by Balogh, Mary
But even as he held that thought he wandered to the window of his room to look down upon the innyard. He smiled and shook his head in amused disbelief as he witnessed all the bustle. There were two grand carriages, one of them with a crest—the ducal crest?—emblazoned boldly upon the door that was visible to him. A third, somewhat more humble conveyance—though it was merely a relative point—must belong to the group too, since Gabriel was not aware of any other arrival within the past hour. The yard was teeming with large men, all clad in the same gaudy livery. The cavalcade must look like a traveling circus when it was strung out along the road.
Lady Jessica Archer had more than a majordomo and a maid for protection, then. She was as well guarded as a queen. She was a precious commodity. And she had all the accompanying haughtiness one might expect of such a woman. The inclination of her head when she had said thank you had spoken volumes about a life of aristocratic privilege and entitlement. He might have been a worm as easily as a man under one of those fine kid leather shoes.
How shockingly indiscreet it had been of the landlord to reveal her full identity in order to persuade him to give up the private parlor for which he had paid. If the man had only realized it, Gabriel would have been far more willing to relinquish it to a Miss Nobody-in-Particular than to the privileged daughter of a duke. It was what came of having spent the last thirteen of his thirty-two years in America, he supposed.
Lady Jessica Archer.
Sister of a duke.
Arrogant. Entitled. Unlikable, at least upon first encounter.
But . . .
But considered another way, she was perhaps perfect.
So perfect that he might marry her.
He chuckled aloud at the absurdity of the thought.
It felt strange, unfamiliar, to be back in England. Of course, he had been gone all his adult life—since he was nineteen, in fact. But he liked America and had had no intention until recently of leaving it. When he had arrived in Boston, using his mother’s maiden name of Thorne, he had had no more than the clothes on his back, one small bag, and only enough money to pay for room and board for a couple of weeks if he found somewhere cheap. He had called upon Cyrus Thorne, a widowed cousin of his mother, and the man had given him employment as a junior clerk in one of his warehouses and a dark little room in the cellar of his home in which to sleep. From those lowly beginnings Gabriel had proved his worth and risen to become his cousin’s right-hand man by the time he was twenty-five. He had also been moved upstairs to a spacious room of his own. Most important, Cyrus had officially adopted him as a son since his marriage had produced no children before his wife died. Gabriel’s name had been legally changed to Thorne, and he had become the official heir to everything Cyrus possessed.
It had been a dizzying rise in fortune, but Gabriel had given hard work and gratitude in return, and affection too. He had come to understand why Cyrus had been a great favorite of his mother and why her heart had been broken when he had decided to go to America to seek his fortune. Gabriel’s father had told him about that. His mother had died giving birth to his stillborn sister. And Cyrus had had fond memories of her too.
A little over a year after adopting Gabriel, Cyrus had died from a fall at the dockside during the loading of one of his ships. It was an accident that ought not to have been particularly serious but had in fact proved fatal.
Shockingly, Gabriel was a very wealthy man by the time he was twenty-six and had huge responsibilities for one so young. He owned a large home, a thriving import-export business, and what amounted to a small fleet of ships. He had several hundred employees. He was a somebody in Boston society and much sought after, particularly by matrons with daughters in search of successful young men of fortune and industrious habits.
He had enjoyed the attention. He had dallied with a few of those daughters, though never to the point at which he felt committed to offering for any of them. He had enjoyed his life in general. The work suited him and filled his days with challenge and activity. Boston was bustling with energy and optimism. Within a few years he had expanded the business, added another ship to his fleet, and made himself wealthier than his cousin had ever been. In addition, he had raised wages for all his workers and improved working conditions. He had given his employees, even the lowliest of them, benefits to cover doctors’ fees and lost wages when they were sick or had been hurt on the job.
He had been happy, though he had never thought to use that exact word at the time. He had been too busy living the life that hard work and sheer good fortune had brought him. Yet he would have given it all to have Cyrus back. It had taken him a long time to recover from the grief of losing him.
He might have forgotten about his life in England, or at least let it slide into distant memory, if it had not been for the letters that came two, sometimes three, times a year from Mary Beck. She was the only person to whom he had written after his arrival in America. He had known she would worry about him if he did not. And he had felt too the need to keep some frail thread of connection to his past.
Despite himself, he had read her letters avidly for the snippets of local news she passed on. He had looked, though he had never asked, for some hint, any hint, that the truth of what had happened before he left had become generally known and had not continued to be falsified. He had sworn Mary to secrecy in his first letter, though it had been unnecessary. She had said nothing about him to anyone, she had assured him in her return letter, and would never do so under any circumstances. He had trusted her word at the time and still did.
Perhaps he ought not to have begun the correspondence. It might be better to have known nothing, to have broken all ties, to have been content to be dead to everyone and everything he had left behind. Even Mary.
The year after Cyrus’s untimely passing, Mary’s spring letter had brought word of three other shocking deaths. Her sister and Julius—her brother-in-law—and nephew had died the previous summer, just after she had written him her last letter of the year. An outbreak of typhus had taken a few other people from the neighborhood as well, though it had not touched Mary herself, living as she did, almost as a hermit in her small cottage on one corner of the family estate.
That had been astounding news in itself, but there had been repercussions that were eventually to complicate Gabriel’s life and force his return to England. For Mary’s brother-in-law and Gabriel’s uncle, Julius Rochford, had also been the Earl of Lyndale. Philip, his only son and his heir, though married, had had no sons of his own—no legitimate ones, at least. And he had predeceased his father by one day. Gabriel, son and only child of the late Arthur Rochford, Julius’s younger brother, was therefore his uncle’s successor.
He was the Earl of Lyndale.
He had not been happy about it or about the death of his aunt, who had been sweet though dithery and a person of no account in her husband’s household. He had regretted the death of his uncle too. He had not grieved the loss of his cousin at all.
He might have ignored his changed status for the rest of his life, and had done so for six years after receiving word of it in Mary’s letter. No one knew where he was—except Mary herself, and she would not tell, having given her promise. If a search had been made for him, and he did not doubt that there had been some halfhearted attempt to discover the whereabouts of the new earl or whether indeed he still lived, then it had failed to turn up any trace of him. When he had taken passage for America, it had seemed a bit of an unnecessary precaution to use his mother’s name instead of his own. As it had turned out, though, it had been a wise thing to do. After a certain number of years—was it seven?—he would be declared officially dead and the next heir in line would succeed him to the title and inherit everything that went with it. That would be his second cousin, Manley Rochford, whom Gabriel remembered with no more fondness than he had felt for Philip. But . . .
May Manley and all his descendants live happily ever after. Or not. Gabriel did not care either way. All that had happened was an
cient history. He wanted nothing to do with the title or the property or the pomp and circumstance to which he was now entitled as a British peer of the realm. He was perfectly content with his life as it was and wanted nothing to do with England.
Except that there was Mary. His aunt’s sister. Mary, with her clubfoot and crooked spine and deformed hand and plain looks. Mary, with her little thatched cottage and her flower garden of breathtaking beauty and her vegetable patch and herb garden and her cats and dogs—all of them strays that she insisted had adopted her. Mary, with her books and her embroidery and her incomprehensible contentment with life.
Mary, now facing the threat of eviction.
Manley Rochford, heir to the title after Gabriel, was already acting upon his prospects. He had within the last year moved his family to Brierley Hall, as though by right, and taken over the running of the estate. He had dismissed the longtime steward, though he had no legal right yet to do so, and more than half the servants, indoor and out, in order to replace them with his own. His son, apparently a vain young man, was lording it about in the neighborhood. All of which facts in themselves would have elicited no more than a shrug from Gabriel. They were welcome, as far as he was concerned.
But . . . Manley had gone a step too far. He had given Mary Beck notice to leave his property by the time he became earl. She was not a member of the Rochford family, he had pointed out to her, and she had no claim whatsoever upon his charity. She was, moreover, a detriment to the neighborhood, where it was generally believed she had used witchcraft to bring the plague of typhus down upon her sister and brother-in-law and nephew, and upon a number of her neighbors too. He must consider the safety of his own family, he had informed her. And he must think of his neighbors, who were afraid to set foot upon Brierley land while Mary lived upon it.
None of which is true except the fact that I am not a Rochford, Gabriel, she had written in a letter to him. I know it is not. The neighbors are not so superstitious or cruel. But I must leave anyway. Please come home.
It was the only time she had ever put any pressure upon him to do anything at all. She might have exerted much further pressure, of course, by divulging her knowledge of where he was to be found in order to protect herself. But Gabriel knew she would not do that. Not Mary.
He had considered bringing her to America, setting her up in a comfortable apartment of her own in his home, giving her a part of his sizable garden, or even all of it if she wished, for her own use. But the journey might well kill her. And he could not imagine her being happy anywhere but in her own little cottage, where she had lived for as long as he had known her. And what would she do with all her strays? It might seem a trivial consideration, but they were Mary’s family, as dear to her as husband and children would be to another woman.
He had considered finding a good agent in London and putting a new steward of his own in at Brierley, someone who would be capable of making sound decisions and exerting his authority while reporting to Gabriel once or twice a year. But doing that would mean revealing that he, Gabriel, was still alive. And if that was revealed, then he would be allowed no more peace in America. He would be expected to return home to England to take up his inheritance and fulfill his duties and responsibilities as a peer of the realm. Even if he held firm and refused to go, the truth would surely be found out in Boston, and everything in his life would change. Probably not for the better. He enjoyed being respected, even courted. He would not enjoy being fawned upon.
That last letter from Mary had turned out to be life altering. He had realized it from the moment he had broken the seal and read it. It had forced him to make the choice between the life he had built in America and the life he had left behind in England. The choice ought to have been ridiculously easy to make.
But there was Mary.
He had reluctantly put the business in the hands of Miles Perrott, his assistant and close friend, whom he would trust with his own life—and with the running of the business. He had made him a partner, leased out his house for two years, made numerous other arrangements, all within a couple of months, and sailed for home with no more than a few months to go before he was officially dead.
A strange choice of word, that—home. His home was in Boston. Once he had established his authority in England and made some sort of arrangements for the smooth running of all he owned there, he could return, he had told himself as he watched America disappear over the horizon, to be replaced by endless expanses of ocean. But making arrangements, he had admitted to himself during the endless days and nights of the voyage, was going to entail far more than he wanted to believe. For though even in Boston he would wish for an heir to inherit the business and the fortune he had amassed, here the need was of far more urgency. For in England he would not have the option of making a will and leaving everything to anyone he chose. In England there were rules and laws, at least for the aristocracy. If as the Earl of Lyndale he died without male issue—and both his father and Cyrus had died suddenly and early, not to mention his uncle and cousin—then the title and entailed properties and any fortune that went with them would go after all to Manley Rochford and his descendants: specifically that son who was already lording it over all who lived in the vicinity of Brierley.
Gabriel had not known Manley well when he was a boy—he had always kept his distance. But what he had known he had abhorred. The feeling had been mutual. The son sounded like a conceited ass. Gabriel did not know him. He had been a mere boy when Gabriel sailed for America.
His need to marry was an urgent one, and he had come to realize it long before the voyage was at an end and he set foot again upon English soil. It was not a happy thought. Nothing about this whole business was happy. But he no longer had the leisure to look about him for as long as it would take to find that one woman who would suit him and offer the expectation of a life of contentment. He needed to marry—and soon.
And his bride must be someone unexceptionable. An earl was not at liberty to marry a scullery maid or a shopkeeper’s daughter or . . . Well. He must choose someone who could fulfill the duties of Countess of Lyndale as though born to the role. She must be someone wellborn, well connected, refined; able to deal with difficult relatives, difficult servants, difficult neighbors . . . difficult everything.
As far as Gabriel knew, his name had not been cleared all those years ago, though he had never asked Mary outright. He might be facing hostility at Brierley, to say the least. He certainly needed a woman who was no timid mouse, one who would command respect by the mere expectation that it would be accorded her. It would help too, and not just for his personal gratification, if she had some beauty, grace, and elegance. And a few more years of age and experience than a young girl fresh from the schoolroom would have.
More important than anything else, he needed someone who could give him sons. Though that was the one thing that could never be guaranteed, of course.
And now it had struck him, as though as a joke, that Lady Jessica Archer might well be the perfect candidate.
Was it a joke?
He really had not taken a liking to her. But he would admit that his hasty judgment might not be a fair one. He knew that from his professional life.
She was almost certainly on her way to London.
And so was he.
Perhaps he would have the chance to get a second look at her.
Three
Jessica rather enjoyed being back in London now that she was here. The weather had warmed even though it was not officially summer yet, and so far there had been more sunny days than wet ones. There had been shopping to do, since fashions changed with dizzying regularity, and last year’s gowns would look sad if worn to this year’s most glittering ton events and last year’s bonnets would stand out like a sore thumb if worn to the daily parade in Hyde Park. There were friends to be called upon and a winter’s worth of news to be caught up on.
There was family to visit and be visited by. Some of the Westcotts had been in Gloucestershire for S
eth’s christening, of course, but others had not. Either way, it did feel lovely, as it did every year, to be surrounded by so many family members in close proximity to one another.
This Season would be more special than any other, if everything went according to plan. She would marry and be settled at last. But . . . Well, what she had so sensibly planned while she was at Rose Cottage seemed a little cheerless now that she was about to put her plan into action.
Lady Parley’s ball in honor of the coming out of her eldest daughter was to be the first truly grand entertainment of the Season, and Jessica was pleased that she had arrived in time to attend it. There had even been time to have the first of her new ball gowns finished and delivered to Archer House, Avery’s home on Hanover Square. It was also her favorite, its narrow yet flowing lines both elegant and flattering to her figure, she believed, its color a deep shade of rose pink she had been looking for in vain for years. Her hand had already been engaged for three sets of dances—the opening set with Mr. Gladdley, who could always be relied upon to make her laugh; the second with Sir Bevin Romley, who for all his large girth and creaking corsets was light on his feet; and the first waltz with Lord Jennings, who despite having no conversation whatsoever beyond his horses always performed the steps with flair.
Jessica had kept all other sets free. There was always the hope, after all, that a new Season would bring new people to town—specifically new gentlemen. And there was always the chance that one of them would be tall, dark, and handsome. And eligible. And interested in her. This year in particular he would be very welcome indeed, this mythical man who would sweep her off her feet and rescue her from sensible plans.
Besides, if she did not keep at least a few sets free until the ball was already in progress, she would never hear the end of it from her disgruntled group of admirers, who would collectively feign heartbreak and heartache and any number of other silly woes. She derived great amusement from them all. It was impossible to take them seriously when they tried so hard to outdo one another in their ardor—most of it deliberately theatrical and not really meant to be taken seriously anyway. Which left the question: Were any of them serious about her? Was she in danger of being left on the shelf after all? But she would not believe that any such ghastly fate awaited her.