by Balogh, Mary
“It is hardly condescension to decide to marry the daughter of a duke,” he said. “I am not myself a duke or a royal prince or a king. I am therefore somewhere below you on the social scale.”
“I am the daughter of a duke,” she said, sketching a few circles in the air with one hand. “And that sums it all up, does it not? But that daughter of a duke, Mr. Thorne, is also a person. When you looked at me—at that inn, at the ball two evenings ago, in Avery’s drawing room yesterday, here today—did you see a person? Did you see me? I very much doubt it. You saw and you see the daughter of a duke.”
He clasped his hands behind his back and tipped his head slightly to one side. His eyes and the upper part of his face were half hidden in the shade cast by the brim of his tall hat. He looked awfully . . . appealing. Which fact annoyed her more than anything else. She did not know him either. She knew things about him, more now than she had known half an hour ago, but she did not know him. Why should one find another person appealing based entirely upon physical attributes? He might be an axe murderer for all she knew. Or a miserly businessman who cheated his clients and mistreated his employees and spent his evenings counting his cash.
He obviously had nothing to say in reply to her outburst. Perhaps he did not even know what she was talking about.
Did she?
And when had they stopped walking?
“I am not a commodity,” she told him, “to be bought and sold on the exchange. Have I used the right terminology? Do you not think you should hope to marry me rather than intend it? Do you not think you should work a little—no, that you should work hard—to win me? There must be all sorts of deals you have to work hard to achieve as a businessman. Should not I be at least as big a deal as any of them?”
She did not know quite what she was saying. But she had worked herself into a state of considerable agitation, rare for her. She was angry at the arrogance of this man, who had made a list, even if it was only in his head, found that she suited all his requirements, and decided without further ado that he would marry her. The presumption! How dared he?
Perhaps he might not have irked her so much if she did not find him appealing. And that fact infuriated her even more. How could she? Was she that shallow?
“You wish to be wooed, then, Lady Jessica?” he asked her.
Did she? She thought about it. “With a view to marriage?” she said. “That is the end for which a man woos a woman, is it not? It is sometimes a necessary but rather tedious step a man must take in order to persuade her to say yes. As though she lacked the intelligence to demand more?”
He still had his hands clasped at his back. She was still rooted to the spot. She wished she had brought her parasol from the curricle. She could twirl it about her head and give her hands something to do.
“No,” she said before he could answer. “I do not want to be wooed, Mr. Thorne. I am not at all certain it would accomplish its desired aim anyway. Indeed, I am almost certain it would not. But if you want a chance with me, then you will . . . Oh.” She circled the air with her hand again. Where were the right words when one most needed them? “You will romance me.”
His eyebrows rose. His eyes, darker than ever in the shade of his hat, were as intent upon hers as always. “Is it a verb?” he asked. “To romance?”
She stared at him, stupefied. “I have no idea,” she said. “I am no grammarian, Mr. Thorne. But it perfectly expresses what you must do if you wish to persuade me even to consider falling in with your intention.”
“I must romance you,” he said. “How does it differ from wooing?”
She had no idea. Or, rather, she did, but how could she find the words to explain?
“Its end, its whole purpose, is not necessarily marriage,” she said. “It is about . . . oh, about persons. About feelings. About getting to know another person. Not just facts, but . . . getting to know the person behind the facts. And showing that person that you know and understand and like the whole person, regardless of imperfections. It is . . .”
“Falling in love?” he suggested when she struggled for further words. His eyebrows were still up.
“Oh,” she said, frustrated. “Not necessarily. It is about making the other person feel appreciated. It is about making her feel that she is a person, that she matters, that she is more precious than all the cold facts in her favor. It is about making her understand that she is more precious in your sight than all other women. It is making her feel that she is . . .”
“Loved?” he said when she was lost for words again.
She sighed deeply and audibly. “There are really no words,” she said. “No, it is not about falling in love or about loving. How can one do or feel either of those things in advance? You do not know me, just as I do not know you, Mr. Thorne. It is about the possibility of love. The possibility of friendship and laughter and . . . oh, and something more. Something bright and beautiful. Something that will transform life and fill it with color and . . .”
This time he did not end the sentence for her. Not immediately, anyway. They stared at each other.
“Romance,” he said at last.
What a prize idiot she had just made of herself. And she had no idea where it had all come from. Just an hour or two ago she had been planning a marriage for herself that was every bit as passionless and calculated as the one he proposed. And then she had got angry and . . . and this had happened.
Romance? She was twenty-five years old. Any man looking at her and considering her as a wife would have everything but romantic love in mind. She was horribly, hideously eligible. How could she expect any man to look beyond the facts that she was the daughter and sister of a duke, that she was wealthy, and that she had the upbringing and education and accomplishments of her rank? Romance at her age? Or at any age? It was laughable. It was pathetic.
Except that she was not just Lady Jessica Archer. She was . . . She was her. She was the being that was inside her and far more meaningful to her than any of the outer trappings of birth and rank.
It was a strange time to be having all these thoughts, which she could not recall ever having before. Not consciously or coherently, anyway.
He turned to stroll onward, and she walked beside him, leaving two feet of space between them. She could see the curricle in the distance. Thank heaven. Though the ride home was going to seem endless.
But she was not sorry, she thought, lifting her chin. She was not. How dared he, or any man, decide that he was going to marry her?
“Very well, Lady Jessica,” he said as they drew closer to the curricle. “I will romance you. Not with a view to matrimony, but as an end in itself, to see where it leads.”
Jessica licked her lips. Oh goodness, what had she started now? “Thank you,” she said, her words cold and clipped.
“But I do hope,” he said as he offered his hand to help her up to her seat, “that you will not expect a bouquet quite as large as the one that was in your brother’s drawing room yesterday.”
He spoke the words in all seriousness. But . . . A joke from Mr. Thorne? Really?
She settled her skirts about her as he climbed to his place and took the ribbons from his young groom.
“Oh, I will not,” she assured him, raising her parasol and twirling it behind her head. “I shall expect a far larger one.”
He did not laugh. But when she looked at him out of the corner of her eye, she could see that he was actually and definitely smiling.
He looked different when he smiled. He looked handsome. Not almost handsome, but the real thing.
Not that looks mattered. At all.
Eight
Gabriel sent Lady Jessica Archer a single long-stemmed pink rose the following morning.
He ought to have turned his eyes and his mind elsewhere, of course, as soon as it became obvious she was going to make him work to win her, with no guarantee that the prize would be his at the end of it all. He needed a wife soon. And there was no reason to believe he would have any great dif
ficulty finding one even if the ton knew no more about him than it already did. For some reason he had captured the public’s imagination. Yet he had set his sights upon the very lady whose imagination had not been captured.
He had no time to romance Lady Jessica just because she had taken offense at his saying he intended to marry her. What the devil did it mean, anyway, to romance a woman? He was still not convinced there was any such verb. Though her meaning would stand even if the word did not. She wished to be flattered, to be fawned over, to be sighed over with open adoration, to be sent flowers, and generally to be treated like a goddess.
Gabriel was gazing out of his sitting room window upon rain—the drizzling sort that only England seemed able to produce in such depressingly copious quantities. He had intended to call at Archer House this afternoon to invite her to drive in the park with him later. It was what the ton did in large numbers, apparently, in the late afternoon. It was where they went to see and be seen, to pick up the latest gossip and to spread it, to ogle the opposite sex and to flirt.
It was not going to happen today, however. Even if the rain let up right at this moment it would be damp and miserable out there. Chilly too, or at least it had been chilly when he went to White’s Club this morning with Bertie Vickers.
No. He was being unfair—perhaps because he was feeling frustrated and therefore irritable.
Everything he had just thought was almost certainly not what Lady Jessica had meant by the term romancing. It was unfair to think she was so shallow. Indeed, he knew she was not. He just could not imagine her being susceptible to any sort of flattery. She would stare right through him, her chin and her nose in the air, as though she could see the hairs on the back of his head. No. What had offended her was her assumption that he saw her as a commodity rather than as a person. Did he? He very much feared she might have a point. She wanted him to see her for what she really was—or perhaps that should be who she really was, quite independent of all the attributes that made her one of the most eligible ladies in England.
He had been taken aback by her outburst. She had been seriously upset with him. Not so much with his presumption in informing her that he intended to marry her as with the fact that it was not she he wished to marry, but rather the titled, wealthy Lady Jessica Archer, sister of the Duke of Netherby. Just as though they were two quite separate entities.
Were they?
Strangely, stupidly, the possible truth of that had not struck him until she said it. He had assumed that the Lady Jessica he saw was the whole person, that there was no more to her than the appearance she presented to the world, of beauty, elegance, poise, arrogance, and entitlement. She would perfectly suit his purpose, he had decided almost the first moment he saw her. Even her beauty would suit him. One of his first duties as Earl of Lyndale, after all, would be to produce sons. She would be an attractive bedfellow, he had thought, if perhaps a trifle cold.
Which of them, then, had been the arrogant one?
He had been taught by Cyrus and his own instincts to identify what he wanted and to go after it. He had been taught to expect success so that he could the more easily achieve it. What if those admirable traits in a businessman did not apply to a lover?
They almost certainly did not.
Gabriel drummed his fingers on the windowsill and called himself all sorts of an idiot.
Her outburst had dispelled any notion he had had that she was cold to the core. And it had done strange things to his resolve. It had not lessened it as it ought to. He had found himself wanting to waste time and energy romancing her, with no assurance of success. His fingers stopped drumming as he frowned in thought. I am not at all certain I want to marry you. Indeed, I am almost certain I do not. Those, he believed, had been her exact words. Would his time and effort be all for nothing, then? Was he willing to pin all his hopes upon that one little word—almost? She was almost certain. And what the devil did romancing a woman entail?
It is about the possibility of love, she had said when he had pressed her on the point. The possibility of friendship and laughter and . . . oh, and something more. Something bright and beautiful. Something that will transform life and fill it with color and . . .
She had been talking about love. Romantic love, though she would not admit it.
The Lady Jessica Archer he had thought he knew, because really there was not a great deal to know, had been transformed before his eyes into someone of mysterious depths. And he had promised that he would indeed consider the possibility she had spoken of. Very well, Lady Jessica. I will romance you. Not with a view to matrimony, but as an end in itself, to see where it leads.
Was he mad?
Would he keep that promise? Madness was something he did not indulge in. Madness cost time. And efficiency. And money. Time, in particular, was not something he could afford to waste in this instance. He needed a bride so that he could move on to the next stage of his homecoming.
Nevertheless he had sent her a rose this morning, wondering as he did so what she would make of it. Did she receive many gifts of a single rose? Would she be offended at the paltriness of it? Or would she be amused, as he hoped she would be, at the contrast with that ostentatious bouquet that she had seemed to find a bit objectionable? Would she make the connection?
Would she like it? Was pink her color? But she had worn it to the Parley ball.
He turned impatiently from the window. If he went now to call at Archer House, even assuming she was there, he would probably find himself having to make labored conversation with her mother and her sister-in-law and possibly Netherby himself. And perhaps other visitors too, members of her court, of which he would appear to be the newest addition. Perish the thought. He would not do it. Instead he snatched up the pile of invitations that had accumulated upon the table by the door and summoned Horbath to bring him outdoor garments suitable for London drizzle. He would see if Lady Vickers was at home instead. He would ask her advice upon which invitations he ought to accept. Invitations had always come singly in Boston, and not daily either.
Lady Vickers was at home, having decided not to proceed with the round of afternoon calls she had planned. “I hate rain, Gabriel,” she told him. “It makes me cross and lazy. But now I am glad I did not go out. I would have missed you, and that would have been a pity. Come and sit by the fire while we wait for the tea tray.”
They conversed amiably until she had poured their tea and handed him his cup and saucer with two generously buttered scones on a plate. Then she got down to the serious business of reading through all his invitations.
She recommended that he attend all the balls. “You have told us one of your principal purposes in remaining in town is to select a bride,” she said. “Where else are you to see all the most eligible young ladies in one place? Though Bertie reported that you did not show any particular interest in any of the young ladies I recommended for the first ball. Next time I will have to be sure to be there myself to oversee your choices. On the evening of the Parley ball I felt obliged to attend a very tedious political dinner with Trevor.”
She also advised him on which soirees and garden parties and Venetian breakfasts and such like he ought to attend and which invitations he would be better off declining. “For one cannot go to everything,” she said. “One must be discerning.”
“And that one?” he asked. She was getting toward the bottom of the pile.
“An evening party at the home of Lord and Lady Hodges,” she read aloud. “In honor of the arrival in town of the Earl and Countess of Riverdale—Lady Hodges’s brother and sister-in-law. Ah, and Lord Hodges’s sister and brother-in-law. A brother and sister married a brother and sister. I see the party is described as a select one. That means it will not be a great squeeze. I daresay most of the guests will be family. The Westcotts are a sizable and close lot.”
“You believe I ought to refuse the invitation, then?” he asked her.
“Oh, by no means,” she said. “This is one you must definitely accept
, Gabriel. Lady Hodges is paying you a considerable compliment, given the fact that it is a small party and she does not know your full identity.” She tapped the invitation card with the back of one knuckle. “The Westcotts are extremely well connected—Lord Molenor, the Marquess of Dorchester, the Duke of Netherby, Viscount Dirkson, Lord Hodges. And the Earl of Riverdale himself, of course—head of the family and a very handsome and distinguished gentleman. Let me think. There must be some young, unwed ladies among them too. It might be a good thing to meet them in a more intimate setting than a ball. Yes, of course. Lady Estelle Lamarr is Dorchester’s daughter. Bertie told me you danced with her at the ball. A waltz, I believe? You do not need me to tell you that she is very eligible. Ah! And Lady Jessica Archer is the duke’s sister. Her mother was a Westcott. So were Lady Molenor and Lady Dirkson and Lady Hodges herself. The marchioness was once married to . . .”
But Gabriel was no longer paying full attention. The party was in two days’ time, and the invitation, he remembered Horbath explaining to him when he returned to his hotel from White’s this morning, had not come in the post but had been delivered by hand. The messenger had even wanted to take a reply back with him but had been persuaded to leave without one when he was warned his wait might be a lengthy one. A select party. And Lady Jessica Archer, whose mother was a Westcott, was almost certain to be one of the select persons.
“Thank you for the advice,” he said. “I will certainly go.”
“Lady Estelle would be a very good match for you,” Lady Vickers said. “So would Lady Jessica. In the years since they left the schoolroom, however, neither young lady has shown any inclination to choose a husband. They do not need to be in any hurry, of course, as so many young ladies do. They have the wealth and the connections—and the beauty too—to marry whenever they choose. Now there is a challenge for you, Gabriel, especially if you insist upon remaining stubborn and not making it known that you are the Earl of Lyndale.” She looked hopefully at him.