by Mary Balogh
“I would imagine,” Jessica said in answer to his implied inquiry, “it is my cousin Elizabeth herself—Lady Hodges, that is—whom you have to thank.”
“I have already expressed my gratitude to her,” he said. “I cannot imagine anywhere I would rather be this evening than just precisely where I am.”
His tone made it clear that just precisely where he was meant not Elizabeth and Colin’s house in general or even the drawing room in particular, but this precise spot in the drawing room, alone with Jessica, space all about them even though there were enough family and guests to more than half fill the rest of the room. Even Grandmama and Great-aunt Edith, surrounded by people who had come to greet them, seemed to be some distance away, though Jessica could not recall moving away from them. But this was not going to happen again, she decided, not as it had at the soiree a few evenings ago. She had no wish to spend the whole evening virtually alone with Mr. Rochford in plain sight of a couple of dozen or so interested family members and others tactfully keeping their distance. If she was going to allow the courtship of Mr. Rochford, it was going to be on her own terms. She was not going to let her family and the whole ton start to see them as an established couple and then find that she had been backed into a corner from which there was no easy escape.
She reached for a glass of wine from the tray held by a passing servant, though she did not really want it, and at the same time took a few steps to her right, bringing herself into the orbit of a group that included Alexander and Elizabeth and Cousin Peter and . . . oh, and Estelle and Mr. Thorne. Mr. Rochford moved with her.
So much for her relaxed evening with family and close friends, she thought rather crossly before seeing the funny side of the situation. It was as though some malicious fate had learned of her decision to choose a husband this year and had sent her two candidates, both of whom had shown interest in her without any effort to attract on her part and both of whom made her want to run for the hills or some deep, dark cave or her bedchamber with an extra bolt added to the door.
It seemed she was not ready for marriage after all—and perhaps never would be.
She caught Mr. Thorne’s eye over the rim of her glass, and he raised his eyebrows. Why was it she had the feeling he had detected her inner amusement—albeit a rueful amusement? There was no hint of a smile on his face.
“I cannot tell you,” Mr. Rochford was saying, addressing Elizabeth, “how honored I am to have been included in your guest list in what I can see is essentially a family gathering. I suppose I must grow accustomed to being treated with such deference. It still seems much like a dream that soon my father will be Earl of Lyndale in name as well as in fact. And that I will be his heir.”
“We are delighted you were able to come,” Elizabeth said, smiling warmly at him.
“In fact?” Mr. Thorne asked. “Your father will be earl in name as well as in fact?”
“Ah, yes,” Mr. Rochford said. “Brierley Hall was falling into chaos and disrepair in the absence of a firm-handed master. Servants, neighbors, hangers-on—they were all taking advantage of the fact. Much as my father wanted to cling to hope, even after all hope was realistically gone, that my cousin would be found alive and would return to take responsibility for his inheritance, he was eventually forced to acknowledge that it was not going to happen. Much against the grain, and knowing he might be accused of doing what he was not yet legally entitled to do, he took up residence at Brierley a while ago and began the difficult task of putting the estate to rights. It has all been very distressing for him—for all of us. Yet he still holds out hope that at the last moment Gabriel will reappear to lift the burden from his shoulders.”
“Ah,” Mr. Thorne said. “Gabriel, was he? That is my name too. I have never encountered another, though I am not encountering one in person now, alas, am I? Unlike your father, you are sure he is dead?”
“There can be little doubt,” Mr. Rochford said, shaking his head sadly. “Though I hope I am wrong. I am afraid my cousin was ironically named, however. He was very far from being an angel.”
“Oh, he was a rogue, then, was he?” Peter asked, grinning, his interest noticeably piqued.
“One hates to wash one’s family linen in public,” Mr. Rochford said with a sigh, and then proceeded to do just that. “I am afraid he was a severe trial and disappointment to the late earl, his uncle, who had taken him in out of the kindness of his heart after his father died. A little wildness in a boy, especially an orphaned lad, is to be expected, of course, and is not a bad thing in itself. But as he grew older he grew increasingly wild and unmanageable, even vicious at times. My father’s cousin, the earl, hushed up some of the worst of his excesses in the hope, I suppose, that he would learn from his mistakes and grow to a more sober maturity. Finally, however, there was a scandal that could not be silenced. It involved the daughter of a neighbor and ended up with the death of her brother. There could, of course, be other explanations than the obvious ones, but Gabriel fled the very same night as the death and no one has heard from or of him since. Would an innocent man flee instead of remaining to clear his name or do the decent thing?”
“It sounds to me, then,” Estelle said, “as if it might be better for all concerned if he is dead. Did you know him well, Mr. Rochford?”
“Well enough,” he said with a sigh. “He was a likable boy. I was fond of him. It grieved me to see his wildness turn into vice—if indeed that is what happened. I do not wish to judge him despite all the evidence. I certainly do not wish him dead. People do change, after all. And perhaps there was an explanation he did not stay to offer. Self-defense, perhaps? I would rather give him the benefit of any small doubt there may be than condemn him. Like my father, I wish even now he would reappear to claim his inheritance.”
No he did not, Jessica thought, opening her fan and plying it before her face. The return of the legitimate earl from the dead would be disastrous for Mr. Rochford. It would kill all his expectations. And it was clear for all to see that he was eagerly anticipating those expectations. If he hated to wash his family linen in public, why had he done so? She felt intensely uncomfortable.
“After seven years it does seem unlikely,” Alexander said briskly. “Your father is coming to London later in the Season, I understand, Rochford? I shall look forward to making his acquaintance. I do not believe I have had the pleasure of meeting him anytime in the past. And you have recently arrived in London, Thorne? From America, I have heard? I trust you had a decent voyage?”
“Thank you. I did,” Mr. Thorne said. “There were no severe storms to put me in fear of my life. Or any cutthroat pirates either. It was all, indeed, rather tedious, which is the best one can hope for of any lengthy journey.”
“You lived in Boston?” Elizabeth asked, smiling. “I suppose you left friends behind you there. They must have been sorry to see you leave.”
“I was happy there for a number of years,” he said, and went on to describe some of the social life of Boston.
Jessica was grateful to Alexander and Elizabeth for so effortlessly turning the conversation away from a topic that ought not to have been aired for public consumption. She felt oddly guilty for Mr. Rochford’s questionable manners, as though she was responsible for his being here—as perhaps she was in a sense.
His name was Gabriel, Jessica thought. Mr. Thorne’s, that was. He had spent thirteen years in America, having fled there after some upset with his family. He had come back, reluctantly, to claim a recently acquired inheritance. How long ago was it that the other Gabriel, Gabriel Rochford, had fled after presumably assaulting a neighbor’s daughter and then murdering her brother? Though murder might be too strong a word if there had been a fair fight. Or a duel. Or, as Mr. Rochford himself had allowed, it had been self-defense. If Mr. Gabriel Rochford did not appear within the next few months, he would be declared legally dead and his kinsman would become the new earl.
An inhe
ritance brought me back. And a family situation that necessitated my being here in person.
She could remember his saying those words at Richmond.
Surely . . .
“Lady Jessica,” Mr. Rochford said, speaking low in her ear, “would you do me the honor of presenting me to the Dowager Countess of Riverdale and the lady beside her, who I believe is her sister?”
But as he was about to offer his arm, Anna came to join the group and he turned to compliment her on her appearance and bow over her hand, which he raised to his lips.
Grandmama, Jessica saw when she turned her head, was nodding in her direction and smiling even as she was saying something to Aunt Edith. It looked as though they approved of what they saw.
Mr. Rochford had known his cousin well—or well enough, to use his exact words. Surely even after thirteen years a cousin one had known well enough would not have become totally unrecognizable.
Besides, Gabriel was not that uncommon a name. She would surely be able to think of one or two others if she set her mind to the task.
Nine
It had not taken Gabriel long to understand that he had been invited to Lord and Lady Hodges’s party as a possible suitor for Lady Estelle Lamarr, while Rochford was being matched up with Lady Jessica Archer. He was seeing the less than subtle hand of the Westcott family at work, if he was not greatly mistaken, or at least of its female members. Both young ladies, extremely eligible, must be a bit of a worry to their fond relatives, for both were almost certainly past the age of twenty yet remained unmarried, unbetrothed, and seemingly unattached.
What the family had perhaps not taken into account, at least in the one case, was the character of Lady Estelle. She had a winning smile and an air of open candor. And a twinkling eye. He had noticed all three as well as her prettiness at the Parley ball.
“I wonder if you understand, Mr. Thorne, that we have been thrown together to discover if we like each other,” she had said to him when he already did understand after Lady Molenor had made a point of presenting him to her—again—and then disappearing at an imagined call from another family member.
“I am flattered,” he said, smiling back at her. “I am considered an eligible connection, then, for the daughter of a marquess?”
“Oh, I do not doubt that your supposed American fortune and your connections here in England would be looked at very closely indeed if you were to make an offer for me to my father,” she said. “I am his only daughter and he is very protective. I also have a twin brother who would check your credentials just as thoroughly even if Papa did not. But you are Lady Vickers’s kinsman, and she and Sir Trevor are your godparents. Sir Trevor Vickers is a prominent member of the government and is held in high esteem.”
“Ah,” he said. “Then I can aspire as high as to your hand, can I?” He was rather enjoying himself, he realized.
“Well, you can,” she agreed. “But you would be foolish to do so.”
“I am devastated.” He set one hand over his heart and she laughed. “Is it something I said?”
“Hard as it is for my family to understand,” she told him, tapping her closed fan against his sleeve, “I am not ready for marriage yet, Mr. Thorne. Eventually, perhaps, but not now.”
“And I cannot sway your resolve?” The twinkle in her eye told him that she fully realized he was not devastated.
“You cannot, alas,” she said. “This coming autumn the lease will come to an end on the house—my father’s house—where Bertrand and I spent much of our childhood. The tenants will be leaving. Once the house is empty, Bertrand intends to take up residence there, and I plan to go with him. We are twins, you know, and enjoy a close bond. I do not doubt he will wish to marry eventually, and I am quite sure I will too. But first I want to go home. I want to spend time there. With my brother. And with myself.”
“Leaving home, going home,” he said. “They are pivotal, emotionally charged moments in life.” He knew something about them. “I must look elsewhere, then, for a bride.”
They continued to smile at each other, but with a little less amusement than a few moments before. He understood her, and perhaps she knew he did.
“Perhaps Jessica?” she suggested, and laughed. “Now she is eligible. Even more than I am. Though I do pity the man who has to face Avery to ask for her hand. He can be terrifying.”
“I may have to decide if I am willing to take the risk, then,” he said just as they were joined by her twin and a friend she introduced as Mrs. Overleigh.
If he had been invited here as a possible suitor for Lady Estelle, Gabriel thought, then his continued presence here was redundant. Rochford was fawning all over Lady Jessica. How the devil was he going to use this occasion to some advantage in order to romance her? He had not set eyes upon her for three days, and though she might have seen the humor of the pink rose the first day, the joke might have worn a bit thin on subsequent days. Besides, he did not suppose a joke was romantic. But what else was he to do? He found it difficult, even impossible, to be ostentatious. He would feel downright embarrassed about sending a bouquet. The next thing he might find himself doing was kissing his fingertips and blowing her a kiss or gazing soulfully at her.
He discovered as the evening progressed that this was not the sort of party at which one spent the whole time in the same place with the same set of fellow guests. These people were adept at moving about, aligning themselves with different groupings, keeping the conversation fresh and touching upon any number of topics. No one dominated any conversation, though Gabriel suspected Rochford would have done so if he had been allowed. But almost immediately after he had divulged that damning and astoundingly inaccurate information about Gabriel Rochford and his relationship with him, both Riverdale and Lady Hodges deftly turned the subject without being at all obvious about it. Both had perhaps felt that such conversation was not appropriate to the occasion, though young Peter Wayne, one of Molenor’s sons, had been agog with interest.
It was a strange tale Rochford had told. He had been just a boy when Gabriel went to America—a boy he had never met and had known next to nothing about. Yet there had been the story about his own wildness and its gradual development into vice and rape and murder. Had all these lies come from Anthony Rochford’s father? After thirteen years, without any contrary story being told, were the details now etched in stone? Had Rochford told the story tonight with the sole purpose of blackening the name of a cousin he assumed was not alive to speak for himself? So that no one would question the moral as well as the legal right of his father to take over the title?
Lady Hodges had moved to include Viscountess Dirkson and another lady in the group, and Lady Estelle had turned away with her friend when two young men, Dirkson’s son, Gabriel believed, and the friend’s husband, drew their attention. The Duchess of Netherby had approached to say good evening to Rochford. He was bowing over her hand and raising it to his lips.
“Lady Jessica,” Gabriel said, seizing the opportunity, “do you play the pianoforte?” There was a grand pianoforte in one corner of the drawing room, though no one had yet gone near it.
She raised her eyebrows in that haughty way of hers. “Well,” she said, “I do, but I do not lay claim to any great talent. My music teacher told me one day when I was still a child that I played as though I had ten thumbs instead of just two and eight fingers. All my governess could say in my defense was that it was unkind of him to speak so candidly. And when I ran to Avery to complain, all he did was look at me with that pained expression he is so good at and ask me what my point was.”
Everyone in the group laughed.
“We love you anyway, Jessica,” her aunt, Lady Dirkson, said, her eyes warm with merriment. “And that was a cruel thing to say, and not at all accurate.”
“Definitely not ten thumbs, Jess,” Peter Wayne, her cousin, assured her. “More like eight thumbs and two little fingers.”
&nb
sp; “Perhaps you would care to tackle a duet,” Gabriel suggested.
“You play?” Lady Jessica asked.
He did. He had never had lessons and no one had ever encouraged him, though his aunt had come quietly into the room a few times at Brierley while he was playing and quietly listened and quietly went away again. Cyrus’s late wife had had a pianoforte in Boston, sadly out of tune. Gabriel had had it tuned after Cyrus’s death and had played it for his own entertainment.
“A little,” he admitted.
“You must certainly play for us, then,” Lady Hodges said with her characteristic warm smile, and she raised an arm to summon her husband. “There is some sheet music inside the bench.”
He had never learned to read music.
“Shall we?” he asked, reaching out a hand toward Lady Jessica.
“Oh dear,” she said, eyeing his hand with obvious misgiving. But she set her own in it and allowed him to lead her toward the pianoforte. Lord Hodges had opened the cover over the keys and was propping open the lid. Lady Hodges was removing a pile of music from inside the bench and setting it on top.
“There,” she said. “I am sure you can find something you know, Jessica. And anytime I have heard you play I have found your performance quite competent.”
She smiled at them both, took her husband’s arm, and went off to mingle with their guests.
Lady Jessica looked through the pile of music while Gabriel stood half behind her, his hands at his back.
“Thank you for the roses,” she murmured.
“I have always considered a single rose more lovely than a whole vaseful,” he said.