“We will go up to the drawing room, where your family is waiting to meet you,” the duchess, her aunt, said. “There is so much to be discussed that one scarcely knows where to begin, but begin we must. Lifford, take Lady Anastasia’s cloak and bonnet.”
A few moments later Anna walked beside her up the stairs while the duke came behind. They turned up the left branch from the half landing and at the top entered a large chamber that must overlook the street and was bright with afternoon sunlight. The fact that all this was hers would perhaps have taken Anna’s breath away if the people gathered in the room had not done it first. All of them had been present yesterday, and all of them were now silent—again—and turned to watch her.
The duchess undertook to make the introductions. “Anastasia,” she said, indicating first the elderly lady who was seated beside the fireplace, “this is the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, your grandmother. She is your father’s mother, as I am your father’s sister. Beside her is Lady Matilda Westcott, my elder sister, your aunt.” She indicated another couple farther back in the room, the woman seated, the man standing behind her chair. “Lord and Lady Molenor—your uncle Thomas and aunt Mildred, my younger sister. They have three boys, your cousins, but they are all at school. And standing over by the window are the Earl of Riverdale, Alexander, your second cousin, with his mother, Mrs. Westcott, Cousin Althea, and his sister, Lady Overfield, Cousin Elizabeth.”
It was all too dizzying and too much to be comprehended. All these people, all these aristocrats, were her relatives. But the only thing her mind could grasp clearly was that the people she most wished to see were not there.
“But where are my sisters and brother,” she asked, “and their mother?”
Everyone within her line of vision looked identically shocked.
“Oh, you will not be embarrassed by their presence, Anastasia,” the duchess assured her. “Viola left for the country this morning with Camille and Abigail—for Hinsford Manor, your home in Hampshire, that is. They will not remain there longer than a few days, however. Viola will take her daughters to Bath to live with her mother, their grandmother, and she herself will take up residence with her brother in Dorset. He is a clergyman and a widower. He and Viola have always been dearly fond of each other.”
“They have gone?” Anna felt suddenly cold despite the sunshine. “But I had hoped to meet them here. I had hoped to get to know them. I had hoped they would get to know me. I had hoped . . . they would . . . wish it.”
She felt very foolish in the brief silence that followed. How could she have expected any such thing? Her very existence had ended the world as they knew it yesterday.
“And the young man, my half brother?” she asked.
“Harry has disappeared,” the duchess told her, “and Avery refuses to search for him until tomorrow, assuming he has not returned of his own volition by then. You need not worry about him, however. Avery will see to his future. He was Harry’s appointed guardian when he was still the Earl of Riverdale.”
“It is my understanding,” the duke said, “that I inherited the guardianship of Harry himself from my late esteemed father, not just that of the Earl of Riverdale. I would rather dislike finding myself with Cousin Alexander as a ward. I daresay he would like it even less.”
“Oh, yes, he would indeed, Avery,” the new earl’s mother said. The Duke of Netherby was by now sprawled with casual elegance in a chair in a far corner of the room, Anna saw, his elbows on the arms, his fingers steepled. Miss Rutledge would have told him to sit up straight with his feet together and flat on the floor.
“Come and stand here, Anastasia,” the dowager countess, her grandmother, said, indicating the floor in front of her chair, “and let me have a good look at you.”
Anna came and stood while everyone, it seemed, had a good look at her. The silence seemed several minutes long, though it probably lasted no longer than half a minute at most.
“You have good deportment, at least,” the dowager said at last, “and you speak without any discernible regional accent. You look, however, like a particularly lowly governess.”
“I am lower even than that, ma’am,” Anna said. “Or higher, depending upon one’s perspective. I have the great privilege of being teacher to a school of orphans, whose minds are inferior to no one’s.”
The aunt who was beside the dowager’s chair gasped and actually recoiled.
“Oh, you may sheathe your claws,” the dowager said. “I was merely stating fact. It is not your fault you are as you are. It is entirely my son’s. You may call me Grandmama, for that is what I am to you. But if you did not call me that, ma’am would be incorrect. What would be correct?” She waited for an answer.
“I am afraid, Grandmama,” Anna said, “that any answer I gave would be a guess. I do not know. My lady, perhaps?”