Someone to Romance

by Balogh, Mary

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, taking both her hands in his and squeezing them.

  She sighed. “Why is it,” she asked him, “that it is always the women who suffer? Do not make your wife suffer, Gabriel. She is far too young to be a widow.”

  “I do not know what Bertie has told you,” he said, “but there will be no pistols at dawn, I assure you, ma’am. Or at any other time of day either.”

  “Just remember,” she told him, “that only you stand between him and the earldom he has so craved, Gabriel. Watch yourself. Please.”

  “I will.” He kissed the back of one of her hands.

  Bertie went with him when he left the house. They proceeded to Archer House, as planned hastily when Gabriel was carrying Jessica from the private parlor at the hotel. While Bertie was shown into Netherby’s study, however, Gabriel was asked to step up to the drawing room, where Anna and Jessica’s mother were awaiting him.

  “Jessica will be fine,” Gabriel assured them before they could even ask. “She was conscious before I left, and she is in excellent hands. Her maid is very competent, as I am sure you know. And Mary has healing powers that extend to all living beings.”

  “Jessica is not a deer or a horse,” the dowager duchess said tartly. “But Ruth I know I can depend upon. I have never known Jessica to faint. I daresay the prospect of your being shot dead in a duel was too much for her sensibilities. I suppose she cares for you.”

  She was on the verge of tears, Gabriel could see, but like her daughter—on most occasions—she had herself well under control and looked every inch the duchess.

  “And I care for her,” he said. “There will be no duel. No pistols. No deaths.”

  “There is a veritable army of Westcotts downstairs in Avery’s study,” Anna told him. “We have been excluded, of course. We are mere women.”

  “One woman fainted this morning, Anna,” her mother-in-law reminded her, “because she was included and realized there was a possibility that her husband of less than a week could have his brains blown out before today ends.”

  “But as Avery pointed out to us when we got home, Mother,” her daughter-in-law said, “Gabriel cannot afford to die just yet. If Mr. Manley Rochford could avoid prosecution, he would become the Earl of Lyndale after all, and that is unthinkable.”

  “Hmph,” the dowager said. “You had better go down and join them, Gabriel. They are all doubtless bristling with ideas. But I will tell you this. That man deserves to be strung up by his thumbs.”

  “I will keep it in mind,” Gabriel said, and he grinned at them—Jessica’s mother and her sister-in-law—before he left the room and went downstairs.

  Good God! Every man who either was a Westcott or had some familial connection to them must be in the study. Plus Bertie. In addition to those who had been at the breakfast meeting, there were Colin, Lord Hodges; Molenor’s sons, Boris and Peter Wayne; Dorchester’s son, Bertrand Lamarr; and Dirkson’s son, Adrian Sawyer. All of them grim faced.

  “They are packed and ready to leave,” Gabriel told them after nodding his greeting to the group.

  “My men on the morning shift are keeping a close eye,” Netherby said. “No actual movement yet.”

  “He has been thoroughly humiliated,” Hodges said. “And masterful choreography there, may I add, Lyndale. But he has probably concluded that it is unlikely he is facing imminent arrest. He is not likely to be convicted upon a thirteen-year-old rape charge, after all. As Elizabeth pointed out to me last night, it rarely happens. Enough doubt will be cast by any defense lawyer worth his salt to suggest that the encounter was consensual or that the woman lied about the identity of her assailant. As to murder, well, all the evidence is purely circumstantial. Unfortunately. There were no witnesses.”

  “Proving Lyndale innocent is the easy part,” Dorchester said in full agreement. “Proving Rochford guilty is virtually impossible. Even his false claim to have seen Lyndale commit the murder can be explained by the fact that he was observing from a distance and was simply mistaken. His urging of Lyndale to flee can be explained by familial fondness.”

  “We know what cannot be done, Marcel,” Lord Molenor said. “But what can be?”

  “He cannot be allowed to go completely free,” Dirkson said. “Even though he would probably die of disappointment and live in abject misery until then. The whole business cries out for some sort of justice.”

  “I plan to beat the stuffing out of him,” Gabriel said. “For what he was about to do to Mary Beck. For what he has already done to a number of the faithful servants at Brierley. For what he did to Penelope Clark. For what he did to Orson Ginsberg.”

  “And for what he did to you,” Bertrand Lamarr added.

  “And for what he did to me.”

  “How?” Riverdale asked. “You have an idea, Lyndale?”

  “Yes,” Gabriel said. “I would have written a note before leaving the hotel, but I wanted to get out of there before Jessica recovered sufficiently to . . . complicate matters. Perhaps I may write it here, Netherby. I will invite him to meet me in Hyde Park today, this afternoon, to discuss how we will proceed from here. I will inform him that I and my wife’s relatives are seriously considering having him arrested for rape and murder and attempted murder—of me. I will invite him to come and tell me why we ought not to do that. I will imply that I am willing to let him go unmolested if he can come to some sort of agreement with me—to keep out of my sight for the rest of his life, perhaps.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “Weak,” Hodges said. “He will know perfectly well that no solid case can be made against him.”

  “But there may be enough doubt there,” Riverdale said, “to make him nervous.”

  “I will emphasize,” Gabriel said, “that there are to be no weapons, that it is not a duel to which I am challenging him.”

  “If he believes that,” Boris Wayne said, “he has feathers for brains.”

  “There will be no weapons,” Gabriel said, “except my fists.”

  “He would still be an idiot,” Peter Wayne said, looking him up and down. “If I were in his shoes, I would bring some weapon. Probably a gun.”

  “So would I,” his father agreed. “He has every motive to get rid of you, Lyndale, if he possibly can.”

  “I will not be going alone, though,” Gabriel said. “If one or more of you can be persuaded to go with me, that is. There would be too many witnesses. He would not dare risk being taken up for a hanging offense.”

  “But what if he does?” Boris Wayne asked.

  “I believe,” the Marquess of Dorchester said, “there must be more of us with you than will be apparent to the eye.”

  “Slinking in the bushes?” Hodges asked. “Armed to the teeth, Marcel?”

  “There is to be no shooting,” Gabriel said. “There are to be no deaths. No violence except what I plan to mete out with my fists—and what he may choose to return with his.”

  “That is the ideal,” Riverdale said. “Sometimes, however, reality is different. Shall we agree that there will be no unprovoked shooting?”

  “I suppose that is the best we can aim for,” Gabriel said. He knew it was essentially a weak plan. So much could go wrong. But something must be done. Of that he was determined.

  There was a brief silence, during which no one came up with any more brilliant ideas.

  “Write the note,” Netherby said, getting up from his chair behind the desk. “I shall give myself the pleasure of delivering it in person.”

  “Heaven help the man,” Boris Wayne said, laughing.

  “Where shall I suggest we meet?” Gabriel asked as he walked behind the desk. “Hyde Park is rather large.”

  “There is a handy clearing among the trees on the eastern side of the park,” Riverdale said. “Netherby fought a duel there some years ago. That did not involve pistols either. Or swords. Only Netherby’s lethal feet. Bare feet, I might add.”

  “Mine, alas,” Gabriel said, “are capable
only of conveying me from place to place. I believe my fists are handy enough, however. Give me specific directions. Manley Rochford will be as unfamiliar with the park as I am.”

  “Will he come?” Adrian Sawyer asked.

  “Of course he will,” Lord Molenor said. “Netherby will be delivering the note, will he not?”

  And so it was that a few hours after leaving his hotel, Gabriel was standing in a largish clearing of level grass in an area otherwise of rather dense trees on the eastern side of Hyde Park, awaiting the arrival of Manley Rochford. Bertie was with him, as was Riverdale. Most of the other men who had gathered in Netherby’s study had been persuaded to stay away, though it had gone much against the grain with all of them. Dorchester, his son, Dirkson, and Netherby were somewhere out of sight. Well out of sight. Gabriel had not caught a glimpse of any one of them.

  “Will he come?” Bertie asked when it was five minutes past the appointed time.

  “It will be a bit of an anticlimax if he does not,” Gabriel said, strolling away from his two companions to the other side of the clearing. “But if he does not come to me, then I will go to him.” He peered through the trees to see if anyone was approaching from that direction.

  And it was just at that moment that a shot rang out from somewhere behind him, quickly succeeded by another.

  Twenty-two

  Down, Lyndale. Down, Vickers!” the Earl of Riverdale yelled. “Devil take it!”

  It was advice he did not immediately apply to himself. He came hurtling across the distance between himself and Gabriel and brought him down with a flying leap.

  If he had been shot, Gabriel thought, both the warning and the tackle would have come too late. But he did not believe he was dead. Pain registered all over his body, and for a few moments, while the breath was still knocked out of him and most of the sense out of his head, he tested the pain to discover if any of it was attributable to a bullet wound. And, if so, if it was fatal. He did not believe he was at death’s door. But he was bound to be in shock, and shock, he had heard, could delay one’s reactions for a considerable time. His ears were certainly ringing. He could hear voices even so—neither Riverdale’s nor Bertie’s. Nor his own, though he did consider the possibility that one of the voices at least was his.

  Someone was wailing in a demented sort of way. Not him.

  Someone else was warning that although he was down, he ought to be careful. Neither he was identified.

  A third voice was saying with perfect clarity, “You do not have to hold me. I have no intention of running away.”

  And then, unmistakably Netherby’s voice—not his usual bored voice, but one of far greater authority. “He is dead.”

  The wailing voice acquired words. “You killed him. You murdered him. Papaaaa!”

  Riverdale eased off Gabriel and cautiously raised his head. Gabriel pushed himself to his feet and absently brushed himself down. One detached part of his mind observed that his right boot had suffered what might be irreparable damage in the form of long scuff marks. Horbath would not be pleased.

  “Who is dead?” Bertie was demanding of Netherby, who had just stridden into the clearing, not looking anything like his usual indolent self. Bertie was also brushing at his clothes.

  “Manley Rochford,” Netherby said, his words clipped, a hardness in his face Gabriel had not seen there before. “He was about to shoot Lyndale in the back. Had you no more sense, Thorne, than to move away from the other two? Had you no more sense, Riverdale, than to let him? Or you, Vickers?”

  “Who killed him?” Gabriel asked, wondering if the buzzing in his ears was entirely attributable to the gunshots. “You?”

  “I had no clear line of fire,” Netherby said. “It looked as though he was approaching with his son in all good faith. Dorchester saw otherwise and got off a shot. Though his was not the first, and if I am not much mistaken, it merely grazed Rochford’s gun hand and forced him to drop the pistol. We did agree there were to be no deaths if they could be avoided.”

  “Who, then?” Bertie demanded as they all strode off into the trees. “Egad, but that man has a loud voice.”

  That man, Gabriel could see, was Anthony Rochford, bent over the body of his father, and clearly distraught.

  “It is time we discovered the answer to that question,” Netherby said, and Gabriel looked toward three men standing on the far side of the body, two of whom—Dirkson and Bertrand Lamarr—had a firm hold upon the arms of the third man, who stood tall and proud between them, a pistol at his feet.

  “Mr. Ginsberg,” Gabriel said.

  “I am not going anywhere,” the man said, shaking off the hold of the other two men. “I will take my trial. And I will die like a man. I will die satisfied, knowing that I have been preceded from this life by the scoundrel who debauched my daughter and murdered my son.” His voice was firm and distinct even though Anthony Rochford was still wailing and sobbing.

  “He murdered my father,” he said. “He killed my father.”

  “He felled a man who was about to murder the Earl of Lyndale,” Netherby said in that same cold, authoritative voice. “And there were four witnesses. This was not murder, Mr. Ginsberg. This was a shot fired to save the life of an innocent, unarmed man.”

  “But for you, Mr. Ginsberg,” Dorchester said, “Lyndale might be dead now, killed in the same way as your son was killed.”

  “You will not hang, Mr. Ginsberg,” Riverdale said. “You will not even stand trial. After the inevitable inquiry, which will very probably not take long at all, you will be able to go home to your daughter and live in some sort of peace at last.”

  “Was that your man who was watching Rochford’s house last night?” Netherby asked him.

  “Not my man,” Ginsberg replied. “Me. I spotted your man in time to duck into a better hiding place. I followed Rochford here today.”

  Gabriel went down on one knee on the grass beside the body of his second cousin. He spread a hand across the back of Anthony Rochford. “You will need to be brave for your mother’s sake,” he said. “She is going to need you, Anthony.”

  The wailing stopped. The sobbing did not. Gabriel patted his back, closed his eyes, and swallowed against a lump in his throat. There was Jessica’s family. And then there was his own. But it included other cousins—female ones. First cousins, daughters of Uncle Julius. And his family included Marjorie Rochford. And Anthony himself. Perhaps . . .

  But these were strange thoughts to be having while he was kneeling over the body of the man who would have murdered him in cold blood.

  He continued to pat Anthony’s back while he sobbed and hiccuped.

  “I d-did not kn-know,” he managed to say, “that he h-had b-brought a g-g-gun with him.”

  They had duly visited the Tower of London and spent all of half an hour there. They spent more time at Westminster Abbey, partly because they sat down for a while to rest. They conversed without stopping, commenting with great enthusiasm upon all they saw. Mary declared more than once that her breath was quite taken away, and Great-aunt Edith observed that it was really quite delightful to see such national treasures through fresh eyes that had not grown a bit jaded from seeing them so much. Grandmama injected a note of reality by reminding them of some of the grim history behind those breathtaking places, especially the Tower. Jessica agreed wholeheartedly with everything that was said. She was having a wonderful time, she assured everyone whenever she was silent too long and her grandmother looked at her with a frown.

  Oh yes, everyone agreed, they were all having a wonderful time.

  There was to be no duel.

  No guns.

  No deaths.

  No one even whispered any of those things, of course. They were too busy having a wonderful time.

  And then they arrived at the tearoom, which was to be the climax of their day out, with its fine china tea service, its delicate crustless sandwiches, its scones and strawberry preserves and clotted cream, and its dainty pastries and cakes of all
kinds.

  “What a wonderful banquet!” Mary exclaimed. “Oh, I am being spoiled.”

  Yes, wonderful, they all agreed. And Grandmama nodded graciously to the other occupants of the rooms, mostly ladies.

  It had perhaps not been the best choice of tearoom, Jessica decided within minutes of arriving. For of course most of the members of the ton now present in London had attended that costume ball last evening. And any who had not would have read about it in the morning papers. Any few who had missed both would have been exposed to gossip all day. Their story must be at the very top of everyone’s list.

  Everyone wanted to smile and nod at Jessica. A few bolder souls approached their table with the same basic message—“I will not interrupt your tea, Lady Lyndale, but do allow me to congratulate you and tell you how delightful it is that the earl, your husband, has returned as though from the dead. I knew from the first time I saw him as Mr. Thorne, the American gentleman, that there was something very special, even aristocratic, about him.”

  Everyone’s smiles and nods had to be acknowledged. Everyone who approached had to be thanked. Never had Jessica been more thankful for her Lady Jessica Archer persona, though she had not even known until very recently that such a thing existed. Perhaps she had realized it only at Richmond Park when Gabriel had wanted to marry that person and she had been upset that he had had no idea who the real Jessica Archer was.

  There was to be no duel.

  No guns.

  No deaths.

  The mantra had run through her head without ceasing since before she left the hotel. Her head believed it. Her stomach knew it all to be a blatant lie.

  Each of them took one tiny sandwich while Great-aunt Edith poured the tea. Each of them looked at her tiny sandwich, and each of them dutifully bit into it.

  Each of them, perhaps, was hearing that same mantra repeat itself to the point of utter weariness.