Someone to Love (Westcott #1)(35)
“Oh, Lizzie.” Anna set down her cup and saucer and gazed at Elizabeth in horror.
“Camille sent the notice,” Elizabeth said. “I daresay it will appear in tomorrow morning’s papers.”
“But why?” Anna’s eyes widened.
“Perhaps,” Elizabeth said, “because it will seem less humiliating to have the ton believe she was the one to sever the connection.”
“And that is how gentlemen behave?” Anna said. “This is the world in which I am expected to learn to live?”
“At least give the man credit for not publicly shaming his betrothed,” Elizabeth said, but before Anna could express her outrage, she held up one hand. “But I still think he ought to be boiled in oil—at the very least.”
Anna leaned back in her chair. “Poor, poor Camille,” she said. “She is my sister, Lizzie. I offered to share everything, but my brother ran away and my sisters fled to the country with their mother.”
“Give them time,” Elizabeth said. “And give yourself time, Anna. I could have chosen a better moment to tell you than bedtime, could I not? I am sorry. But it is too late now for me to decide that it would have made better breakfast conversation.”
Anna sighed as they both got to their feet. Five minutes later she was alone in her vast bedchamber, having refused the offer of the services of Elizabeth’s maid. She and her little bag had this room as well as a dressing room larger than her room in Bath and a private sitting room in which to move about. And, unlike the rooms at the hotel, these belonged to her, as did the entire house.
But there was an emptiness inside that was vaster than her whole body. She longed suddenly for the dear solidity of Joel. If he were here now and offered her marriage again, she would accept before the proposal was fully out of his mouth. Perhaps it was as well he was not here. Poor Joel. He deserved better.
I do believe, Anna, that I may well fall in love with you.
What would it be like to fall in love?
What would it be like to be kissed?
And, oh dear, what was it going to be like to be Lady Anastasia Westcott?
Was it too late to go back, simply to forget the events of the past few days? Her letters had not yet been sent. But yes, it was too late. Her leaving now would not solve anything for her brother and sisters and their mother. They could not simply forget the last few days and return to their lives the way they had been.
She fell asleep a long while later wondering what had happened to the Reverend and Mrs. Snow, her maternal grandparents.
*
Avery found that he had rather badly miscalculated. It did not happen often. But then, he was not often called upon to deal with young earls who had just lost title and fortune and discovered themselves to be penniless bastards.
He did not discover Harry at any of the expected places during the evening or the night, though he spent weary hours wandering and looking and asking numerous questions of the boy’s erstwhile cronies and hangers-on. Dispossessed ex-earls soon lost their appeal, it seemed. It was all enough to make one lose one’s faith in humanity—if one had ever harbored any.
He did encounter Uxbury, however—Viscount Uxbury, Camille’s esteemed former betrothed—when he took a break from his search to call in at White’s Club. Uxbury waylaid him as he was passing through the reading room, which was virtually deserted at that hour of the evening.
The viscount was someone to be avoided at the best of times. It had always seemed to Avery that if one were to pick him up and shake him vigorously, one would soon find oneself engulfed in dust, blinded and choked by it. What Camille saw in him, though she was admittedly rather starchy and high in the instep herself, Avery had never understood, though since he did not need to understand, he had been content with ignorance. By this evening, however, he resented even more than usual being hauled aside by this particular gentleman. The engagement was off, he had heard from his stepmother, hence Camille’s having left London with Abigail and their mother. Avery did not know who had ended the engagement or exactly why. He really did not need or particularly want to know.
“Ah, Netherby, old chap,” Uxbury said. “Come to celebrate your freedom from an irksome responsibility, have you?”
Old chap? Avery raised his eyebrows. “Responsibility?”
“Young Harold,” Uxbury explained. “The bastard.” He said the word not as an insult, but as a descriptor.
“A word of warning,” Avery said, possessing himself of his quizzing glass. “My ward does not like to be so called and will not scruple to tell you so. He claims that it makes him feel like a balding Saxon king awaiting an arrow through the eye. He prefers Harry.”
“What he is,” Uxbury said, “is a bastard. I have had a very near escape, Netherby. You will wish to congratulate me upon it, I daresay. If the late Riverdale had died six months later than he did, I would have found myself riveted to his by-blow before discovering the truth. One can only shudder at the thought. Though you would have escaped altogether having to deal with a wild and petulant youth.”
“And so I would,” Avery said, dropping his glass on its ribbon. He was tired of this conversation.
He clipped Uxbury behind the knees with one foot and prodded the stiffened fingertips of one hand against a point just below the man’s ribs that would rob him of breath for a minute or ten and probably turn him blue in the face into the bargain. He watched Uxbury topple, taking down a table and a heavy crystal decanter with him, and causing a spectacular enough crash to bring gentlemen and waiters and other assorted male persons running or at least hurrying from every direction. He watched Uxbury reach for a shout and not find it—or his next breath.