by Mary Balogh
She fell asleep a long while later wondering what had happened to the Reverend and Mrs. Snow, her maternal grandparents.
* * *
Avery found that he had rather badly miscalculated. It did not happen often. But then, he was not often called upon to deal with young earls who had just lost title and fortune and discovered themselves to be penniless bastards.
He did not discover Harry at any of the expected places during the evening or the night, though he spent weary hours wandering and looking and asking numerous questions of the boy’s erstwhile cronies and hangers-on. Dispossessed ex-earls soon lost their appeal, it seemed. It was all enough to make one lose one’s faith in humanity—if one had ever harbored any.
He did encounter Uxbury, however—Viscount Uxbury, Camille’s esteemed former betrothed—when he took a break from his search to call in at White’s Club. Uxbury waylaid him as he was passing through the reading room, which was virtually deserted at that hour of the evening.
The viscount was someone to be avoided at the best of times. It had always seemed to Avery that if one were to pick him up and shake him vigorously, one would soon find oneself engulfed in dust, blinded and choked by it. What Camille saw in him, though she was admittedly rather starchy and high in the instep herself, Avery had never understood, though since he did not need to understand, he had been content with ignorance. By this evening, however, he resented even more than usual being hauled aside by this particular gentleman. The engagement was off, he had heard from his stepmother, hence Camille’s having left London with Abigail and their mother. Avery did not know who had ended the engagement or exactly why. He really did not need or particularly want to know.
“Ah, Netherby, old chap,” Uxbury said. “Come to celebrate your freedom from an irksome responsibility, have you?”
Old chap? Avery raised his eyebrows. “Responsibility?”
“Young Harold,” Uxbury explained. “The bastard.” He said the word not as an insult, but as a descriptor.
“A word of warning,” Avery said, possessing himself of his quizzing glass. “My ward does not like to be so called and will not scruple to tell you so. He claims that it makes him feel like a balding Saxon king awaiting an arrow through the eye. He prefers Harry.”
“What he is,” Uxbury said, “is a bastard. I have had a very near escape, Netherby. You will wish to congratulate me upon it, I daresay. If the late Riverdale had died six months later than he did, I would have found myself riveted to his by-blow before discovering the truth. One can only shudder at the thought. Though you would have escaped altogether having to deal with a wild and petulant youth.”
“And so I would,” Avery said, dropping his glass on its ribbon. He was tired of this conversation.
He clipped Uxbury behind the knees with one foot and prodded the stiffened fingertips of one hand against a point just below the man’s ribs that would rob him of breath for a minute or ten and probably turn him blue in the face into the bargain. He watched Uxbury topple, taking down a table and a heavy crystal decanter with him, and causing a spectacular enough crash to bring gentlemen and waiters and other assorted male persons running or at least hurrying from every direction. He watched Uxbury reach for a shout and not find it—or his next breath.
“Dear me,” he said to no one in particular. “The man must have been drinking too deep. Someone ought to loosen his cravat.”
He strolled away after a few moments, when it seemed there was enough help to revive a swooning regiment. It was, he decided as he left the club to resume his search, Camille who had had the near escape yesterday, not her erstwhile betrothed.
Even the youngsters who might still be counted as Harry’s friends were unable to point Avery in the right direction. He was told variously that Harry had gone off to a gaming hell, a brothel, a tavern, a postperformance theater party, another fellow’s rooms, and home. He was to be discovered at none of those places. The boy was usually quite predictable. Finding him was generally no more arduous than following a blazing trail would be. But this time he appeared to have fallen off the map, and Avery was beginning to wonder if perhaps he had slipped off to join his family in Hampshire.
It was Edwin Goddard, his secretary, who finally discovered the lad the following morning, no more than an hour after Avery had enlisted his assistance. God bless the man, he was worth his weight in gold.
Harry—drunk and bleary eyed, disheveled, clothes stained and even torn, stinking after two days without any encounter with water or soap, razor or tooth powder or a change of linen—had encountered, or been encountered by, a recruiting sergeant and had taken the king’s shilling in exchange for his spindly signature and a spot in some unprestigious regiment as a private soldier. By the time Avery came up with the group—it consisted of a few other ragamuffin recruits as well as Harry and the sergeant—his ward was looking pale and glum and mulish and the obvious possessor of a gigantic headache.
The Duke of Netherby, who had bathed and changed his clothes since last night, regarded the disgusting huddle of military would-be heroes through his quizzing glass—he had chosen a jeweled one deliberately so that it would wink in the sun—while the disgusting huddle gawked back and Harry looked green and defiant.
“Harry,” His Grace said with a sigh. “It is time to come home, my lad.”
“’Ere, ’ere.” The sergeant stepped forward to within one foot of His Grace. “The lad ’as been recruited, pretty boy, and belongs to the king, and there ain’t a bleeding thing you can do about it.”
Pretty boy? This felt a little like that first year at school all over again.
The man was at least eight inches taller than Avery and at the very least twice his weight—more probably three times. His head had been shaved, and every inch of his body that was visible was pitted and scarred to show him for the great bruiser of a soldier he was.
Avery regarded him through his glass. It was not an attractive sight, especially when magnified, but it was an impressive one, and might well put the wind up a whole battalion of French soldiers, not to mention one pretty boy. The sergeant looked uneasy under the leisurely scrutiny, but, to his credit, he did not retreat by even a fraction of one inch.
“Quite so,” Avery said with a long-suffering sigh. “I will see my ward’s signature, my man.”
“I ain’t yur man, and I don’t ’ave to—” the sergeant began.
“Ah, but you will,” the Duke of Netherby informed him, sounding bored.
The recruiting paper was produced.
“As I thought,” Avery said after taking his time perusing it through his glass. “This is indeed my ward’s signature, but it is shaky, for all the world as though he had been coerced into writing it.”
“’Ere,” the sergeant said, frowning ferociously. “I don’t like your tone, guv, and I don’t like wot you are hinsinuating.”
“I assume,” Avery said, “one of the king’s shillings is at this moment nestled in one of my ward’s pockets?”
“Unless ’e ’as ate it,” the sergeant said.
The disgusting huddle snickered.
“Harry.” His Grace of Netherby stepped up to the boy, one hand outstretched. The other recruits were gawking again. A small but ever-growing crowd was gathering in a circle about them. “If you please.”
“Give it to ’im, ’arry,” someone in the crowd yelled, “and let the serge take ’im instead of you. The Frogs would eat ’im for tea, they would.”
There was a wag in every crowd.
Harry produced the battered shilling and handed it over. “I’ve signed, Avery,” he said. “I’m going to be a soldier. It’s all I’m good for. It’s what I want to do.”
Avery handed the shilling to the sergeant. “You may take this back,” he said, “and you may tear up that paper. It is worthless. It would not stand up in court.”
One element of the crowd cheered
while another booed.
“’e don’t want it torn up,” the sergeant pointed out. “You ’eard wot ’e said. Take yourself off, guv. ’e belongs to the king now, and I am the king’s hagent. Take yourself off before I pop you a good one and make you cry and wet yourself.”
Wild cheering from the ever-growing crowd. It was a challenge almost worth accepting, but one really must not indulge in the temptation to show off. Avery sighed and lowered his glass.
“But you see,” he said, “the boy is my ward. His signature, and what he believes to be his wishes, mean nothing without my permission. My permission is not granted.”
“And ’oo might I be haddressing?” the sergeant asked.
“He is the Duke of Netherby,” Harry said sullenly.
Instead of instantly groveling, the sergeant glowered, and Avery regarded him with approval. “And I s’pose you ’ave the ear of the king whenever you want it,” the man said bitterly, “and all the other nobs’ ears ’oo don’t ’ave to live by the laws of the land like all the rest of us salt of the earth ’umans.”
“It does seem rather unfair,” Avery agreed.
“’e would be useless, anyway,” the sergeant said, turning his head to spit in the dirt, only narrowly missing the left boot of the nearest of the spectators. “Just look at ’im. The best soldiers are the scum of the earth, like the rest of ’em there. I’ll whip ’em into shape in no time flat, Lord love ’em.”
The scum of the earth gawked back at him. One of them then leered at Avery, favoring him with a view of a mouthful of rotten teeth.
“Take ’im,” the sergeant said, tearing the recruitment paper in two lengthwise and then again crosswise before dropping the pieces and setting a giant boot over them. “And good riddance. Let ’im drink ’imself to death. ’e is well on ’is way already.”
“I don’t want to leave,” Harry said mulishly.
“Of course you do not,” Avery said agreeably, glancing once at the boy through his glass before turning away. “But there is nothing left for you here, Harry.” Except a good dose of lice and fleas and other vermin from the company in which he found himself.
Avery strolled away without looking back, and after a minute or two Harry fell into step beside him.
“Damn you, Avery,” he said, “I want to be a soldier.”
“Then a soldier you shall be,” Avery said. “If you are still of the same mind after a good bath and a good sleep and a good breakfast. But perhaps as an officer, Harry? You are an earl’s son, after all, even if through no fault of your own or your mother’s you were born on the wrong side of the blanket.”
“I cannot afford a commission,” Harry growled.
“Probably not,” Avery said—it was not the time to remind the boy that his newfound half sister had offered to divide her fortune with her siblings. “But I can, you see. And I will, since you are my stepmother’s nephew and Jessica’s cousin and my ward. If you still wish it after you wake up sober, that is.”
Life had grown remarkably tiresome, he thought as he tried not to smell Harry. And decidedly odd. Had he really told Lady Anastasia Westcott, alias Anna Snow, yesterday afternoon that he might well fall in love with her? If he were to list the top one hundred types of women most likely to attract him, in descending order, she would be number one hundred and one.
And had he offered her the choice of walking on or being kissed?
He was not in the habit of kissing unmarried maidens, and he was in absolutely no doubt that she was both.
Nine
Anna awoke the following morning feeling exhausted. The past few days had been so far outside any of her past experiences that she could find no place in which to rest her soul. Even her bed—wide and comfortable, with deep, downy pillows and soft, warm covers—felt too vast and too luxurious.
She threw back the covers, swung her legs over the side of the bed, got to her feet, and stretched. And there was no end in sight to all the strangeness. Yesterday she had made the decision to stay, at least for a while. She had written to Miss Ford to resign from her teaching position and to Bertha Reed inviting her to come and be her maid—she had even enclosed money for the stagecoach from what Mr. Brumford had given her until some more regular arrangement could be made.
She stepped into her dressing room and selected one of her two day dresses—she could not wear her Sunday dress for a third day in a row. Someone had been in her dressing room recently. There was water in the jug on the washstand, and it was still warm. She poured some into the bowl, stripped off her nightgown, and washed herself all over before dressing and brushing her hair and twisting it into its usual knot at the back of her neck. She drew a few deep breaths and let herself out of the room. She would come back later to make her bed.
A manservant who was standing in the hall looked a little startled to see her, but bowed and led her to what he described as the breakfast parlor, which was smaller than the dining room where she and Elizabeth had eaten last evening. He drew a chair out from the table and pushed it back in as she seated herself. He would go and inform Mr. Lifford, he told her, that my lady was ready for her breakfast.
Her breakfast arrived ten minutes later to an accompaniment of apologies from the butler for having kept my lady waiting. Anna had finished eating and drunk two cups of coffee—a rare luxury—before Elizabeth joined her.
“My maid came to inform me that you were up and at breakfast already,” she said, setting a light hand upon Anna’s shoulder and bending to kiss her on the cheek. “And goodness, she was right. I am the one who is usually accused of being an early riser.”
“But I was alarmed at how late I was,” Anna said, feeling warmed to the toes by the casual gesture of affection.
“Gracious!” Elizabeth said, and they both laughed.
But the time to relax soon came to an end. There was the dreaded meeting with the housekeeper to face soon after breakfast, though it turned out to be not as intimidating as Anna had expected, perhaps because Elizabeth remained with her. Mrs. Eddy gave them a tour of the house, and Anna was awed almost speechless by the vastness and splendor of it all. She did speak, though, when she saw the large portrait over the mantel in the library and the housekeeper casually named the subject of it as the late Earl of Riverdale.
Her father? Anna stepped closer.
“Is it a good likeness?” she asked. Her heart was beating rather heavily.
“It is, my lady,” Mrs. Eddy said.
Anna gazed at it for a long time. High, starched shirt points and an elaborately tied neckcloth framed a fleshy, handsome, arrogant face from below and short, dark, artfully disheveled hair from above. He had been painted only from the waist up, but he looked portly. Anna could see nothing of herself in him, nor could she feel any of herself. A stranger gazed back at her from the canvas, and she found herself shivering and wishing she had brought her shawl down with her.
The tour ended in the kitchens belowstairs, where the cook signaled two maids and a manservant to come to attention while she presented them to my lady. Anna smiled and had a few words with them all. Then she remembered how some of the governors of the orphanage used to pay a visit to the home and nod with benevolent condescension upon orphans and staff alike but never spoke a word to anyone but Miss Ford. Perhaps, she thought, she was already committing a grievous error. But . . . perhaps she would continue committing it. She could not imagine herself, even in the persona of Lady Anastasia Westcott, ignoring servants as though they did not exist.
She would show my lady the linen closets and the silver and china and crystal cabinets another time, Mrs. Eddy suggested as they climbed the stairs from the kitchens—and the account books, of course. My lady would have noticed a slight scarcity of staff, though it would not affect the running of the house until the servants who had left could be replaced by the agency from which they always drew new staff as needed.
“If you will provide me with a list of the servants required, Mrs. Eddy,” Anna told her, “I will see if I can replace some of them myself. I have friends who are fast approaching adulthood and would be delighted to be offered training and employment at a grand home in London.”
“Friends, my lady?” Mrs. Eddy asked faintly.
Oh dear, another error. “Yes.” Anna smiled at her. “Friends.”
And that was when her day got really busy. The duchess, Aunt Louise, had arrived, and on her heels came Monsieur Henri, a hairdresser with waving hands and a French accent that was as fake as his name, if Anna’s guess was correct. But her aunt described him as the most fashionable stylist in London, and Anna could only trust in her judgment. Soon she found herself seated in the middle of what had been described as the sewing room during her tour of the house, a square chamber at the back of the same floor as the drawing room, overlooking the long back garden. A large, heavy sheet had been draped about her, and her hair had been taken down out of its pins and brushed out. Elizabeth sat by the window. Aunt Louise was standing in front of Anna, though far enough away not to interfere with Monsieur Henri, who was wafting about her, a comb in one hand while the other made artistic figures in the air as his head tipped first to one side and then to the other.
“A short style to suit my lady’s exquisite features, n’est-ce pas?” he said. “With curls and ringlets to give ’eight and beauty.”
“Short hair is all the crack,” Aunt Louise agreed. “And that hair is heavy and quite lifeless as it is.”
“My hair is straight,” Anna pointed out. “It would take a great deal of time and effort to coax a curl into it.”
“And that is precisely what hot tongs and maids are for,” her aunt said. “And a lady always has time to spend upon her appearance.”
Bertha loved fussing over the younger girls at the orphanage, braiding their hair and arranging the braids in different ways to give the girls some individuality. But . . . creating curls out of short, straight hair? Morning, afternoon, and evening? Surely the curls would not hold all day. And how long would it take each time? Anna would be spending half her life sitting in a chair in her dressing room.