Someone to Love (Westcott #1)(23)

“I do not care where she has lived or how difficult it will be to bring her up to snuff,” Camille cried, rudely interrupting. “I hate her. With a passion. Do not ever ask me to pity her.”

“I am sorry, Grandmama,” Abigail said, getting up to stand by her sister. “Cam is upset. She will feel better after she has had a talk with Lord Uxbury.”

“Abby and Cam are not going to be staying here with us after all?” Jessica asked, teary eyed.

“Harry will stay here, I daresay,” the duchess said, “after Avery has found him. You must not worry about him, Viola.”

“My mind is too numb to feel worry,” the former countess said. “I suppose he is out getting drunk. I wish I were with him, doing the same thing.”

“Mama,” Jessica blurted, “promise me that woman will never, ever be allowed inside this house again. Promise me I will never see her again. I may well scratch her eyes out if I do. She is ugly and stupid and she looks worse than a servant and I hate her. I want everything to be back as it was. I want H-Harry back as the earl and laughing because he is h-happy, not because he is s-sad and can never be h-h-happy again. I want Abby to be my proper cousin again and still living close by. I want— I hate this. I hate it. And why is Avery not out looking for Harry and fetching him home?”

Avery dropped his glass on its ribbon, sighing inwardly, and opened his arms. She glared at him for one moment, then scrambled to her feet and dashed into his arms and buried herself against him. She would have climbed right inside if she could, he thought. She wept noisily and inelegantly against his shoulder, and he closed one arm about her and spread the other hand over the back of her head.

“Do s-s-something,” she cried. “Do something.”

“Hush,” he murmured against her ear. “Hush, love. Life is full of clouds. But clouds are lined with gold. You just have to wait for the sun to come out again. It will. It always does.”

Asinine words. He sounded worse than Cousin Althea had a few minutes ago. Where the devil did such drivel come from?

“Promise?” she said. “P-promise?”

“Yes, I promise,” he said, removing his hand from her head in order to fish out a large handkerchief from his pocket. Since women were always the ones who wept buckets of tears, it seemed illogical that they were also the ones who carried handkerchiefs so thin and dainty they were invariably sodden within moments of a cloudburst. “A cool glass of lemonade in the schoolroom will be just the thing for you, Jess. No, don’t protest. It was not a question.”

Her mother thanked him with her eyes as he led his half sister from the room, one arm about her waist.

He wondered what Lady Anastasia Westcott was doing at this precise moment and whether she had any idea at all of what was facing her—apart from a life of ease as a very wealthy woman, that is.

And he wondered where exactly Harry was. It would not be difficult, though, to find him later and keep an eye on him. He would be in one of his usual haunts, no doubt. And in one of those haunts he must be allowed to remain until he had stopped laughing.

Poor devil.





Six




Mr. Brumford handed Anna down from the carriage outside Westcott House early in the afternoon of the following day, and Miss Knox climbed down behind her, unassisted. Anna, looking both ways along South Audley Street and up at the house before her, saw that it was not quite as imposing as the mansion she had been taken to yesterday. Even so, everything here had been built on a lavish scale, and she felt dwarfed.

She owned the house.

She also owned a manor and park and farmland in Hampshire and a fortune so vast that her mind could not grasp the full extent of it. Her father had inherited part of the fortune from his father, but he had become unexpectedly shrewd in his later years and had doubled and then tripled it with investments in commerce and industry. The investments were still working to her advantage.

The knowledge of her wealth had actually made Anna feel quite bilious and even more desirous of going home to Bath and pretending none of this had happened. But it had happened, and she had reluctantly agreed to stay at least a few more days to consult at more length with her solicitor, for that was what Mr. Brumford had called himself—not just her father’s solicitor, but hers. Her mind was all bewilderment. She had to stay at least until everything was clear in her head and she understood better what it was all going to mean to her. Her life, she suspected, was going to change whether she wished it or not.

This morning Mr. Brumford had sent a message that he would accompany her when she arrived at Westcott House and again encountered her family. If they were to meet her at the house, did it mean her half brother and half sisters had recovered somewhat from their shock, and were prepared to welcome her, or at least to converse with her in a more amiable manner? But what about their mother, poor lady? Oh, this was not going to be easy.

The door opened even as she set her foot on the bottom step, and a manservant dressed all in black bowed and stood aside to allow her to enter. The hall was rich wood and high ceiling and marble floor with a wide, elegant wooden staircase—was it oak?—rising at the back of it to fan out to either side halfway up and double back upon itself.

A lady was descending the stairs—the one who had sat at one end of the second row yesterday, the duchess. Anna recalled that she had declared she would kill her brother if only he were still alive. Her brother—Anna’s father. This lady, then, was her aunt? Behind her, descending at a more leisurely pace, came the man who had stood throughout the proceedings yesterday, the one she had thought both beautiful and dangerous.