by Balogh, Mary
She was being unfair, she told herself. He was new to London. He was new to the social prominence of being heir to an earldom, though his father was not yet the earl. Last evening had been his first ton ball. He had told her so. He had probably been horribly nervous and had overcompensated for that fact. She must give him a chance to grow more at ease in the new life that was about to be his. She would like nothing better than to fall in love with him and marry him and live happily ever after as the Countess of Lyndale. The future countess. She must not consign his father to the grave just yet, poor man. Or the present earl, for that matter, though it was surely almost certain that he really was in his grave and had been for many years.
Yes, she would allow herself to fall in love with Mr. Rochford if she possibly could. But there was also this bouquet. There was something undeniably . . . ostentatious about its size. Perhaps he had merely ordered it but had not actually seen it. Perhaps if he had done so . . .
“What is amusing you?” Anna asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Jessica said, startled out of her musings. “Though I was thinking that if that bouquet was divided up into smaller ones, we could fill every room in the house quite adequately.”
Anna laughed again. “It was a very generous gift,” she said. “Ah. Was that the door knocker?”
They both listened and heard the sound of the heavy front doors being opened below them. Visitors? They were not expecting anyone. But soon there was the unmistakable sound of the butler’s footsteps approaching the drawing room.
“Mr. Rochford, perhaps?” Anna said, raising her eyebrows at Jessica.
The butler opened the door after tapping on it. “Mr. Thorne wishes to know if Lady Jessica is at home to visitors, Your Grace,” he said, addressing Anna.
“Mr. Thorne?” Anna frowned and turned her gaze upon Jessica.
“Lady Parley presented him to me last evening,” Jessica explained. “The American, Anna. Sir Trevor Vickers’s godson. But how strange of him to call here today. He requested the introduction yet did not ask me to dance. Mr. Dean’s set was about to begin, but there were numerous other sets after that.”
“Ah yes, I remember the gentleman,” Anna said. “Someone pointed him out to us. For some reason he appears to have caught the imagination of the ton. Perhaps because he is a fine figure of a man and there is some mystery about him. Are you at home to him?”
He had disconcertingly dark eyes. They made her uncomfortable. In two brief encounters she had been unable to identify the color of those eyes. Blue? Black? How could they be both? Yet they were. They were very penetrating eyes and seemed to look not just into hers but through them. Why on earth had he come here?
There was one way to find out, she supposed. Besides, she recalled that last evening Mr. Rochford had not been the only gentleman who had piqued her interest. Mr. Thorne had too, though surely only because of that earlier encounter when she had mistaken him for a cit. That was not altogether right, however. Her interest had been aroused last evening even before she recognized him. He was handsome. Well, sort of handsome. Attractive would be a more accurate word. Very attractive.
“Jessica?” Anna prompted.
“Show him up, by all means,” Jessica said, addressing Avery’s butler—and then wished, too late, that she had sent him back downstairs with a different answer.
A minute later Mr. Thorne stepped into the room, looking, as he had last evening, the epitome of elegance, in a dark green, form-fitting coat with buff pantaloons and shiny Hessian boots, both of which garments hugged powerful, shapely legs. His linen was white and crisp, the fall of his neckcloth neat and simpler than it had been last evening, as befitted daytime wear. A diamond pin of modest size winked from its folds. He looked larger, more imposing, than he had looked either last evening or back at the inn.
And yes, Jessica decided all within the span of the first second, he was very definitely attractive. More so than Mr. Rochford. But less handsome—if the two men were to be judged by facial features alone, that was. Facial features were not everything, though.
Anna had risen to her feet and was moving toward him, her right hand extended. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Thorne,” she said. “I am the Duchess of Netherby, Lady Jessica’s sister-in-law.”
“Your Grace,” he said, taking her hand and bowing over it—a slight bow, not a lavish one. He turned his eyes upon Jessica, who had also risen, though she had not moved away from her chair. “Lady Jessica.”
“Mr. Thorne,” she said, watching him as he took the seat Anna had indicated.
“I trust you enjoyed the ball last evening,” he said, addressing them both and holding up a staying hand when Anna lifted the teapot and looked inquiringly at him. “No, thank you, ma’am.”
“We did,” Jessica said. “Lord and Lady Parley must have been very gratified. They can boast in all truth today that their ball was a grand squeeze.”
“And I hope you enjoyed it too,” Anna said.
“Yes,” he agreed.
This, Jessica thought, would clearly be hard going. But he had come for a specific purpose, it seemed, and he got down to business without further ado.
“I wonder, Lady Jessica,” he said, turning his attention and the full intensity of that disturbingly dark gaze upon her, “if you are free tomorrow to drive out to Richmond Park with me. I have been told it is well worth a visit.”
Oh goodness.
“Alone, Mr. Thorne?” Anna raised her eyebrows while Jessica regarded him thoughtfully.
“In an open curricle, ma’am,” he said. “Ought I to have arranged a party? I have become unaccustomed to the English way of doing things.”
But he looked slightly amused, Jessica thought, as though there were something a bit funny about her needing a chaperon if she stepped out with him.
Would she go? She knew nothing more of him than his name and the facts that he was a relative of Lady Vickers and had recently returned from a lengthy stay in America. Any other gentleman, if he made so bold as to call upon her the day after making her formal acquaintance, would ask no more than that she drive in Hyde Park with him at the fashionable hour of the afternoon or that she reserve a dance for him at the next ball. Or he would send her flowers. Her mother would certainly have something to say about this invitation if she were here. So would Avery.
But good heavens, she was twenty-five years old. And he was not asking her to go to the ends of the earth with him. Or the moon.
But did she want to go? That was the only question that signified. “It must be all of two years since I was last in Richmond Park,” she began, but before she could say more the drawing room door opened and Avery strolled in.
He was still in his riding clothes, though he wore them, as he wore everything else, with a somewhat showy elegance. He had abandoned his outdoor garments. He was holding a quizzing glass in one hand, not as bejeweled as the one he had chosen last evening, though really there was no great difference. He wore rings on multiple fingers of each hand, and his nails were perfectly manicured. He might have been considered foppish, Jessica had often thought, had it not been for the air of authority and masculinity and even danger that he wore as surely as he wore his perfectly tailored clothes. And, as she had so recently thought, there was never anything vulgar about Avery’s appearance.
His eyes paused upon Mr. Thorne for a moment before moving to Anna. “We have returned,” he said. “No falls and no broken bones, you will be happy to know, my love. Merely a few sulks that we could not continue riding for yet another hour.”
“You are sulking?” Anna asked.
“Ah,” he said, raising the glass halfway to his eye. “Yes. I was not as precise as I might have been, was I? Josephine has gone upstairs to paint, because it is what she wanted to do all along. She did not want to go riding. It is stupid. She did it merely to humor me.”
“Oh dear,” Anna said, smiling. “May I make Mr. Thorne known to you? My husband, Mr. Thorne.”
M
r. Thorne had stood to make his bow.
“You were pointed out to me last evening,” Avery said, regarding their visitor with lazy eyes. “But there was no chance to make your acquaintance. You are a kinsman of Lady Vickers, I understand?” He looked steadily at Mr. Thorne, his quizzing glass halfway to his eye.
“Her second or third cousin, possibly with a remove involved,” Mr. Thorne said. “I never was sure of the exact connection. We are a large, far-flung family.”
“As far-flung as America, I understand,” Avery said. “But you have returned.”
“I have,” Mr. Thorne said agreeably, and Jessica was again given the impression that he was amused. “And Lady Vickers has been obliging enough to make my return known to some of her peers, though I have been gone, alas, too long to remember any of them, if, indeed, I ever met them. I visited London only once or twice when I was a young lad.”
“Quite so,” Avery said, raising his glass all the way to his eye as he looked the bouquet over with a slightly pained expression. “Your offering, Thorne?”
“No,” Jessica said quickly. “They were awaiting Anna and me when we returned from the library with the children. I believe they would look better broken down into several vases and distributed through the house.”
“I will leave that to your judgment,” he said, lowering his glass. “But I am happy to relinquish my mental image of you staggering into Hanover Square under the weight of such a floral offering, Thorne.”
“Mr. Thorne has asked me to drive out to Richmond Park with him tomorrow,” Jessica said. “In his curricle. I have not been there for at least a couple of years.”
“A curricle,” Avery said. “Without her mother or a maid to accompany her, then. It is fortunate, Thorne, that you have Lady Vickers to vouch for your respectability.”
“It is.” He inclined his head, and Jessica thought he still looked slightly amused. Most people, even men, meeting Avery for the first time were awed by him, even intimidated.
“Again,” Avery said, “I leave the choice of whether she accepts your invitation or not to my sister’s judgment.”
Mr. Thorne had not sat back down since Avery entered the room. “I will not take any more of your time,” he said, turning to her. “Lady Jessica, will you drive to Richmond Park with me tomorrow?”
There was, as everyone was saying, something of a mystery about him. He was a man who must surely have an interesting story to tell. But he was perfectly respectable, as Avery had just said. He was a gentleman, a relative of Lady Vickers. It was not, perhaps, quite wise to grant him such a favor upon a very slight acquaintance, but she could not resist the chance to learn more of that story. If, that was, he was willing to tell it. She wondered irrelevantly what her answer would be if it were Mr. Rochford standing there asking to take her to Richmond Park.
But there was a silence waiting to be filled.
“Thank you, Mr. Thorne,” she said. “I will.”
“At one o’ clock?” He bowed after she had nodded, took his leave of Avery and Anna, and strode from the room.
“Well, this is an interesting turn of events,” Anna said a few moments after the door had closed behind him. “I would have wagered upon Mr. Rochford’s calling this afternoon, if anyone, but it is Mr. Thorne who came instead.”
“I suppose, Jess,” Avery said, “it was Rochford who sent the flowers.”
“It was,” she said.
“Yes,” he commented, strolling closer and looking at them again, but with the naked eye this time. “It is as I would have expected.”
He did not explain. He did not need to. Jessica had had the same thought.
“I wonder why Mr. Thorne went to America,” Anna said, “and why he has returned—and to London instead of to his home, wherever that is, though he has hardly ever been here before.”
“Perhaps Jess can twist his arm for information when she drives out with him tomorrow,” Avery said, turning his lazy gaze upon his sister. “Were you even introduced to him last evening, Jess? I did not see you dance with him.”
“I did not,” she said. “Lady Parley presented him to me, but it was just before Mr. Dean claimed his set, and there was no chance to exchange more than a few words.”
“Ah,” he said. “But you made a significant enough impression upon him that he came today to lay his heart at your feet.”
“How absurd,” she said. “But the truth is, I had seen him before last evening. He was at the inn where I spent the night on the way home from Abby and Gil’s, looking for all the world like a cit—nothing like his appearance last evening or today. He had already reserved the only private parlor at the inn, but Mr. Goddard arranged with the landlord to persuade him to give it up to me. I daresay I was not meant to come face-to-face with him, especially while he was arguing the point with the landlord, but I did. And he did eventually quit the parlor after Mr. Goddard had hustled me upstairs to my room.”
“Edwin was uncharacteristically careless,” Avery said. “I will have a word with him.”
“Nonsense,” Jessica said. “He was such a scrupulous guardian that I almost imagined, except when I looked at him, that he was you.”
“But how romantic,” Anna said with a laugh, “that when Mr. Thorne saw you again last evening, Jessica, he immediately asked Lady Parley to present him. And today he has come here to invite you to drive to Richmond Park with him. Perhaps none of it would have happened if Mr. Goddard had not been careless, Avery. Though I am sure Jessica is right and he was no such thing.”
“Romantic!” Jessica said, tutting and shaking her head. “I do not believe Mr. Thorne and romance can ever be realistically uttered in the same breath.”
Though she knew she would look forward to tomorrow. It was not often that she found any gentleman attractive and intriguing, yet she found Mr. Thorne both.
Her life had suddenly acquired color. Not one but two new gentlemen had arrived in town, and both of them were showing an interest in her. More to the point, she was feeling some interest in them. Had it ever happened before? She did not believe so. Perhaps there was hope for her this year after all, without her having to settle for someone who did not particularly attract her.
Perhaps by the end of the year she would be married.
Happily married.
Dared she hope?
Six
The fine, sunny weather had held, Gabriel saw when he looked out of his hotel room window the following morning. In England one never knew what to expect from one day to the next, or even from one hour to the next. He had purchased a sporting curricle and pair the week before and hired a young groom. But a curricle, of course, called for fine weather, especially when one planned to share the high seat with a lady.
Horbath had put a letter beside his breakfast plate on top of the neatly folded morning paper. It was from Mary, Gabriel saw. She had received his own letter, then, which he had sent with Simon Norton, the man he had hired to be his steward. He had been obliged to take Norton into his confidence and had sent him to Derbyshire, not to displace Manley Rochford’s steward at Brierley, but to do some discreet information gathering. Gabriel had told him about Mary and instructed him to make sure she was secure in her cottage for the present and had sufficient money upon which to live. He had written to her himself to tell her he was back in England and she need worry no longer about her home and livelihood.
She had shed tears when she learned that he was so close, Mary had written in her letter—not unhappy tears, Gabriel must understand. She was still under notice to leave her cottage, and her allowance had been cut off, though Mr. Manley Rochford surely had no authority to do that yet. She was grateful that Gabriel had been thoughtful enough to send her money with Mr. Norton, whom by the way she considered a very pleasant, respectful young man. She did not need it, however. Through the years she had managed to put a little aside whenever she could for a rainy day and would be able to feed herself and the animals at least until Gabriel came home. Did he know that Mr. Nort
on had been taken on at Brierley as a gardener? And did he know that Mr. Manley Rochford was planning to leave for London soon with his wife to celebrate his elevation to the rank of earl? Did he know that Mr. Anthony Rochford was already there?
Gabriel knew. And when he opened the paper and came to the society pages, he read that the handsome and charming Mr. Anthony Rochford, son and heir of Mr. Manley Rochford, who was expected to become the Earl of Lyndale in the very near future, had been seen driving in Hyde Park at the fashionable hour yesterday afternoon with Lady Jessica Archer, sister of the Duke of Netherby. And this had happened the very day after he had danced and sat at supper with her at Lady Parley’s ball. Was the heart of the lovely and elusive heiress about to be snared at last?
Not if he had anything to say about it, Gabriel thought. Not by Anthony Rochford, anyway. One thing had been clear from Mary’s letter. There was no chance that she had misunderstood the eviction notice. Rochford had not had any change of heart since moving to Brierley. Without any right to do so, he had cut off the allowance her brother-in-law, the late earl, had made her. No matter what else he was doing at Brierley or planning to do—there had been no report yet from Simon Norton himself—Manley Rochford’s treatment of Mary was enough to seal his fate. And Gabriel’s too. There was to be no miraculous reprieve, and therefore no return to his life in America.
Let the courtship begin, then.
The front doors of Archer House opened as he drew his horses to a halt outside at almost precisely one o’clock. Someone must have been watching for him. Netherby stepped out as Gabriel was descending from his high seat and handing the ribbons to his groom.