Someone to Love

It was all too dizzying and too much to be comprehended. All these people, all these aristocrats, were her relatives. But the only thing her mind could grasp clearly was that the people she most wished to see were not there.

“But where are my sisters and brother,” she asked, “and their mother?”

Everyone within her line of vision looked identically shocked.

“Oh, you will not be embarrassed by their presence, Anastasia,” the duchess assured her. “Viola left for the country this morning with Camille and Abigail—for Hinsford Manor, your home in Hampshire, that is. They will not remain there longer than a few days, however. Viola will take her daughters to Bath to live with her mother, their grandmother, and she herself will take up residence with her brother in Dorset. He is a clergyman and a widower. He and Viola have always been dearly fond of each other.”

“They have gone?” Anna felt suddenly cold despite the sunshine. “But I had hoped to meet them here. I had hoped to get to know them. I had hoped they would get to know me. I had hoped . . . they would . . . wish it.”

She felt very foolish in the brief silence that followed. How could she have expected any such thing? Her very existence had ended the world as they knew it yesterday.

“And the young man, my half brother?” she asked.

“Harry has disappeared,” the duchess told her, “and Avery refuses to search for him until tomorrow, assuming he has not returned of his own volition by then. You need not worry about him, however. Avery will see to his future. He was Harry’s appointed guardian when he was still the Earl of Riverdale.”

“It is my understanding,” the duke said, “that I inherited the guardianship of Harry himself from my late esteemed father, not just that of the Earl of Riverdale. I would rather dislike finding myself with Cousin Alexander as a ward. I daresay he would like it even less.”

“Oh, yes, he would indeed, Avery,” the new earl’s mother said. The Duke of Netherby was by now sprawled with casual elegance in a chair in a far corner of the room, Anna saw, his elbows on the arms, his fingers steepled. Miss Rutledge would have told him to sit up straight with his feet together and flat on the floor.

“Come and stand here, Anastasia,” the dowager countess, her grandmother, said, indicating the floor in front of her chair, “and let me have a good look at you.”

Anna came and stood while everyone, it seemed, had a good look at her. The silence seemed several minutes long, though it probably lasted no longer than half a minute at most.

“You have good deportment, at least,” the dowager said at last, “and you speak without any discernible regional accent. You look, however, like a particularly lowly governess.”

“I am lower even than that, ma’am,” Anna said. “Or higher, depending upon one’s perspective. I have the great privilege of being teacher to a school of orphans, whose minds are inferior to no one’s.”

The aunt who was beside the dowager’s chair gasped and actually recoiled.

“Oh, you may sheathe your claws,” the dowager said. “I was merely stating fact. It is not your fault you are as you are. It is entirely my son’s. You may call me Grandmama, for that is what I am to you. But if you did not call me that, ma’am would be incorrect. What would be correct?” She waited for an answer.

“I am afraid, Grandmama,” Anna said, “that any answer I gave would be a guess. I do not know. My lady, perhaps?”

“What are the ranks directly above and below earl?” the aunt—Aunt Matilda?—asked. “And what is the difference between a knight and a baronet, both of whom are Sir So-and-So? You do not know, do you, Anastasia? You ought to know. You must know.”

“I believe, Cousin Matilda,” the young lady by the window—the earl’s sister, Elizabeth?—said, “you are bewildering poor Anastasia.”

“And there are far more important matters to be dealt with,” the dowager countess agreed. “Do sit down, Matilda, and stop hovering. I am not about to fall out of my chair. Anastasia, those clothes are fit only for the dustbin. Even the servants would scorn to wear them.”

If it was possible to feel more humiliated, Anna thought, she could not imagine it. Her Sunday best!

“And your hair, Anastasia,” the duchess’s younger sister—Aunt Mildred—said. “It must be very long, is it?”

“It reaches below my waist, ma’am—Aunt,” Anna said.

“It looks thick and heavy and quite unbecoming,” Aunt Mildred told her. “It must be cut and properly styled without delay.”

“I will have a modiste come here with her assistants tomorrow,” the duchess said. “They will remain here until they have produced the bare essentials of a new wardrobe. Anastasia absolutely must not leave the house until she is fit to be seen. I daresay word has already spread among the ton. It would be strange indeed if it had not.”

“It was being spoken of in the clubs this morning, Louise,” the older man—Aunt Mildred’s husband—said. “Both the blow to Harry and his mother and sisters and the sudden discovery of a legitimate daughter of Riverdale’s. And Alexander’s good fortune, of course.”

“I have yet to discover what is good about it, Thomas,” the new earl said.

Looking at him, Anna concluded that her first impression of him yesterday had been quite correct. He was the most perfectly handsome man she had ever seen. He looked like the prince of fairy tales. She pictured herself describing him to the children in Bath while all the girls sank into a happy dream, imagining themselves as his princess.