“No,” she said. “They probably did not even know, did they?”
“I would say,” he said, “that your father felt quite safe in contracting an illegal marriage.”
“Why did he never revoke the old will?” she asked. “Why did he never make another? Is that unusual?”
“It is,” he said, “to answer your last question first. My father had a will that must have been twelve pages long, all written in such convoluted legalese that I daresay even his lawyer did not fully understand it. The will was unnecessary, of course, since I was the only son and the settlements upon my stepmother and half sister had been well taken care of in the marriage contract. One is left with the intriguing possibility in your father’s case that the continued existence of the old will and the absence of a new one was deliberate on his part.”
She thought about it. “His joke upon posterity when he could no longer be called to account?” she said. “If that is so, he was being extraordinarily cruel to the countess and her children.”
“Or kind at last to you,” he said.
“There is no kindness in money,” she said.
They had reached the line of trees and turned to walk along the rough path among them. There was a nice sense of seclusion here. The harsher sounds of horses’ hooves, vehicle wheels, children’s shrieks, hawkers’ cries, and adult chatter and laughter from the park on one side and the street on the other seemed muted, though it might be only imagination. Here one could hear birds singing and leaves rustling overhead. Here one could smell wood and sap, the fragrances of the earth and various trees. Here one could ignore the artificiality of town life.
He looked at her while her words rang in his head. She was not delighted by her incredible good fortune, was she? He wondered if she had dreamed of it all her life and now found the reality a bit empty, because along with the fortune came the knowledge that her father had been a bounder of the first order and her half sisters had fled with their mother rather than meet her again or accept her offer to share her fortune. That Harry was off somewhere drinking deep until he touched bottom and some sort of rescue could be effected. That her family considered her impossible. She may never be ready were the last words her grandmother had spoken before they left the house. He wondered if she had friends back in Bath. A suitor, perhaps? Someone the family would not consider eligible for her.
“Now, there is a memorable saying,” he said. “It ought to be a quotation from some famous sage—there is no kindness in money. I suspect, though, it is an original Anna-ism. To most people the motive would not matter. It would be enough that your father wanted you to be wealthy at last.”
“I hope it was not deliberate,” she said. “I hope he merely forgot that will and was too lazy to make another. I hope he was not deliberately malicious to us all—to his wife and children and to me. I found my family yesterday. Do you understand, Avery, what that means to someone who has grown up in an orphanage not knowing who she is, not even certain that the name by which she is known is her real name? It means more than all the gold and jewels in the world. And yesterday I lost my family, the part of it that means most to me, anyway. Today they are gone. They have fled rather than see me again. Oh, I am grateful for what remains. I have a grandmother, aunts and an uncle, cousins away at school—and your half sister is my cousin too, is she not?—and second cousins. They are all a treasure that was beyond my dreams just a few days ago, but perversely my heart is too sore to appreciate them fully just yet. Yesterday I learned that my mother is long dead and my father, a selfish, cruel man, is recently deceased. Yesterday I saw his second wife and his other children—my half siblings—crushed and their world destroyed. I am wealthy, probably beyond belief, but in some ways I am more impoverished than I was before—because now I know what I had and have lost.”
The one word that had registered most upon Avery’s mind was his own name—Avery. Almost no one outside his family called him that. Even his mistresses called him Netherby.
But the rest of what she said did register too, and he stopped walking and steered her off the path and set her back against a tree trunk so that she could recover herself before they moved on. She was very upset. She had recently discovered that she was one of the wealthiest women in England, and she was upset—because family meant more to her than riches. She had never known either—family or money—and family meant more. One never really considered the matter when one had always had both. Which was the more important?
He braced one hand against the trunk beside her head and gazed into her face.
“No,” she said, “there is no kindness in money, Avery, and there was absolutely none in the late Earl of Riverdale, my father.”
His name again—Avery. It was something else that had been against him from the start—his name, which suggested flowers and pretty birds and femininity. He could not have been Edward or Charles or Richard, could he? But somehow this woman, this Anna, made a caress of his name, though he had no doubt it was entirely unintentional.
“I wrote yesterday to my dearest friend in Bath,” she said. “I reminded him of something our former teacher was fond of saying—that one ought to beware what one wishes for lest the wish be granted. All orphans have the grand dream of discovering just what I discovered yesterday. I told him Miss Rutledge had been quite right.”
Him. Avery only just stopped himself from asking the man’s name.