She was being unfair, she told herself. He was new to London. He was new to the social prominence of being heir to an earldom, though his father was not yet the earl. Last evening had been his first ton ball. He had told her so. He had probably been horribly nervous and had overcompensated for that fact. She must give him a chance to grow more at ease in the new life that was about to be his. She would like nothing better than to fall in love with him and marry him and live happily ever after as the Countess of Lyndale. The future countess. She must not consign his father to the grave just yet, poor man. Or the present earl, for that matter, though it was surely almost certain that he really was in his grave and had been for many years.
Yes, she would allow herself to fall in love with Mr. Rochford if she possibly could. But there was also this bouquet. There was something undeniably . . . ostentatious about its size. Perhaps he had merely ordered it but had not actually seen it. Perhaps if he had done so . . .
“What is amusing you?” Anna asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Jessica said, startled out of her musings. “Though I was thinking that if that bouquet was divided up into smaller ones, we could fill every room in the house quite adequately.”
Anna laughed again. “It was a very generous gift,” she said. “Ah. Was that the door knocker?”
They both listened and heard the sound of the heavy front doors being opened below them. Visitors? They were not expecting anyone. But soon there was the unmistakable sound of the butler’s footsteps approaching the drawing room.
“Mr. Rochford, perhaps?” Anna said, raising her eyebrows at Jessica.
The butler opened the door after tapping on it. “Mr. Thorne wishes to know if Lady Jessica is at home to visitors, Your Grace,” he said, addressing Anna.
“Mr. Thorne?” Anna frowned and turned her gaze upon Jessica.
“Lady Parley presented him to me last evening,” Jessica explained. “The American, Anna. Sir Trevor Vickers’s godson. But how strange of him to call here today. He requested the introduction yet did not ask me to dance. Mr. Dean’s set was about to begin, but there were numerous other sets after that.”
“Ah yes, I remember the gentleman,” Anna said. “Someone pointed him out to us. For some reason he appears to have caught the imagination of the ton. Perhaps because he is a fine figure of a man and there is some mystery about him. Are you at home to him?”
He had disconcertingly dark eyes. They made her uncomfortable. In two brief encounters she had been unable to identify the color of those eyes. Blue? Black? How could they be both? Yet they were. They were very penetrating eyes and seemed to look not just into hers but through them. Why on earth had he come here?
There was one way to find out, she supposed. Besides, she recalled that last evening Mr. Rochford had not been the only gentleman who had piqued her interest. Mr. Thorne had too, though surely only because of that earlier encounter when she had mistaken him for a cit. That was not altogether right, however. Her interest had been aroused last evening even before she recognized him. He was handsome. Well, sort of handsome. Attractive would be a more accurate word. Very attractive.
“Jessica?” Anna prompted.
“Show him up, by all means,” Jessica said, addressing Avery’s butler—and then wished, too late, that she had sent him back downstairs with a different answer.
A minute later Mr. Thorne stepped into the room, looking, as he had last evening, the epitome of elegance, in a dark green, form-fitting coat with buff pantaloons and shiny Hessian boots, both of which garments hugged powerful, shapely legs. His linen was white and crisp, the fall of his neckcloth neat and simpler than it had been last evening, as befitted daytime wear. A diamond pin of modest size winked from its folds. He looked larger, more imposing, than he had looked either last evening or back at the inn.
And yes, Jessica decided all within the span of the first second, he was very definitely attractive. More so than Mr. Rochford. But less handsome—if the two men were to be judged by facial features alone, that was. Facial features were not everything, though.
Anna had risen to her feet and was moving toward him, her right hand extended. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Thorne,” she said. “I am the Duchess of Netherby, Lady Jessica’s sister-in-law.”
“Your Grace,” he said, taking her hand and bowing over it—a slight bow, not a lavish one. He turned his eyes upon Jessica, who had also risen, though she had not moved away from her chair. “Lady Jessica.”
“Mr. Thorne,” she said, watching him as he took the seat Anna had indicated.
“I trust you enjoyed the ball last evening,” he said, addressing them both and holding up a staying hand when Anna lifted the teapot and looked inquiringly at him. “No, thank you, ma’am.”
“We did,” Jessica said. “Lord and Lady Parley must have been very gratified. They can boast in all truth today that their ball was a grand squeeze.”
“And I hope you enjoyed it too,” Anna said.
“Yes,” he agreed.
This, Jessica thought, would clearly be hard going. But he had come for a specific purpose, it seemed, and he got down to business without further ado.
“I wonder, Lady Jessica,” he said, turning his attention and the full intensity of that disturbingly dark gaze upon her, “if you are free tomorrow to drive out to Richmond Park with me. I have been told it is well worth a visit.”
Oh goodness.
“Alone, Mr. Thorne?” Anna raised her eyebrows while Jessica regarded him thoughtfully.
“In an open curricle, ma’am,” he said. “Ought I to have arranged a party? I have become unaccustomed to the English way of doing things.”
But he looked slightly amused, Jessica thought, as though there were something a bit funny about her needing a chaperon if she stepped out with him.
Would she go? She knew nothing more of him than his name and the facts that he was a relative of Lady Vickers and had recently returned from a lengthy stay in America. Any other gentleman, if he made so bold as to call upon her the day after making her formal acquaintance, would ask no more than that she drive in Hyde Park with him at the fashionable hour of the afternoon or that she reserve a dance for him at the next ball. Or he would send her flowers. Her mother would certainly have something to say about this invitation if she were here. So would Avery.
But good heavens, she was twenty-five years old. And he was not asking her to go to the ends of the earth with him. Or the moon.
But did she want to go? That was the only question that signified. “It must be all of two years since I was last in Richmond Park,” she began, but before she could say more the drawing room door opened and Avery strolled in.
He was still in his riding clothes, though he wore them, as he wore everything else, with a somewhat showy elegance. He had abandoned his outdoor garments. He was holding a quizzing glass in one hand, not as bejeweled as the one he had chosen last evening, though really there was no great difference. He wore rings on multiple fingers of each hand, and his nails were perfectly manicured. He might have been considered foppish, Jessica had often thought, had it not been for the air of authority and masculinity and even danger that he wore as surely as he wore his perfectly tailored clothes. And, as she had so recently thought, there was never anything vulgar about Avery’s appearance.
His eyes paused upon Mr. Thorne for a moment before moving to Anna. “We have returned,” he said. “No falls and no broken bones, you will be happy to know, my love. Merely a few sulks that we could not continue riding for yet another hour.”
“You are sulking?” Anna asked.
“Ah,” he said, raising the glass halfway to his eye. “Yes. I was not as precise as I might have been, was I? Josephine has gone upstairs to paint, because it is what she wanted to do all along. She did not want to go riding. It is stupid. She did it merely to humor me.”
“Oh dear,” Anna said, smiling. “May I make Mr. Thorne known to you? My husband, Mr. Thorne.”
Mr. Thorne had stood to make his bow.
“You were pointed out to me last evening,” Avery said, regarding their visitor with lazy eyes. “But there was no chance to make your acquaintance. You are a kinsman of Lady Vickers, I understand?” He looked steadily at Mr. Thorne, his quizzing glass halfway to his eye.
“Her second or third cousin, possibly with a remove involved,” Mr. Thorne said. “I never was sure of the exact connection. We are a large, far-flung family.”
“As far-flung as America, I understand,” Avery said. “But you have returned.”
“I have,” Mr. Thorne said agreeably, and Jessica was again given the impression that he was amused. “And Lady Vickers has been obliging enough to make my return known to some of her peers, though I have been gone, alas, too long to remember any of them, if, indeed, I ever met them. I visited London only once or twice when I was a young lad.”
“Quite so,” Avery said, raising his glass all the way to his eye as he looked the bouquet over with a slightly pained expression. “Your offering, Thorne?”
“No,” Jessica said quickly. “They were awaiting Anna and me when we returned from the library with the children. I believe they would look better broken down into several vases and distributed through the house.”