Someone to Love (Westcott #1)(30)

She did not choose the weather, even though there was weather happening all around them in the form of sunshine and warmth and very little breeze. Those three subtopics could have kept them chatting for five minutes or longer.

“You must have known my father,” she said.

“He was the duchess, my stepmother’s elder brother,” he said. “And yes, I had an acquaintance with him.” As little as he possibly could.

“What was he like?” she asked.

“Do you wish for the polite answer?” he asked in return.

She turned her head sharply in his direction. “I would prefer the truthful answer,” she said.

“I suppose in your world you can conceive of no other, can you, Anna?” he asked her.

She was small with a minimum of curves. She was small breasted. Her hair, even without the bonnet, was severely styled and heavy. Yet something came into her eyes for a moment, a certain awareness that he did not believe was fear, and somehow it flashed from her eyes into his body, and for a brief moment it did not seem to matter that the only physically appealing thing about her was her Madonna’s face. It was an extraordinary moment. It was almost sexual.

“Why ask a question,” she said, “if one does not want a truthful answer?”

Ah. Now he understood. He liked her. That was extraordinary enough, but it was easier to understand than sexual awareness.

“Anna,” he said by way of reply to her question, “have you never asked a man if you look beautiful? No, foolish question. I do not suppose you have. It would not occur to you to go on a fishing trip for a compliment, would it? Women who ask that question certainly do not want the truth.”

She was still looking directly as him. “How very absurd,” she said.

He suspected that was going to become one of her favorite words in the days and weeks to come.

“Quite so,” he said. “I believe the late Riverdale to have been the most selfish man of my acquaintance, though admittedly I did not know him well. He was, or so I have heard, wild and expensive as a young man. He married the lady his parents had chosen for him when his debts were such that he had no choice but to do whatever it took to restore the flow of funds from which he had been cut off. Apparently that included bigamy and the hiding away of his legitimate daughter. When his father died not long after his marriage and he became the earl, he continued his profligate ways for a while, and then suddenly saw the light, so to speak, and changed completely. It was not a religious epiphany that had assailed him, however. No divine light struck him down and made a penitent of him. According to my father, who knew him well, though reluctantly so as a brother-in-law, he had some extraordinary luck at the gaming tables, invested his winnings in a wild and improbable scheme, made a fortune from it, and turned suddenly and eternally wise. He found himself a brilliant financial adviser and became obsessed with making and hoarding money. He was extremely successful at both, as I discovered when I became Harry’s guardian, and as you will have discovered from your consultations with Brumford.”

“I suppose, then,” Anna said, “it was his dire need for funds that drove him to marry someone else when my mother was still alive. I wonder why she allowed it. Though she seems to have been living with her parents and apart from him at the time. And she was dying.”

“If someone you had met in Bath disappeared from your life and came to London and married and had children,” he said, “would you know about it? Ever?”

“Probably not,” she said after giving the matter some thought.

“Your mother and her parents lived in a rural vicarage,” he said. “It is unlikely they would know of the bigamy unless they had acquaintances who frequented London and were familiar with the aristocracy and knew of the connection between your mother and the man who soon became the Earl of Riverdale. It is even possible he did not ever use his courtesy title in Bath.”

“No,” she said. “They probably did not even know, did they?”

“I would say,” he said, “that your father felt quite safe in contracting an illegal marriage.”

“Why did he never revoke the old will?” she asked. “Why did he never make another? Is that unusual?”

“It is,” he said, “to answer your last question first. My father had a will that must have been twelve pages long, all written in such convoluted legalese that I daresay even his lawyer did not fully understand it. The will was unnecessary, of course, since I was the only son and the settlements upon my stepmother and half sister had been well taken care of in the marriage contract. One is left with the intriguing possibility in your father’s case that the continued existence of the old will and the absence of a new one was deliberate on his part.”

She thought about it. “His joke upon posterity when he could no longer be called to account?” she said. “If that is so, he was being extraordinarily cruel to the countess and her children.”

“Or kind at last to you,” he said.

“There is no kindness in money,” she said.

They had reached the line of trees and turned to walk along the rough path among them. There was a nice sense of seclusion here. The harsher sounds of horses’ hooves, vehicle wheels, children’s shrieks, hawkers’ cries, and adult chatter and laughter from the park on one side and the street on the other seemed muted, though it might be only imagination. Here one could hear birds singing and leaves rustling overhead. Here one could smell wood and sap, the fragrances of the earth and various trees. Here one could ignore the artificiality of town life.