by Balogh, Mary
Marjorie. That was her name.
“Papa?” Anthony Rochford said. “This is Mr. Thorne. The man from America I told you about. Mama?”
“Actually,” Gabriel said without taking his eyes off Manley, and he knew now that he had a rather large and avidly listening audience of the cream of society, “I was born with the name Rochford. Gabriel Rochford. I kept that name until I sailed for America thirteen years ago.”
The reaction was worthy of any melodrama. There was a gasp followed by loud murmurings followed in turn by frantic shushing noises.
“Papa?” Anthony Rochford sounded close to panic now.
Manley ignored him. He was having a bit of an onslaught of panic of his own, Gabriel guessed. But he mastered his emotions with a visible effort. He thrust back his shoulders and continued to point a now shaking finger at Gabriel. He looked rather magnificent, actually, with his crown glinting in the candlelight from the chandelier overhead. All he needed to complete the picture was Excalibur clutched in his hand.
“This man,” he said, addressing the crowd, which must have swelled to consist of almost every guest at the ball. “This man, who changed his name and hid away in America, as well he ought, for thirteen years, has now been driven by ambition to consider it worth the risk of returning at the last possible moment to claim his birthright. I am here to stop him in the name of justice.”
“You may try, Manley,” Gabriel said. He was surprised by how little hate he felt for his cousin, who would have sent him to the gallows thirteen years ago and would do it again now. He felt only contempt.
“This man,” Manley said. “This Gabriel Rochford is a murderer.”
There was another wave of sound. Manley waited for it to subside, as it soon did. No one wanted to miss a word. He took a step forward, leaving his wife and son slightly behind him. He knew how to play to an audience, Gabriel thought appreciatively.
“This man,” Manley continued, “ravished the young and innocent daughter of a neighbor of the Earl of Lyndale, his uncle, and left her in disgrace and with child. When confronted by the young lady’s brother and my dear friend, Gabriel Rochford murdered him. He shot him in the back. I witnessed him doing so, though I was too far away, alas, to stop him. Is there a worse or more cowardly crime than to shoot an unarmed man in the back?”
The cream of society obviously did not think so. The murmur this time was uglier. Equally ugly glances were being directed Gabriel’s way.
“He escaped,” Manley said, “before my cousin, the earl, could have him apprehended. A sure admission of guilt.”
“Perhaps we can take this discussion elsewhere,” the loud, overcheerful voice of Lady Farraday said. “Perhaps—”
Manley ignored her. So did everyone else.
“This man should be seized now,” he said, “before he can escape again. Gabriel Rochford is a dangerous man and worthy only of a dark prison cell until he can hang by the neck until he is dead.”
The murmurings were becoming a little louder and a little uglier. The situation was about to turn downright nasty. At any moment now, Gabriel thought, he was going to be tackled and brought down on the ballroom floor, his arms pinioned behind his back. Perhaps it was only social etiquette and the presence of ladies—several of whom looked just as outraged as their men, however—that had prevented its happening already.
“I find it a little strange, Manley,” Gabriel said, and the need to hear what he had to say outweighed the urge to prevent him from fleeing. Silence fell almost immediately. “I find it strange that you saw me shoot Mr. Orson Ginsberg, my friend, in the back. Of course, by your own admission you were some distance away and were perhaps mistaken about the identity of the murderer. You were the only witness, were you?”
“I was not,” Manley said. “My cousin was with me. Your cousin too. Mr. Philip Rochford.”
“Ah,” Gabriel said. “The late Philip Rochford, that would be.”
“He reported what he saw,” Manley said, “to a number of people, including the earl, his father, and representatives of the law. You made a grave mistake in coming back to England, Gabriel Rochford. If you believe your prospects will protect you—”
“I find it strange,” Gabriel said, cutting him off, “because I know of two other witnesses who are willing to swear, in a court of law if necessary, that I was nowhere near the scene of the murder at the time it was committed.”
“Oh yes?” Manley said. He was sneering now and looking about him to encourage his audience to sneer with him. “Produce them, Gabriel Rochford.”
Gabriel felt someone step up behind him and tug lightly on his domino. Jessica looked back and released her hold of his arm in order to step to one side and draw Mary into the gap between them with one arm about her shoulders. The little bareheaded nun had removed her wimple as well as her mask. She looked steadily and reproachfully at Manley.
He recognized her instantly. So did his wife.
“It is Miss Beck,” she said.
“Be quiet, Marjorie,” Manley commanded, his voice harsh. “You are a long way from home, Miss Beck. Gabriel was always a great favorite with you, I recall. But you may wish to consider well before perjuring yourself in order to save him from the gallows.”
“I never have to consider for long before telling the truth, Mr. Rochford,” she said in her calm, deep voice. “Truth is the only thing to be told, at all times. Gabriel was at my cottage for several hours of the afternoon when poor Mr. Ginsberg died. He was helping me tend a wounded fawn one of the grooms had brought me. The groom remained too and remembers. I have a letter from him in safekeeping.”
It was currently locked inside a safe in Netherby’s study at Archer House.
“I have a firm alibi, you see,” Gabriel said. “You were mistaken, Manley. It was not I who murdered Orson.”
“Alibi!” Manley said scornfully. “It is easy to get your friends to say anything you wish, Gabriel. I demand that this man be arrested.”
The crowd no longer seemed so eager to pounce.
“Besides,” Manley cried, trying to reestablish his hold on them, “he is a ravisher as well as a murderer. I daresay he has no alibi for that.”
“Oh, I say,” someone said. “Remember there are ladies present, Rochford.”
“Even for that rape,” Manley said, repeating the word at least one of his fellow guests had found offensive, “he deserves to die.”
“And I have a letter,” Gabriel said, “written by the lady herself and witnessed by her father and her husband, exonerating me from that charge. You were mistaken again, Manley. It was someone else who ravished her.”
That letter too was in Netherby’s safe.
He waited for the renewed swell of sound around them to die down.
“She does name that someone else in her letter,” Gabriel added, his eyes fixed upon Manley.
Manley had turned even paler, if that was possible. His lips looked almost blue in contrast.
“You brought a fortune from America with you, Thorne,” Anthony Rochford blurted suddenly. “How much did you pay the strumpet? And her father and husband? How much did you pay Miss Beck? And the groom who wrote a letter—if he did write it? In my experience grooms do not write. Or read.” He looked triumphantly about him.
But his words fell flat. And Manley seemed lost for further words. His wife set a hand on his arm again, and again he shook it off.
“We are done here. For now,” he said, speaking with an awful dignity. “If no one among you is man enough to hold this man until the authorities can come to arrest him and haul him off to jail, where he belongs, then I will have to make those arrangements myself. Come, my dear. Come, Anthony.”
A path opened up for him, though he did have to lead his wife and son around Gabriel and Jessica and Mary in order to reach it. They left the ballroom unimpeded. Everyone else simply watched them go.
Gabriel looked down at Mary and smiled. And he looked over her head at Jessica and . . . saw two persons combined
. One and indivisible. He saw Lady Jessica Thorne at her most haughty. He saw also Jessica, the lovely, warmhearted woman he suspected had become indispensable to him for the rest of his life.
“My felicitations, Lady Farraday.” It was the voice of Netherby, bored and aristocratic, not raised above the level of ordinary conversation by one iota but nevertheless commanding the attention of everyone in the ballroom. “I daresay your costume ball will go down in the annals of social history as one of the most memorable entertainments of the decade.”
And a small group of ladies began a round of applause, there were a few cries of Hear, hear, a man whistled piercingly, and Lady Farrady almost visibly let go of the conviction that her precious masquerade was a disaster. The floor was clearing, the orchestra was readying its instruments, but still there was a cluster of persons in the middle of the ballroom.
“I believe we are done here too,” Gabriel said to the two ladies beside him. “Are we ready to leave?”
“Yes,” Jessica said.
“In a minute,” Mary said, looking apologetically from one to the other of them. “I must first thank your grandmother and aunt, if I may, Jessica. They have been very kind to me. What lovely ladies they are.”
Gabriel smiled rather grimly at Jessica as Mary moved away, and she looked back—ah, with that wide, sunny smile that always rocked him back on his heels.
Lady Farraday’s guests had allowed Mr. Manley Rochford and his wife and son to leave without attempting to stop them. It was, of course, otherwise with Gabriel. It made perfect sense to Jessica.
Some wished merely to shake his hand and congratulate him, calling him my lord or Lyndale as they did so. Others wished to assure him that they did not believe for a single moment that he was guilty of what he had been accused of and were very glad that he had a solid alibi for both charges. A few were bold enough to ask him if he knew who was guilty. Was it Mr. Manley Rochford himself? No one asked that specific question, but all wondered. Or so it seemed to Jessica.
“What the devil?” Mr. Albert Vickers said, pumping Gabriel’s hand, seemingly unaware that there were ladies within earshot, including Jessica. “What the devil, Gabe? I jolly well hope you have those letters in a safe place.”
“I do,” Gabriel assured him.
Jessica was not ignored. She was congratulated—upon her marriage and upon the fact that she was the Countess of Lyndale. She was assured that no one believed any of those nasty things Mr. Rochford had said about the earl, her husband. Predictably, a few people told her they had not really liked or trusted the man from their first sight of him at church on Sunday.
The orchestra was poised and ready and Lady Farraday was looking a bit anxious again. Finally Gabriel drew Jessica’s arm through his and they were able to leave the ballroom to rather embarrassing applause.
Alexander was waiting outside the ballroom doors with Mary.
“Tomorrow morning, then,” he said, “in a private dining room at your hotel? The arrangement has not changed?”
He and Avery were planning to meet Gabriel for breakfast tomorrow morning, to assess what had happened tonight, to discuss what ought to happen next. Gabriel had been unwilling to make plans for the latter ahead of time. They had had no way of knowing how their plans for the ball itself would turn out.
“I have reserved a room,” Gabriel told him, shaking his hand. “I appreciate the support, Riverdale, even though I am such a new member of the family.”
Alexander grinned. “We thrive upon such crises,” he said. “I hope you reserved a largish room. I suspect Wren and Anna will insist upon coming too, and I would not bet against a few others. Jessica, for example.” He turned to her and hugged her tightly.
“Thank you, Alexander,” she said. “You look very impressive as Alexander the Great.”
He laughed.
And finally they left.
Mary, seated beside Jessica on one carriage seat while Gabriel sat with his back to the horses, was very quiet.
“You are tired, Mary?” Jessica asked her.
“I believe,” she said, “I could sleep for a week if no one disturbed me. What will happen to him, Gabriel?”
“I am not sure,” he told her. “It is what will be discussed at tomorrow’s breakfast meeting. I suppose, Mary, you feel sorry for him?”
She thought about it in her serious, quiet way. “We diminish ourselves too,” she said at last, “when feeling sorry for someone who has done a dreadful wrong leads us to excuse him and simply hope he will mend his ways. Feeling sorry for someone but acknowledging that justice ought nevertheless to be done is more appropriate to moral beings. Yes, Gabriel, I feel sorry for him—and I feel real sorrow for his wife and his son, who appears vain and occasionally callous, but is perhaps not really vicious. For Manley Rochford I feel pity and hope for justice. It breaks my heart.”
“Even though he was intent upon making you homeless and destitute?” Jessica asked.
“Even though,” Mary said, patting her hand.
None of them said anything else during the ride home—home, for the present at least, being a hotel. They both saw Mary to her room, which was close to their suite. Ruth was waiting for her inside.
“My dear Ruth,” Mary was saying as Gabriel was closing the door, “you ought not to have waited up so late just for me. You must lie down on that truckle bed right away. I hope it is comfortable.”
The first thing Gabriel did when they stepped inside their own suite was to summon his valet from his bedchamber and dismiss him for the night. He went with a respectful bow and a murmured good night.
“He was not happy at being dismissed before he could perform his final duties for the day,” Jessica said after the door closed behind him.
“How can you tell?” Gabriel asked, grinning at her. “I have never known anyone with a more impassive face.”
“One gets to know,” she said, smiling back. “Servants give subtle hints of their true feelings that they fully expect their employers to interpret.”
“I suppose,” he said, “your maid was annoyed with you just now even though she did not even look at you?”
“But of course,” she said. “She did not look at me, Gabriel.”
Oh, it was so lovely to see him smile, to hear him laugh. Smiles and laughter made him look downright handsome as well as younger.
And then both the smile and the laughter were gone, and he cast aside his black domino and strode toward her to remove hers. Both garments landed in a heap on the floor—his customary storage place for clothes as they were removed, it seemed. He caught her up in his arms and held her tightly and wordlessly. It was almost hard to breathe. He held her for a long time until she realized something that threatened to turn her knees to water.
He was weeping.
“Gabriel?” she whispered.
“Oh good God,” he muttered. “Devil take it.”
He released her and turned away from her. He went to stand facing the fireplace, one forearm resting on the mantel.
Jessica picked up their dominoes and set them on one of the chairs at the table where they dined. She leaned back against the table and looked at him. He was drawing deep breaths and releasing them a bit raggedly. Men found it so embarrassing to weep, foolish creatures. Though she was blinking her eyes more than was normally necessary and swallowing several times to quell the gurgle in her throat. She pushed herself up to sit on the table, something she could not recall ever doing before.
He took out his handkerchief, blew his nose, and put it away. And he turned his head to look at her.
“He is my cousin, Jessica,” he said. “Second cousin, to be exact. Philip was my cousin. My uncle Julius was my father’s brother. They are—were, in some cases—my family. And then consider your family.”
Life was rarely fair, was it? She had realized that, probably for the first time, eight years ago, when life as she had known it had been shattered. Yet her family had held firm and prospered. They were always there to lean u
pon or simply to love.
“You were lonely, Gabriel?” she asked. Oh, surely more than lonely. His father died when he was nine, his mother years before that.
“The world is full of lonely people,” he said, coming toward her. He took hold of a ringlet of hair that was hovering over the corner of her eye and hooked it behind her ear. “It must never be used as an excuse for unhappiness or self-pity. Consider Mary.”
“Your aunt was her sister,” she said. “Were they not close?”
“No,” he said. “My aunt did her duty by taking Mary to Brierley with her after her marriage to my uncle, and he did his duty by giving her a home of her own and making her an allowance. Much can be said for duty. It ought to be done. But it is no substitute for love.”
“Your uncle did his duty by you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And then,” she said, “you went away and worked hard and found both happiness and love—with your mother’s cousin.”
“Cyrus,” he said. “Yes.”
She felt infinitely sad. She cupped his face with her hands. How cruel it must have seemed when Cyrus died in a senseless accident. “And ultimately duty brought you back to England.”
“And love,” he said. “I love Mary.”
“Yes.” She leaned forward and set her lips softly to his. He did not immediately respond, though he did not draw back his head either.
“And now,” she said, “you love everyone else at Brierley, all those who are suffering from having had Manley Rochford there for a while.”
“I did not know,” he said. “I ought to have. I have been derelict in my duty.”
“But not any longer,” she said. “You must not be hard on yourself, Gabriel. You had duties in Boston too. You dealt with those by leaving your friend in charge, confident that he will carry your legacy forward. Now you will solve this problem. And you have already started. Manley will no longer be there. And you and I will. I will be there by your side. It is why you married me.”
“Jessie,” he said. “That is not—”
She set a finger across his lips.
“And it is why I married you,” she told him. “Duty and—”