worse than anyone, that she was no one’s inferior, that she belonged on this earth as surely as anyone else did.
It was an attitude and a quality of character that had never stood her in greater stead than it had today. For she had been in the clutches of terror from the moment the carriage stopped outside this grand house in its stately London square—she did not know its name—and Miss Knox, taking a firm stand on the pavement, had told her to climb the steps alone to the front door and rap the knocker. As soon as the door opened, Anna had been aware of the carriage moving off with Miss Knox inside it.
Anna had soon realized that the man who had opened the door was a servant, but it had not been apparent to her at the time. He had probably not expected her to step right inside past him without a word. It was probably not done in polite circles—and it certainly seemed she had stepped into polite circles. And then there had been the other two men in the large tiled hall in which she had found herself. One was stout and pompous looking and no more disconcerting than some of the governors of the orphanage who sometimes made an official visit and patted a few orphans on the head and laughed too heartily. The other one . . .
Well, Anna had still not been able to categorize the other man to her satisfaction. She guessed, though, that he was someone very grand indeed, perhaps even a lord. It was a distinct possibility if this house—this mansion—was his. He had filled her with a knee-weakening terror when he had spoken to her in a light, bored, cultured voice and suggested that she had come to the wrong door, even the wrong house. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to turn tail and scurry out through the still-open door.
She was very glad she had not done so. Where would she have gone? What would she have done? She was glad she had stood her ground, remembering that she was everyone’s equal and that she had been summoned here and brought in a carriage.
She sat now in the room to which the butler had brought her and wished she could melt into her chair and through the floor and reemerge in her classroom in Bath. Thirteen heads had turned at her entry—she had counted them since—and all thirteen persons had looked identically astonished, especially when the butler had indicated a chair just inside the door and instructed her to be seated. Only one of them had spoken, though—a plumpish lady seated at one end of the second row of chairs.
“Horrocks,” she had said in a commanding, haughty voice, “you will oblige me by taking this . . . person elsewhere immediately.”
The butler had bowed to her. “Mr. Brumford directed me in the hearing of His Grace to escort her here, Your Grace,” he had said.
His Grace. Your Grace.
No one had said another word, either to Anna or to one another. They had sat instead in a stiff, disapproving silence that seemed louder than the conversation that had been in progress when Anna stepped into the room.
She had consciously practiced dignity and sat with an apparently calm, relaxed demeanor despite the fact that her stomach felt as though it had clenched itself into a tiny ball and was about to squeeze out what little breakfast she had eaten before leaving the hotel. She had even removed her cloak and arranged it neatly over the back of the chair without getting to her feet. She had set her bonnet and her gloves and reticule on the floor beneath the chair.
She had forced herself to look, not downward at her hands as she desperately wanted to do, but about her at the room and the people in it. If she looked down, she might never be able to bring herself to look up again. After a few minutes the man from the hall—His Grace?—who had tried to get her to leave, stepped into the room, and everyone turned to look at him in mute appeal, probably in the hope that he would get rid of her. He did not say anything. He did not sit down either. He went instead to stand on the other side of the room and propped one shoulder against the wall. He would have been reprimanded for that at the orphanage. Walls were not to be leaned against.
It was a large, square, high-ceilinged room. The walls were covered in deep pink brocade. Landscape paintings in heavy gilded frames were hung upon them. The ceiling was coved and framed by a gilded frieze. There was a scene painted directly onto the ceiling. It was something from the Bible or mythology, Anna guessed, though she did not gaze upward long enough to identify exactly what it was. There was a patterned carpet underfoot, its colors predominantly rose. The furnishings were solid and elegant.