Someone to Love (Westcott #1)(88)
“Alice went to Bath to be a governess,” the vicar explained. “She met and married Westcott there before we even knew of him. All was rosy for a while. They had rooms there, and then Anna was born—Anastasia they christened her, but Alice always called her Anna and so did we. Then her husband started disappearing for weeks at a time, and she got sick with what turned out to be consumption, and the rent was in arrears and the landlord was after her for it because Westcott was never at home, and there was not enough money for food. Finally she begged a ride with some people she knew and came back here, bringing little Anna with her, and he made no more than a token protest. He came here once and blustered a bit—we never warmed to him, Alma and I—but he did not stay. He never sent her any money and only one or two letters, which always came through a solicitor in Bath. Never any gifts for the child. After Alice died, we talked it over, my wife and I, and decided the decent thing to do was let him know, though we did not expect it would matter much to him. It mattered to us. Our daughter, our only child, was gone, and little Anna was wandering all over the house, looking lost and asking where Mama had gone and when she was coming back.”
He stopped to blow his nose loudly into a large handkerchief.
“But he came,” he continued, “and he insisted upon taking Anna away with him even though we begged him to leave her here. She was all we had left, and Alma had been more mother than grandmother to her while Alice was ill. He took her anyway, and he never wrote. It was thirteen months before he finally did—just a brief note regretting to inform us that his daughter, Anastasia, had died of typhoid fever. He did not reply to the letter I wrote in reply.”
“He took me to Bath,” Anna told them, “and left me at an orphanage there as Anna Snow. He never came back, but he did support me all through my childhood and right up to his recent death. He had already remarried before my mother died. They had three children, my half brother and half sisters. The marriage was bigamous, of course, and the children illegitimate, a fact that has caused endless anguish since the truth came out after his death. His title and entailed properties have passed to my second cousin and his fortune to me. I suppose he feared to leave me here with you lest somehow you discover and expose the truth.”
“If we had not written after Alice died, Isaiah,” his wife said, “perhaps he would have forgotten all about us and left us alone. Perhaps Anna would have grown up here where she was loved. Oh, what a dreadful wickedness. I grieved for you, Anna, dead so soon after Alice, until I took to my bed and would have stayed there if I had not suddenly realized that if I died too I would leave your grampa with a burden too heavy for any mortal shoulders to bear. But in my heart I have grieved ever since. You were such a . . . lovely little child. And you grew up all alone in an orphanage? So close to here? Only in Bath? Ah, my heart aches.”
Anna was sitting on a crochet-covered stool beside her chair, holding her hand. “But at least,” she said, “I am not dead. And at least I now know that you did not turn me away because you did not want me.”
Her grandmother moaned.
“Sir.” Avery turned to the old gentleman, who was blowing his nose again. “If it is not too much trouble, I would like to have a closer look at that lych-gate and the church. I am sure my wife will enjoy a comfortable coze with her grandmother.”
The vicar got so quickly to his feet that it seemed to Avery he was relieved. There was only so much sentiment a man could take.
“And you are a duke,” he said, shaking his head with incredulity, “and Anna a duchess. Your marriage must be of recent date?”
“Three days ago, sir,” Avery said. “We married quietly by special license rather than wait for the banns. Anna wanted to come here as soon as my secretary discovered where you were, and I wanted to make it possible for her to do so without unnecessary delay.”
“You are an angel,” Mrs. Snow said. “You even look a bit like one. Does he not, Isaiah?”
“It is the hair, ma’am,” Avery said, deliberately grimacing. “The bane of my existence.”
“Never say so,” she said. “It is your halo. Come into the kitchen, Anna, and I will brew us some tea. You must tell me everything about your life and more than everything. Oh, please do not let anyone pinch me. I am still afraid I am going to wake up any moment. You are so pretty. Is she not, Isaiah? Just as your mother was before her illness. Come.”
And she got to her feet and drew Anna to hers as the vicar led Avery outside.
And the thing was, Avery thought over the following hour or so, that he was not merely being polite, showing a feigned interest in what was clearly the vicar’s pride and joy. He enjoyed examining the structure of the lych-gate and poking around in the dark, dank little church and climbing the tightly winding stone steps to the platform in the tower from where the bells he could see above his head were rung on Sundays and for weddings and funerals—though only one of them was tolled on those last occasions, the vicar explained. Avery enjoyed listening to the history of the church, which the Reverend Snow clearly enjoyed telling in great detail. And he allowed himself to be led slowly about the churchyard while the vicar pointed out a number of the headstones, which bore the names of families who had lived in the area for centuries. He was shown the grave of Anna’s mother: Here Lies Alice Westcott, Beloved Only Daughter of the Reverend and Mrs. Snow, Devoted Mother of Anastasia, Sorely Missed. And the dates, showing that she had been twenty-three years old at the time of her death. Younger than Anna was now.