Someone to Love (Westcott #1)(16)
“It was not impossible to find her,” the solicitor continued, “even though we did not know by what name she had been admitted to the institution or indeed which orphanage it was. Neither was it difficult to find the solicitor through whom the business of supporting her was conducted. Mr. John Beresford is a lawyer of some distinction in Bath and has his offices close to the Abbey. He was not willing to talk to my man, for which I can only commend him, but knowing that his lordship was deceased and that Brumford, Brumford & Sons had represented him in all his other business dealings as well as his father and grandfather before him, he did agree to talk with me if I would go to Bath in person and show him ample proof of my identity. I went without hesitation or delay and was able to reassure Beresford that I had the young lady’s best interests at heart in that his late lordship’s widow, with the full concurrence of the Duke of Netherby, the present Riverdale’s guardian, had commissioned me to find her and make a generous settlement upon her.”
If there was a long version of a story to be told, Brumford would invariably choose it, Avery thought. Camille had heard enough. Her back had stiffened and she spoke up.
“If you are about to disclose that this . . . woman for whom you searched was my father’s—” But she could only inhale sharply rather than speak the word. “You really ought to have followed your instructions and made this report privately to my mother and His Grace, Mr. Brumford. Such sordid details are not for my sister’s ears or mine or those of Lady Jessica Archer, who is not even out of the schoolroom yet. I wonder at your temerity, at your vulgarity. I wonder that His Grace—”
“Bear with me, ma’am, if you please,” Brumford said, holding up one hand, palm out. “In a moment it will be clear why this must be said to all of those gathered here, painful as I am sure it is. Beresford informed me, with full documentation to put the truth of what he said beyond any doubt, that twenty-six years ago the recently deceased Earl of Riverdale, who bore the courtesy title of Viscount Yardley at the time, being his father’s heir, but called himself merely Mr. Humphrey Westcott, married Miss Alice Snow in Bath by special license and settled her in rooms there. One year later, almost to the day, Lady Yardley, who appears to have known herself only as Mrs. Westcott, was delivered of a daughter. When the child was a year or so old, however, she moved back to live with her parents, the Reverend Isaiah Snow and his wife, in a country vicarage several miles from Bristol, her health having broken down. She died there of consumption two years later. The Reverend Snow and his wife for undisclosed reasons found themselves unable to keep the child and raise her, and the girl’s father, by then the Earl of Riverdale, removed her from the vicarage and delivered her to the orphanage in Bath, where she grew up and where she was still living, in the capacity of teacher at the orphanage school, until a few days ago.”
“Good God!” Harry had leapt to his feet and turned to stare behind him at the woman sitting close to the door. “You? You are our father’s . . . ? No, you are not his by-blow, are you? You are his legitimate daughter. Good God. You are my half sister. Good God.”
The dowager countess too had turned her head and raised a lorgnette to her eyes.
The woman herself looked back at Harry, apparently unmoved by what she had just heard. But Avery, observing her more closely through his quizzing glass, noted that her knuckles were whiter than they ought to be.
What she was, he thought, was Lady Anna Westcott, legitimate daughter of the late Earl of Riverdale. Interesting. Very interesting indeed. But Brumford had not finished.
“There is more, sir,” he said, addressing Harry and clearing his throat again, “if you will be seated.”
Harry sat, turning his head slowly away from his newfound sibling. He was looking more pleased than outraged.
“I checked certain crucial facts and made a disturbing discovery,” Brumford continued. “I had Beresford check them too, but I had not been mistaken. The dates on the relevant official documents showed to our shocked eyes—and you may believe me that we were very deeply shocked—that Humphrey Westcott, Viscount Yardley, married Miss Viola Kingsley at St. George’s Church here on Hanover Square four months and eleven days before the death of his first wife.”
Ah. All was suddenly clear.
Avery let his glass drop on its ribbon. A stunned silence fell upon the room. Brumford mopped his brow with a large handkerchief before continuing.
“The marriage of Lord Yardley to Miss Kingsley was bigamous and therefore invalid,” he said. “It remained invalid after the death of his first wife. The children of that illicit union were—and are—illegitimate. The late Earl of Riverdale had only one legitimate child, Lady Anastasia Westcott.”
For a moment longer the silence resumed and held. Then someone wailed horribly—Jess—and Avery pushed himself away from the wall. The dowager countess was on her feet, her lorgnette trained upon the woman by the door while Lady Matilda Westcott produced a vinaigrette from her reticule and tried to press it upon her mother while making bovine noises probably intended to be soothing. Elizabeth, Lady Overfield, spread both hands over her face and bowed her head forward until it almost touched her knees. Baron Molenor set an arm about Mildred’s shoulders in an unprecedented display of public affection for his wife. The countess too was on her feet and turning to look back, her face drained of color. The duchess, also out of her chair, Jess clutched to her bosom, was promising to call down fire and brimstone upon Brumford’s head and to have him disbarred for incompetence and other assorted crimes and cast into some deep, dark dungeon. Abigail had buried her face against her brother’s shoulder and got to her feet when he did. Camille was loudly declaring that such vulgarity was not for the ears of delicately reared ladies and she would listen to no more of it. Alexander Westcott was sitting rigidly to attention and gazing at an ashen-faced Harry. His mother was clutching Alexander’s arm.