Everyone wanted to smile and nod at Jessica. A few bolder souls approached their table with the same basic message—“I will not interrupt your tea, Lady Lyndale, but do allow me to congratulate you and tell you how delightful it is that the earl, your husband, has returned as though from the dead. I knew from the first time I saw him as Mr. Thorne, the American gentleman, that there was something very special, even aristocratic, about him.”
Everyone’s smiles and nods had to be acknowledged. Everyone who approached had to be thanked. Never had Jessica been more thankful for her Lady Jessica Archer persona, though she had not even known until very recently that such a thing existed. Perhaps she had realized it only at Richmond Park when Gabriel had wanted to marry that person and she had been upset that he had had no idea who the real Jessica Archer was.
There was to be no duel.
No guns.
No deaths.
The mantra had run through her head without ceasing since before she left the hotel. Her head believed it. Her stomach knew it all to be a blatant lie.
Each of them took one tiny sandwich while Great-aunt Edith poured the tea. Each of them looked at her tiny sandwich, and each of them dutifully bit into it.
Each of them, perhaps, was hearing that same mantra repeat itself to the point of utter weariness.
The famed tearoom sandwich felt and tasted like cardboard in Jessica’s mouth. She chewed and swallowed, half expecting to choke. She did not.
“Ah,” Mary said at last, interrupting some historical feature of Westminster Abbey that Grandmama was recounting for their edification. Her face lit up with a smile. “Gabriel!”
Jessica turned her head sharply and then leapt to her feet, tipping her delicate chair to the floor as she did so. He was striding across the tearoom, narrowly missing a few tables that stood in his way. His eyes, burning hot in a pale face, were focused upon her. And he caught her up in a tight hug—or she caught him up. It was impossible to say which of them was the more guilty of causing such a scandalous public spectacle. For the moment she did not care—or, indeed, even think of such a triviality as propriety.
“I am all right,” he murmured against her ear. “I wanted you to know that as soon as possible. I have only just been able to get away. I am safe. You can stop worrying.”
She lifted her face to his. He was deathly pale. And he kissed her, very briefly, on the lips.
She was jolted back to reality by the burst of applause and laughter all around them.
“Oh,” she said.
Gabriel had a little more presence of mind. He released her, looked about the room, and removed his hat. “I do beg your pardon,” he said, including the whole clientele with a sweeping glance.
His words were met with more laughter. Someone—surely one of the few men present—whistled through his teeth.
“Gabriel,” Grandmama said as he leaned down to pick up Jessica’s chair—it was undamaged, she was happy to see. “Do join us.”
And someone rushed up with another chair and someone else appeared with another place setting, and within a minute at the longest he was seated at their table. The general hubbub died down, though Jessica did not doubt they were the focus of avid scrutiny from all sides and would be the subject of numerous conversations for at least the rest of the day.
“We have had a wonderful time, Gabriel,” Mary said. “And now it has become more wonderful, especially for dear Jessica. You have had a good day too?” She was smiling her sweet, placid smile, giving everyone, both at their table and at all the rest, time to settle down to a semblance of normalcy.
He spoke very quietly, for their ears only, as Great-aunt Edith poured him a cup of tea. “There has been a spot of bother,” he said, smiling. “Nothing for any of you to worry about. I am delighted you have had a good day. The weather has certainly been your friend.”
His smile succeeded only in making him look paler.
“A spot of bother?” Grandmama asked.
“Yes,” he said. “It delayed me for a while, ma’am. But it is being very competently dealt with by Netherby and Dorchester and Riverdale. As soon as I judged my presence to be no longer essential—at least for the present—I came to set your minds at rest. I hoped I would find you still here.”
“With what are they dealing competently, Gabriel?” Jessica asked. She was chewing the second half of her sandwich. It tasted only marginally better than the first.
“Manley Rochford is dead,” he said, and his hand closed tightly about hers on the table.
She lifted her chin. She was not going to faint again.
“Oh, Gabriel,” Mary said. “How?”
“I arranged a rendezvous with him in Hyde Park,” he told them. “I intended to . . . punish him before allowing him to leave London and return home. There is no proof, you see, that he murdered anyone. And the other charge would merely drag the name of an innocent woman through the mud and would probably not result in a conviction. So I knew there was really no legal recourse for achieving justice. I decided instead to confront him myself. But not in a duel. I sent him a message simply asking him to meet me in Hyde Park. I had people with me and others keeping an eye upon any route he might take to join me. I did not expect any real trouble, but unfortunately I underestimated him. He brought a gun with him and would have shot me in the back with it had not Mr. Ginsberg shot him first—and killed him. Ginsberg is the man whose daughter was ravished and whose son was murdered. I do beg your pardon. But I saw no way of not letting you know.”
Jessica clutched his hand. And they were all silent for a long minute.
“I will say only this,” Grandmama finally said, keeping her voice as low as his had been. “I am not sorry he is dead. He deserved to die. And I am not sorry he was killed by Mr. Ginsberg. It is fitting that he was the one to mete out justice since no court of law would be able to do it. Now.” She raised her voice somewhat. “A scone, Miss Beck? With strawberries and cream? I can assure you they are always delicious here.”
And, amazingly, they continued with tea just as though this were any other afternoon of social leisure.
A week later Viscount Dirkson and his wife stood just inside the open doors of their drawing room, greeting the select group of guests who had been invited to their soiree. Aunt Matilda looked so very much younger and lovelier than she had two years ago, before she met the love of her youthful years again and then married him, Jessica thought as they hugged. Aunt Matilda glowed with happiness even after the two years of marriage.
Gabriel was nervous, Jessica knew. For he had agreed to play the pianoforte for the “impromptu” concert that would begin later in the evening. He had agreed to play the Bach piece he had performed at Elizabeth and Colin’s party and one or two other pieces.
“The thing is,” he had explained to her, “that whenever I have played for other people in the past, it really has been an impromptu thing. I have never had to stare the ordeal in the face for days ahead of time and wonder if I was going to make an utter ass of myself.”
“You will not,” she had said. “Allow yourself to disappear into the world of your music, Gabriel.”
He had given her a hard look. “You do understand,” he had said.
“Yes, I do,” she had assured him.
“And another thing,” he had said, refusing to be fully reassured. “When I play the Bach piece, Jessie, it will be nothing like it was last time. When people use written music, they can more or less guarantee that what they play now will be identical or at least very similar to what they played in the past and what they will play in the future.”
“Yours will be just as lovely this time as it was last, even if not identical,” she had told him. “Better even. Because it will not be music that has been frozen onto a sheet of parchment but music that is living and breathing inside you.”
He had laughed. Though he was no less nervous tonight than he had been since Aunt Matilda asked him during that garden party where he had kissed Jessica for the first time. How could he be nervous over something like this when he had lived through a nightmare of a week, starting with that moment in Hyde Park when he had come so close to being shot in the back and killed?
Jessica would have nightmares about that for the rest of her life.
Everything had been settled. There had been enough witnesses—and illustrious ones at that—to swear that Manley Rochford had been about to shoot an unarmed Gabriel in the back and had been stopped in the nick of time in the only way possible. His motive was perfectly clear to everyone who needed to be convinced. He had been deprived of the title he had so long coveted, and he was fearful that he would be charged with rape and murder. He had compounded the danger of that happening by attempting to kill the man who stood between him and what he had believed rightfully his until the night before. Mr. Ginsberg, though he had a definite motive for killing Manley Rochford, could not rightfully be accused of murdering him. He had shot to save the life of an innocent man, who, moreover, had had his back to his would-be killer.
No one had asked Mr. Ginsberg what his intention had been when he followed Manley to the park. He had returned home. So had Mrs. Rochford and her son, returning to their home and not Brierley. They took the body of Manley with them for burial.