No one actually spoke to me or to one another after I had arrived, though it was quite clear they were all outraged. So much for my best Sunday dress and my best shoes! In addition to the duke (who came into the room after I did) and the duchess, who must be his mother rather than his wife, I believe, the young Earl of Riverdell or Riverdale—I am not sure which—was there with his mother and his two sisters. There was also a very young lady all in white and five other ladies and two gentlemen, of whose identities I am not perfectly sure.
Joel, oh, Joel, I must rush ahead with my narrative here. The young earl and his sisters are MY BROTHER AND SISTERS. Oh, I know, Miss Rutledge would have frowned her disapproval of those capital letters and the ones I used earlier. She would have said they are the written equivalent of a rudely raised voice. But, Joel, they are my half siblings! (Miss R was not overfond of exclamation marks either, was she?) Their father, the Earl of Riverwhatever, was also MY father. You see? I cannot help but rudely raise my voice again. Moreover—oh, moreover, Joel—my father was married to my mother, who was Alice Snow before she married him. My real name, though I am not at all sure I shall ever be able to bring myself to use it since it does not sound at all like me, is Anastasia Westcott, or more accurately LADY Anastasia Westcott. My mother, who had left my father and taken me to live with her at a vicarage somewhere near Bristol—the vicar was her father, my grandfather—died when I was still an infant, and my father died just recently. I narrowly missed knowing him, though I suppose that was by his choice. After my mother’s death he took me to the orphanage in Bath and left me there.
Why, you may well ask, when I was his legitimate daughter and a lady? Well, partly, perhaps, it was because he had been estranged from my mother for a few years while her health declined. And partly—no, MAINLY, Joel—it was because a few months before her death he married the lady who was in the room there today as his widow, the countess—I believe an earl’s wife is a countess, is she not, though I am not absolutely certain. And he proceeded to have three children with her—the son and two daughters I mentioned above.
Can you guess what is coming? I daresay you can since you certainly do not lack for wits and it would not take much intelligence anyway to understand. That second marriage was bigamous. It was not a legal, valid marriage, and all children of the union are therefore illegitimate. The countess, who has recently lost the man she thought to be her husband—my father!—is not the countess after all and never was. And the very young man, her son, is not the earl. Her daughters are not Lady So-and-So. I must have heard their names but foolishly cannot remember them—my own sisters! I believe the young man is Harry. I am, in fact, my father’s only legitimate child.
Today I found the family for which I have always longed—my half brother and half sisters—and today I lost them again in the most cruel fashion. Can you just imagine the bewilderment and anguish in that room, Joel, when the truth was revealed? And since every sufferer needs a scapegoat, someone to blame, and my father, the real culprit, was no longer available, then of course all their hostility was turned upon me. The man who has now become the earl since my half brother does not qualify might have been their choice as scapegoat, but he was wise enough to declare himself quite averse to his change in status, though to do him justice I believe he meant it.
It did not occur to me to declare that I would really rather not be my father’s only legal child, though I did protest having been left the whole of his fortune while my brother and sisters have been totally disinherited. Oh yes, there is that too. Some parts of my father’s property were entailed and go to the new earl. Other parts are not entailed and come to me because my father’s only will was made just after my birth and left everything to me—and presumably to my mother if she had lived.
How could my father have behaved as he did, Joel? I do not suppose I will ever know the answer, though one lady there today said that he had always been a toad. I think she may have been his sister and therefore my aunt. Oh, how very dizzying this all is. I have not fully comprehended it yet. Can you tell? And can you blame me?
This is turning into a very long missive, but I had to write to someone or burst. And you were my obvious choice. What are best friends for, after all, but to burden with all one’s woes? Some people would not call them woes, would they? I have no idea how much I am now worth, but it must be something, do you not think, or the word fortune would not have been used. I hope it will be enough, anyway, to allow me to send this very long letter. It will cost the earth.