Someone to Love (Westcott #1)(18)
“You would have to stand in line behind me, Louise,” Lady Molenor said. “He was always a toad. I was never fond of him even if he was my own brother. I would not have said that in your hearing before today, Viola, or in yours, Mama, but now I will not hold back.”
“My love.” Molenor patted her hand.
Avery sighed. “Let us retire to the drawing room to imbibe tea or whatever other beverage takes anyone’s fancy,” he said. “I find myself having had a surfeit of rose pink for one morning, and I daresay I am not the only one. It is too much like seeing red. Brumford doubtless has an office and other clients awaiting him and may be excused for the present. Her Grace will lead the way. I shall follow with Lady Anastasia.”
But Lady Anastasia Westcott had risen to her feet at last and was buttoning her cloak at the neck. Her bonnet and gloves and reticule were upon the seat of her chair. “I shall return to Bath, sir,” she said as Brumford drew level with her on his way out. “I have duties awaiting me there. Perhaps you would direct me to the stagecoach stop and lend me the money for a ticket if what I have with me is not enough. Or perhaps there is enough in my portion of the inheritance from my father to make a loan unnecessary.”
She drew on her bonnet and tied the ribbons beneath her chin while addressing the rest of the room. “No one need worry that I will impose myself further upon a family that clearly does not want me. My father did none of us a good turn, but I cannot apologize for the devastating effects this morning’s disclosures are having upon his other family any more than any of you can apologize to me for a near lifetime spent in an orphanage, not even knowing that Snow was not my legal name or Anna my full first name.”
They all watched her as they would a riveting performance onstage. She was just a little slip of a thing, Avery thought, and quite unappealing in her cheap, dreary garments and severe hairstyle, which had all but disappeared beneath her bonnet. Yet there was something rather magnificent about her, by Jove. She did not appear either upset or discomposed, though she had described them all as a family that clearly did not want her. She was like an alien creature to the world in which she had found herself this morning, and the world to which she belonged by right. She had just wondered if there was enough money in the fortune she had inherited to pay for a stagecoach ticket to Bath. She clearly had no idea she could probably buy every stagecoach in the country and all the horses that went with them without putting so much as a dent in her inheritance.
She followed Brumford from the room, and no one made any move to stop her. Everyone filed upstairs in an unnatural silence. Avery found the solicitor and the heiress still in the hall when he emerged last from the room.
“There is a great deal of business to be discussed, my lady,” Brumford was saying, rubbing his hands together. “It would be altogether more convenient if you were to remain in London. I took the liberty of reserving you a suite of rooms at the Pulteney for an indefinite period as well as the services of Miss Knox as chaperone. The carriage is at the door. I will be happy to send you back there if you do not wish to go up to the drawing room with the Duke of Netherby.”
She looked consideringly at Avery. “No,” she said. “I need to be alone, and I believe the other people who were here this morning need to be able to talk freely without the encumbrance of my presence. I can walk back to the hotel, though, sir. I am far more accustomed to walking than to riding in a carriage.”
An alien creature, indeed.
Brumford made a suitably horrified response, and Avery strolled past them and outside, to where a carriage did indeed wait, complete with a large, hatchet-faced woman inside, who looked more like a prison guard than a chaperone. Brumford stood back with much bowing and scraping as Avery offered his hand to help Lady Anastasia in. She ignored it and entered unassisted. Perhaps she had not seen it—or him. She sat beside the chaperone and gazed forward.
Avery reentered the house and proceeded upstairs to the drawing room and the Westcott family, minus its newfound member—its wealthiest member.
Even he could not complain that this morning had been a crashing bore.
Five
Dear Joel,
Do you remember how Miss Rutledge’s too-oft-uttered repertoire of wise sayings used to make us groan and cross our eyes at each other? One we always particularly hated was “Beware what you wish for—your wish may be granted.” It seemed so cruel, did it not, when our dreams were so very precious to us? But she was right!
I have wished and wished all my life, just as you have and almost all the other children with whom we grew up and whom we teach now, that I knew who I was, that I could discover that I came of distinguished parents, and that I would be taken at last to the bosom of my rightful family and be showered with riches, not necessarily all of them monetary. Oh, Joel, my dream came true today, except that it seems more like a nightmare at this precise moment.
I am writing to you from my private sitting room at the Pulteney Hotel—I do believe it is one of the grandest London has to offer. It seems like a palace to me.
Were you told about Miss Knox, the chaperone appointed me for my journey? I daresay you were, and by more than one person. She is still with me. She has withdrawn to her own bedchamber, though she has left the door ajar between the two rooms, presumably so that she may feel she is keeping proper guard over me and is doing the job for which she was hired. She is a very silent person. Today, though, I am thankful for that fact.