She followed Brumford from the room, and no one made any move to stop her. Everyone filed upstairs in an unnatural silence. Avery found the solicitor and the heiress still in the hall when he emerged last from the room.

“There is a great deal of business to be discussed, my lady,” Brumford was saying, rubbing his hands together. “It would be altogether more convenient if you were to remain in London. I took the liberty of reserving you a suite of rooms at the Pulteney for an indefinite period as well as the services of Miss Knox as chaperone. The carriage is at the door. I will be happy to send you back there if you do not wish to go up to the drawing room with the Duke of Netherby.”

She looked consideringly at Avery. “No,” she said. “I need to be alone, and I believe the other people who were here this morning need to be able to talk freely without the encumbrance of my presence. I can walk back to the hotel, though, sir. I am far more accustomed to walking than to riding in a carriage.”

An alien creature, indeed.

Brumford made a suitably horrified response, and Avery strolled past them and outside, to where a carriage did indeed wait, complete with a large, hatchet-faced woman inside, who looked more like a prison guard than a chaperone. Brumford stood back with much bowing and scraping as Avery offered his hand to help Lady Anastasia in. She ignored it and entered unassisted. Perhaps she had not seen it—or him. She sat beside the chaperone and gazed forward.

Avery reentered the house and proceeded upstairs to the drawing room and the Westcott family, minus its newfound member—its wealthiest member.

Even he could not complain that this morning had been a crashing bore.

Five

Dear Joel,

Do you remember how Miss Rutledge’s too-oft-uttered repertoire of wise sayings used to make us groan and cross our eyes at each other? One we always particularly hated was “Beware what you wish for—your wish may be granted.” It seemed so cruel, did it not, when our dreams were so very precious to us? But she was right!

I have wished and wished all my life, just as you have and almost all the other children with whom we grew up and whom we teach now, that I knew who I was, that I could discover that I came of distinguished parents, and that I would be taken at last to the bosom of my rightful family and be showered with riches, not necessarily all of them monetary. Oh, Joel, my dream came true today, except that it seems more like a nightmare at this precise moment.

I am writing to you from my private sitting room at the Pulteney Hotel—I do believe it is one of the grandest London has to offer. It seems like a palace to me.

Were you told about Miss Knox, the chaperone appointed me for my journey? I daresay you were, and by more than one person. She is still with me. She has withdrawn to her own bedchamber, though she has left the door ajar between the two rooms, presumably so that she may feel she is keeping proper guard over me and is doing the job for which she was hired. She is a very silent person. Today, though, I am thankful for that fact.

This morning I was taken to a vast mansion on a regal square with a park at the center of it in surely the most exclusive part of London. As soon as I set foot inside the door, I was promptly ordered by the most frightening man I have ever seen to leave again—he turned out to be the owner of the house and A DUKE!

But after it was established that I really was in the right place, I was shown into a room where thirteen other people waited. One of them—she turned out to be A DUCHESS—instructed the very superior butler to remove me, but again it was confirmed that I was supposed to be there.

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.