by Mary Balogh
So this gentleman had reserved the private parlor, had he, but was now being evicted from it on account of her? It was the sort of thing Mr. Goddard would be able to arrange with ease, of course, having all the weight of the ducal authority behind him. Whether the guest would go meekly remained to be discovered. He did not look meek. He did not look quite like a gentleman either, or behave like one. What gentleman would speak openly of money in the hearing of strangers? Or look a lady over from head to toe quite so boldly or with such obvious disapproval? Middle-class, Jessica guessed. A cit, perhaps, a businessman of some means. He must have money to be staying at an inn, even of this not-quite-superior quality, and to be paying for a private parlor.
Jessica inclined her head to him with cool courtesy. “Thank you,” she murmured before moving toward the stairway and the sanctuary of her room.
The unknown guest bowed to her in return, a slight, surely deliberately mocking gesture involving a small flourish of the hand that was not holding his book and a dipping of the head.
“I beg your pardon, Lady Jessica,” Mr. Goddard said when they had reached the top of the stairs. “I shall have a word with the landlord, who does not appear to have proper control of his house.”
He led the way to her room.
Being a woman had frustrations in plenty, Jessica thought again as the door closed behind her and Ruth. But being a man had its annoyances too. What would that guest do? Would he flatly refuse to vacate the parlor and then find himself confronted by Mr. Goddard himself? Would the landlord bribe him, perhaps, with a free dinner in the public dining room? Money was something he seemed to understand. It was none of her concern, however. Mr. Goddard would sort it out to her advantage.
“Tell me that is warm water in the pitcher, Ruth,” she said.
“It is, my lady,” her maid assured her after cupping her hands about the water jug.
Of course it was. Why had she even asked? Mr. Goddard would have seen to it before coming to escort her inside.
Two
Gabriel Thorne waited for the newly arrived guest to disappear up the stairs with her minions and move out of hearing before he spoke again.
She was Lady Jessica Archer, daughter of the late Duke of Netherby, sister of the present duke. She was exquisitely lovely and expensively clothed in what was no doubt the very height of female fashion. She was almost without doubt rich, privileged, pampered, entitled, and arrogant. She was surely accustomed to getting her way on any and all issues with the mere lifting of a finger. Everyone in her sphere would scurry about to satisfy her every whim. She had been delayed in her journey, the landlord had informed him. That must surely have provoked some temper. She had been forced to stop for the night well short of her planned destination—almost certainly an inn or a hotel far superior in quality to this one, though this was no hovel. And, having arrived at a substitute stopping place, she had made the inconvenient discovery that it boasted only one private parlor—which was already taken.
Such a fact would not disconcert Lady Jessica Archer for one moment, of course. She would merely have her majordomo oust the guest already in occupation of the room and install herself there instead. The fact that she would be inconveniencing that guest would not have crossed her mind—any more than would the possibility that he might refuse to go.
He was very tempted to do just that.
It was fortunate for him, perhaps, that according to his usual custom he had taken a room overlooking the innyard so that he could more easily keep an eye on his horses. The best rooms, the ones she would demand, would be at the front of the inn. If there had been no such thing as a private parlor, she would probably have demanded that the dining room be appropriated for her exclusive use while all other guests would be forced to eat in discomfort in their rooms.
Oh, it was probably unfair of him to judge the woman on such little evidence and no acquaintance. It was unfair to be hugely irritated by her and take an instant dislike to her. It was also virtually impossible not to do either. Even her “Thank you” had been spoken with the sort of frigid condescension that made it meaningless.
His irritation, even anger, had taken him by surprise. For really, what had provoked it had been slight. Perhaps the real cause of his annoyance was being back in England. He had forgotten what English ladies could be like. He had forgotten how obsequious the lesser classes could be when dealing with the upper classes, especially the aristocracy. The landlord had infuriated him. So had his understanding that really, the man had had no choice. He was regretting coming. Though he had had little choice beyond turning his back upon someone he loved.
“You will move out of the parlor, then, sir?” the landlord asked, his voice still anxious. “I shall reserve the best table in the dining room for you, the one between the fireplace and the window. And your dinner and all the ale and spirits you care to drink will be free of charge tonight. I will refund your payment for the private parlor in its entirety, even though you have had the use of it for the past couple of hours.”
“Yes, you will,” Gabriel said, his tone clipped.
The landlord visibly relaxed despite the curtness with which Gabriel had spoken. “It is very generous of you, sir, even though—” The rest of the sentence died on his lips when Gabriel fixed him with a steady gaze.
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “It is.”
For he could have contested the issue. Was there not some saying that possession is nine-tenths of the law? He would almost have enjoyed confronting that superior-looking majordomo. Unfortunately, he possessed an innate sense of courtesy that told him a lady who was traveling alone, except for her servants, really ought to be allowed the privacy of a parlor. Even a cold and arrogant lady.
He made his way up to his room, where he placed a folded handkerchief between the pages of his book to hold his place.
Lady Jessica Archer. Sister of the Duke of Netherby. In all probability she was on her way to London. Easter was over and the spring Season must already be heating up with all its myriad balls and soirees and garden parties and other fancy entertainments. The great marriage mart. He wondered why she was still unmarried. She was no tender young girl. If she were, she would hardly be on the road with only a majordomo and a maid for protection.
But even as he held that thought he wandered to the window of his room to look down upon the innyard. He smiled and shook his head in amused disbelief as he witnessed all the bustle. There were two grand carriages, one of them with a crest—the ducal crest?—emblazoned boldly upon the door that was visible to him. A third, somewhat more humble conveyance—though it was merely a relative point—must belong to the group too, since Gabriel was not aware of any other arrival within the past hour. The yard was teeming with large men, all clad in the same gaudy livery. The cavalcade must look like a traveling circus when it was strung out along the road.
Lady Jessica Archer had more than a majordomo and a maid for protection, then. She was as well guarded as a queen. She was a precious commodity. And she had all the accompanying haughtiness one might expect of such a woman. The inclination of her head when she had said thank you had spoken volumes about a life of aristocratic privilege and entitlement. He might have been a worm as easily as a man under one of those fine kid leather shoes.
How shockingly indiscreet it had been of the landlord to reveal her full identity in order to persuade him to give up the private parlor for which he had paid. If the man had only realized it, Gabriel would have been far more willing to relinquish it to a Miss Nobody-in-Particular than to the privileged daughter of a duke. It was what came of having spent the last thirteen of his thirty-two years in America, he supposed.
Lady Jessica Archer.
Sister of a duke.
Arrogant. Entitled. Unlikable, at least upon first encounter.
But . . .
But considered another way, she was perhaps perfect.
So perfect t
hat he might marry her.
He chuckled aloud at the absurdity of the thought.
It felt strange, unfamiliar, to be back in England. Of course, he had been gone all his adult life—since he was nineteen, in fact. But he liked America and had had no intention until recently of leaving it. When he had arrived in Boston, using his mother’s maiden name of Thorne, he had had no more than the clothes on his back, one small bag, and only enough money to pay for room and board for a couple of weeks if he found somewhere cheap. He had called upon Cyrus Thorne, a widowed cousin of his mother, and the man had given him employment as a junior clerk in one of his warehouses and a dark little room in the cellar of his home in which to sleep. From those lowly beginnings Gabriel had proved his worth and risen to become his cousin’s right-hand man by the time he was twenty-five. He had also been moved upstairs to a spacious room of his own. Most important, Cyrus had officially adopted him as a son since his marriage had produced no children before his wife died. Gabriel’s name had been legally changed to Thorne, and he had become the official heir to everything Cyrus possessed.
It had been a dizzying rise in fortune, but Gabriel had given hard work and gratitude in return, and affection too. He had come to understand why Cyrus had been a great favorite of his mother and why her heart had been broken when he had decided to go to America to seek his fortune. Gabriel’s father had told him about that. His mother had died giving birth to his stillborn sister. And Cyrus had had fond memories of her too.
A little over a year after adopting Gabriel, Cyrus had died from a fall at the dockside during the loading of one of his ships. It was an accident that ought not to have been particularly serious but had in fact proved fatal.
Shockingly, Gabriel was a very wealthy man by the time he was twenty-six and had huge responsibilities for one so young. He owned a large home, a thriving import-export business, and what amounted to a small fleet of ships. He had several hundred employees. He was a somebody in Boston society and much sought after, particularly by matrons with daughters in search of successful young men of fortune and industrious habits.
He had enjoyed the attention. He had dallied with a few of those daughters, though never to the point at which he felt committed to offering for any of them. He had enjoyed his life in general. The work suited him and filled his days with challenge and activity. Boston was bustling with energy and optimism. Within a few years he had expanded the business, added another ship to his fleet, and made himself wealthier than his cousin had ever been. In addition, he had raised wages for all his workers and improved working conditions. He had given his employees, even the lowliest of them, benefits to cover doctors’ fees and lost wages when they were sick or had been hurt on the job.
He had been happy, though he had never thought to use that exact word at the time. He had been too busy living the life that hard work and sheer good fortune had brought him. Yet he would have given it all to have Cyrus back. It had taken him a long time to recover from the grief of losing him.
He might have forgotten about his life in England, or at least let it slide into distant memory, if it had not been for the letters that came two, sometimes three, times a year from Mary Beck. She was the only person to whom he had written after his arrival in America. He had known she would worry about him if he did not. And he had felt too the need to keep some frail thread of connection to his past.
Despite himself, he had read her letters avidly for the snippets of local news she passed on. He had looked, though he had never asked, for some hint, any hint, that the truth of what had happened before he left had become generally known and had not continued to be falsified. He had sworn Mary to secrecy in his first letter, though it had been unnecessary. She had said nothing about him to anyone, she had assured him in her return letter, and would never do so under any circumstances. He had trusted her word at the time and still did.
Perhaps he ought not to have begun the correspondence. It might be better to have known nothing, to have broken all ties, to have been content to be dead to everyone and everything he had left behind. Even Mary.
The year after Cyrus’s untimely passing, Mary’s spring letter had brought word of three other shocking deaths. Her sister and Julius—her brother-in-law—and nephew had died the previous summer, just after she had written him her last letter of the year. An outbreak of typhus had taken a few other people from the neighborhood as well, though it had not touched Mary herself, living as she did, almost as a hermit in her small cottage on one corner of the family estate.
That had been astounding news in itself, but there had been repercussions that were eventually to complicate Gabriel’s life and force his return to England. For Mary’s brother-in-law and Gabriel’s uncle, Julius Rochford, had also been the Earl of Lyndale. Philip, his only son and his heir, though married, had had no sons of his own—no legitimate ones, at least. And he had predeceased his father by one day. Gabriel, son and only child of the late Arthur Rochford, Julius’s younger brother, was therefore his uncle’s successor.
He was the Earl of Lyndale.
He had not been happy about it or about the death of his aunt, who had been sweet though dithery and a person of no account in her husband’s household. He had regretted the death of his uncle too. He had not grieved the loss of his cousin at all.
He might have ignored his changed status for the rest of his life, and had done so for six years after receiving word of it in Mary’s letter. No one knew where he was—except Mary herself, and she would not tell, having given her promise. If a search had been made for him, and he did not doubt that there had been some halfhearted attempt to discover the whereabouts of the new earl or whether indeed he still lived, then it had failed to turn up any trace of him. When he had taken passage for America, it had seemed a bit of an unnecessary precaution to use his mother’s name instead of his own. As it had turned out, though, it had been a wise thing to do. After a certain number of years—was it seven?—he would be declared officially dead and the next heir in line would succeed him to the title and inherit everything that went with it. That would be his second cousin, Manley Rochford, whom Gabriel remembered with no more fondness than he had felt for Philip. But . . .
May Manley and all his descendants live happily ever after. Or not. Gabriel did not care either way. All that had happened was ancient history. He wanted nothing to do with the title or the property or the pomp and circumstance to which he was now entitled as a British peer of the realm. He was perfectly content with his life as it was and wanted nothing to do with England.
Except that there was Mary. His aunt’s sister. Mary, with her clubfoot and crooked spine and deformed hand and plain looks. Mary, with her little thatched cottage and her flower garden of breathtaking beauty and her vegetable patch and herb garden and her cats and dogs—all of them strays that she insisted had adopted her. Mary, with her books and her embroidery and her incomprehensible contentment with life.
Mary, now facing the threat of eviction.
Manley Rochford, heir to the title after Gabriel, was already acting upon his prospects. He had within the last year moved his family to Brierley Hall, as though by right, and taken over the running of the estate. He had dismissed the longtime steward, though he had no legal right yet to do so, and more than half the servants, indoor and out, in order to replace them with his own. His son, apparently a vain young man, was lording it about in the neighborhood. All of which facts in themselves would have elicited no more than a shrug from Gabriel. They were welcome, as far as he was concerned.
But . . . Manley had gone a step too far. He had given Mary Beck notice to leave his property by the time he became earl. She was not a member of the Rochford family, he had pointed out to her, and she had no claim whatsoever upon his charity. She was, moreover, a detriment to the neighborhood, where it was generally believed she had used witchcraft to bring the plague of typhus down upon her sister and brother-in-law and nephew, and
upon a number of her neighbors too. He must consider the safety of his own family, he had informed her. And he must think of his neighbors, who were afraid to set foot upon Brierley land while Mary lived upon it.
None of which is true except the fact that I am not a Rochford, Gabriel, she had written in a letter to him. I know it is not. The neighbors are not so superstitious or cruel. But I must leave anyway. Please come home.
It was the only time she had ever put any pressure upon him to do anything at all. She might have exerted much further pressure, of course, by divulging her knowledge of where he was to be found in order to protect herself. But Gabriel knew she would not do that. Not Mary.
He had considered bringing her to America, setting her up in a comfortable apartment of her own in his home, giving her a part of his sizable garden, or even all of it if she wished, for her own use. But the journey might well kill her. And he could not imagine her being happy anywhere but in her own little cottage, where she had lived for as long as he had known her. And what would she do with all her strays? It might seem a trivial consideration, but they were Mary’s family, as dear to her as husband and children would be to another woman.
He had considered finding a good agent in London and putting a new steward of his own in at Brierley, someone who would be capable of making sound decisions and exerting his authority while reporting to Gabriel once or twice a year. But doing that would mean revealing that he, Gabriel, was still alive. And if that was revealed, then he would be allowed no more peace in America. He would be expected to return home to England to take up his inheritance and fulfill his duties and responsibilities as a peer of the realm. Even if he held firm and refused to go, the truth would surely be found out in Boston, and everything in his life would change. Probably not for the better. He enjoyed being respected, even courted. He would not enjoy being fawned upon.