by Mary Balogh
One’s wedding day was supposed to be the happiest day of one’s life.
She had just become the quintessential bride. For in her case it was surely true.
Eighteen
Gabriel was gazing up at the ceiling, thinking about his father. There was a time—it went on for years after he had been taken to Brierley to live—when his grief had been a raw wound, a daily ache of longing, an almost nightly anguish, with sleep elusive. How could his papa have been so very different from Uncle Julius, he had wondered then, and from Philip? His uncle had not been unkind to Gabriel, just . . . indifferent. He had been an abrupt, autocratic, impatient man who seemed to lack all finer feelings, even with his wife. Especially with her, perhaps. It had been difficult for Gabriel to believe that Uncle Julius and his papa had been brothers.
The intensity of that early grief had faded over time. But he had never forgotten how much his father had loved him, how much he had loved his father. When he had gone to America, he had transferred some of that love to Cyrus.
He missed them both today. But for his father he felt some of the raw ache his childhood self had felt when he was led away from the cemetery beside the vicarage where they had lived, and he had understood, perhaps for the first time, that he would never see his papa again. Never. Never had seemed an unfathomable expanse for his nine-year-old self. It still did today.
His father had not been at his wedding.
Or his mother. But he had known her only through the stories his father had told of her—and those Cyrus had told him. The rawness of loss had not been so immediate with her. His father had once told him that he had cried inconsolably for a whole week after her death.
“A penny for your thoughts,” a soft voice said from beside him, and he turned his face toward Jessica’s.
It was very close. His arm was about her. Her head was nestled against his shoulder. Her eyes were dreamy with sleep. Her dark hair, which he had so thoroughly brushed not long ago, was spread about her in a disordered mass. He had pulled the top sheet over them, but beneath it they were both still naked—except for her pearl necklace, he realized for the first time. He could feel her, soft and warm, all down his side.
And now someone else belonged to him. Just to him. She was his wife. This was their wedding day. It still seemed unreal.
“I was thinking about my father,” he told her.
“Tell me,” she said.
“I think,” he said, “I never quite forgave him for dying. It was unnecessary, you see. He neglected a chill because it was more important to him to serve his parishioners than to live for me. I blamed him for that, for loving them more than he loved me. But he didn’t, I understand now. He loved everyone. I had a very special place in his heart—I was his son. But that did not mean he loved his flock any the less. He was a man who had a religion—he was a clergyman. More important, though, he lived that religion. Maybe I should forgive him at last. What do you think?”
“I think you already have,” she said.
She was gazing back into his eyes. He was going to have no alternative than to love her, he thought, and was amazed he had not really considered the matter before. He was, after all, his father’s son and Cyrus’s adopted son. This was a different relationship, a far more intimate one. But she was his. His wife. This morning he had vowed to love, honor, and keep her. She had given up everything today in order to spend her life with him. She would, God willing, be the mother of his children. Of course he was going to have to love her.
He had certainly enjoyed making love to her. And he had been right when he had thought that day at Richmond Park that despite his first impression of her she might be capable of passion.
“Gabriel,” she asked him, “what are we going to do about Manley Rochford? And his wife? And Anthony Rochford?”
Yes, and there was that. It had been at the back of his mind all day. He had largely ignored it because this was his wedding day.
We, she had said. What are we going to do?
“I knew he was planning to come here soon,” he said. “I was hoping, though, to get there before he left. It would have been easier to confront him there. I waited too long.”
“Because I wanted a family wedding,” she said. “We ought to have married on Tuesday, as soon as you came with the special license.”
“Even then it would have been too late,” he said. “We would probably have passed him on the road. Besides . . .” He smoothed her hair back from her face, hooked it behind her ear, and touched his fingertips to her cheek. “I liked our wedding just the way it was. Did you?”
“I am very glad Mr. Vickers did not drop my ring,” she said, and he watched a smile light her eyes.
And there, he thought. There. That was how he wanted her to look. For him. Because he had pleased her or amused her. Because they could share a joke. Because there was some bond between them. He smiled back at her, and there was a flicker of something in her eyes, something that took away the smile but left a lingering look of . . . what? Wistfulness? Yearning?
“I liked our wedding,” she said.
But she had asked a question.
“I suppose,” he said, “I should call on him. Privately. Let him know I am back. Still alive. Give him a chance to leave quietly and avoid embarrassment.”
“You suppose we should call on him,” she said.
His first thought was that he would not expose her to that. But it was for this very thing he had married her. This confrontation with Manley and the return to Brierley.
She did not wait for him to answer. “Would he give in that easily?” she asked him. “Or would he have you arrested?”
It would be a toss-up. It could go either way. Manley might simply admit defeat and creep on home, taking his wife and son with him. He might not want the humiliation of having all his hopes dashed in full sight of the ton. On the other hand, his disappointment would be colossal, and he might choose to fight. He had set up Gabriel as a ravisher and murderer thirteen years ago, he and Philip between them. He might well believe that the charges would stick now and take Gabriel to the gallows. Or he might try to send him scurrying back to America with the threat of arrest. It had worked before, after all.
“He might,” he said. “I believe he wants very badly to be the Earl of Lyndale, owner of Brierley, possessor of a large fortune. And he is tantalizingly close to achieving his dream. I am not so easily frightened these days, however, and I can put up a good defense.”
“It might be messy,” she said.
He ran his thumb across her lips and then kissed her softly. Was she taking fright? Even though she had known before she married him—
“And why should he be given the chance to slink off home if he chooses not to fight?” she asked. “Gabriel! He ravished your boyhood sweetheart and left her with child. He murdered her brother, your friend, in the most cowardly way imaginable, by shooting him in the back. And he is just as guilty even if it was actually your cousin who fired the gun. He tried to put the blame on you. He would have let you hang. Are you going to allow him to walk away now, unpunished?”
She sounded, rather incongruously, like the Lady Jessica Archer of his early acquaintance.
“If anyone deserves to hang,” she said, “it is he.”
He turned more fully onto his back and draped his free hand over his eyes.
“And if anyone deserves to be publicly humiliated, Gabriel,” she added, “it is surely Mr. Manley Rochford.”
He had cut off Mary’s allowance without any authority to do so and was about to turn her out of her home to certain destitution. He had got rid of a number of servants at Brierley, again without any right to do so, and had turned several of them out of their homes. He had not changed in thirteen years. Perhaps he had never again ravished anyone—though Gabriel would not wager against it—or shot anyone else in the back. But he was still a sorry excuse
for a human being. Just as Philip had been. How could they have been related to his own father?
“Yes,” he said.
She moved more fully onto her side then and spread one hand over his chest. She moved one leg between his.
“Gabriel,” she said, “what are we going to do?”
We again.
“We are going to let things be messy,” he said, using her word. “We are going to confront him, Jessie, in as dramatic and as public a way as possible.”
She lifted her head, and because she could not hold it up comfortably, she came farther over him, bracing herself with both hands on his chest and moving her leg right across both of his. Her hair fell about her face and over his chest. She was smiling. And looking damned irresistible. Looking and feeling.
“Where?” she asked him. “And when?”
“Ah,” he said, cupping her face with his hands, “those are the questions.”
“We need answers,” she said. “Aunt Matilda and Viscount Dirkson’s soiree? You are to play the pianoforte there, are you not? Aunt Matilda is very excited about it. But no. That is not until the end of next week. Anyway, it would not be public enough. What is coming up in the next few days that simply everyone will be attending? Let me think.”
“There is a masquerade ball on Tuesday,” he said.
She stared down at him. “The masquerade,” she said. “With all the drama of the unmasking at midnight. Oh, Gabriel, it will be perfect. We must find out if Mr. Manley Rochford is going to be there. We must make sure he is sent an invitation—and that he accepts it. Oh, I know. The family committee is meeting tomorrow at Aunt Matilda’s. I will go to it. Oh, they are going to love this.”
“Jessie,” he said, frowning a bit. He did not need to drag the whole Westcott family into what was bound to be a messy scandal, whichever way it went. If anything, her family members needed to be warned to stay away from the masquerade.
Three fingers pressed against his lips before he could say more.
“Oh no,” she said. “You must not object, as I can see you are about to do. No, Gabriel. This is why you married me. Because I am an aristocrat myself and because I have the full force of a very aristocratic family behind me. We can be very formidable when we choose to be.”
And even when they did not so choose, he thought.
“You must not forbid me,” she said. “I would have to disobey, and I promised just this morning to obey you. What a foolish part of the wedding service that is. The whole of it was written by men, of course.” She looked down at him and then smiled, sunshine and mischief dancing in her eyes. And then she laughed softly. “When you married me, you married into the Westcott family. Now you have to take the consequences.”
“In the meanwhile,” he said, “I will call upon my lawyer. I may need him.”
“To deal with me?” Her eyes were still laughing. She was actually enjoying this, he realized.
“No,” he said. “I think I can manage that without his help. Jessie, did I hurt you? I would not want—”
“Oh, but I would,” she said.
And she slid her hands up his chest and cupped his face with them, bringing her full weight down on top of him and her face very close to his as she did so.
She kissed him.
It was an invitation not easily resisted. He did not even try.
* * *
* * *
The news spread quickly, as news always did, that Mr. Manley Rochford, very soon to be the Earl of Lyndale, had arrived in London with his wife. Their son, Mr. Anthony Rochford, had been informed of their arrival soon after he arrived at a ball on Thursday evening. He had left immediately, much to the disappointment of many, in order to welcome them, as any dutiful son would.
All three attended church on Sunday—St. George’s on Hanover Square, of course, the church favored by most of the ton while they were in town during the spring. Mr. Anthony Rochford introduced his parents to the clergyman and to as many important personages among the congregation as he could. His father received their words of greeting with an air of gracious gravity. He would, with the greatest reluctance, accept the title and the duties it imposed upon him when the fateful day came, of course. It seemed, alas, that he had no choice. At the same time, that would be a day of grief rather than unalloyed rejoicing, for it would be final confirmation that there could be no further hope of his cousin’s still being alive. It would be the day he had wished fervently would never come.
The ton seemed deeply affected. Mr. Manley Rochford was a dignified, handsome man—an older version of his son without the smile. Nobody seemed particularly to notice his wife, who said nothing. Or, if she did, no one heard. Mr. Anthony Rochford still smiled, but there was a brave, sad tinge to it on that Sunday morning.
“It was a magnificent performance,” Estelle reported to her father and stepmother at luncheon. “I almost soaked a handkerchief with my tears.”
They had not been there. But Estelle and Bertrand had gone to church, as they usually did. They had been brought up by an uncle and aunt who had strict rules about worship. Though, as Bertrand was fond of saying whenever questioned on the matter, he and his sister went from personal inclination too. It was, after all, many years since they had lived with their uncle and aunt.
“He is a distinguished-looking man—I will give him that,” Edith Monteith remarked to the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, her sister, as they rode back home in the carriage.
“And handsome too,” Miss Adelaide Boniface, her companion, agreed. “I admire the graying at the temples that happens to some fortunate men when they reach a certain age.”
“If he had been on the stage,” the dowager commented sourly, “he would have been booed off it for overacting.”
“Pride goeth before a fall,” Mildred, Lady Molenor, said to her husband as they walked home from church. “Where is that quotation from, Thomas? The Bible?”
“The Bible or William Shakespeare,” he said. “It is bound to be one or the other. I assume you are making a prediction about Rochford?”
“He is going to be hideously disappointed,” she said. “I cannot wait to witness it. Our plan—Jessica and Gabriel’s actually, but we all have a part to play—is quite spectacular and quite diabolical.”
“I married a bloodthirsty woman,” he said.
“Thomas,” she said. “He is a—” She looked around to make sure no one was within earshot but lowered her voice anyway. “He is a ravisher. And almost certainly a murderer too.”
“Are you quite sure you wish to accompany me tomorrow, Wren?” Alexander, Earl of Riverdale, asked his wife during the afternoon while she was feeding their baby in the nursery. “I will be quite happy to go alone.”
“After observing his behavior at church this morning,” she said, looking up at him tight-lipped, “I will go even if you change your mind. He would have let Gabriel die thirteen years ago. He would have watched him hang. For something he did. He is beneath contempt. And compassion.”
He leaned across their suckling baby and kissed her hard on the mouth.
The Westcott women had held their meeting at Viscount Dirkson’s home on Saturday afternoon. They had all been present, including, to the surprise of everyone else, Jessica herself.
“Because,” she had explained when questioned, “it is not enough simply to confront the man privately and allow him to slink off back home to lick his wounds—though the thought even of that gives me some satisfaction. He must not be allowed to escape some sort of justice, however.”
“My thoughts exactly, Jessica,” Wren said. “But how are we going to bring that about?”
“It is the precise reason why we have gathered here,” Aunt Matilda pointed out.
“I think we should have him arrested,” Grandmama said. “And thrown into a deep, dark dungeon. A damp one. With rats.”
“On
thirteen-year-old charges?” Cousin Althea said. “For offenses that were committed a long way away? I think that might be easier said than done, Cousin Eugenia, though I do wish we could do it.”
“Avery could do it,” Jessica’s mother said. “And make the charges stick. So could Alexander. The two of them together—”
“We need a definite plan,” Cousin Elizabeth said. “Something we can implement even if Avery and Alex disagree on the bold move of trying to have Mr. Rochford arrested.”
“I have one,” Jessica told them. “It is why I am here. I would not have come otherwise.” And then she wished she had not added that last, for everyone looked at her—naturally, for she had spoken—and she could feel her cheeks grow hot. She had slept last night, deeply and dreamlessly, probably for several hours, but before and after—
Well.
She probably looked like a dewy-eyed bride the day after. Which was precisely what she was.
“There is that costume ball on Tuesday evening,” she continued. “I have been looking forward to it ever since I received my invitation.”
“I love masquerades,” Estelle cried. “And I am not telling anyone what my costume is to be. No one will recognize me in a million years.” She laughed.
“It is bound to be a great squeeze,” Aunt Viola said. “Everyone loves a masquerade—the respectable kind, anyway, and Lady Farraday’s is always very respectable indeed. No one sneaks in uninvited there despite the most impenetrable of disguises. That distinctive invitation card is everything. Are you hoping Mr. Rochford—Mr. Manley Rochford—will be there, Jessica, even though he is such a recent arrival in town?”
“That is where all of you come in,” Jessica said, glancing about the room. “We need to make sure both that he is invited and that he attends.”
They all gazed at her thoughtfully for a moment.
“I sense a brilliant plan,” Elizabeth said. “The unmasking will be a sensation. I suppose it is the unmasking you are picturing as the climactic moment, Jessica?”