Someone to Romance

by Balogh, Mary

  “A neat sporting rig,” Netherby said, looking the curricle over unhurriedly. “And a fine pair of matched grays. You have a good eye.”

  “I believe I do,” Gabriel agreed. Bertie Vickers had recommended a pair of chestnuts when he had accompanied Gabriel to Tattersalls, but to Gabriel’s eye they had seemed all show and no go.

  “Lady Jessica is of age, as you are surely aware,” Netherby said, patting the neck of one of the horses and running his hand along it. “She is also independent of spirit and likes to insist upon making her own decisions regardless of what anyone else thinks or advises. It is quite unexceptionable for her to choose with whom she drives out, of course, even when the destination is a little more distant than Hyde Park. Her mother, however, is not happy that your choice of vehicle prohibits either her or a maid from accompanying her.”

  Gabriel was amused. “I have no intention of abducting Lady Jessica or of taking her anywhere inappropriate for a delicately nurtured female,” he said. “But even if I did, I doubt very much she would allow it.”

  “Quite so,” Netherby said agreeably, standing back and turning to watch his sister come down the steps, pulling on one of her kid gloves as she did so.

  She was wearing a long-sleeved, high-waisted carriage dress of dark blue velvet, with a high-crowned, small-brimmed bonnet of pale silver gray. She looked startlingly lovely. Also haughty and perfectly self-possessed. She stopped on the bottom step to look over his rig.

  “Impressive,” she said. “I am happy to see that it is a sporting curricle, Mr. Thorne. I like to be high enough off the ground to see the world when I am on a pleasure excursion.” She turned to her brother. “I suppose you are threatening Mr. Thorne with dire consequences if he veers as much as an inch from the beaten path, Avery?”

  “You do me an injustice, Jess.” Netherby raised his eyebrows and the quizzing glass he wore on a black ribbon about his neck. “Have you ever known me to have to resort to threatening anyone?”

  She appeared to give the matter some thought. “Not in words, no,” she said, and smiled so dazzlingly at her brother that Gabriel was almost rocked back on his heels. Good God! But the smile disappeared without a trace as she crossed the pavement and turned her haughty gaze upon him.

  “Your hand, if you please, Mr. Thorne,” she said, stepping up to the curricle and gathering her skirts in one hand as she prepared to climb to her seat.

  “Good afternoon to you too, Lady Jessica,” he said.

  She gave him a measured look before setting her hand in his, but she did not comment upon his veiled reproof. She climbed to her seat and arranged her skirts about her. A servant who had followed her from the house handed up an umbrella. Or was it a parasol?

  They were on their way a few moments after that, while Netherby stood on the pavement, his hands clasped at his back, watching.

  “I suppose,” Gabriel said, “I ought to have applied to your mother for permission to drive out with you.”

  “No,” she said. “You ought to have applied to me. As you did.”

  “It is not easy, I daresay, to assert one’s independence when one is a lady,” he said as he turned his curricle out of Hanover Square.

  “But one must persist,” she said, “or at the very least choose one’s battles. I suppose you could not avoid noticing the ridiculous cavalcade of carriages and servants and outriders my brother deemed necessary to convey me from my cousin’s home in Gloucestershire to London a few weeks ago.”

  “I might have failed to do so had it not been for the livery,” he said. “It was, er, eye-catching, to say the least.”

  She turned her head to look at him with a gleam of something that might have been amusement in her eyes, but she did not smile as she had at Netherby.

  “Why did you ask me to accompany you all the way to Richmond Park?” she asked him.

  “I might say it was because I would not enjoy making the journey or seeing the beauties of nature alone,” he said. “But instead I will answer your question with one of my own. How else am I to get to know you?”

  Her eyebrows arched upward. She kept her head turned his way for a long, silent moment. “Most gentlemen who wish to pursue an acquaintance with me dance with me at balls or engage me in conversation at soirees and garden parties or ask to drive me in Hyde Park during the fashionable hour of the afternoon,” she said.

  “They join your court, in other words,” he said. “It is an impressively large one, if Lady Parley’s ball is anything to judge by. Has Rochford been added to the number?”

  “Ah,” she said. “You can read, then, can you, Mr. Thorne? Yes, he drove me in the park yesterday afternoon. Avery uses the same word you chose to describe my admirers. Court, that is. Time will tell if Mr. Rochford chooses to become a part of it. Will you?”

  He looked at her appreciatively before giving his attention again to maneuvering his horses through the busy streets of London. “The answer is a resounding no,” he said.

  “Indeed?” She sounded more amused than chagrined as she watched a young crossing sweeper scurry out of the way of the curricle and scramble to pick up the coin Gabriel tossed down to him. “I suppose that explains why you did not ask me to dance two evenings ago. It would also explain why you did not invite me to drive in Hyde Park yesterday, where the whole world—and at least one newspaper reporter—would have seen you pay court to me. But why, pray, did you have Lady Parley present you to me? She did say, if I recall correctly, that you asked for the introduction. And why did you call upon me yesterday? Why did you ask me to drive to Richmond Park with you today?”

  “All three questions have a single answer,” he told her. “It is because I intend to marry you.”

  That brought her head snapping his way again. She gazed at him with wide eyes, he saw at a glance. Or perhaps glared would be a more accurate word. And her chin was up. He wondered irrelevantly if young Timms, his groom, was enjoying himself.

  “You intend to marry me?” she asked, putting considerable emphasis upon the one word. “You are presumptuous, sir.”

  “I suppose I might have chosen a more abject verb,” he conceded. “Hope, perhaps. Or wish. But intend is the most accurate.”

  “You do not know me,” she protested. “I do not know you. I believe you must have windmills in your head.”

  “But you cannot be sure I do,” he said. “By your own admission you do not know me.”

  He seemed to have rendered her speechless. She continued to stare at him for several moments though he did not turn his head again to look at her. Then she laughed unexpectedly, a low sound she probably did not intend to be as seductive as it was.

  “I still believe it,” she said. “You, sir, have windmills in your head if you believe I will marry you simply because you intend it. Or even hope or wish for it.”

  “You do not intend ever to marry, then?” he asked her.

  “That is none of your business, Mr. Thorne,” she said, her laughter forgotten, to be replaced by icy hauteur.

  “How old are you?” he asked her.

  “Mr. Thorne!”

  “Twenty-four?” he suggested. “Twenty-five? Twenty-six? No more than that, I believe. But surely well past the age at which most ladies marry. Yet I cannot believe no man has ever asked or hinted that he would ask with the smallest encouragement. You are the daughter and sister of a duke, after all. I would be surprised if you are not also extremely wealthy. Besides all of which you are easy on the eyes.”

  There was a pause. “And you, sir,” she said, “are impertinent.”

  “For speaking the truth?” he said. “Do you encourage your court to cluster about you, Lady Jessica, because you do not want to marry? Safety in numbers and all that? It seems altogether possible.”

  “If you do not change the subject immediately,” she said, “I must ask that you take me home, sir.”

  “My guess,” he said, “is that you have given up hope.”

  “Oh really,” she said, sounding severely
annoyed. “Are these American manners, Mr. Thorne?”

  “It would be somewhat alarming,” he said, “if a whole nation was to be judged—and presumably condemned—upon the words and behavior of one man who has only lived there for a number of years. But back to my point. I believe, Lady Jessica, you have given up hope of finding that one man who can distinguish himself from the crowd and renew your interest in matrimony and a new life, quite independent of your mother and brother—half brother, I believe that is.”

  “Well,” she said, “you have certainly distinguished yourself from the crowd, Mr. Thorne. But if you believe that you have also aroused in me any eagerness to marry you, you are sadly mistaken. To put the matter mildly.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed.

  “There is no perhaps about it,” she retorted.

  They lapsed into silence after that while Lady Jessica faced forward and raised her parasol. It was definitely a parasol rather than an umbrella. It was made of a pale silvery gray lacy fabric that would not offer much protection from rain. She twirled it vigorously behind her head for a few moments before lowering it again with a snap. He had discomposed her, Gabriel could see, though she maintained a stiff dignity and did not carry through on her threat to demand that she be taken home.

  When they approached Richmond he directed his horses to one of the gates in the high wall that he had been told surrounded the whole of the park. Perhaps he would find somewhere inside later to leave the curricle so that they could walk. But first he wanted to find and drive along the Queen’s Ride he had heard about, a grand avenue that ran between woodland on either side.

  There were other people in the park, enough, anyway, to satisfy the Dowager Duchess of Netherby when she questioned her daughter later, as she surely would. Generally speaking, though, there was an agreeable sense of rural quiet here, a heightened awareness of trees swaying and rustling in the breeze, of birds singing, of blue sky above with small white clouds scurrying across it in a breeze that was hardly apparent on the ground. Once or twice they spotted deer, which apparently roamed free here in large numbers. There were the smells of greenery and soil and fresh air. Gabriel felt an unexpected wave of pleasure at being back in England. He had forgotten . . .

  “I miss the countryside,” she said, breaking a lengthy silence.

  “You do not live in London all year, then?” he asked. Most of the upper classes did not. He knew that much from when he had lived in England himself.

  “No,” she said. “I grew up at Morland Abbey in Sussex, my father’s home and now Avery’s. I still live there with my mother. And with Avery and Anna and their children, of course.”

  “Your mother did not move to a dower house after your father’s passing?” he asked. “Is that not what most dowagers do?”

  “Most?” she said. “I do not know. My mother and I have our own apartment in the abbey. It is very large. The abbey, I mean, though our apartment is spacious too. We are not confined there, however. We live freely with my brother and sister-in-law.”

  “You do not long for your own establishment?” he asked.

  She turned her head. “Are we returning to that subject?” she asked. “My own home, you mean, as a wife and mother?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Are not most young ladies eager to get away from their mothers and their brothers in order to be mistresses of their own establishments?”

  “I cannot speak for most ladies,” she said.

  “Then speak for yourself,” he told her, acknowledging with a nod a couple of riders who were cantering by in the opposite direction.

  “I have never been tempted,” she said.

  “Because you cannot be?” he asked her. “Or because it has just not happened?”

  “Oh,” she said, sounding cross again, “we are back on the subject. What about you, Mr. Thorne? You must be considerably older than I am. Thirty, at a guess? At least that. Have you never been tempted to marry?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “It happened a couple of weeks or so ago, soon after I had disembarked after a long voyage from America. I was relaxing in the private parlor of the inn at which I had put up for the night, reading and minding my own business, when I was interrupted by the landlord, who had come to beg me to relinquish my claim upon the room, for which I had already paid handsomely. A lady had arrived unexpectedly at the inn and was demanding it. A very important lady. He dared not say no. His business might be forever ruined. When I followed him from the room, prepared to argue the point, I came face-to-face with the lady herself, though I do not doubt I was not intended to do so. Almost instantaneously I gave in to the temptation to give up not only the parlor but also my single state. I decided that Lady Jessica Archer, sister of the Duke of Netherby, would be my wife.”

  “What nonsense you speak!” she exclaimed. “You decided that I would be your wife. How dared you then? And how dare you now?” She looked at him sharply. “How did you know who I was?”

  “The landlord was obliging enough to provide the information,” he said. “I daresay he thought that knowing who you were would the more readily persuade me to relinquish my claim upon the room.”

  “That was unpardonably indiscreet of him,” she said.

  “Yes, was it not?” he agreed. “That dour-looking majordomo you had with you would doubtless have had his head if he had known.”

  “Mr. Goddard?” she said. “He is Avery’s secretary.”

  But it was time to change the subject. He had wanted to shock her, to make it clear to her that he had no interest whatsoever in dallying with her and thus becoming just one more member of the court for which she obviously cared not a fig. He had definitely ruffled her feathers.

  “I believe the Pen Ponds are worth a look,” he said. “Shall we find them and then leave the curricle somewhere and enjoy the scenery on foot?”

  “Very well,” she said after appearing to consider the matter. “We will walk. We will also talk, Mr. Thorne. If you are to expect that I will even consider your preposterous intention of marrying me, you must answer some questions. You know about me. You knew who I was the very first time you set eyes upon me. I daresay that would account for your interest. All vanity aside, I know I am extremely eligible despite the fact that I am twenty-five years of age. I know nothing whatsoever about you except that you are a kinsman of Lady Vickers and have recently returned to England after spending thirteen years in America. I do not even have more than a nodding acquaintance with Lady Vickers, though Avery has a great deal of respect for Sir Trevor.”

  “They are my godparents,” he told her.

  “Even that fact does not arouse any great passion for you in my bosom,” she told him. “I doubt any further facts will either, but I like the Pen Ponds, and it would be a shame to have come all this way and not see them.”

  “As soon as we are on foot, Lady Jessica,” he told her, “we may enjoy our surroundings at greater leisure while you interview me.”

  “Interview?” she said. “As though for employment? As my husband? Very well, Mr. Thorne. Prepare to make yourself irresistible to me. This may be your only chance.”

  He could not decide if he liked her or not. Her manner was cold and haughty and had been almost from the moment when she had stepped out of Archer House and looked over his rig while virtually ignoring him. But she had used the word passion a few moments ago and it had set him to wondering if she was capable of feeling any. Something told him she might be. Not that he had thought of his choice of a countess in terms of passion.

  And there had been that smile she had leveled upon her brother before she crossed the pavement to his curricle. For a brief moment she had been transformed before his eyes into someone quite different. He had a hankering to see that smile again, but directed at him this time.

  Perhaps it was too soon, however, to decide whether he liked Lady Jessica Archer. Or if it would make any difference either way.

  He needed a countess rather more than he needed a wife.

>   Seven

  Pen Ponds was a rather unfortunate name, Jessica had always thought, for what was in reality two sizable lakes separated by a causeway right in the heart of Richmond Park. One might almost be led to expect a couple of muddy watering holes with a few dejected ducks bobbing in them. They were actually very picturesque. If the Queen’s Ride gave the dual impressions of grandeur and deep seclusion, the Ponds gave more the impression of open countryside, of the elemental intermingling of earth, water, and sky. The birds did not remain hidden here as they did on the Ride, pouring out their songs from the green depths of the woods, but rather called them out with freer abandon as they swooped over the water in pursuit of one another or glided and swam upon its surface.

  She ought not to have agreed to walk here. She was not in the right mood for it. She ought to have demanded to be taken back home. Mr. Thorne was quite unpardonably presumptuous.

  He was very different from Mr. Rochford, who had called upon her yesterday afternoon an hour after Mr. Thorne left and asked very properly if he might have the honor of driving her in the park later at the fashionable hour. He had even come into the house again when he returned for her, to ask her mother if he might be permitted to do so—Mama had been home by then. Jessica had been a bit annoyed at his doing so, of course, as she was no young girl and it was quite unnecessary, but even so, he had erred on the side of correctness. He had conversed pleasantly with her before they got caught up in the exchange of greetings and chitchat with acquaintances they met in the park, and he had been unfailingly charming. He had smiled without ceasing, as he had done the night before, but really it was a handsome smile, and it was far better than a scowl.

  She did not find Mr. Thorne nearly as amiable a man. If Mr. Rochford hoped to marry her, as he very well might—he was, after all, about to become heir to an earldom and she would be a brilliant match for him—he had not so much as hinted that he intended to do so, just as though she were a commodity to be purchased at his will.