Someone To Love

by Mary Balogh

  “Yes, actually,” he said. “It is the next logical step for me to take, is it not? Riddings is prospering at last, everyone dependent upon me is well looked after, and the only thing lacking to make all secure is an heir. My next birthday is my thirtieth. I came here with you and Lizzie, Mama, because I cannot like either of you being here without a man to lend you countenance and offer escort wherever you wish to go, but I came too on my own account to . . . look about me, if you will. I am not in any hurry to make a choice. It may not even happen this year. But I do not need to marry money, and I am not so highly ranked that I am obliged to look high for a bride. I hope to find someone who will . . . suit me.”

  “Someone with whom to fall in love?” Elizabeth suggested, leaning slightly to one side so that the footman could refill her water glass.

  “I shall certainly expect to feel an affection for the lady,” he said, flushing slightly. “But romantic love? Pardon me, Lizzie, but is that not for females?”

  His mother tutted.

  “Like me?” Elizabeth sat back in her chair and watched him eat.

  “Ah.” His fork remained suspended halfway to his mouth. “I did not mean it that way, Lizzie. I did not mean to offend.”

  “And you did not,” she assured him. “I fell head over heels in infatuation with Desmond the moment I set eyes upon him, silly girl that I was, and called it love. It was not love. But the experience of a bad marriage has not made a cynic of me. I still believe in romantic love, and I do so hope you discover it for yourself, Alex. You deserve all that is good in life, especially after all you have done for me.”

  Sir Desmond Overfield, her late husband, had been a charming man but a heavy drinker, the sort who turned uglier the more he drank and became verbally and physically abusive. When Elizabeth had fled back to her childhood home on one occasion, her face scarcely recognizable beneath all the swelling and bruises, her father had sent her back, albeit reluctantly, when Desmond came for her, with the reminder that she was now a married lady and her husband’s property. When she had fled there again two years later, after her father was dead, this time with a broken arm as well as bruises over most of her face and body, Alex had taken her in and summoned a physician. Desmond had come again to claim his property, sober and apologetic, as he had been the first time, but Alex had punched him in the face and broken his nose and dislodged a few of his teeth. When her husband had returned with the nearest magistrate, Alex had blackened both his eyes and invited the magistrate to stay for luncheon. Desmond had died less than a year after that, stabbed in a tavern brawl in which ironically he had been only a spectator.

  “I will choose a bride with whom I can expect to be comfortable and even happy,” Alex promised now, “but I shall ask your opinion, Lizzie, and Mama’s too before making any offer.”

  His mother gave a little shriek of horror. “You will not marry just to please your mother,” she said. “The very idea.”

  “Oh, you will do no such thing,” Elizabeth protested simultaneously.

  He grinned at them. “But you will both have to share a house with my wife,” he said. “All this is purely hypothetical, however, at least for now. I have talked and danced with a number of ladies in the couple of weeks since the Season began, but none have tempted me to courtship. I am in no great hurry to make a choice. In the meantime, we have a soiree to attend tonight and had better be on our way within the half hour. And tomorrow we will discover what earth-shattering disclosures Harry’s solicitor has to make that necessitate our presence. I am sure neither of you is under any obligation to go with me, though.”

  “But Mama and I have been invited too,” Elizabeth reminded him. “I would not miss it for worlds. Besides, I have not seen any of the cousins since the funeral either, and their enforced seclusion must be quite irksome to them, especially when the Season is tempting them with so many entertainments. Camille must be hugely disappointed at having been forced to postpone her wedding to Viscount Uxbury, and poor Abigail must feel even worse done by at having to wait until next year to make her come-out when she is already eighteen. Perhaps we will see young Jessica too, since this meeting is to be at Archer House. Oh, and I must confess, Alex, that I look forward to seeing the Duke of Netherby. He is so deliciously . . . grand.”

  “Lizzie!” Alexander looked pained as he nodded to the footman to remove their plates. “He is nothing but bored artificiality through to the very heart. If he has one.”

  “But he does it all with such magnificent flair,” she said, the twinkle back in her eyes. “And he is so very beautiful.”

  “Beautiful?” He looked thunderstruck before relaxing and shaking his head and chuckling. “But the word does fit, I must confess.”

  “Oh, it does,” their mother agreed. “If I were but twenty years younger.” She sighed and fluttered her eyelashes, and they all laughed.

  “He is the very antithesis of you, Alex,” Elizabeth said, patting his hand once more while they all got to their feet. “Which fact must be an enormous relief to you, since you really do not like him one little bit, do you?”

  “The antithesis?” he said. “I am not beautiful, then, Lizzie?”

  “Absolutely not,” she said, linking her arm through his while he offered the other to his mother. “You are handsome, Alex. Sometimes I think it is unfair that you got all the stunning good looks—from Mama’s side of the family, of course—while I have never been anything but passably pretty. But it is not just your looks that disqualify you from being called beautiful. You never look bored or haughty, and you definitely have a heart. And a conscience. You are a solid citizen and a thoroughly worthy gentleman.”

  “Good God,” he said, grimacing. “Am I really such a dull dog?”

  “Not at all,” she said, laughing. “For you have the looks.”

  He was, in fact, the quintessential tall, dark, handsome man—with an athletic, perfectly toned body and blue eyes to boot. He also had a smile that would melt frozen butter, not to mention female hearts. And, yes, he had a firm sense of duty to those dependent upon him. Elizabeth, four years his senior, was beginning to recover some of the bloom she had lost during her difficult marriage, though she was neither as dark nor as strikingly good-looking as her brother. She did, however, have an even temper, an amiable countenance, and a cheerful disposition that had somehow survived six years of disappointment and anxiety and abuse.

  “Lizzie!” her mother exclaimed. “You have always been beautiful in my eyes.”

  Three

  “The devil!” Harry, the young Earl of Riverdale, frowned down the stairs at his sisters, who were frowning right back up at him. “Is it today old Brumford wants to see us at Avery’s house? Not tomorrow?”

  “You know very well it is today,” Lady Camille Westcott said. “You had better make haste. You look a fright.”

  He looked as though he had been up all night carousing, which, in fact, was exactly what he had been doing. His fine evening clothes were creased and rumpled, his shirt cuffs soiled, his neckcloth limp and askew, his fair, wavy hair disheveled, his eyes bloodshot, and no one would particularly wish to come within smelling distance of him. He was in dire need of a shave.

  “You did not even come home last night, Harry,” Lady Abigail remarked rather obviously, her eyes moving over him from head to toe with open disapproval.

  “I would dashed well hope not,” he said. “I would hardly be returning from a morning ride dressed like this, would I? Why the devil did Brumford have to choose today? And in the morning, of all the ungodly times? And why Archer House and not here? What the devil does he have to say anyway that cannot be put in a letter or conveyed through Mama or Avery? He does a great deal too much posturing and prosing, if anyone were to ask me, not that anyone ever does. I am of half a mind to get rid of him as soon as I turn twenty-one and choose someone else who understands that a solicitor’s absence is more appreciated than hi
s presence and his silence more than his eloquence.”

  “I must protest your language, Harry,” Camille said. “It may be all very well for your male acquaintances, but it certainly will not do in the hearing of your sisters. You owe Abby and me an apology.”

  “Do I?” He grinned and then winced and grasped his temples with the thumb and middle finger of one hand. “You both look like avenging angels, I must say—just what a fellow needs when he has come home for a well-earned sleep.”

  At least he had not said they looked like two crows, as he had when they first put on their blacks. Camille was darker haired than her brother, tall, very upright in bearing, rather severe of countenance, her features too strong to be described as pretty, though she could certainly be called handsome with some justification. Abigail had her brother’s coloring and good looks and slender build, though she was small of stature.

  “Mr. Brumford will soon be awaiting us at Archer House,” Abigail reminded him. “So will Cousin Avery.”

  “But what can be left to discuss?” he asked, releasing his temples. “He droned on for hours when he came here a few weeks ago, though he had absolutely nothing new to say. And why do the two of you have to go this time as well to be bored silly? I shall have a few questions for him when I see him, you may rest assured.”

  “Which will perhaps be within the hour,” Camille said, “If you will but go and change, Harry, rather than continue to stand there clutching your temples and looking like a tragic hero. You would not wish Cousin Avery to see you like that.”

  “Netherby?” Harry grinned—and winced again. “He would not care. He is a good egg.”

  “He would look at you through his quizzing glass, Harry,” Abigail said, “and then he would lower it and look bored. I would hate above everything for him to look at me like that. Go.”

  Their mother appeared behind him at the top of the stairs at that moment. He smiled shamefacedly at her and ducked out of sight. Their mother followed him.

  “He is still half inebriated, Abby,” Camille said to her sister. “I wish Cousin Avery would put his foot down, but one knows he will not. Uxbury had a word with Harry last week, but our brother told him to mind his own business. Uxbury implied that he used stronger language than that, but he would not quote him verbatim.”

  “Lord Uxbury does have an unfortunate way of saying things that set Harry’s back up, you must admit, Cam,” Abigail said gently.

  “But he is right every time,” Camille protested. “Yet it is Cousin Avery who is the good egg. Harry gets away with altogether too much. He is wearing a black armband—a crumpled black armband—while we are decked out in black from head to toe. Black is not your color, and it most definitely is not mine. You are supposed to be making your come-out this spring, and I am supposed to be marrying Uxbury. Neither event is going to happen, yet Harry is out every day and night, sowing wild oats. And neither Mama nor Avery utters one word of reproach.”

  “Sometimes life does not seem fair, does it?” Abigail said.

  Camille turned away from the stairs to return to the morning room, where they had been about to take their coffee when they heard their brother stumble his way into the house. Their mother came into the room behind them.

  “What is this summons to Archer House all about, Mama?” Abigail asked.

  “If I knew that,” the countess said, “we would not need to go. But you girls have been starved for entertainment, and the outing will do you good. Your aunt Louise and Jessica will be happy to see you. It is too bad mourning precludes you from attending all but the most sober and dull of the Season’s entertainments. But if you are about to complain to me, Cam, that your brother’s social life is not as restricted as yours and Abby’s, then you might as well save your breath. He is a man and you are not. You are old enough to understand that gentlemen live by a wholly different set of rules from the ones by which we must abide. Is it fair? No, of course it is not. Can we do anything about it? No, we cannot. Complaints are pointless.”

  Abigail took her a cup of coffee. “Are you worried about something, Mama?” she asked with a frown.

  “No,” her mother said quickly. “Why should I be? I just wish to have this morning over with. Goodness knows what it is all about. I must advise Harry to change his solicitor. Avery will not object. He finds Mr. Brumford tedious beyond endurance. If the man has business to discuss, then he ought to come here and discuss it in private.”

  The sisters sipped their coffee, exchanged glances, and regarded their mother in thoughtful silence. Something was worrying her.

  * * *

  Edwin Goddard, His Grace of Netherby’s secretary, had seen to the setup of the rose salon. Chairs had been arranged in three neat rows to face a large oak table from behind which Brumford presumably intended to hold court at the appointed hour. Avery had viewed the room with distaste earlier—so many chairs? But now he stood out in the tiled hall, awaiting the arrival of the last of his guests. At least, all these people must be called guests, he supposed, though it was not he who had invited them. Standing out in the hall was preferable, however, to being in the salon, where his stepmother was playing the part of gracious hostess to an alarmingly and mysteriously large number of her relatives, and Jessica was in transports of delight at seeing Harry and his sisters and was talking to them at great speed and at a pitch high enough to have brought a frown of censure from her governess if that worthy woman had been present. She was not, however, Jess having been released from the schoolroom for the occasion.

  Brumford was in the hall too, though he had taken up a position at some distance from the duke and was uncharacteristically silent—mentally practicing his speech, perhaps?—and easily ignored. Avery had asked him upon his arrival if this family gathering had anything to do with the delicate and very private matter the countess had entrusted to his skill and discretion a few weeks ago. But Brumford had merely bowed and assured His Grace that he had come on a matter of grave concern to the whole Westcott family. Beyond regarding the man in silence for a little longer than was strictly necessary through his quizzing glass, Avery had not pressed him further. Brumford was, after all, a man of the law and could therefore not be expected to give a direct answer to any question.

  Avery tried not to think of any of the dozen or so more congenial ways in which he might be spending his morning. He raised his eyebrows at a burst of merry laughter from the rose salon.

  There was a knock upon the outer doors, and the butler opened them to admit Alexander Westcott, Mrs. Westcott, and Lady Overfield. Westcott was looking his usual immaculate, dignified self. Avery had known him since they were boys at school together, and if Westcott had ever had a hair out of place, even after the most rugged scrimmage out on the playing fields, or set one toenail out of line behavior-wise in all the years they had spent there, Avery had certainly never witnessed it. Alexander Westcott and gentlemanly reserve and respectability were synonymous terms. The two men had never been friends.

  Westcott nodded briskly to him, and Mrs. Westcott and her daughter smiled.

  “Netherby?” he said.

  “Cousin Avery,” both ladies said simultaneously.

  “Cousin Althea.” He stepped forward, extended one languid, beringed hand for the elder lady’s, and raised it to his lips. “A pleasure indeed. Cousin Elizabeth.” He kissed her hand too. “Looking ravishing as always.”

  “As are you.” The younger woman’s smile had acquired a twinkle.

  He raised his eyebrows. “One does one’s utmost,” he said on a sigh, and released her hand. He had always liked her rather more than he did her brother. She had a sense of humor. She had a good figure too. She had inherited both from her mother, though not the mother’s dark good looks. The son had got those.

  “Westcott,” Avery said by way of greeting.

  Brumford, bowing reverentially from the waist, was ignored.

  The b
utler ushered the new arrivals into the salon, and there was a swell of greetings from within and even a squeal or two. It was time he went to join them, Avery thought with an inward sigh, taking his snuffbox from a pocket and flicking open the lid with a practiced thumb. Everyone was present and accounted for. But before he could move, the knocker rattled once more against the outer doors and the butler hurried to open them.

  A woman stepped inside without awaiting an invitation. A governess—Avery would wager half his fortune on it. She was young and thin and uncompromisingly straight backed and clad from head to toe in a darkish blue, with the exception of her gloves and reticule and shoes, which were black. None of her garments was either costly or stylish, and that was a kind assessment. Her hair was scarcely visible beneath the small brim of her bonnet, though there appeared to be a large bun at the back of her neck.

  She stopped just inside the door, clasped her hands at her waist, and looked about her as though expecting a pupil or three to materialize from the shadows with books and slates at the ready.

  “I do believe,” Avery said, closing the snuffbox with a snap, “you have mistaken the front door for the servants’ entrance and the house for one in which there are infants in anticipation of instruction. Horrocks will set your feet in the right direction.” He raised one eyebrow in the butler’s direction.

  She turned her eyes upon him—large, calm gray eyes, which did not falter when they encountered his. She stayed where she was and looked neither abashed nor terrified nor horrified nor frozen in place nor any of the things one might have expected of someone who had just stepped through the wrong door.

  “I was brought from Bath yesterday,” she said in a soft, clear voice, “and today I was set down outside the door of this house.”

  “If you please, miss.” Horrocks was holding the door open.

  But Avery was arrested by a sudden realization. By God, she was not a governess, or not just a governess anyway. She was a bastard.