Someone to Romance

by Balogh, Mary

  The famed tearoom sandwich felt and tasted like cardboard in Jessica’s mouth. She chewed and swallowed, half expecting to choke. She did not.

  “Ah,” Mary said at last, interrupting some historical feature of Westminster Abbey that Grandmama was recounting for their edification. Her face lit up with a smile. “Gabriel!”

  Jessica turned her head sharply and then leapt to her feet, tipping her delicate chair to the floor as she did so. He was striding across the tearoom, narrowly missing a few tables that stood in his way. His eyes, burning hot in a pale face, were focused upon her. And he caught her up in a tight hug—or she caught him up. It was impossible to say which of them was the more guilty of causing such a scandalous public spectacle. For the moment she did not care—or, indeed, even think of such a triviality as propriety.

  “I am all right,” he murmured against her ear. “I wanted you to know that as soon as possible. I have only just been able to get away. I am safe. You can stop worrying.”

  She lifted her face to his. He was deathly pale. And he kissed her, very briefly, on the lips.

  She was jolted back to reality by the burst of applause and laughter all around them.

  “Oh,” she said.

  Gabriel had a little more presence of mind. He released her, looked about the room, and removed his hat. “I do beg your pardon,” he said, including the whole clientele with a sweeping glance.

  His words were met with more laughter. Someone—surely one of the few men present—whistled through his teeth.

  “Gabriel,” Grandmama said as he leaned down to pick up Jessica’s chair—it was undamaged, she was happy to see. “Do join us.”

  And someone rushed up with another chair and someone else appeared with another place setting, and within a minute at the longest he was seated at their table. The general hubbub died down, though Jessica did not doubt they were the focus of avid scrutiny from all sides and would be the subject of numerous conversations for at least the rest of the day.

  “We have had a wonderful time, Gabriel,” Mary said. “And now it has become more wonderful, especially for dear Jessica. You have had a good day too?” She was smiling her sweet, placid smile, giving everyone, both at their table and at all the rest, time to settle down to a semblance of normalcy.

  He spoke very quietly, for their ears only, as Great-aunt Edith poured him a cup of tea. “There has been a spot of bother,” he said, smiling. “Nothing for any of you to worry about. I am delighted you have had a good day. The weather has certainly been your friend.”

  His smile succeeded only in making him look paler.

  “A spot of bother?” Grandmama asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “It delayed me for a while, ma’am. But it is being very competently dealt with by Netherby and Dorchester and Riverdale. As soon as I judged my presence to be no longer essential—at least for the present—I came to set your minds at rest. I hoped I would find you still here.”

  “With what are they dealing competently, Gabriel?” Jessica asked. She was chewing the second half of her sandwich. It tasted only marginally better than the first.

  “Manley Rochford is dead,” he said, and his hand closed tightly about hers on the table.

  She lifted her chin. She was not going to faint again.

  “Oh, Gabriel,” Mary said. “How?”

  “I arranged a rendezvous with him in Hyde Park,” he told them. “I intended to . . . punish him before allowing him to leave London and return home. There is no proof, you see, that he murdered anyone. And the other charge would merely drag the name of an innocent woman through the mud and would probably not result in a conviction. So I knew there was really no legal recourse for achieving justice. I decided instead to confront him myself. But not in a duel. I sent him a message simply asking him to meet me in Hyde Park. I had people with me and others keeping an eye upon any route he might take to join me. I did not expect any real trouble, but unfortunately I underestimated him. He brought a gun with him and would have shot me in the back with it had not Mr. Ginsberg shot him first—and killed him. Ginsberg is the man whose daughter was ravished and whose son was murdered. I do beg your pardon. But I saw no way of not letting you know.”

  Jessica clutched his hand. And they were all silent for a long minute.

  “I will say only this,” Grandmama finally said, keeping her voice as low as his had been. “I am not sorry he is dead. He deserved to die. And I am not sorry he was killed by Mr. Ginsberg. It is fitting that he was the one to mete out justice since no court of law would be able to do it. Now.” She raised her voice somewhat. “A scone, Miss Beck? With strawberries and cream? I can assure you they are always delicious here.”

  And, amazingly, they continued with tea just as though this were any other afternoon of social leisure.

  A week later Viscount Dirkson and his wife stood just inside the open doors of their drawing room, greeting the select group of guests who had been invited to their soiree. Aunt Matilda looked so very much younger and lovelier than she had two years ago, before she met the love of her youthful years again and then married him, Jessica thought as they hugged. Aunt Matilda glowed with happiness even after the two years of marriage.

  Gabriel was nervous, Jessica knew. For he had agreed to play the pianoforte for the “impromptu” concert that would begin later in the evening. He had agreed to play the Bach piece he had performed at Elizabeth and Colin’s party and one or two other pieces.

  “The thing is,” he had explained to her, “that whenever I have played for other people in the past, it really has been an impromptu thing. I have never had to stare the ordeal in the face for days ahead of time and wonder if I was going to make an utter ass of myself.”

  “You will not,” she had said. “Allow yourself to disappear into the world of your music, Gabriel.”

  He had given her a hard look. “You do understand,” he had said.

  “Yes, I do,” she had assured him.

  “And another thing,” he had said, refusing to be fully reassured. “When I play the Bach piece, Jessie, it will be nothing like it was last time. When people use written music, they can more or less guarantee that what they play now will be identical or at least very similar to what they played in the past and what they will play in the future.”

  “Yours will be just as lovely this time as it was last, even if not identical,” she had told him. “Better even. Because it will not be music that has been frozen onto a sheet of parchment but music that is living and breathing inside you.”

  He had laughed. Though he was no less nervous tonight than he had been since Aunt Matilda asked him during that garden party where he had kissed Jessica for the first time. How could he be nervous over something like this when he had lived through a nightmare of a week, starting with that moment in Hyde Park when he had come so close to being shot in the back and killed?

  Jessica would have nightmares about that for the rest of her life.

  Everything had been settled. There had been enough witnesses—and illustrious ones at that—to swear that Manley Rochford had been about to shoot an unarmed Gabriel in the back and had been stopped in the nick of time in the only way possible. His motive was perfectly clear to everyone who needed to be convinced. He had been deprived of the title he had so long coveted, and he was fearful that he would be charged with rape and murder. He had compounded the danger of that happening by attempting to kill the man who stood between him and what he had believed rightfully his until the night before. Mr. Ginsberg, though he had a definite motive for killing Manley Rochford, could not rightfully be accused of murdering him. He had shot to save the life of an innocent man, who, moreover, had had his back to his would-be killer.

  No one had asked Mr. Ginsberg what his intention had been when he followed Manley to the park. He had returned home. So had Mrs. Rochford and her son, returning to their home and not Brierley. They took the body of Manley with them for burial.

  Jessica and Anna had called upon Mrs. Rochfor
d before she left. They had not been at all sure they would be received, but they were. Mrs. Rochford had been wan but gracious. She was not sorry, she had assured them, that she was not after all to be the Countess of Lyndale. She had never wanted the title. She had implied, though she had certainly not said it, that she was not sorry either that her husband was gone. She had family of her own, she had told them—brothers and a sister who all lived close by and would support her. Not financially, she had added, but in every way that mattered. And she had her son, who she claimed was good at heart and would grow stronger under the influence of his uncles. She had thanked them for calling.

  Gabriel had called upon her too—and been received. But she would take nothing from him, he had reported. He owed her nothing. Quite the contrary. She and her son would manage. She would be able to live frugally now that they would be on their own—a statement that had spoken volumes about how Manley had lived. She had thanked him for his offer of help and sent him on his way.

  “I am expecting Anthony to return at any moment,” she had explained to him. “I would rather he not find you here, Gabriel.”

  Mary had also returned home. They had wanted her to stay until they were ready to go themselves, but she had explained to them that she was no longer needed here and was missing her home and her animals and her garden quite dreadfully.

  Gabriel was sending Mr. Norton back to Brierley with Mary to take over as estate manager from the man Manley Rochford had put in place. Mr. Norton had much to do to start sorting out the mess of fired servants and the ones who had been brought in instead of them. All must somehow be found employment, Gabriel had instructed Mr. Norton, since it would be grossly unfair to make servants suffer for the perfidy of their employer. Mr. Norton had been confident that he could settle all to his lordship’s satisfaction. A number of the servants could simply be sent back to Mrs. Rochford’s home, for example. She would surely have need of at least some of them.

  Mr. Norton and Mary returned in a carriage that was far more comfortable than the one they had come in. And, despite Mary’s protests, Ruth had been dispatched with her. Jessica could manage perfectly well without her maid until she reached Brierley herself, she had assured Mary not quite truthfully. And it was unthinkable for Mary to travel alone, with only a man for company—though she had done it on the way to London, of course.

  Jessica and Gabriel were to leave tomorrow. All their belongings were packed. Tonight was a farewell with the family, though Jessica did not doubt that at least a few of them would turn up at the hotel tomorrow morning to wave them on their way.

  The thought of leaving, of being far away in a place she had never seen before, a place moreover that had a rather sad history as far as Gabriel was concerned, brought a lump to her throat. But she swallowed it away determinedly and smiled as she greeted her relatives and the other guests at the soiree.

  She was, after all, Jessica Thorne, Countess of Lyndale.

  Aunt Matilda would be very pleased with her soiree, she thought later in the evening. Her drawing room was crowded, though not packed to the point of discomfort, and it seemed that all her guests, family and friends alike, were in unusually high spirits. The past week had been a good one for the family despite the stress. They had come together, as they always did, to deal with a crisis that threatened one of their own, and they had prevailed. Jessica had married well, her husband had assumed his title, and the two of them were about to set off for the earl’s home and estate and the beginning of a new life together.

  “And as is perfectly clear to us all, Jessica and Gabriel,” Aunt Matilda said to them at one point in the evening, “you have followed the Westcott family tradition and made a love match. We heard about the scene in the tearoom, did we not, Elizabeth? Mama told me even before Charles read it aloud to me from the morning paper the day after.”

  “And Colin and I heard it from a dozen people who thought we might be interested to know,” Elizabeth said, looking from one to the other of them with her usual twinkling smile. “I only wish I had been there to see it for myself. What a romantic moment it must have been. It drew cheers.”

  Jessica felt herself blushing. Not so much over the reminder of that scene in the tearoom, but because Gabriel was at her side, hearing Aunt Matilda assume that theirs was a love match. She had no idea if it was true and she tried not to think of it. They were indeed embarking upon a new life, and it would be challenge enough, though not nearly as great a one as Gabriel had feared when he had chosen her as his bride. Her specifically. Not because he had loved her, but because he had judged that she had the connections and character and education and experience and demeanor to do an adequate job as his countess.

  Those guests who were not family seemed as happy to be at the soiree as everyone else. The new Earl of Lyndale and his countess had achieved a great deal of fame since the masquerade ball, and they were obviously the main attraction this evening. None of which did anything to allay Gabriel’s fraught nerves, Jessica suspected.

  One of the guests, a thin, pale young lady who was there with her mother, opened the impromptu concert with three songs to her mother’s accompaniment on the harp. She had a sweet, untrained soprano voice, which did not at all seem to go with her unremarkable appearance. She was someone else, Jessica thought, who held great beauty inside herself until it was time to release it as music.

  “She sings like an angel,” Grandmama said loudly enough to be heard by almost everyone after the applause had died down.

  Yes, she did.

  She was followed by the very young son of Viscount Dirkson’s elder daughter. He played some sort of jig on his violin and got everyone’s toes tapping, even though he paused a few times, breaking the rhythm, while his little fingers felt around for the note he needed in order to proceed. He favored the audience with a gap-toothed grin when they applauded, and when someone suggested an encore, he played it all over again, pauses and all, before setting his instrument down with a clatter and dashing for his grandpapa, who scooped him up and let him hide his face against his broad shoulder.

  Viscount Dirkson was also Katy and Seth’s grandpapa, Jessica thought suddenly—Abby and Gil’s children, that was. And she felt a sudden melancholy at the thought that her cousin and best friend was so far away and soon would be farther. When would they see each other again? But that was the nature of life when one grew up, and she could not honestly say she wished she was going to stay here, close to her family. Not when that would mean letting Gabriel leave without her.

  But this was no time to let her thoughts wander. Viscount Dirkson, still holding his grandson, was telling everyone that Gabriel had kindly agreed to play for them—beginning with Bach’s “Jesus bleibet meine Freude,” roughly translated to mean Jesus shall remain my joy, with which he had enthralled the Westcott family some weeks ago.

  There were some smatterings of applause and a buzz of interest as Gabriel took his seat on the bench, arranged the tails of his evening coat behind him, and looked down at the keyboard as he flexed his fingers in his lap. He was still horribly nervous, Jessica thought, resisting the urge to rub her sweating palms over her skirt. She was sitting quite close to him. The movement might distract him. Her heart was pounding in her ears. He looked really quite, quite gorgeous—a totally irrelevant thought to be having at the moment. His hair needed cutting. It was curling all over his head. She was glad he had not yet had it cut.

  Oh please. Please, please start.

  And he did. And he had been right. The music he produced was nothing like it had been the last time. And everything like it. For it was not a performance of something that had been written down and memorized. Yet it was Bach, surely as Bach was meant to be played. And it was music that seemed to come from a deep well of beauty and creativity and rightness. As he had done at Elizabeth and Colin’s, he closed his eyes soon after he started playing and tipped back his head slightly, a frown of concentration between his brows—until toward the end he bowed his head over the keys,
his eyes still closed.

  Jessica found herself swallowing repeatedly so that she would not disgrace herself either by sobbing aloud or by allowing tears to spill from her eyes down her cheeks.

  When he was finished, he lifted his hands from the keyboard and made no other movement for a while. Neither did anyone else. Until Avery of all people got to his feet to applaud and everyone else followed. Except, for a few moments, Jessica.

  Oh dear God, she loved him.

  Not for his looks. Not for his sense of duty and honor. Not for the music that was in him. Not because he was still bringing her a rose each day. Not because he had hurried to that tearoom, knowing she would be beside herself with worry. Not even because his frequent lovemaking made her deliriously happy. Not because of anything.

  She just loved him.

  He was back in his surroundings, she could see, and looked acutely embarrassed as he acknowledged the applause with a smile and a curt nod of the head. His eyes met Jessica’s and there was something in his, something far back within them, that caught at her breathing and surely stopped her heart for a moment before it resumed its beating, audible to her ears again.

  He next played a short piece by Mozart and something else Jessica could not identify. Then he got to his feet and moved away from the pianoforte even though someone at the back of the room—the same person as last time?—begged for an encore.

  And the party continued.

  Aunt Matilda hugged Gabriel tightly, seemingly unconcerned about the tears that trickled down her cheeks. “Thank you, Gabriel,” she said. “Thank you for playing just because I asked you to. If you want, I will adopt you. Charles will not mind.”

  And they both laughed as they hugged, and Jessica lost the battle with two tears.

  It was only the start of an emotional hour, of course.

  It was never easy to say goodbye.

  Even though, as Uncle Thomas pointed out with cheerful gruffness, goodbye very rarely meant forever.