by Mary Balogh
He smiled fondly at her as she stood looking at him, her hands clasped at her waist. “One of my many secret dreams is to be a writer,” he said. “Have I ever told you that? To write truth dressed up in fiction. It is said one ought to write about what one knows. I could invent endless stories about what I know.”
Secret dreams! It was a familiar, evocative phrase. They had often played the game as they grew up—What is your most secret dream? Usually it was that their parents would suddenly appear to claim them and whisk them off to the happily-ever-after of a family life. Often when they were very young they would add that they would then discover themselves to be a prince or princess and their home a castle.
“Stories about growing up as an orphan in an orphanage?” Anna said, smiling back at him. “About not knowing who you are? About dreaming of your missing heritage? Of your unknown parents? Of what might have been? And of what still might be if only . . . ? Well, if only.”
He shifted his position slightly and moved the paint jar so that he would not accidentally tip it.
“Yes, about all that,” he said. “But it would not be all wistful sadness. For though we do not know who we were born as or who our parents or their families were or are, and though we do not know exactly why we were placed here and never afterward claimed, we do know that we are. I am not my parents or my lost heritage. I am myself. I am an artist who ekes out a reasonably decent living painting portraits and volunteers his time and expertise as a teacher at the orphanage where he grew up. I am a hundred or a thousand other things too, either despite my background or because of it. I want to write stories about it all, Anna, about characters finding themselves without the hindrance of family lineage and expectations. Without the hindrance of . . . love.”
Anna gazed at him in silence for a few moments, the soreness of what felt very like tears in her throat. Joel was a solidly built man, somewhat above average in height, with dark hair cut short—because he did not want to fulfill the stereotypical image of the flamboyant artist with flowing locks, he always explained whenever he had it cut—and a round, pleasant face with a slightly cleft chin, sensitive mouth when it was relaxed, and dark eyes that could blaze with intensity and darken even further when he felt passionately about something. He was good-looking and good-natured and talented and intelligent and extremely dear to her, and because she had known him most of her life, she knew too about his woundedness, though any casual acquaintance would not have suspected it.
It was a woundedness shared in one way or another by all orphans.
“There are institutions far worse than this one, Joel,” Anna said, “and probably not many that are better. We have not grown up without love. Most of us love one another. I love you.”
His grin was back. “Yet on a certain memorable occasion you refused to marry me,” he said. “You broke my heart.”
She clucked her tongue. “You were not really serious,” she said. “And even if you were, you know we do not love each other that way. We grew up together as friends, almost as brother and sister.”
He smiled ruefully at her. “Do you never dream of leaving here, Anna?”
“Yes and no,” she said. “Yes, I dream of going out there into the world to find out what lies beyond these walls and the confines of Bath. And no, I do not want to leave what is familiar to me, the only home I have known since infancy and the only family I can remember. I feel safe here and needed, even loved. Besides, my . . . benefactor agreed to continue supporting me only as long as I remain here. I— Well, I suppose I am a coward, paralyzed by the terror of destitution and the unknown. It is as though, having been abandoned once, I really cannot bear the thought of now abandoning the one thing that has been left me, this orphanage and the people who live here.”
Joel got to his feet and strolled over to the other side of the room, where the easels were still set up so that today’s paintings could dry properly. He touched a few at the edges to see if it was safe to remove them.
“We are both cowards, then,” he said. “I did leave, but not entirely. I still have one foot in the door. And the other has not moved far away, has it? I am still in Bath. Do you suppose we are afraid to move away lest our parents come for us and not know where to find us?” He looked up and laughed. “Tell me it is not that, Anna, please. I am twenty-seven years old.”
Anna felt rather as if he had punched her in the stomach. The old secret dream never quite died. But the most haunting question was never really who had brought them here and left them, but why.
“I believe most people live their lives within a radius of a few miles of their childhood homes,” she said. “Not many people go adventuring. And even those who do have to take themselves with them. That must turn out to be a bit of a disappointment.”
Joel laughed again.
“I am useful here,” Anna continued, “and I am happy here. You are useful—and successful. It is becoming quite fashionable when in Bath to have your portrait painted by Joel Cunningham. And wealthy people are always coming to Bath to take the waters.”
His head was tipped slightly to one side as he regarded her. But before he could say anything more, the classroom door was flung open without the courtesy of a knock to admit Bertha Reed, a thin, flaxen-haired fourteen-year-old who acted as Miss Ford’s helper now that she was old enough. She was bursting with excitement and waving a folded paper in one raised hand.
“There is a letter for you, Miss Snow,” she half shrieked. “It was delivered by special messenger from London and Miss Ford would have brought it herself but Tommy is bleeding all over her sitting room and no one can find Nurse Jones. Maddie punched him in the nose.”
“It is high time someone did,” Joel said, strolling closer to Anna. “I suppose he was pulling one of her braids again.”
Anna scarcely heard. A letter? From London? By special messenger? For her?
“Whoever can it be from, Miss Snow?” Bertha screeched, apparently not particularly concerned about Tommy and his bleeding nose. “Who do you know in London? No, don’t tell me—that ought to have been whom. Whom do you know in London? I wonder what they are writing about. And it came by special messenger, all that way. It must have cost a fortune. Oh, do open it.”
Her blatant inquisitiveness might have seemed impertinent, but really, it was so rare for any of them to receive a letter that word always spread very quickly and everyone wanted to know all about it. Occasionally someone who had left both the orphanage and Bath to work elsewhere would write, and the recipient would almost invariably share the contents with everyone else. Such missives were kept as prized possessions and read over and over until they were virtually threadbare.
Anna did not recognize the handwriting, which was both bold and precise. It was a masculine hand, she felt sure. The paper felt thick and expensive. It did not look like a personal letter.
“Oliver is in London,” Bertha said wistfully. “But I don’t suppose it can be from him, can it? His writing does not look anything like that, and why would he write to you anyway? The four times he has written since he left here, it was to me. And he is not going to send any letter by special messenger, is he?”
Oliver Jamieson had been apprenticed to a boot maker in London two years ago at the age of fourteen and had promised to send for Bertha and marry her as soon as he got on his feet. Twice each year since then he had faithfully written a five- or six-line letter in large, careful handwriting. Bertha had shared his sparse news on each occasion and wept over the letters until it was a wonder they were still legible. There were three years left in his apprenticeship before he could hope to be on his feet and able to support a wife. They were both very young, but the separation did seem cruel. Anna always found herself hoping that Oliver would remain faithful to his childhood sweetheart.
“Are you going to turn it over and over in your hands and hope it will divulge its secrets without your having to break the seal
?” Joel asked.
Stupidly, Anna’s hands were trembling. “Perhaps there is some mistake,” she said. “Perhaps it is not for me.”
He came up behind her and looked over her shoulder. “‘Miss Anna Snow,’” he said. “It certainly sounds like you. I do not know any other Anna Snows. Do you, Bertha?”
“I do not, Mr. Cunningham,” she said after pausing to think. “But whatever can it be about?”
Anna slid her thumb beneath the seal and broke it. And yes, indeed, the paper was a thick, costly vellum. It was not a long letter. It was from Somebody Brumford—she could not read the first name, though it began with a J. He was a solicitor. She read through the letter once, swallowed, and then read it again more slowly.
“The day after tomorrow,” she murmured.
“In a private chaise,” Joel added. He had been reading over her shoulder.
“What is the day after tomorrow?” Bertha demanded, her voice an agony of suspense. “What chaise?”
Anna looked at her blankly. “I am being summoned to London to discuss my future,” she said. There was a faint buzzing in her ears.
“Oh! By who?” Bertha asked, her eyes as wide as saucers. “By whom, I mean.”
“Mr. J. Brumford, a solicitor,” Anna said.
“Josiah, I think that says,” Joel said. “Josiah Brumford. He is sending a private chaise to fetch you, and you are to pack a bag for at least a few days.”
“To London?” Bertha’s voice was breathless with awe.
“Whatever am I to do?” Anna’s mind seemed to have stopped working. Or, rather, it was working, but it was whirring out of control, like the innards of a broken clock.
“What you are to do, Anna,” Joel said, pushing a chair up behind her knees and setting his hands on her shoulders to press her gently down onto it, “is pack a bag for a few days and then go to London to discuss your future.”
“But what future?” she asked.
“That is what is to be discussed,” he pointed out.
The buzzing in her ears grew louder.
READ ON FOR THE NEXT BOOK IN MARY BALOGH’S WESTCOTT SERIES,
Someone to Remember
COMING IN NOVEMBER 2019
Lady Matilda Westcott’s day had just taken a turn for the worse. She had not thought it possible, but she had been wrong.
She was sitting behind the tea tray in the drawing room, pouring for her mother and their visitors, whose unexpected arrival had cheered her at first. Alexander, Earl of Riverdale and head of the Westcott family, and Wren, his wife, were always welcome. They were an amiable, attractive young couple, and Matilda was extremely fond of them. Their conversation had followed predictable lines for several minutes—inquiries after the health of Matilda and her mother, and news of their young children and those of Elizabeth, Alexander’s sister, and Colin, Lord Hodges, her husband, with all of whom they had enjoyed a picnic in Richmond Park the day before. But now they had changed the subject.
“Wren and I have decided that we really ought to invite Viscount Dirkson to dine with us,” Alexander said.
“Ought?” Matilda’s mother, the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, asked sharply. Matilda meanwhile had gone still, the teapot poised over the third cup.
“As a sort of thank-you, Cousin Eugenia,” Wren explained. “Not that any of us need to thank him, exactly. Gil is his son, after all. But Viscount Dirkson has had no dealings with Gil all his life and might easily have ignored that custody hearing a couple of weeks ago. His absence might have made no difference in the judge’s decision, of course. On the other hand, perhaps it did make a difference. And we want him to know that we appreciate what he did. For Abigail’s sake. And for Gil’s and Katy’s sakes. We have invited him for tomorrow, and he has accepted.”
“But we would like it to be a family dinner,” Alexander said. “Not all the Westcotts are in town, of course, but we hope those who are will join us.” He smiled his very charming smile, first at Matilda’s mother and then at Matilda herself.
Matilda scarcely noticed as she proceeded to pour the third cup of tea with a hand she held steady.
She was invited too.
She should have been delighted. While the last earl, Humphrey, her brother, was alive, the Westcotts had not been nearly as close a family as they were now. He had had little use for any of them, even his wife and son and daughters. And he had done terrible things during his life, the very worst of which was to marry twice. That was not a crime in itself, but in his case it was. His first, secret marriage, to Alice Snow, had produced one equally secret daughter, Anna. His second marriage, to Viola, his countess for twenty-three years, had produced three children—Camille, Harry, and Abigail. The criminal aspect of those marriages was that they had overlapped by a month or two before Alice died of consumption. As a result Viola and her offspring had ended up dispossessed while Anna, who had grown up in an orphanage, not knowing even who she was, had inherited a vast fortune, and the whole family had been thrown into turmoil, for the bigamous nature of Humphrey’s second marriage had been unearthed only after his death.
May he not rest in peace, Matilda was often very tempted to think, even to say aloud. A very unsisterly sentiment, no doubt, not to mention unladylike. She often gave in to the temptation to think it nevertheless—as she did now.
She should have been delighted by the invitation, as Alexander was a far different sort of earl than Humphrey had been and had worked hard to draw the family together. However, the dinner was in honor of someone outside the family. Viscount Dirkson. Charles. A man Matilda would be very happy never to set eyes upon again for at least the rest of her life.
It had all started when Abigail Westcott, Humphrey’s younger daughter, had arrived unexpectedly in London a few weeks ago with an equally unexpected husband, whom she had married the day before. Lieutenant Colonel Gil Bennington had seemed a perfectly respectable young gentleman—he was a military friend of Harry, Abigail’s brother. However, he had proceeded to reveal to Abigail’s family that in reality he grew up as a gutter rat—his words—with his unmarried mother, who had scraped together a living as a village washerwoman. The family had been duly shocked. It really, truly was shocking, after all. Matilda had liked the young man anyway. He was tall and dark and handsome even if his face was marred by the scar of an old battle wound and even if he did tend to look upon the world with a dour expression. She had thought the sudden marriage wondrously romantic. She had fallen into shock only when Lieutenant Colonel Bennington had admitted, when pressed, that his father, with whom he had had no dealings all his life, was Viscount Dirkson.
He had been Charles Sawyer when Matilda had had an acquaintance with him, ages ago, aeons ago. A lifetime. The title had come later, upon the death of his father.
But she had had a dealing with him since Gil’s revelation—a secret, horribly scandalous dealing that would shock her family to the roots if they knew about it. The memory of it could still turn her cold enough to faint quite away—if she were the vaporish sort, which she was not. Well, it was not a secret from all of them. Young Bertrand Lamarr knew. He was Abigail’s stepbrother, not a Westcott by birth but accepted by all of them as an honorary family member.
What had happened was that she, a single lady, had called upon Viscount Dirkson, a widowed gentleman, at his London home, with only young Bertrand as a companion to lend a semblance of respectability to what was in reality quite beyond the pale. She had screwed her courage to the sticking point, to quote someone in a Shakespeare play—Lady Macbeth?—though it might not be a strictly accurate quote. Anyway, she had gone to persuade Charles to do something at last for his natural son, who was about to appear before a judge to plead for the return of his young daughter, who had been taken to the home of her maternal grandparents while Gil was away fighting at the Battle of Waterloo, and was never returned. It was the first time in thirty-six years she had come face
-to-face with Charles or exchanged a word with him. After she had said her piece she had left with Bertrand, and she had comforted herself—tried to, at least—with the thought that that was the end of it. Finished. The end.
Now Alexander and Wren had invited him to a family dinner.
And she was a member of the family.
Charles Sawyer also happened to be the only man Matilda had ever loved. All of thirty-six years ago. More than half a biblical lifetime ago. She was fifty-six now.
All the cups had been filled, Matilda saw, and must be distributed before the tea in them turned cold. Her mother was talking.
“Viscount Dirkson is to be rewarded, then, for fathering a son out of wedlock and doing nothing for him in the more than thirty years since, until he spoke up on his son’s behalf before a judge a few weeks ago?” she asked as Matilda set a cup of tea on the table beside her and made sure it was close enough for her to reach but not close enough as to be knocked over by a careless elbow.
Wren came to take Alexander’s and her cups from the tray and smiled her thanks to Matilda. “He did purchase his son’s first commission some years ago, if you will recall, Cousin Eugenia,” she said.
The dowager made a sound of derision and batted away her daughter’s hand when Matilda tried to rearrange her shawl, which had slipped off one shoulder. “Don’t fuss, Matilda.”
“And that son is now married to Abigail and is therefore a member of our family,” Alexander added, taking his cup and saucer from Wren’s hand. “But even aside from purchasing the commission, what Dirkson did a couple of weeks ago was significant. Without his recommendation at the court hearing, Gil might very well not have regained custody of his daughter, and both he and Abigail would have been distraught. Dirkson would surely have attended the hearing for his own sake, of course, since Gil is his son. However, Wren and I feel an obligation to thank him on behalf of Abigail’s family. Do say you will come too.”