Someone to Love

“But I have no wish to be the Earl of Riverdale,” Alexander Westcott protested, getting to his feet and frowning ferociously at Brumford. “I have never coveted the title. I certainly have no wish to benefit from Harry’s misfortune.”

“Alex.” His mother rested a hand on his arm again.

“You,” Camille said, rising to her feet and pointing an accusing finger at Lady Anastasia. “You conniving, scheming . . . creature. How dare you sit here with your betters. How dare you come here at all. The Duke of Netherby ought to have had you tossed out. You are nothing but a vulgar, ruthless, fortune-hunting b-b-bastard.”

“Camille.” Lady Molenor rose and reached across the chair in front of her to try to draw her niece into her arms. But Camille pushed them away and took a step back.

“But it is we, Cam, who are the bastards,” said Abigail, as ashen faced as her mother.

There was a beat of shocked silence before Avery’s sister Jessica wailed again over the horrible blow that had just been dealt her favorite cousins and launched herself once more at her mother’s bosom.

Harry laughed. “By Jove,” he said, “and so we are, Abby. We have been disinherited. Just like that.” He snapped a finger and thumb together. “What a lark.”

“Humphrey was always trouble,” the dowager countess said. “No, Matilda, I do not need smelling salts. I have always maintained that he worried his father into an early grave.”

Another voice spoke, soft and low pitched, and silenced them all, even Jess. It was the voice of a schoolteacher accustomed to drawing attention to herself.

“I am Anna Snow,” the voice said. “I do not recognize the other person you say I am, sir. If I am indeed the legitimate daughter of a father and mother I now know by name for the first time, then I thank you for disclosing those facts. And if I have indeed inherited something from my father, I am pleased. But I have no desire to take more than my fair share, however much or little the whole might be. If I have understood you correctly, the young man in front of you and the young ladies on either side of him are also the children of my father. They are my brother and sisters.”

“How dare you! Oh, how dare you!” Camille looked as if she were about to burst with outrage.

Harry laughed again, a little wildly, and Abigail clutched his arm.

“Miss Westcott,” Brumford said. “Perhaps—”

But Camille, realizing suddenly that he was addressing her, whipped about and turned her outrage on him. “I am Lady Camille Westcott to you,” she said. “How dare you!”

“But you are not, Cam, are you?” Harry said. He was still laughing. “I am not even sure we are entitled to the name Westcott. Mama certainly is not, is she? What an absolute lark.”

“Harold!” his aunt Matilda said. “Remember that you are in the presence of your grandmother.”

“Brothers! Oh, I could murder Humphrey,” the duchess said. “I am only sorry he is already dead.”

“You would have to stand in line behind me, Louise,” Lady Molenor said. “He was always a toad. I was never fond of him even if he was my own brother. I would not have said that in your hearing before today, Viola, or in yours, Mama, but now I will not hold back.”

“My love.” Molenor patted her hand.

Avery sighed. “Let us retire to the drawing room to imbibe tea or whatever other beverage takes anyone’s fancy,” he said. “I find myself having had a surfeit of rose pink for one morning, and I daresay I am not the only one. It is too much like seeing red. Brumford doubtless has an office and other clients awaiting him and may be excused for the present. Her Grace will lead the way. I shall follow with Lady Anastasia.”

But Lady Anastasia Westcott had risen to her feet at last and was buttoning her cloak at the neck. Her bonnet and gloves and reticule were upon the seat of her chair. “I shall return to Bath, sir,” she said as Brumford drew level with her on his way out. “I have duties awaiting me there. Perhaps you would direct me to the stagecoach stop and lend me the money for a ticket if what I have with me is not enough. Or perhaps there is enough in my portion of the inheritance from my father to make a loan unnecessary.”

She drew on her bonnet and tied the ribbons beneath her chin while addressing the rest of the room. “No one need worry that I will impose myself further upon a family that clearly does not want me. My father did none of us a good turn, but I cannot apologize for the devastating effects this morning’s disclosures are having upon his other family any more than any of you can apologize to me for a near lifetime spent in an orphanage, not even knowing that Snow was not my legal name or Anna my full first name.”

They all watched her as they would a riveting performance onstage. She was just a little slip of a thing, Avery thought, and quite unappealing in her cheap, dreary garments and severe hairstyle, which had all but disappeared beneath her bonnet. Yet there was something rather magnificent about her, by Jove. She did not appear either upset or discomposed, though she had described them all as a family that clearly did not want her. She was like an alien creature to the world in which she had found herself this morning, and the world to which she belonged by right. She had just wondered if there was enough money in the fortune she had inherited to pay for a stagecoach ticket to Bath. She clearly had no idea she could probably buy every stagecoach in the country and all the horses that went with them without putting so much as a dent in her inheritance.