She eased the baby from Anna’s arms into her own as she spoke, and miraculously Bea snuggled into her and even stopped grizzling for a moment.
“The magic touch,” Anna said. “You have had it with all four of the children, Mother. Thank you.”
“On behalf of my valet,” Avery added, “a million thanks, Mother. He has a way of not complaining when I arrive in my room with one half of my neckcloth limp and soggy that I find quite unnerving.”
Jessica’s mother remained on her feet and rocked the baby against her shoulder, murmuring nonsense as she did so. Beatrice, still sucking on her fist, seemed to be falling asleep.
“Ah,” Anna said. “Another rose. I do like Mr. Thorne’s style. I assume the rose is from him? A bouquet was being delivered as I was coming through the hall just now. A very large one. I am guessing it is for you, Jessica, and that it is from Mr. Rochford again. He is paying quite determined court to you. He scarcely left your side last evening except when you were at the pianoforte with Mr. Thorne.”
“It was very gratifying,” Jessica’s mother murmured. “And he was very deferential to Mama and Aunt Edith.”
“A little too deferential?” Jessica said, and her eyes met her brother’s across the table. He raised his eyebrows. “What do you know of his cousin, Avery?”
“His cousin?” he said. “The missing earl, do you mean? Next to nothing except that he is missing and presumed dead.”
“His name was Gabriel,” Jessica said—and, when his eyebrows remained aloft, “It is Mr. Thorne’s name too.”
“Ah,” he said. “Are you seeing some intrigue at work, Jess? Are they one and the same, do you suppose?” He waggled his eyebrows at her.
“I do not suppose it for a single moment,” she said. “Gabriel is hardly a unique name.”
“Quite so,” he said, but his eyes remained thoughtfully upon her while Anna talked of Mr. Thorne’s playing last night.
“I could listen to him for a whole evening without growing weary,” she said. “Did you notice, Jessica, that his eyes were closed much of the time while he played Bach and there was a slight frown between his brows? It was clear he felt the music right down to the depths of his soul.”
“I did notice,” Jessica said. “I was very glad I had played first.”
“Until now,” Anna said, “you have resisted all attempts to pay you serious court, Jessica. Is this year to change all that? With Mr. Rochford and his charm and his lavish compliments and large bouquets, perhaps? Or with Mr. Thorne and his mysterious silences and single roses and heavenly music? With both?”
“Or perhaps with neither,” Jessica said. “Are you tired of having me forever underfoot, then, Anna?”
“Oh heavens,” Anna cried, reaching across the distance between them to squeeze Jessica’s hand. “Never. Oh, absolutely not, Jessica. I could never have too much family. Nor could I love the one I have more deeply than I do. That was not my meaning at all.”
“I know it was not,” Jessica assured her, squeezing her hand back.
Anna had spent twenty-two of her first twenty-five years at an orphanage in Bath, knowing herself only as Anna Snow, Snow being her mother’s maiden name, though she had not known that either. When she had discovered that she was Lady Anastasia Westcott, the legitimate daughter—and only legitimate child, as it happened—of the late Earl of Riverdale, it might have been expected that she would be bitter, that she would resent the family ties and the life of privilege all the other Westcotts shared. Instead she had loved them resolutely and fiercely almost from the first moment, even while some of them had resented her.
Jessica had hated her—she had come, seemingly from nowhere, to wreck Abby’s life as well as Camille’s and Harry’s, and to destroy her own dreams. It had taken her a long time to accept Anna as part of the Westcott family, then as Avery’s wife, her own sister-in-law and cousin. It had taken even longer to love her.
Avery’s eyes were resting upon Anna across the table. It often shocked Jessica to note that despite the almost bored expression her brother wore habitually in company, there was something in his eyes whenever he looked at his wife that spoke of fathomless depths of . . . Of what? Love? Passion? Passion seemed too strong a word to use of the indolent Avery, but appearances could be deceptive, Jessica thought. She was sure there must be a well of passion in him that very few people would suspect.
Oh, she thought with a sudden wave of unexpected yearning, how could she possibly be planning this year merely to settle for an eligible match? She wanted what Avery and Anna had. She wanted what Alexander and Wren had and Elizabeth and Colin. And Abby and Gil.
She wanted love. Even more than that, she wanted passion.
And she thought of that silly little detail that had kept her awake through most of the night, tossing and turning in her bed, punching and reshaping her pillow. She thought of Mr. Thorne’s little finger caressing hers upon the pianoforte keys, very lightly, very deliberately. Very briefly. How idiotic in the extreme that such a thing could have robbed her of a night’s sleep. If she were to tell anyone, she would be laughed off the face of the earth. She had felt that touch sizzle—yes, it was the only appropriate word—through her whole body, warming her cheeks, setting her heart to beating faster, creating a strange ache low in her abdomen and down along her inner thighs to her knees. Her toes had curled up inside her evening slippers.
She had wanted to weep.
She had asked him to romance her and had expected—if she had expected him to take up the challenge at all, though he had said he would—lavish gestures, similar to what she was getting from Mr. Rochford. Instead, in all the days since, she had had a pink rose each morning and a touch of his little finger to hers last evening.
It was laughable.
But she still, even after a few hours of sleep, felt like weeping.
She wanted . . .
Oh, she wanted and wanted and wanted.
What Avery had.
What Alexander had.
What Elizabeth and Camille and Abby had. And Aunt Matilda.
She wanted.
“Mr. Rochford has asked to take you rowing on the Thames this afternoon during the garden party?” her mother asked, speaking softly so as not to wake the baby.
“Yes,” Jessica said. “I promised that I would go out in one of the boats with him.”
“It is going to be a lovely day,” Anna said. “It already is.”
Jessica wished it were raining. She really did not like Mr. Rochford, she had decided last evening. He tried too hard to be charming and deferential. He smiled too much. All of which she might have ignored or at least excused on the grounds that he had not been to London before and was new to the position of prominence with the ton into which his prospects had thrown him even though his father was not yet officially the Earl of Lyndale. What had turned the tide against him last evening was the story he had told about the supposedly dead earl, his cousin. It might be perfectly true. She had no reason to believe it was not. But it included serious charges, involving even debauchery and murder. Ought he to have volunteered that information to a group of strangers in the middle of a party? About his own family? He had shown poor taste at best. At worst, he had been deliberately smearing the name of his father’s predecessor in order to make himself and his father look better by contrast. More legitimate, perhaps. How unnecessary. The law itself was about to make them legitimate.
Would she have been so offended if his dead cousin had not happened to have the same name as Mr. Thorne?
Gabriel?
Yes, of course she would. She did not like to hear people blackening the reputation of someone who was incapable of defending himself—or herself. Especially that of a relative. She could not imagine any of the Westcotts doing such a thing.
“You are right,” she said in answer to Anna’s comment. “It is not even windy. It is going to be a perfect day for a garden party.”
After a few hours spent at the House of Lords, Avery Archer, Duke of Netherby, and Alexander Westcott, Earl of Riverdale, had a late luncheon together at White’s Club.
They were not natural friends. At one time Alexander had viewed Avery as little more than an indolent fop, while Avery had considered Alexander a bit of a straitlaced bore. But that was before Harry was stripped of the earldom and his title and entailed properties passed to Alexander, a mere second cousin. It was before Avery married Lady Anastasia Westcott, the late earl’s newly discovered and very legitimate daughter. The crisis, or rather the series of crises that arose from those events and subsequent ones, had thrown the two men together on a number of occasions, not the least of which was a duel at which Avery fought—and won—and Alexander acted as his second. Their encounters had given them at first a grudging respect for each other and finally a cautious sort of friendship.
They spoke of House business and politics and world affairs in general while they ate. Once Avery discouraged a mutual acquaintance from joining them by raising his quizzing glass halfway to his eye, bidding the man a courteous but rather distant good day, and pointedly not asking for his company.
After their coffee had been served, Avery changed the subject.