Someone to Love

Well, Anna had still not been able to categorize the other man to her satisfaction. She guessed, though, that he was someone very grand indeed, perhaps even a lord. It was a distinct possibility if this house—this mansion—was his. He had filled her with a knee-weakening terror when he had spoken to her in a light, bored, cultured voice and suggested that she had come to the wrong door, even the wrong house. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to turn tail and scurry out through the still-open door.

She was very glad she had not done so. Where would she have gone? What would she have done? She was glad she had stood her ground, remembering that she was everyone’s equal and that she had been summoned here and brought in a carriage.

She sat now in the room to which the butler had brought her and wished she could melt into her chair and through the floor and reemerge in her classroom in Bath. Thirteen heads had turned at her entry—she had counted them since—and all thirteen persons had looked identically astonished, especially when the butler had indicated a chair just inside the door and instructed her to be seated. Only one of them had spoken, though—a plumpish lady seated at one end of the second row of chairs.

“Horrocks,” she had said in a commanding, haughty voice, “you will oblige me by taking this . . . person elsewhere immediately.”

The butler had bowed to her. “Mr. Brumford directed me in the hearing of His Grace to escort her here, Your Grace,” he had said.

His Grace. Your Grace.

No one had said another word, either to Anna or to one another. They had sat instead in a stiff, disapproving silence that seemed louder than the conversation that had been in progress when Anna stepped into the room.

She had consciously practiced dignity and sat with an apparently calm, relaxed demeanor despite the fact that her stomach felt as though it had clenched itself into a tiny ball and was about to squeeze out what little breakfast she had eaten before leaving the hotel. She had even removed her cloak and arranged it neatly over the back of the chair without getting to her feet. She had set her bonnet and her gloves and reticule on the floor beneath the chair.

She had forced herself to look, not downward at her hands as she desperately wanted to do, but about her at the room and the people in it. If she looked down, she might never be able to bring herself to look up again. After a few minutes the man from the hall—His Grace?—who had tried to get her to leave, stepped into the room, and everyone turned to look at him in mute appeal, probably in the hope that he would get rid of her. He did not say anything. He did not sit down either. He went instead to stand on the other side of the room and propped one shoulder against the wall. He would have been reprimanded for that at the orphanage. Walls were not to be leaned against.

It was a large, square, high-ceilinged room. The walls were covered in deep pink brocade. Landscape paintings in heavy gilded frames were hung upon them. The ceiling was coved and framed by a gilded frieze. There was a scene painted directly onto the ceiling. It was something from the Bible or mythology, Anna guessed, though she did not gaze upward long enough to identify exactly what it was. There was a patterned carpet underfoot, its colors predominantly rose. The furnishings were solid and elegant.

But it was at the people she looked most closely. Sitting in the row closest to the table were three young people and a more mature lady. The ladies were dressed in deep mourning. The young man—he was actually a boy more than a man—was wearing a dark green coat over white linen, but there was a black band on his sleeve. A brother and his sisters and mother? There was something about them that suggested a familial connection.

The six people in the row behind them were also in black, except for one young girl who wore white. The lady who had told the butler to remove Anna sat with regal dignity, her spine not quite touching the straight back of her chair. What sort of lady was addressed as Your Grace? Anna did not know. The only one of their number who turned a head to look back toward Anna after that first shocked glance from all of them was the younger of the two ladies who sat in the back row. She was not wearing mourning. She had what looked like a good-natured face, though she did not smile. The man next to her was broad shouldered and looked tall and well formed and very handsome, though Anna had not seen him on his feet or full faced after that first brief glance he had given her.

And then there was the man from the hall—the one who was standing against the wall. Anna almost did not look directly at him, though she had been very aware of him from the moment he walked into the room. She looked at him at last simply because she would not give in to cowardice. As she had sensed, he was gazing steadily back, a jeweled snuffbox in one hand, a fine linen handkerchief in the other. Almost—oh, almost she looked away. But she did not do so. Dignity, she reminded herself. He is no better than I.

He was of barely average height and slight of build. She was surprised at that. He had seemed far larger when she first set eyes upon him. He was as elegant as the handsome gentleman in the back row, but while the other man was quietly immaculate, he was . . . not. There was something exquisite about the folds of his very white neckcloth, about the close cut of his dark blue coat and the even closer fit of his gray pantaloons. There were silver tassels on his supple, shining boots, heavy rings on at least four of his fingers, which even from this distance she could see were perfectly manicured. There were chains and fobs at his waist, a silver stud in his neckcloth. His posture as he leaned against the wall was . . . graceful. His hair was fair—no, it was actually golden—and had been cut in such a way that it hugged his head neatly and yet seemed to wave softly about it at the same time, like a halo.