Someone to Romance

by Balogh, Mary

  Well enough, he had said when Lady Estelle had asked him if he had known Gabriel Rochford. He was a likable boy. I was fond of him. It grieved me to see his wildness turn into vice.

  Yet Anthony Rochford had never met him until very recently. Gabriel Rochford’s behavior had always been as far from wild as north is from south. Any hard edges he had now were acquired in America. He remembered his boyhood self as quiet, studious, rather dull, too plagued by conscience and concern for the feelings of others to get into any real mischief. He had been his father’s son, in other words. His first nine years had shaped his character and sensibilities.

  He was a likable boy. Not only had Anthony Rochford never come to Brierley with his father while Gabriel was there, but he was also eight or nine years younger than Gabriel. He would have been only ten or eleven years old when Gabriel went to America.

  There were two things he must do without further delay, Gabriel decided. He must marry Lady Jessica Archer—if she would have him. But first he must make a journey. It was time to take some action—almost seven years later than he ought.

  He would accept the invitation to Vauxhall. It would probably be an enjoyable evening even if Lady Jessica was not of the party. He had heard that Vauxhall was a place one must see when one was in London. But he hoped she would be there. He could no longer indulge in social activities for the mere pleasure of them—not that he had done so from the beginning, of course. But he must develop a stronger sense of purpose.

  He had arranged to spend the morning with Bertie Vickers. They were going to spar at Jackson’s boxing saloon. Bertie was not an early riser, however. The breakfast things having been removed from the table, Gabriel sat down to write a letter to Simon Norton with instructions not to leave the estate. He would take care of further investigation himself. He wrote also to Miles Perrott, his partner in Boston, thrusting aside the wave of homesickness that threatened to engulf him as he did so. Boston was no longer home. It was regrettable, but he might as well grow accustomed to the new reality. He informed Miles that he would not be returning, at least not in the foreseeable future. He also wrote an acceptance of the invitation to Vauxhall.

  This afternoon there was a garden party to which he had promised to escort Lady Vickers since both Sir Trevor and Bertie had other commitments. He would keep his promise.

  Would Lady Jessica be there?

  There was a long-stemmed pink rose beside Jessica’s breakfast plate again. Beneath it, resting on her linen napkin, was a card that was a little different from usual. It had two words instead of one. Gabriel Thorne, he had written in the bold black handwriting she had come to recognize as his. The rose too was a little different. It was a darker shade of pink, very like the color of the ball gown she had worn to the Parley ball. She picked it up and held it to her nose for a few moments before taking her seat and nodding to the butler when he came to pour her coffee.

  “Good morning, Jess,” Avery said, lowering his paper far enough that he could see her over the top of it. “I had almost given up hope of seeing you this side of luncheon.”

  “I slept late,” she told him, smiling at her mother as she spread her napkin across her lap. It was not a lie, but she had slept late only because she had been late going to sleep. Dawn had already been graying her room. Both Avery and her mother had finished their breakfast, she could see, but were reading over a final cup of coffee. Her mother was looking through the morning post. She set it all aside, however, after Jessica had sat down.

  “Mr. Thorne plays the pianoforte extremely well,” she said. “Where did he learn to play, Jessica? In America? Did he say?”

  “He did not learn at all,” Jessica said. “He plays by ear.”

  “Astonishing,” her mother said. She nodded toward the rose. “I wonder if he sends a rose each day to other young ladies too. To Estelle, for example. Or is it just you?”

  “I have no idea, Mama.” Jessica laughed. “I could hardly ask him, could I? And I could hardly ask Estelle.”

  “Do you . . . like him?” her mother asked, half frowning. “He has certainly caught the imagination of the ton for some largely inexplicable reason. He is invited everywhere. But it is a bit puzzling, considering how little is known about him. Yes, he is Lady Vickers’s kinsman and godson. But all families have a few ramshackle members one would not wish to see one’s daughters marrying. How do we even know he has a fortune or where it comes from? Do we have any evidence but his word? And do we have even that? I have not heard that he has boasted of being wealthy. Which is to his credit, of course.”

  “I know no more about him than you do, Mama,” Jessica said, not quite truthfully. “But does it matter? I am not about to elope to Gretna Green with him.”

  Avery set down his paper. “What a very tedious waste of time and effort that would be,” he said, “when you are twenty-five years old, Jess, and could merely toddle along to the nearest church with a special license anytime you chose—just as Anna and I did once upon a time.”

  Jessica laughed again. “You must not worry, Mama,” she said. “I have no intention of toddling along to the nearest church with Mr. Thorne any more than I have of running off to Scotland with him.”

  Anna came into the breakfast parlor at that moment. She was holding Beatrice, whose head was burrowed into the hollow between her shoulder and neck while she sucked loudly on one fist and cried with soft grizzling sounds. Her only visible cheek was bright red.

  “I do apologize for being so late,” Anna said. “Poor Bea really is cutting four teeth at once. We were quite right, Mother. And she will not let go of me, though Nurse tried several times to take her. Bea would only scream.”

  Avery had got to his feet, but it was Jessica’s mother who was first to move around the table. “You are spoiling her, Anna,” she said. “Let us see if she will allow her grandmother to spoil her instead so that you can eat. I have finished already. Come, chicken. Come and tell Grandmama what is wrong. Yes, I know. The whole world is against you, is it not?”

  She eased the baby from Anna’s arms into her own as she spoke, and miraculously Bea snuggled into her and even stopped grizzling for a moment.

  “The magic touch,” Anna said. “You have had it with all four of the children, Mother. Thank you.”

  “On behalf of my valet,” Avery added, “a million thanks, Mother. He has a way of not complaining when I arrive in my room with one half of my neckcloth limp and soggy that I find quite unnerving.”

  Jessica’s mother remained on her feet and rocked the baby against her shoulder, murmuring nonsense as she did so. Beatrice, still sucking on her fist, seemed to be falling asleep.

  “Ah,” Anna said. “Another rose. I do like Mr. Thorne’s style. I assume the rose is from him? A bouquet was being delivered as I was coming through the hall just now. A very large one. I am guessing it is for you, Jessica, and that it is from Mr. Rochford again. He is paying quite determined court to you. He scarcely left your side last evening except when you were at the pianoforte with Mr. Thorne.”

  “It was very gratifying,” Jessica’s mother murmured. “And he was very deferential to Mama and Aunt Edith.”

  “A little too deferential?” Jessica said, and her eyes met her brother’s across the table. He raised his eyebrows. “What do you know of his cousin, Avery?”

  “His cousin?” he said. “The missing earl, do you mean? Next to nothing except that he is missing and presumed dead.”

  “His name was Gabriel,” Jessica said—and, when his eyebrows remained aloft, “It is Mr. Thorne’s name too.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Are you seeing some intrigue at work, Jess? Are they one and the same, do you suppose?” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

  “I do not suppose it for a single moment,” she said. “Gabriel is hardly a unique name.”

  “Quite so,” he said, but his eyes remained thoughtfully upon her while Anna talked of Mr. Thorne’s playing last night.

  “I could listen to him for a whole evening
without growing weary,” she said. “Did you notice, Jessica, that his eyes were closed much of the time while he played Bach and there was a slight frown between his brows? It was clear he felt the music right down to the depths of his soul.”

  “I did notice,” Jessica said. “I was very glad I had played first.”

  “Until now,” Anna said, “you have resisted all attempts to pay you serious court, Jessica. Is this year to change all that? With Mr. Rochford and his charm and his lavish compliments and large bouquets, perhaps? Or with Mr. Thorne and his mysterious silences and single roses and heavenly music? With both?”

  “Or perhaps with neither,” Jessica said. “Are you tired of having me forever underfoot, then, Anna?”

  “Oh heavens,” Anna cried, reaching across the distance between them to squeeze Jessica’s hand. “Never. Oh, absolutely not, Jessica. I could never have too much family. Nor could I love the one I have more deeply than I do. That was not my meaning at all.”

  “I know it was not,” Jessica assured her, squeezing her hand back.

  Anna had spent twenty-two of her first twenty-five years at an orphanage in Bath, knowing herself only as Anna Snow, Snow being her mother’s maiden name, though she had not known that either. When she had discovered that she was Lady Anastasia Westcott, the legitimate daughter—and only legitimate child, as it happened—of the late Earl of Riverdale, it might have been expected that she would be bitter, that she would resent the family ties and the life of privilege all the other Westcotts shared. Instead she had loved them resolutely and fiercely almost from the first moment, even while some of them had resented her.

  Jessica had hated her—she had come, seemingly from nowhere, to wreck Abby’s life as well as Camille’s and Harry’s, and to destroy her own dreams. It had taken her a long time to accept Anna as part of the Westcott family, then as Avery’s wife, her own sister-in-law and cousin. It had taken even longer to love her.

  Avery’s eyes were resting upon Anna across the table. It often shocked Jessica to note that despite the almost bored expression her brother wore habitually in company, there was something in his eyes whenever he looked at his wife that spoke of fathomless depths of . . . Of what? Love? Passion? Passion seemed too strong a word to use of the indolent Avery, but appearances could be deceptive, Jessica thought. She was sure there must be a well of passion in him that very few people would suspect.

  Oh, she thought with a sudden wave of unexpected yearning, how could she possibly be planning this year merely to settle for an eligible match? She wanted what Avery and Anna had. She wanted what Alexander and Wren had and Elizabeth and Colin. And Abby and Gil.

  She wanted love. Even more than that, she wanted passion.

  And she thought of that silly little detail that had kept her awake through most of the night, tossing and turning in her bed, punching and reshaping her pillow. She thought of Mr. Thorne’s little finger caressing hers upon the pianoforte keys, very lightly, very deliberately. Very briefly. How idiotic in the extreme that such a thing could have robbed her of a night’s sleep. If she were to tell anyone, she would be laughed off the face of the earth. She had felt that touch sizzle—yes, it was the only appropriate word—through her whole body, warming her cheeks, setting her heart to beating faster, creating a strange ache low in her abdomen and down along her inner thighs to her knees. Her toes had curled up inside her evening slippers.

  She had wanted to weep.

  She had asked him to romance her and had expected—if she had expected him to take up the challenge at all, though he had said he would—lavish gestures, similar to what she was getting from Mr. Rochford. Instead, in all the days since, she had had a pink rose each morning and a touch of his little finger to hers last evening.

  It was laughable.

  But she still, even after a few hours of sleep, felt like weeping.

  She wanted . . .

  Oh, she wanted and wanted and wanted.

  What Avery had.

  What Alexander had.

  What Elizabeth and Camille and Abby had. And Aunt Matilda.

  She wanted.

  “Mr. Rochford has asked to take you rowing on the Thames this afternoon during the garden party?” her mother asked, speaking softly so as not to wake the baby.

  “Yes,” Jessica said. “I promised that I would go out in one of the boats with him.”

  “It is going to be a lovely day,” Anna said. “It already is.”

  Jessica wished it were raining. She really did not like Mr. Rochford, she had decided last evening. He tried too hard to be charming and deferential. He smiled too much. All of which she might have ignored or at least excused on the grounds that he had not been to London before and was new to the position of prominence with the ton into which his prospects had thrown him even though his father was not yet officially the Earl of Lyndale. What had turned the tide against him last evening was the story he had told about the supposedly dead earl, his cousin. It might be perfectly true. She had no reason to believe it was not. But it included serious charges, involving even debauchery and murder. Ought he to have volunteered that information to a group of strangers in the middle of a party? About his own family? He had shown poor taste at best. At worst, he had been deliberately smearing the name of his father’s predecessor in order to make himself and his father look better by contrast. More legitimate, perhaps. How unnecessary. The law itself was about to make them legitimate.

  Would she have been so offended if his dead cousin had not happened to have the same name as Mr. Thorne?

  Gabriel?

  Yes, of course she would. She did not like to hear people blackening the reputation of someone who was incapable of defending himself—or herself. Especially that of a relative. She could not imagine any of the Westcotts doing such a thing.

  “You are right,” she said in answer to Anna’s comment. “It is not even windy. It is going to be a perfect day for a garden party.”

  After a few hours spent at the House of Lords, Avery Archer, Duke of Netherby, and Alexander Westcott, Earl of Riverdale, had a late luncheon together at White’s Club.

  They were not natural friends. At one time Alexander had viewed Avery as little more than an indolent fop, while Avery had considered Alexander a bit of a straitlaced bore. But that was before Harry was stripped of the earldom and his title and entailed properties passed to Alexander, a mere second cousin. It was before Avery married Lady Anastasia Westcott, the late earl’s newly discovered and very legitimate daughter. The crisis, or rather the series of crises that arose from those events and subsequent ones, had thrown the two men together on a number of occasions, not the least of which was a duel at which Avery fought—and won—and Alexander acted as his second. Their encounters had given them at first a grudging respect for each other and finally a cautious sort of friendship.

  They spoke of House business and politics and world affairs in general while they ate. Once Avery discouraged a mutual acquaintance from joining them by raising his quizzing glass halfway to his eye, bidding the man a courteous but rather distant good day, and pointedly not asking for his company.

  After their coffee had been served, Avery changed the subject.

  “To what do I owe this very kind invitation?” he asked.

  Alexander leaned back in his chair and set his linen napkin beside his saucer. “Jessica is giving serious consideration to settling down at last, is she?” he asked.

  Avery raised his eyebrows. “If she is,” he said, “she has not confided in me. Nor would I encourage her to do so. That is a matter for my stepmother to worry her head over. Or not. My sister is of age and has been for several years.”

  “What do you think of Rochford as a suitor for her hand?” Alexander asked.

  “Do I have to think anything?” Avery sounded pained. “But it seems I must. You invited me to have luncheon with you for this exact purpose, I suppose.” Avery sighed, and then continued. “He is perfectly eligible and will be more so very soon unless the
missing earl should suddenly drop down from the heavens into our midst at the last possible moment like a bad melodrama. Rochford has obviously set his sights upon Jessica. Equally obviously, the usual family committee has decided to promote the match and throw them together at every turn. Why else would he have been invited to your sister’s supposedly exclusive party last evening? I understand Jessica is to go out with him in a boat small enough to allow for only one rower and one passenger at a garden party this afternoon. One would hope his manners are polished enough that he will volunteer to be the rower.”

  “Do you like him?” Alexander was frowning.

  “I do not have to,” Avery said as he stirred his coffee. “Jessica would be the one marrying him. But as far as I am concerned, the man has too many teeth, and he displays them far too often. He also has abysmal taste in waistcoats. But he may have myriad other virtues to atone for those vices. And I would not be called upon to look upon either the teeth or his waistcoats with any great frequency if Jess were to marry him. Do I assume you do not like him? On the slight acquaintance of one evening spent in his company?”

  “What do you know of Gabriel Rochford?” Alexander asked. “The missing earl.”

  “Nothing,” Avery said after taking a drink and setting his cup back in its saucer. “Except that he is missing and that he shares an angelic first name with Thorne. But the world, I must believe, contains a fair smattering of other Gabriels.”

  “How long has the earl been missing?” Alexander asked. “Do you know?”

  “I do not,” Avery said. “Is the question relevant to anything?”

  “Rochford told a story last evening,” Alexander said. “Jessica heard it. So did Elizabeth and a few other guests. Estelle was part of the group. So was young Peter. It was not a suitable story for such an audience and such an occasion. Both Elizabeth and I turned the conversation to other topics as soon as we could, but we could hardly interrupt him midsentence. Of course, if you had been there with your quizzing glass and your ducal stare, he would have been muzzled far sooner.”