Someone perfect, p.36
Someone Perfect, page 36
“That will be satisfactory,” she said.
* * *
* * *
Anna Snow had been brought to the orphanage in Bath when she was not quite four years old. She had no real memory of her life before that beyond a few brief and disjointed flashes—of someone always coughing, for example, or of a lych-gate that was dark and a bit frightening inside whenever she was called upon to pass through it alone, and of kneeling on a window ledge and looking down upon a graveyard, and of crying inconsolably inside a carriage while someone with a gruff, impatient voice told her to hush and behave like a big girl.
She had been at the orphanage ever since, though she was now twenty-five. Most of the other children—there were usually about forty of them—left when they were fourteen or fifteen, after suitable employment had been found for them. But Anna had lingered on, first to help out as housemother to a dormitory of girls and a sort of secretary to Miss Ford, the matron, and then as the schoolteacher when Miss Rutledge, the teacher who had taught her, married a clergyman and moved away to Devonshire. She was even paid a modest salary. However, the expenses of her continued stay at the orphanage, now in a small room of her own, were still provided by the unknown benefactor who had paid them from the start. She had been told that they would continue to be paid as long as she remained.
Anna considered herself fortunate. She had grown up in an orphanage, it was true, with not even a full identity to call her own, since she did not know who her parents were, but in the main it was not a charity institution. Almost all her fellow orphans were supported through their growing years by someone—usually anonymous, though some knew who they were and why they were there. Usually it was because their parents had died and there was no other family member able or willing to take them in. Anna did not dwell upon the loneliness of not knowing her own story. Her material needs were taken care of. Miss Ford and her staff were generally kind. Most of the children were easy enough to get along with, and those who were not could be avoided. A few were close friends, or had been during her growing years. If there had been a lack of love in her life, or of that type of love one associated with a family, then she did not particularly miss it, having never consciously known it.
Or so she always told herself.
She was content with her life and was only occasionally restless with the feeling that surely there ought to be more, that perhaps she should be making a greater effort to live her life. She had been offered marriage by three different men—the shopkeeper where she went occasionally, when she could afford it, to buy a book; one of the governors of the orphanage, whose wife had recently died and left him with four young children; and Joel Cunningham, her lifelong best friend. She had rejected all three offers for varying reasons and wondered sometimes if it had been foolish to do so, as there were not likely to be many more offers, if any. The prospect of a continuing life of spinsterhood sometimes seemed dreary.
Joel was with her when the letter arrived.
She was tidying the schoolroom after dismissing the children for the day. The monitors for the week—John Davies and Ellen Payne—had collected the slates and chalk and the counting frames. But while John had stacked the slates neatly on the cupboard shelf allotted for them and put all the chalk away in the tin and replaced the lid, Ellen had shoved the counting frames haphazardly on top of paintbrushes and palettes on the bottom shelf instead of arranging them in their appointed place side by side on the shelf above so as not to bend the rods or damage the beads. The reason she had put them in the wrong place was obvious. The second shelf was occupied by the water pots used to swill paint brushes and an untidy heap of paint-stained cleaning rags.
“Joel,” Anna said, a note of long suffering in her voice, “could you at least try to get your pupils to put things away where they belong after an art class? And to clean the water pots first? Look! One of them even still has water in it. Very dirty water.”
Joel was sitting on the corner of the battered teacher’s desk, one booted foot braced on the floor, the other swinging free. His arms were crossed over his chest. He grinned at her.
“But the whole point of being an artist,” he said, “is to be a free spirit, to cast aside restricting rules and draw inspiration from the universe. My job is to teach my pupils to be true artists.”
She straightened up from the cupboard and directed a speaking glance his way. “What utter rot and nonsense,” she said.
He laughed outright. “Anna, Anna,” he said. “Here, let me take that pot from you before you burst with indignation or spill it down your dress.”
But before he could say anything more, the classroom door was flung open without the courtesy of a knock to admit Bertha Reed, a thin, flaxen-haired fourteen-year-old who acted as Miss Ford’s helper now that she was old enough. She was bursting with excitement and waving a folded paper in one raised hand.
“There is a letter for you, Miss Snow,” she half shrieked. “It was delivered by special messenger from London and Miss Ford would have brought it herself but Tommy is bleeding all over her sitting room and no one can find Nurse Jones. Maddie punched him in the nose.”
“It is high time someone did,” Joel said, strolling closer to Anna. “I suppose he was pulling one of her braids again.”
Anna scarcely heard. A letter? From London? By special messenger? For her?
“Whoever can it be from, Miss Snow?” Bertha screeched, apparently not particularly concerned about Tommy and his bleeding nose. “Who do you know in London? No, don’t tell me—that ought to have been whom. Whom do you know in London? I wonder what they are writing about. And it came by special messenger, all that way. It must have cost a fortune. Oh, do open it.”
Her blatant inquisitiveness might have seemed impertinent, but really, it was so rare for any of them to receive a letter that word always spread very quickly and everyone wanted to know all about it. Occasionally someone who had left both the orphanage and Bath to work elsewhere would write, and the recipient would almost invariably share the contents with everyone else. Such missives were kept as prized possessions and read over and over until they were virtually threadbare.
Anna did not recognize the handwriting, which was both bold and precise. It was a masculine hand, she felt sure. The paper felt thick and expensive. It did not look like a personal letter.
“Oliver is in London,” Bertha said wistfully. “But I don’t suppose it can be from him, can it? His writing does not look anything like that, and why would he write to you anyway? The four times he has written since he left here, it was to me. And he is not going to send any letter by special messenger, is he?”
Oliver Jamieson had been apprenticed to a bootmaker in London two years ago at the age of fourteen and had promised to send for Bertha and marry her as soon as he got on his feet. Twice each year since then he had faithfully written a five- or six-line letter in large, careful handwriting. Bertha had shared his sparse news on each occasion and wept over the letters until it was a wonder they were still legible. There were three years left in his apprenticeship before he could hope to be on his feet and able to support a wife. They were both very young, but the separation did seem cruel. Anna always found herself hoping that Oliver would remain faithful to his childhood sweetheart.
“Are you going to turn it over and over in your hands and hope it will divulge its secrets without your having to break the seal?” Joel asked.
Stupidly, Anna’s hands were trembling. “Perhaps there is some mistake,” she said. “Perhaps it is not for me.”
He came up behind her and looked over her shoulder. “Miss Anna Snow,” he said. “It certainly sounds like you. I do not know any other Anna Snows. Do you, Bertha?”
“I do not, Mr. Cunningham,” she said after pausing to think. “But whatever can it be about?”
Anna slid her thumb beneath the seal and broke it. And yes, indeed, the paper was a thick, costly vellum. It was not a long letter. It was from Somebody Brumford—she could not read the first name, though it began with a J. He was a solicitor. She read through the letter once, swallowed, and then read it again more slowly.
“The day after tomorrow,” she murmured.
“In a private chaise,” Joel added. He had been reading over her shoulder.
“What is the day after tomorrow?” Bertha demanded, her voice an agony of suspense. “What chaise?”
Anna looked at her blankly. “I am being summoned to London to discuss my future,” she said. There was a faint buzzing in her ears.
“Oh! By who?” Bertha asked, her eyes as wide as saucers. “By whom, I mean.”
“Mr. J. Brumford, a solicitor,” Anna said.
“Josiah, I think that says,” Joel said. “Josiah Brumford. He is sending a private chaise to fetch you, and you are to pack a bag for at least a few days.”
“To London?” Bertha’s voice was breathless with awe.
“Whatever am I to do?” Anna’s mind seemed to have stopped working. Or, rather, it was working, but it was whirring out of control, like the innards of a broken clock.
“What you are to do, Anna,” Joel said, pushing a chair up behind her knees and setting his hands on her shoulders to press her gently down onto it, “is pack a bag for a few days and then go to London to discuss your future.”
“But what future?” she asked.
“That is what is to be discussed,” he pointed out.
The buzzing in her ears grew louder.
Read on for an excerpt from Mary Balogh’s
Remember Love
A Ravenswood Novel
Coming in 2022
Two
One person who was waiting with more eagerness than usual for the Ravenswood fete was Gwyneth Rhys, daughter of Sir Ifor and Lady Rhys. A gentleman of Welsh birth and upbringing, Sir Ifor had inherited his title, land, and fortune from an uncle who had never married. At the time Sir Ifor had owned land in Wales too, and he had a beloved younger brother with no land of his own and a growing young family to feed. With the full knowledge and agreement of his wife, Sir Ifor had sold his land and home to his brother for five guineas and moved to England with his wife and Idris, his infant son. The following year Gwyneth had been born.
Sir Ifor missed Wales, for he had a large extended family of relatives there and a wide circle of friends and had lived a rich life in his home country. Wales returned the sentiment and missed him too, or at least the southwestern part of it in which he had grown up did. For as well as being a sociable, good-hearted gentleman, he was an organist of considerable talent and local renown. And he was a singer and a conductor of choirs. Music was in his soul, as was the case with many of his fellow Welshmen. And Welshwomen too, of course—that went without saying. He had brought his passion and his talents with him to England, however. Having discovered that there was no sizable pipe organ within an hour of his home in any direction, he had purchased one and had it installed in the village church, where he played it for Sunday services and upon numerous other occasions too.
He had taken over the church choir, all boys, and had trained them until they sounded like junior angels instead of a pack of disgruntled growling dogs who would not have recognized a tune if one had tapped them on the shoulder. He had added a few girls to their number despite the misgivings of the elderly man who was vicar at the time. Sir Ifor had fixed the man with a long stare, and the vicar had capitulated rather than embroiling himself in an argument concerning the inferior status of women in the Church. “These volatile Welsh persons must be humored,” he was rumored to have explained to a deputation of elders who had called upon him to question his decision. Sir Ifor had trained an all-women’s choir too and a mixed choir, and occasionally an everyone-together choir. So far he had been unable to gather enough men for a choir of their own despite his rapturous descriptions of the male voice choirs in Wales.
Most of the residents of Boscombe and its surrounding areas considered Sir Ifor Rhys something of a local treasure. For everyone who did join his choirs—even the boys, for the love of God—actually enjoyed going to practice. Sir Ifor made them all laugh. More important, he made them want to sing. He convinced them that they could sing even though they suffered from that dreadful handicap of being English. And if they genuinely could not—there were, after all, a few people who were born with the affliction of tone deafness—there was nothing that could be done about it except to let them sing anyway.
It was not just Sir Ifor people valued, however. Lady Rhys—Bronwyn to her husband and close friends—had a lovely soprano voice, and Idris was a fine tenor. Gwyneth, after being dismissed for a few years by her fellow sopranos as one of those rare Welsh persons without a distinguished singing voice, had been discovered as she grew older to have a rich alto voice. But even apart from that, she was a fine harpist, though she was not heard nearly as often as many people would have liked because, as the instrument was big and heavy, it could not simply be hauled about for all the impromptu concerts with which people entertained themselves at private gatherings.
Fortunately for everyone in the neighborhood, Sir Ifor had never expressed any intention of returning to his original home, which no longer belonged to him anyway. His English house had been named Cartref—the Welsh word for home—and that was exactly what it was to him and his Bronwyn. As for Wales, it was not that far away and could be visited at any time, despite the deplorable condition of the roads. And visit it he did. He spent a few weeks of every summer there with his family.
Gwyneth had turned eighteen a few months ago, just after Easter. She was no longer a girl but a woman, and her thoughts had turned inevitably toward her future—toward romance and love and matrimony, that was. Not that she had not thought of those things before, of course. Like most of her female friends, she had dreamed of boys and a happily-ever-after since she was twelve, maybe even younger. But there was a difference now. She was eighteen, and everyone would fully expect her to be seriously contemplating courtship and marriage. The young men she knew, and there were quite a few hereabouts, had begun to eye her with increased interest, just as she was eyeing them. Last summer, even though she had been only seventeen at the time, a few young neighbors and friends of her uncle and aunt and cousins in Wales had begun to look upon her with an interest they had not shown to any marked degree before. She had looked back with an answering awareness that they were no longer boys but young men. Attractive young men in some cases.
There was one problem, though. Or perhaps two.
One of those young men was Nicholas Ware, the Earl of Stratton’s second son, who was just a year older than she. He was truly gorgeous to look upon, though she had fully noticed it only recently. Before then he had been merely her very best friend. He was good-natured and sociable and a huge favorite with all her friends, some of whom claimed to suffer heart palpitations if he should merely happen to glance their way. He was not a flirt, however, and was perhaps not even aware of the effect he was having upon the young female population of their neighborhood.
Nicholas had been Gwyneth’s friend for as far back as she could remember. A closer friend, in fact, than her female companions, who as children and growing girls had not been free to come visiting whenever they wished and, even when they did come, had been expected to remain in the drawing room with the adults or at least to stay somewhere within their sight while behaving with ladylike decorum.
Nicholas had come riding over to Cartref frequently, and it was for Gwyneth’s company he came. They had spent hours and days of their childhood chasing each other and playing hide and seek among the trees and skipping rope and tumbling and climbing trees and chasing sheep—though that last was strictly forbidden and earned them a scolding if they were caught. They had talked and laughed endlessly and occasionally squabbled. She had ridden with him, at first on her pony while a groom hovered close by, and then on her horse, neatly seated on the sidesaddle she despised, or bareback and astride whenever she could avoid the scrutiny of that same groom.
As they grew older, Nicholas had continued to come when he was not away at school. They had talked and talked, sitting up in a tree if it was a summer day, shut up in the parlor on colder days. She had told him about the freedom she always enjoyed when she was in Wales, running along the wide sandy beaches with her cousins and their friends, climbing the cliff faces, even swimming in the sea and diving beneath the foam of the waves. He complained to her of the tedium of school and the tyranny of the masters there and the bullying of the older boys, whom he delighted in defying. He even told her about the girls he and his friends would see occasionally despite the cloisterlike nature of the school, and of sneaking out occasionally to meet them—only to be disappointed by their giggling silliness.
Gwyneth’s female friends were envious of her, for the gorgeous Nicholas Ware had eyes for no one but her. Yet to Gwyneth he felt a little like Idris did. Like a brother, that was, except more so. She tried sometimes to see him as her friends did and succeeded for a few moments. He was handsome and vibrant with life. Quite the stuff of romantic dreams, in fact. But then it was as though her eyes refocused and all she saw was Nick, her friend.
It was actually a little annoying.
He usually chose to sit beside her rather than anyone else at neighborhood parties and concerts, perhaps because conversation with each other never required any effort or because they shared the same sense of humor. He always asked her before anyone else to dance with him at the assemblies—once she was deemed old enough to dance at them at all, that was. They could often amuse themselves for hours on a chilly or a wet day, singing duets while she played the spinet or the harp in the parlor. Occasionally her father came in to make a suggestion, the most common being that a duet was made to be sung together, in harmony with each other, not attacked as though they were in a competition to see who could finish first.
