by Mary Balogh
“I have come to call upon Mrs. Clark,” Gabriel said. “Is she your mother?”
The boy sat up and crossed his legs. “Who shall I say is calling, sir?” he asked.
But the younger boy, less concerned with the niceties of hospitality, had turned tail and gone dashing toward the house. He opened the door, crashing it against a wall inside, and yelled. “Mama,” he cried. “Someone to see you.”
The little girl went tearing after him.
The older boy laughed and scratched his head. “I do beg your pardon, sir,” he said as he pushed himself to his feet. “They are like a pair of wild animals today. It comes of having been cooped up in the house all day yesterday because of the rain.”
Gabriel knew all about the rain. He had driven his curricle through it.
“I am an old acquaintance of your mother’s,” he explained. And yes, he thought, the boy must be about twelve years old. “I am staying not far from here for a day or two and came to pay my respects. Ask her if she has time to see Gabriel Rochford, if you will.”
“Yes, Mr. Rochford.” The boy turned to lead the way toward the house.
Before they reached it, however, a woman appeared in the doorway. She was a bit on the plump side, noticeably older than when Gabriel had seen her last—she had been seventeen then. But she was still fair haired and pretty. The little girl was clinging to her skirt and peeping about it at Gabriel. The little boy came bouncing outside again, jumping two-footed down the steps.
“Penny,” Gabriel said, removing his hat.
She stared blankly at him for a few moments, and then one hand crept to her throat. “Gabriel?” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Oh dear God, it is. I heard you were dead.”
“Who is he, Mama?” the little boy asked, jumping on the spot.
She looked down at the child and blinked, almost as though she had forgotten who he was. “You will mind your manners, Wilbur,” she said. “Make your bow to Mr. Rochford and go up to the schoolroom. Amelia, you go too. Kendall, take them up, if you please, and stay with them there until you are called.”
“Aw, Mama,” the little boy complained. “Can’t we just play outside?”
“You will do as you are told,” she said firmly.
“Come on, nippers,” the older boy said. “I bet I can beat you both at spillikins.”
“Cannot,” they both chorused together, and the little girl reached for his hand.
As the children made their way toward the staircase that was visible over their mother’s shoulder, an older man approached the door. He stopped abruptly when he saw Gabriel, and his gaze narrowed and then hardened upon him.
“Mr. Ginsberg.” Gabriel nodded to him.
“We heard you were dead,” he said. And then, with flared nostrils and barely leashed fury, “Would that you were.”
“Papa, please,” Penelope said. “Wait until the children are upstairs.”
None of them moved until a door closed and they could no longer hear the children’s voices. A flush moved up Penelope’s neck and into her face. Her father’s nostrils remained flared.
“Come into the sitting room, Gabriel,” she said. “And I named you wrongly to the children, did I not? You are the Earl of Lyndale.”
“I will not have that man in my house,” her father said. “I will send for a constable if he does not leave my property immediately. He belongs in a jail cell while a gallows is prepared.”
“Please, Papa,” she said, closing her eyes briefly. “Let us talk about this in private.”
“I did not kill your son, sir,” Gabriel said. “He was my friend.”
Ginsberg, white haired and straight backed, old for his years, glared at him for a long, silent moment and then turned to stalk away in the direction of a room that turned out to be the sitting room. Gabriel followed Penelope inside it and shut the door. Her father went to stand by the window, looking out, his hands clasped behind him.
“Gabriel,” Penelope said again, “we heard you had died.”
“I did not,” he told her. Neither of them sat down. “You too probably wish I had.”
Ginsberg growled but did not say anything. Penelope raised her hand to her throat again.
“I went away,” Gabriel said. “I had been thinking about leaving for some time, but I was spurred on by what happened. I was a frightened boy, and it seemed to me that there was real cause for fear. You might perhaps have cleared up one misperception if I had stayed, Penny. I believe you did not do it, though, after I was gone.”
She clutched her throat and closed her eyes again. Ginsberg turned sharply from the window, his face a mask of fury.
“You are not going to try denying—” he began, but his daughter cut him off.
“Please, Papa,” she said.
It occurred to Gabriel that he might have tried to insist upon speaking to her privately. But he was not sorry he had not done so. His own anger had been suppressed for years, only to be aroused again now. They had been sweethearts, he and Penny—and yes, it was the most appropriate word to use of two young innocents who had rarely been alone together and had never done anything more daring than hold hands when they could and twice share a very brief, chaste kiss. She had been seventeen, for the love of God, he nineteen. They had been children.
“The boy you called Kendall is your son?” Gabriel asked. “Who is his father, Penny?”
She made a sound of distress deep in her throat. Ginsberg took a menacing step forward, only to be stopped by her raised hand.
“I never said it was you,” she told Gabriel. “I let it be assumed that it was. It seemed . . . preferable. I thought Papa would persuade you to marry me, and I did not believe you would really mind. I thought you liked me and would do that for me when I explained.”
Good God!
“What the devil!” Ginsberg bellowed. Again, her raised hand stopped him.
“And then everything got out of hand,” she said. “Orson went stalking off in a rage to find you and hold you to account—or what he thought was holding you to account. And then you killed him. Oh dear God, I was beside myself. I did not know what to do. I was seventeen. Barely that even. Did I cause my own brother’s death, Gabriel, as surely as if I had fired the gun myself? I have always believed I did and that I was responsible for you becoming a killer. But I know it must have been an accident. He was shot in the back. There is no way you would have done that deliberately. Oh dear God.”
“I did not kill Orson,” Gabriel said.
She looked at him with eyes suddenly grown wild, her teeth sunk deep into her lower lip.
“What—” Ginsberg began.
“Who is your eldest child’s father, Penny?” Gabriel asked again.
She huffed out a breath, closed her eyes again briefly, and spoke. “I was going to Brierley with a cake Mama had baked for your aunt,” she said. “She had been feeling poorly. They were in the park too. I think they must have been coming from the tavern. They looked . . . drunk. They were weaving and laughing and . . . I could not hide fast enough. One of them . . . He tried to flirt with me, but when that did not work, he started to kiss me while the other one laughed and told him I was your girl—Gabe’s girl, he said. And then the first man laughed and told me what I needed was a real man. And then he . . . And the other one would not stop him. He just laughed. He was married. I mean the one who . . . He would not have been able to marry me.”
“His name?” Gabriel asked softly. But of course he knew.
His cousin Philip had been a man of loose morals and a frequent drunk all the time Gabriel had known him. It was said—and Gabriel believed it—that no female servant or farm girl was safe from him when he was in his cups.
Manley had been just such another. He was all of five years older than Philip, but they were friends and he had come to Brierley frequently and stayed, often for weeks
at a time.
By the time Gabriel went to America, both men were married, with children, but those facts had not changed them. Manley’s child had been left at home whenever he brought his wife to Brierley, and the two wives had been left at the house to amuse each other while the men drank in the village and went shooting out of season and ogled the local young women, married and single, and generally made nuisances of themselves. Lords of the manor. Entitled to whatever or whoever took their fancy.
Gabriel had always heartily disliked both of them, a sentiment they had made no bones about returning. They had always derived great pleasure from blaming him for some of the idiotic things they had done—grown men acting like bully boys. And his uncle, stern and autocratic, but as thick as a brick, Gabriel had often thought, had been unable or unwilling to see his son and his cousin’s boy for what they were. He had been ready enough to take their word and punish Gabriel.
“His name, Penny?”
Ginsberg looked as though he were about to explode, but he held his peace and stayed where he was, staring at the floor.
Penelope drew a deep, ragged breath. “Mr. Manley Rochford,” she said.
Ginsberg’s head snapped back as though he had been punched hard on the chin. His eyes were fast closed, his face chalk white. “He came to Orson’s funeral,” he murmured.
“You have told no one this until now, Penny?” Gabriel asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I told Mr. Clark—my husband—before I married him.”
“But he did not deem it necessary to have Manley Rochford taken into custody and charged with ravishment and probably murder too?” he asked.
She frowned. “But you killed Orson,” she said. “It was you he went to confront.”
“He did not find me,” he told her. “I was with Mary Beck. She had been brought a fawn with a broken leg, and I was helping her set and bind it. When I finally arrived home, I was confronted with three things. You were with child. Orson was dead, shot in the back. And I was guilty on both counts. You had admitted the first, and Philip and Manley had witnessed the second from a distance. They had been too far away, of course, to prevent the shooting. My uncle, his house threatened with terrible scandal, advised me to run while I could. And I fled before I could give myself time to think. It was not the wisest thing to do, of course, but I was nineteen. And there were people to swear that I was guilty of each charge—you on the one hand, Manley and Philip, my own cousins, on the other.”
Ginsberg had groped his way to a chair and sat down heavily upon it.
“I am so sorry, Gabriel,” Penelope said. “So very sorry. But they saw you kill Orson.”
“Two men,” Gabriel said. “One of whom had raped you, the other of whom was present when it happened but did nothing to stop it. Yet you took their word for what happened to your brother—and my friend? You have believed ever since that I shot him in the back?”
“You ran away,” she said. “What was I supposed to think? I have always believed it must have been an accident, that you did not mean to kill him. But . . . you ran away.”
“I am going home to Brierley,” he told her. “Not immediately, but soon. I may need you to tell this story to other people, Penny. At the very least I may need to tell other people that they can confirm the truth of my story by speaking with you.”
She was shaking her head, her eyes wide.
“I am guilty neither of ravishment nor of being the father of your son,” he said. “I am innocent in the death—or murder—of your brother.”
Ginsberg moaned softly into the hand he had spread over his face.
“The story must be told in some form,” Gabriel said. “It has become imperative that I go home to Brierley. I have work to do there, and I do not wish to find myself hampered by old assumptions and old charges that might after all require me to fight for my life in a court of law. I do not wish to have to deal with the hostility of skeptical neighbors. I do not want Manley Rochford to continue living at Brierley and throwing his weight about there, destroying innocent lives. You ought not to want it either, Penny, surely. I am putting up at the posting inn two miles or so from here. I cannot for the life of me remember what it is called, but you must know the one I mean. If you choose to write out the story you have told me this morning and send it there, perhaps it will save you from having anyone else come here to question you in person.” He waited through a brief silence.
“I will ask Mr. Clark what I should do,” she said. “No. I will do it. I will send a servant.”
He nodded curtly to her and turned to her father, who was still sitting slumped on his chair, his hand shielding his face.
“Good day to you, sir,” he said. “I did not come to stir up trouble. I came only to discover the truth and build my defense, should one become necessary.”
Mr. Ginsberg did not reply. Penelope had nothing more to say. Gabriel found his way out of the house and along the garden path to where young Timms was walking the horses back and forth while they waited.
He knew now who had got Penny with child, Gabriel thought as he drove his curricle back to the inn. But who had killed Orson Ginsberg? Manford? Philip? One of them had surely done it. But only one of them was still alive to provide the answer. And he was a liar.
He tried to forgive Penny. She had been a frightened girl—just as he had ended up being a frightened boy. She had silently assented to the story she had thought most beneficial to herself. She had believed he would be persuaded to marry her. And perhaps she had been right. Things had not turned out the way she had hoped, however. Instead she had been forced to live ever since with the ghastly and disastrous consequences of her implicit lie in not correcting the assumption her father and brother had made.
It was hard to forgive her. Except that he was himself in need of a great forgiveness. There were people in and around Brierley who were suffering today because for the past six years and more he had ignored them. He had done it because Brierley had brought him very little happiness and some misery when he was a boy. Yet it was not they who had caused his unhappiness. He had neglected his duty, and it was not for him now to take the moral high ground and condemn a woman who had once been frightened by an unbearable crime that had been committed against her.
Thirteen
There had been only the one yellow rose, the day after the garden party. Since then the rosebuds had been pink again.
The romantic gesture no longer meant anything to Jessica. Quite the contrary. She was angry. Quietly furious. For the flowers were the only evidence that the Earl of Lyndale, alias Mr. Gabriel Thorne, still existed somewhere on the face of this earth. And even they were not proof positive. He might have ordered them in advance and left a little pile of signed cards to be delivered with them. He might be anywhere by now, even six feet underground. He might be on the high seas, making his way back to Boston to count his piles of money while he was being declared dead in England. She hoped there was a ferocious storm in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, tossing him about, breaking his limbs—preferably both arms and both legs. And his head. She hoped it would turn him a bilious green at the very least.
How dared he.
How dared he toy with her affections and make her begin to think that perhaps, just maybe, there was a possibility she might marry him and expect something like happiness with him? How dared he pretend that he intended to marry her, only to desert her when she was starting to lose her common sense? How dared he send her roses and play the pianoforte for her until she felt he had sucked her very soul into wherever it was the music came from? How dared he stroke her little finger? And kiss her among the roses, his booted foot on the edge of the bench beside her, his fingertips resting against her jaw, making her want to burst with . . . with desire?
Wherever he had disappeared to, she hoped he stayed there—forever. And she hoped it was a nasty place, overrun with snakes. And rats. If she never saw him
again it would be too soon. No, that was a silly overworked expression. She never wanted to see him again. Full stop. Shoulders back, chin in air, nose in air, and all the rest of it. Lady Jessica Archer, ice maiden, unapproachable, unassailable—or something like that.
And then there was Mr. Rochford—that smiling liar. Far from being discouraged by Avery’s refusal to give his blessing to a proposal of marriage, the man was bearing his disappointment with tragic fortitude. He had come the very next day—much to her mother’s delight—to beg her to drive in the park with him, and she had gone because she did not want to admit to herself that she was disappointed it was not Mr. Thorne who had come. He had sighed and smiled and smiled and sighed and declared that the end of the seven years since his cousin the former earl’s unfortunate demise could not come fast enough for him.
“For His Grace, your brother—or ought I to say half brother?—assured me, Lady Jessica,” he had told her, “that he will welcome my suit with open arms once my father is officially the Earl of Lyndale. Then you may expect to see me upon bended knee, setting my heart at your feet.”
The thing was, though, he had not asked. Therefore, she had been unable to refuse. She had come to dislike him quite heartily. It was hard to understand what it was about him that so enchanted virtually every other lady in London, old and young alike, those of her own family not excepted.
And really, could one imagine Avery welcoming any man with open arms? It was such a ludicrous idea that she had been hard-pressed not to laugh aloud.
Oh, this Season was turning out to be one huge disappointment. She had launched herself into it with such high hopes for her future. And what had she got? Her usual court of admirers, all of whom were amusing and endearing, but really not husband material: Mr. Rochford, who was dazzlingly handsome and relentlessly charming but really a bit of a bore—not to mention the fact that he was a malicious liar; and Mr. Thorne, about whom the less said, the better. Who cared that when he had stood before her at the garden party, one booted foot propped against the seat upon which she sat, one arm draped over his thigh in its skintight pantaloons as he mentioned romance and then kissed her, he had exuded such raw masculinity that she could easily have suffocated—or swooned—from the sheer physicality of it? Really, who cared?