by Mary Balogh
He recognized her instantly. So did his wife.
“It is Miss Beck,” she said.
“Be quiet, Marjorie,” Manley commanded, his voice harsh. “You are a long way from home, Miss Beck. Gabriel was always a great favorite with you, I recall. But you may wish to consider well before perjuring yourself in order to save him from the gallows.”
“I never have to consider for long before telling the truth, Mr. Rochford,” she said in her calm, deep voice. “Truth is the only thing to be told, at all times. Gabriel was at my cottage for several hours of the afternoon when poor Mr. Ginsberg died. He was helping me tend a wounded fawn one of the grooms had brought me. The groom remained too and remembers. I have a letter from him in safekeeping.”
It was currently locked inside a safe in Netherby’s study at Archer House.
“I have a firm alibi, you see,” Gabriel said. “You were mistaken, Manley. It was not I who murdered Orson.”
“Alibi!” Manley said scornfully. “It is easy to get your friends to say anything you wish, Gabriel. I demand that this man be arrested.”
The crowd no longer seemed so eager to pounce.
“Besides,” Manley cried, trying to reestablish his hold on them, “he is a ravisher as well as a murderer. I daresay he has no alibi for that.”
“Oh, I say,” someone said. “Remember there are ladies present, Rochford.”
“Even for that rape,” Manley said, repeating the word at least one of his fellow guests had found offensive, “he deserves to die.”
“And I have a letter,” Gabriel said, “written by the lady herself and witnessed by her father and her husband, exonerating me from that charge. You were mistaken again, Manley. It was someone else who ravished her.”
That letter too was in Netherby’s safe.
He waited for the renewed swell of sound around them to die down.
“She does name that someone else in her letter,” Gabriel added, his eyes fixed upon Manley.
Manley had turned even paler, if that was possible. His lips looked almost blue in contrast.
“You brought a fortune from America with you, Thorne,” Anthony Rochford blurted suddenly. “How much did you pay the strumpet? And her father and husband? How much did you pay Miss Beck? And the groom who wrote a letter—if he did write it? In my experience grooms do not write. Or read.” He looked triumphantly about him.
But his words fell flat. And Manley seemed lost for further words. His wife set a hand on his arm again, and again he shook it off.
“We are done here. For now,” he said, speaking with an awful dignity. “If no one among you is man enough to hold this man until the authorities can come to arrest him and haul him off to jail, where he belongs, then I will have to make those arrangements myself. Come, my dear. Come, Anthony.”
A path opened up for him, though he did have to lead his wife and son around Gabriel and Jessica and Mary in order to reach it. They left the ballroom unimpeded. Everyone else simply watched them go.
Gabriel looked down at Mary and smiled. And he looked over her head at Jessica and . . . saw two persons combined. One and indivisible. He saw Lady Jessica Thorne at her most haughty. He saw also Jessica, the lovely, warmhearted woman he suspected had become indispensable to him for the rest of his life.
“My felicitations, Lady Farraday.” It was the voice of Netherby, bored and aristocratic, not raised above the level of ordinary conversation by one iota but nevertheless commanding the attention of everyone in the ballroom. “I daresay your costume ball will go down in the annals of social history as one of the most memorable entertainments of the decade.”
And a small group of ladies began a round of applause, there were a few cries of Hear, hear, a man whistled piercingly, and Lady Farrady almost visibly let go of the conviction that her precious masquerade was a disaster. The floor was clearing, the orchestra was readying its instruments, but still there was a cluster of persons in the middle of the ballroom.
“I believe we are done here too,” Gabriel said to the two ladies beside him. “Are we ready to leave?”
“Yes,” Jessica said.
“In a minute,” Mary said, looking apologetically from one to the other of them. “I must first thank your grandmother and aunt, if I may, Jessica. They have been very kind to me. What lovely ladies they are.”
Gabriel smiled rather grimly at Jessica as Mary moved away, and she looked back—ah, with that wide, sunny smile that always rocked him back on his heels.
* * *
* * *
Lady Farraday’s guests had allowed Mr. Manley Rochford and his wife and son to leave without attempting to stop them. It was, of course, otherwise with Gabriel. It made perfect sense to Jessica.
Some wished merely to shake his hand and congratulate him, calling him my lord or Lyndale as they did so. Others wished to assure him that they did not believe for a single moment that he was guilty of what he had been accused of and were very glad that he had a solid alibi for both charges. A few were bold enough to ask him if he knew who was guilty. Was it Mr. Manley Rochford himself? No one asked that specific question, but all wondered. Or so it seemed to Jessica.
“What the devil?” Mr. Albert Vickers said, pumping Gabriel’s hand, seemingly unaware that there were ladies within earshot, including Jessica. “What the devil, Gabe? I jolly well hope you have those letters in a safe place.”
“I do,” Gabriel assured him.
Jessica was not ignored. She was congratulated—upon her marriage and upon the fact that she was the Countess of Lyndale. She was assured that no one believed any of those nasty things Mr. Rochford had said about the earl, her husband. Predictably, a few people told her they had not really liked or trusted the man from their first sight of him at church on Sunday.
The orchestra was poised and ready and Lady Farraday was looking a bit anxious again. Finally Gabriel drew Jessica’s arm through his and they were able to leave the ballroom to rather embarrassing applause.
Alexander was waiting outside the ballroom doors with Mary.
“Tomorrow morning, then,” he said, “in a private dining room at your hotel? The arrangement has not changed?”
He and Avery were planning to meet Gabriel for breakfast tomorrow morning, to assess what had happened tonight, to discuss what ought to happen next. Gabriel had been unwilling to make plans for the latter ahead of time. They had had no way of knowing how their plans for the ball itself would turn out.
“I have reserved a room,” Gabriel told him, shaking his hand. “I appreciate the support, Riverdale, even though I am such a new member of the family.”
Alexander grinned. “We thrive upon such crises,” he said. “I hope you reserved a largish room. I suspect Wren and Anna will insist upon coming too, and I would not bet against a few others. Jessica, for example.” He turned to her and hugged her tightly.
“Thank you, Alexander,” she said. “You look very impressive as Alexander the Great.”
He laughed.
And finally they left.
Mary, seated beside Jessica on one carriage seat while Gabriel sat with his back to the horses, was very quiet.
“You are tired, Mary?” Jessica asked her.
“I believe,” she said, “I could sleep for a week if no one disturbed me. What will happen to him, Gabriel?”
“I am not sure,” he told her. “It is what will be discussed at tomorrow’s breakfast meeting. I suppose, Mary, you feel sorry for him?”
She thought about it in her serious, quiet way. “We diminish ourselves too,” she said at last, “when feeling sorry for someone who has done a dreadful wrong leads us to excuse him and simply hope he will mend his ways. Feeling sorry for someone but acknowledging that justice ought nevertheless to be done is more appropriate to moral beings. Yes, Gabriel, I feel sorry for him—and I feel real sorrow for his wife and his so
n, who appears vain and occasionally callous, but is perhaps not really vicious. For Manley Rochford I feel pity and hope for justice. It breaks my heart.”
“Even though he was intent upon making you homeless and destitute?” Jessica asked.
“Even though,” Mary said, patting her hand.
None of them said anything else during the ride home—home, for the present at least, being a hotel. They both saw Mary to her room, which was close to their suite. Ruth was waiting for her inside.
“My dear Ruth,” Mary was saying as Gabriel was closing the door, “you ought not to have waited up so late just for me. You must lie down on that truckle bed right away. I hope it is comfortable.”
The first thing Gabriel did when they stepped inside their own suite was to summon his valet from his bedchamber and dismiss him for the night. He went with a respectful bow and a murmured good night.
“He was not happy at being dismissed before he could perform his final duties for the day,” Jessica said after the door closed behind him.
“How can you tell?” Gabriel asked, grinning at her. “I have never known anyone with a more impassive face.”
“One gets to know,” she said, smiling back. “Servants give subtle hints of their true feelings that they fully expect their employers to interpret.”
“I suppose,” he said, “your maid was annoyed with you just now even though she did not even look at you?”
“But of course,” she said. “She did not look at me, Gabriel.”
Oh, it was so lovely to see him smile, to hear him laugh. Smiles and laughter made him look downright handsome as well as younger.
And then both the smile and the laughter were gone, and he cast aside his black domino and strode toward her to remove hers. Both garments landed in a heap on the floor—his customary storage place for clothes as they were removed, it seemed. He caught her up in his arms and held her tightly and wordlessly. It was almost hard to breathe. He held her for a long time until she realized something that threatened to turn her knees to water.
He was weeping.
“Gabriel?” she whispered.
“Oh good God,” he muttered. “Devil take it.”
He released her and turned away from her. He went to stand facing the fireplace, one forearm resting on the mantel.
Jessica picked up their dominoes and set them on one of the chairs at the table where they dined. She leaned back against the table and looked at him. He was drawing deep breaths and releasing them a bit raggedly. Men found it so embarrassing to weep, foolish creatures. Though she was blinking her eyes more than was normally necessary and swallowing several times to quell the gurgle in her throat. She pushed herself up to sit on the table, something she could not recall ever doing before.
He took out his handkerchief, blew his nose, and put it away. And he turned his head to look at her.
“He is my cousin, Jessica,” he said. “Second cousin, to be exact. Philip was my cousin. My uncle Julius was my father’s brother. They are—were, in some cases—my family. And then consider your family.”
Life was rarely fair, was it? She had realized that, probably for the first time, eight years ago, when life as she had known it had been shattered. Yet her family had held firm and prospered. They were always there to lean upon or simply to love.
“You were lonely, Gabriel?” she asked. Oh, surely more than lonely. His father died when he was nine, his mother years before that.
“The world is full of lonely people,” he said, coming toward her. He took hold of a ringlet of hair that was hovering over the corner of her eye and hooked it behind her ear. “It must never be used as an excuse for unhappiness or self-pity. Consider Mary.”
“Your aunt was her sister,” she said. “Were they not close?”
“No,” he said. “My aunt did her duty by taking Mary to Brierley with her after her marriage to my uncle, and he did his duty by giving her a home of her own and making her an allowance. Much can be said for duty. It ought to be done. But it is no substitute for love.”
“Your uncle did his duty by you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And then,” she said, “you went away and worked hard and found both happiness and love—with your mother’s cousin.”
“Cyrus,” he said. “Yes.”
She felt infinitely sad. She cupped his face with her hands. How cruel it must have seemed when Cyrus died in a senseless accident. “And ultimately duty brought you back to England.”
“And love,” he said. “I love Mary.”
“Yes.” She leaned forward and set her lips softly to his. He did not immediately respond, though he did not draw back his head either.
“And now,” she said, “you love everyone else at Brierley, all those who are suffering from having had Manley Rochford there for a while.”
“I did not know,” he said. “I ought to have. I have been derelict in my duty.”
“But not any longer,” she said. “You must not be hard on yourself, Gabriel. You had duties in Boston too. You dealt with those by leaving your friend in charge, confident that he will carry your legacy forward. Now you will solve this problem. And you have already started. Manley will no longer be there. And you and I will. I will be there by your side. It is why you married me.”
“Jessie,” he said. “That is not—”
She set a finger across his lips.
“And it is why I married you,” she told him. “Duty and—”
“Love?” he said.
Ah, but she did not want to load that sense of guilt upon his shoulders. “Affection,” she said. “You feel some for me. I know you do. And I feel some for you. It is a start, Gabriel. It is a very good start.”
“Yes,” he said, and they gazed at each other.
What was the difference, she wondered, between affection and love? Or between desire and affection—and love? What did she feel for her husband? What did he feel for her? But did it matter by what name it was labeled? It just was.
His hands came to her hips then and his mouth returned to hers. But open and hungry this time. And hot. Oh, so hot. He was hot. Whatever that meant. Words again. Words could be so stupid. Stupidly inadequate. So could thoughts.
Begone, then, thoughts.
His mouth was devouring hers. His tongue was deep in her mouth and sending trails of tingling heat right down inside her to her toes, though it concentrated about her womanly parts, those she had discovered on the bed in the next room during the past few days and nights.
But mouth and tongue were not sufficient. Not by half. Oh—
He was raising her evening gown, none too gently, and he lifted her above the table for a moment so that he could raise it up and, after he had dealt quickly with the buttons at the back, all the way off her body to be tossed to the floor. Her stays followed in short order. And then her shift. He did not touch her evening slippers or her silk stockings and the garters that held them up. He shrugged out of his evening coat, with a bit of help from her, and his waistcoat and neckcloth. He tugged at his shirt and pulled it up and off his head to join everything else on the floor. He dealt with the buttons at his waist but did not remove his breeches. His mouth ravished hers almost the whole time. And then she realized—oh goodness!
He was not going to take the time to carry her into the bedchamber. He was going to—right here, right now.
His hands came to her naked hips again and pulled her to the edge of the table. She wrapped her legs about him. And he thrust hard into her.
The table squeaked as he worked in her. The sound got all caught up with the eroticism of the moment—that and the rhythmic sound of the wetness of their coupling.
It was unbearably painful. Unbearably sweet. Unbearably—
Her forehead came to rest on his shoulder as she shuddered and then shuddered again and again before floating d
ownward from . . . Well, there went the stupidity of words again. There never were any for the truly important things. She floated downward.
He was still pulsing and throbbing inside her though he was still and she knew he was finished.
And he was hot. There was really no other word that came close to describing what he was as a lover.
“I am so sorry, Jessie,” he said. He was still inside her. He sounded breathless, as well he ought.
She raised her head and looked into his dark blue eyes—they were heavy lidded with the aftermath of passion.
“If you really mean that, Gabriel,” she said, “I am leaving you in the morning and going home to Archer House.”
He smiled slowly at her.
Oh, that smile.
Twenty-one
The table in the private dining room Gabriel had reserved at his hotel had been set for ten. He and Jessica were down first, but they were soon joined by Riverdale and Netherby and their wives. The Marquess of Dorchester arrived next with Baron Molenor and Viscount Dirkson. Bertie Vickers came on their heels. Gabriel was rather touched to see him.
“I was not invited, Gabe,” he said, shaking hands with him and nodding first to Jessica and then to everyone else. “But m’father found out about it from Netherby, and I told him I was coming, invitation or not. I was offended by that gold waistcoat of the younger Rochford a few weeks ago, and I was offended by his gold domino and mask last evening. Sequins on a man, for the love of God! The father, on the other hand—well, talk about smiling villains. There is a Shakespeare quote about them somewhere. Can’t remember where. Did I understand correctly, Gabe? Did the man commit crimes and then try to blame them upon you? Would he have sent you to the gallows in his place? Would he still if he could get away with it? We have to do something. And if there is something I can do to help . . . Well, it is why I came.”
“I am glad you did,” Gabriel assured him.
No one else came, though all the younger men of the Westcott family and a number of the women had apparently wanted to. But they had been persuaded to remain at home. So ten settings were exactly enough.
