“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 son, 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.