“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 meaningat 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?Passionseemed 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 tosettlefor 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 wantedpassion.
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.
Itwaslaughable.
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.
Shewanted.
“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 thetoninto 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.”
