by Balogh, Mary
Jessica feared she was going to marry him.
Feared?
He might be a ravisher and a murderer. She had not asked him, and it seemed strange now that she had not. Had she been afraid of the answer? It seemed strange that after shrugging off so many worthy candidates for her hand she was finally giving serious consideration to the suit of a man who might have committed two of the worst crimes imaginable. But . . . Oh, but he had returned from America, not because he was the Earl of Lyndale and owner of what was probably a grand home and estate and a sizable fortune. In the more than six years since the death of his uncle he had not been tempted by those things. He had been happy in America. He had actually used that word—happy. He had returned because a hermit of a woman who had been born with severe physical challenges was about to be turned out of her modest cottage by the man who would be earl if Mr. Thorne did not come back. He had given up everything that was dear to him, perhaps forever, for the sake of that one woman. Because he loved her—though not in any romantic way.
Could such a man be a ravisher? A murderer?
But she had only his word . . .
And she had only Mr. Rochford’s word . . .
Which did she believe? She had not even asked Mr. Thorne the important questions.
“I like him, Mama,” she said rather lamely in answer to her mother’s question.
“We know nothing of his lineage,” her mother said, “apart from the fact that he is somehow related to Lady Vickers. We cannot even be certain that he is wealthy, though he patronizes the very best tailors and boot makers and is apparently putting up at an expensive hotel. But he may be deep in debt for all we know. And if he made his fortune in trade, he may not be quite up to snuff even if he is a gentleman. Not for your father’s daughter at least.”
“Mama,” she said, smiling, “it is not Mr. Thorne who is downstairs with Avery.”
No, it was not. She had thought perhaps he might come yesterday after kissing her at the garden party. Oh, not to make a formal offer, perhaps, but maybe to take her driving or walking in the park. She had thought when Avery first mentioned this morning that some gentleman had requested the favor of half an hour of his time that perhaps it was Mr. Thorne. She was getting a little tired of roses and silences. Though there had been the magical interlude with the pianoforte at Elizabeth and Colin’s party. Yes, magical. And there had been the rose arbor at the garden party, and that kiss. Not quite her first, but . . . Oh, wherever was the man? She did not want just to be romanced. She wanted . . .
Oh, she wanted her heart to be besieged.
“You are quite right,” her mother said, laughing. “And if it were, I daresay Avery would make short work of him. He would not willingly allow you to marry a cit, even one who is a gentleman by birth. Not that you need his permission, of course, but it would be as well to have it when you do decide to marry. Avery has his funny ways, but I would never question his judgment.”
The drawing room door opened as she finished speaking and Avery stepped into the room. He raised his quizzing glass to his eye as the butler closed the door behind him, and he surveyed Jessica through its lens. A pure affectation, of course. There was nothing wrong with Avery’s eyesight.
“You are looking remarkably well turned out, Jess,” he said.
“Thank you.” She made to get to her feet. She must go down and get this over with. But Avery raised a staying hand and lowered his glass.
“Rochford asked for half an hour and was granted exactly that,” he said. “His mission might have been accomplished sooner, but he has a tendency to wrap up the kernel of what he has to say in florid language. He wishes to convey a countess’s title upon you at some future date, Jess.”
“Yes,” she said. “I will go down and speak with him.”
“Ah,” he said. “I would have detained him if I had known you were eager to speak to him. Alas, he has gone.”
“Gone?” Jessica’s mother said. “You did not refuse him, Avery, surely.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I do not have the power to do any such thing, Mother,” he said. “My duty as Jess’s guardian came to an end four years ago, a fact that afforded me as much relief as it did her. But men who wish to marry her seem to feel obliged to seek out my blessing if not my permission. That is what Rochford came to get. He failed and left. I did offer to bring him up to pay his respects to both of you anyway, but he seemed to be out of sorts and went away instead. Your efforts to look your best have been all for naught, Jess. Perhaps I had better take you and Mother to Gunter’s for an ice.”
“Avery,” Jessica’s mother said. “You are being deliberately tiresome. Why, pray, did you withhold your blessing from Mr. Rochford’s suit? You must know that it is what all of her family has been hoping for.”
“All?” he said, frowning. “Am I not at least an honorary member of the Westcott family, Mother, as your stepson? And as Anna’s husband? You wound me.”
“In case neither of you has noticed,” Jessica said rather tartly, “I am here. I would be obliged if the two of you would not continue to talk about my business as though I were not. Why did you withhold your blessing, Avery?”
He turned his attention upon her. “I cannot in all honesty say, Jess, that he would have my blessing under any circumstances,” he said. “Not unless he can lose a few teeth. But that might involve some painful extractions and I would not wish that upon my worst enemy.”
Jessica’s mother tutted and tossed her glance at the ceiling. Jessica, despite herself, smirked.
“I did inform him,” Avery continued, “that he will have my official blessing at least to speak to you in my house when he can offer in fact what he offered this afternoon merely in theory. The Earl of Lyndale still officially lives. When he is officially dead and Rochford’s father is confirmed in the title, then Rochford himself will be an eligible suitor for the hand of my stepsister. But before you can stamp your foot in anger over my presumption, Jess, may I remind you that I know very well you do not need my permission? It is merely my hope that you will listen to advice.”
“Do you believe, then,” she asked him, “that the Earl of Lyndale still lives?”
“I neither believe nor disbelieve,” he told her. “I speak merely of facts, and the fact is that the present earl lives until he has been pronounced dead by the appropriate authority.”
He was looking very directly at her, Jessica saw, his normally sleepy eyes unusually keen. He knows, she thought. Or if he does not know, he suspects. And if he suspects, he will ferret out the truth. Avery had a way of doing that.
“I am not about to turn down an offer of an ice at Gunter’s,” she told him.
He sighed. “I was afraid of that,” he said.
Her mother looked from one to the other of them and tossed her glance at the ceiling again.
The day after the garden party, Gabriel made arrangements to keep his suite of rooms at his London hotel, though he did not expect to be there for the next week. He arranged to have pink roses, accompanied by signed cards, sent to Archer House each morning for the coming week. He informed Sir Trevor and Lady Vickers and Bertie that he would be away from town for up to a week. And he took his curricle and pair, his valet, and his groom and drove north.
The village was called Lilyvale, Simon Norton had informed him, and was thirty miles or so southeast of Brierley. Ginsberg lived there with his daughter and son-in-law on a tenant farm he had leased more than twelve years ago. The information was secondhand, even thirdhand, by the time it had reached Norton’s ears, but Gabriel had decided to trust it. If it proved false, he would have wasted a few days. It would not be the end of the world.
The information turned out not to be false. Ginsberg lived in a fair-sized house on what looked to be a well-run farm. There was a neat garden about the house, sporting both flowers and vegetables as well as an expanse of freshly scythed lawn. Two young children, a boy and a girl, were roaring about the lawn when Gabriel arrived, involved in some noisy
game. An older boy, nominally in charge of them, perhaps, was stretched out on his side on the grass, propped on one elbow, his head upon his hand. He was reading.
The children stopped to stare, and the older boy looked up from his book. “Good morning, sir,” he said.
“I have come to call upon Mrs. Clark,” Gabriel said. “Is she your mother?”
The boy sat up and crossed his legs. “Who shall I say is calling, sir?” he asked.
But the younger boy, less concerned with the niceties of hospitality, had turned tail and gone dashing toward the house. He opened the door, crashing it against a wall inside, and yelled. “Mama,” he cried. “Someone to see you.”
The little girl went tearing after him.
The older boy laughed and scratched his head. “I do beg your pardon, sir,” he said as he pushed himself to his feet. “They are like a pair of wild animals today. It comes of having been cooped up in the house all day yesterday because of the rain.”
Gabriel knew all about the rain. He had driven his curricle through it.
“I am an old acquaintance of your mother’s,” he explained. And yes, he thought, the boy must be about twelve years old. “I am staying not far from here for a day or two and came to pay my respects. Ask her if she has time to see Gabriel Rochford, if you will.”
“Yes, Mr. Rochford.” The boy turned to lead the way toward the house.
Before they reached it, however, a woman appeared in the doorway. She was a bit on the plump side, noticeably older than when Gabriel had seen her last—she had been seventeen then. But she was still fair haired and pretty. The little girl was clinging to her skirt and peeping about it at Gabriel. The little boy came bouncing outside again, jumping two-footed down the steps.
“Penny,” Gabriel said, removing his hat.
She stared blankly at him for a few moments, and then one hand crept to her throat. “Gabriel?” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Oh dear God, it is. I heard you were dead.”
“Who is he, Mama?” the little boy asked, jumping on the spot.
She looked down at the child and blinked, almost as though she had forgotten who he was. “You will mind your manners, Wilbur,” she said. “Make your bow to Mr. Rochford and go up to the schoolroom. Amelia, you go too. Kendall, take them up, if you please, and stay with them there until you are called.”
“Aw, Mama,” the little boy complained. “Can’t we just play outside?”
“You will do as you are told,” she said firmly.
“Come on, nippers,” the older boy said. “I bet I can beat you both at spillikins.”
“Cannot,” they both chorused together, and the little girl reached for his hand.
As the children made their way toward the staircase that was visible over their mother’s shoulder, an older man approached the door. He stopped abruptly when he saw Gabriel, and his gaze narrowed and then hardened upon him.
“Mr. Ginsberg.” Gabriel nodded to him.
“We heard you were dead,” he said. And then, with flared nostrils and barely leashed fury, “Would that you were.”
“Papa, please,” Penelope said. “Wait until the children are upstairs.”
None of them moved until a door closed and they could no longer hear the children’s voices. A flush moved up Penelope’s neck and into her face. Her father’s nostrils remained flared.
“Come into the sitting room, Gabriel,” she said. “And I named you wrongly to the children, did I not? You are the Earl of Lyndale.”
“I will not have that man in my house,” her father said. “I will send for a constable if he does not leave my property immediately. He belongs in a jail cell while a gallows is prepared.”
“Please, Papa,” she said, closing her eyes briefly. “Let us talk about this in private.”
“I did not kill your son, sir,” Gabriel said. “He was my friend.”
Ginsberg, white haired and straight backed, old for his years, glared at him for a long, silent moment and then turned to stalk away in the direction of a room that turned out to be the sitting room. Gabriel followed Penelope inside it and shut the door. Her father went to stand by the window, looking out, his hands clasped behind him.
“Gabriel,” Penelope said again, “we heard you had died.”
“I did not,” he told her. Neither of them sat down. “You too probably wish I had.”
Ginsberg growled but did not say anything. Penelope raised her hand to her throat again.
“I went away,” Gabriel said. “I had been thinking about leaving for some time, but I was spurred on by what happened. I was a frightened boy, and it seemed to me that there was real cause for fear. You might perhaps have cleared up one misperception if I had stayed, Penny. I believe you did not do it, though, after I was gone.”
She clutched her throat and closed her eyes again. Ginsberg turned sharply from the window, his face a mask of fury.
“You are not going to try denying—” he began, but his daughter cut him off.
“Please, Papa,” she said.
It occurred to Gabriel that he might have tried to insist upon speaking to her privately. But he was not sorry he had not done so. His own anger had been suppressed for years, only to be aroused again now. They had been sweethearts, he and Penny—and yes, it was the most appropriate word to use of two young innocents who had rarely been alone together and had never done anything more daring than hold hands when they could and twice share a very brief, chaste kiss. She had been seventeen, for the love of God, he nineteen. They had been children.
“The boy you called Kendall is your son?” Gabriel asked. “Who is his father, Penny?”
She made a sound of distress deep in her throat. Ginsberg took a menacing step forward, only to be stopped by her raised hand.
“I never said it was you,” she told Gabriel. “I let it be assumed that it was. It seemed . . . preferable. I thought Papa would persuade you to marry me, and I did not believe you would really mind. I thought you liked me and would do that for me when I explained.”
Good God!
“What the devil!” Ginsberg bellowed. Again, her raised hand stopped him.
“And then everything got out of hand,” she said. “Orson went stalking off in a rage to find you and hold you to account—or what he thought was holding you to account. And then you killed him. Oh dear God, I was beside myself. I did not know what to do. I was seventeen. Barely that even. Did I cause my own brother’s death, Gabriel, as surely as if I had fired the gun myself? I have always believed I did and that I was responsible for you becoming a killer. But I know it must have been an accident. He was shot in the back. There is no way you would have done that deliberately. Oh dear God.”
“I did not kill Orson,” Gabriel said.
She looked at him with eyes suddenly grown wild, her teeth sunk deep into her lower lip.
“What—” Ginsberg began.
“Who is your eldest child’s father, Penny?” Gabriel asked again.
She huffed out a breath, closed her eyes again briefly, and spoke. “I was going to Brierley with a cake Mama had baked for your aunt,” she said. “She had been feeling poorly. They were in the park too. I think they must have been coming from the tavern. They looked . . . drunk. They were weaving and laughing and . . . I could not hide fast enough. One of them . . . He tried to flirt with me, but when that did not work, he started to kiss me while the other one laughed and told him I was your girl—Gabe’s girl, he said. And then the first man laughed and told me what I needed was a real man. And then he . . . And the other one would not stop him. He just laughed. He was married. I mean the one who . . . He would not have been able to marry me.”
“His name?” Gabriel asked softly. But of course he knew.
His cousin Philip had been a man of loose morals and a frequent drunk all the time Gabriel had known him. It was said—and Gabriel believed it—that no female servant or farm girl was safe from him when he was in his cups.
Manley had been just suc
h another. He was all of five years older than Philip, but they were friends and he had come to Brierley frequently and stayed, often for weeks at a time.
By the time Gabriel went to America, both men were married, with children, but those facts had not changed them. Manley’s child had been left at home whenever he brought his wife to Brierley, and the two wives had been left at the house to amuse each other while the men drank in the village and went shooting out of season and ogled the local young women, married and single, and generally made nuisances of themselves. Lords of the manor. Entitled to whatever or whoever took their fancy.
Gabriel had always heartily disliked both of them, a sentiment they had made no bones about returning. They had always derived great pleasure from blaming him for some of the idiotic things they had done—grown men acting like bully boys. And his uncle, stern and autocratic, but as thick as a brick, Gabriel had often thought, had been unable or unwilling to see his son and his cousin’s boy for what they were. He had been ready enough to take their word and punish Gabriel.
“His name, Penny?”
Ginsberg looked as though he were about to explode, but he held his peace and stayed where he was, staring at the floor.
Penelope drew a deep, ragged breath. “Mr. Manley Rochford,” she said.
Ginsberg’s head snapped back as though he had been punched hard on the chin. His eyes were fast closed, his face chalk white. “He came to Orson’s funeral,” he murmured.
“You have told no one this until now, Penny?” Gabriel asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I told Mr. Clark—my husband—before I married him.”
“But he did not deem it necessary to have Manley Rochford taken into custody and charged with ravishment and probably murder too?” he asked.
She frowned. “But you killed Orson,” she said. “It was you he went to confront.”
“He did not find me,” he told her. “I was with Mary Beck. She had been brought a fawn with a broken leg, and I was helping her set and bind it. When I finally arrived home, I was confronted with three things. You were with child. Orson was dead, shot in the back. And I was guilty on both counts. You had admitted the first, and Philip and Manley had witnessed the second from a distance. They had been too far away, of course, to prevent the shooting. My uncle, his house threatened with terrible scandal, advised me to run while I could. And I fled before I could give myself time to think. It was not the wisest thing to do, of course, but I was nineteen. And there were people to swear that I was guilty of each charge—you on the one hand, Manley and Philip, my own cousins, on the other.”