“Tell me about your childhood, then,” he said. “What about your father?”
“I was fourteen when he died,” she said, in a quiet voice. “He was very different from Avery. He was the sort of man to whom children are the mother’s domain. I did not see a great deal of him. He was never unkind when I did, but he took no real interest in my upbringing or inme.I have always believed that when he married my mother he hoped for another son. A spare, so to speak. Though he never expressed open disappointment. Not in my hearing, at least. And there were no more children after me.”
“You did not complain to him about your music teacher?” he asked.
“Oh good heavens, no,” she said. “I would not even have dreamed of it. I am not complaining about him. It never occurred to me that a father could be affectionate or that he might wish to spend time with his children until I saw Avery withhis—the three girls as well as the lone boy. If he feels any disappointment that he has only the one son so far, he has certainly never shown it. And indeed, I do not believe he does. He adores them all. One would not suspect it from looking at him, would one?”
Gabriel glanced about the room until he spotted Netherby, immaculately elegant despite the rings on almost every finger of both hands and the jewels that winked from the folds of his neckcloth and the handle of the quizzing glass he wore on a black ribbon about his neck. The expression on his face suggested slight boredom, though he was actively involved in a conversation with Dirkson and the Countess of Riverdale. No. One could not quite imagine him adoring his children. Or anyone else for that matter. Yet his duchess seemed a warm, happy woman.
“I had a contented enough childhood,” Lady Jessica said. “It was rather solitary, but there were children in the neighborhood of Morland Abbey with whom I was allowed to play quite often. And I was always close to my mother. I lived for the times, though, when I could stay with my cousins or they came to stay with me.”
“Are they here tonight?” he asked her.
“Boris and Peter are,” she said, “two of my aunt Mildred’s sons. The third, Ivan, is at university. They are all quite a bit younger than I, though. They were fun and full of mischief and I loved them, but I never had a particularly close friendship with them. The other three cousins were Aunt Viola’s. She is here. She is the Marchioness of Dorchester now. Estelle and Bertrand Lamarr are her stepchildren, though they were already very close to adulthood when she married their father. Harry, my cousin, Aunt Viola’s son, was very briefly the Earl of Riverdale after his father, my uncle Humphrey, died. I adore him—Harry, I mean. He was three years older than I and always my hero. It was devastating for him when the discovery was made soon after Uncle Humphrey’s death that his marriage to Aunt Viola had always been a bigamous one. His first wife, whom no one even knew about, was still alive when he married for the second time, and his daughter—hislegitimatedaughter—was put into an orphanage, where she remained until the truth was discovered when she was already grown up.”
“What happened to her?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said. “She is here too. She is Anna. My sister-in-law. Avery’s wife.”
Gabriel could only imagine the drama this family must have lived through after that discovery was made only to be followed by that marriage.
“My cousin Camille was older than Harry,” Lady Jessica told him. “Abigail was younger, just a year older than me. We were more like sisters than cousins. We were the very best of friends. We shared dreams for our future. I suppose it would be very wrong of me to claim that I suffered as much as she did when she lost everything, including her very legitimacy, just before she was to make her come-out here in London. But . . . I suffered. I wanted to die. Foolish, was it not? I was seventeen. One’s emotions tend to be very raw at that age.”
“What happened to her?” he asked. “And to her older sister?”
“Oh,” she said. “Camille surprised everyone by marrying an artist and schoolmaster who grew up at the same orphanage as Anna. They live in a big house in the hills above Bath, and they have a large family. Some of the children are their own and some are adopted. They use the house as a sort of artists’ school or gathering place. One could never have predicted it of Camille. She was so very . . . correct, so very stiff and humorless. She was betrothed to a man no one liked, including her, I do not doubt. I am not sure many people likedher. Then, at least. But she’s a different person now. She is very happy. No one seeing her could doubt that.”
It was strange, Gabriel thought, how one could look at an aristocratic family and assume that their lives were lived on an even keel with no significant troubles. With the Westcott and Archer families, it seemed nothing could be further from the truth.
“And Abigail?” he asked.
“For several years,” she told him, “she retired within herself. There is no other way of putting it. She was quiet, dignified, withdrawn. She would not allow anyone in the family to help her. She would not allow me to suffer with her. And then two years ago she met and married a lieutenant colonel who had brought Harry home from an officers’ convalescent home in Paris, where he had been since the Battle of Waterloo. She married him privately, with no one else but Harry present. No one even knew shelikedGil. She certainly did not at first. They live now in Gloucestershire with their two children—Gil already had a daughter by a previous marriage. And she ishappy. She did not settle for anything less. She ishappy.”
A possibility struck him. “Isshewhy you have never married?” he asked her.
She sat straighter on the bench, though her fingers rested on the keys of the pianoforte. Some of the haughtiness had returned to her manner. “I have not married, Mr. Thorne,” she said, “because I have not chosen to do so.”
“Did you feel somehow betrayed,” he asked her, “by the sudden marriage of your cousin?”
She turned her face toward him. “I amhappyfor her, Mr. Thorne,” she said. “More happy than I can say.”
Which did not answer his question.
“I am sure you are,” he said, and he moved his left hand across the keyboard until his little finger overlapped hers. He rubbed the pad of it lightly over the back of her finger.
He fully expected that she would snatch her hand away. Instead she looked at their hands and he thought he heard her swallow.
“A single rose,” she said softly. “The touch of a single finger. Is this your idea of romancing me, Mr. Thorne?”
It would be a bit pathetic if it were true.
“If you expect grand gestures,” he said, his voice low to match hers, “perhaps it is Rochford whose attentions you ought to encourage.”
Her eyes came slowly to his and held there for a moment. And Lord, he thought, if he had a knife he would surely be able to cut through the air between them. It seemed like a tangible thing, fairly throbbing with tension. Then she sighed softly.
“And perhaps, Mr. Thorne,” she said, “it is time we mingled with the other guests. I am going to see if there is anything my grandmother needs. Or my great-aunt.”
She got to her feet, walked behind the stool, and made her way across the drawing room toward the Dowager Countess of Riverdale. Anthony Rochford met her halfway there, and they approached the dowager together.
