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 pointedlynotasking for his company.
After their coffee had been served, Avery changed the subject.
“To what do I owe this very kind invitation?” he asked.
Alexander leaned back in his chair and set his linen napkin beside his saucer. “Jessica is giving serious consideration to settling down at last, is she?” he asked.
Avery raised his eyebrows. “If she is,” he said, “she has not confided in me. Nor would I encourage her to do so. That is a matter for my stepmother to worry her head over. Or not. My sister is of age and has been for several years.”
“What do you think of Rochford as a suitor for her hand?” Alexander asked.
“Do I have to think anything?” Avery sounded pained. “But it seems I must. You invited me to have luncheon with you for this exact purpose, I suppose.” Avery sighed, and then continued. “He is perfectly eligible and will be more so very soon unless the missing earl should suddenly drop down from the heavens into our midst at the last possible moment like a bad melodrama. Rochford has obviously set his sights upon Jessica. Equally obviously, the usual family committee has decided to promote the match and throw them together at every turn. Why else would he have been invited to your sister’s supposedly exclusive party last evening? I understand Jessica is to go out with him in a boat small enough to allow for only one rower and one passenger at a garden party this afternoon. One would hope his manners are polished enough that he will volunteer to be the rower.”
“Do you like him?” Alexander was frowning.
“I do not have to,” Avery said as he stirred his coffee. “Jessica would be the one marrying him. But as far as I am concerned, the man has too many teeth, and he displays them far too often. He also has abysmal taste in waistcoats. But he may have myriad other virtues to atone for those vices. And I would not be called upon to look upon either the teeth or his waistcoats with any great frequency if Jess were to marry him. Do I assume you donotlike him? On the slight acquaintance of one evening spent in his company?”
“What do you know of Gabriel Rochford?” Alexander asked. “The missing earl.”
“Nothing,” Avery said after taking a drink and setting his cup back in its saucer. “Except that heismissing and that he shares an angelic first name with Thorne. But the world, I must believe, contains a fair smattering of other Gabriels.”
“How long has the earl been missing?” Alexander asked. “Do you know?”
“I do not,” Avery said. “Is the question relevant to anything?”
“Rochford told a story last evening,” Alexander said. “Jessica heard it. So did Elizabeth and a few other guests. Estelle was part of the group. So was young Peter. It was not a suitable story for such an audience and such an occasion. Both Elizabeth and I turned the conversation to other topics as soon as we could, but we could hardly interrupt him midsentence. Of course, if you had been there with your quizzing glass and your ducal stare, he would have been muzzled far sooner.”
“Dear me,” Avery muttered.
“He told a story of his cousin’s wild ways,” Alexander said, “culminating in what he hinted was the rape of a neighbor’s daughter and the murder of her brother. After which he fled to escape the hangman’s noose.”
“Who would not, given the opportunity?” Avery said. “And all this was recounted in my sister’s hearing? And in your sister’s? Perhaps there will now be more to my distaste for the man than his teeth and his waistcoats.”
“As head of the Westcott family,” Alexander said, “it concerns me that Jessica may be considering marriage to a man of . . . shall we say questionable good taste? Perhaps even spite, since the missing earl was not present to speak for himself. Of course, she is also a member of the Archer family, of which you are the head.”
“You are begging me to exert myself, I understand, while assuring me thatyouwill exertyourself,” Avery said. “How very tedious life becomes at times. Is it known how long ago the alleged rape and murder happened?”
“No,” Alexander said. “But it should be easy enough to find out. It should be possible also to discover how long Gabriel Thorne was in America before returning recently for a reason so vaguely explained that really it is no explanation at all.”
“You have been busy for a man who returned to London only a couple of days ago,” Avery said. He nodded to a waiter, who refilled his cup.
Alexander made a face at his own cup, with its cold coffee, and the waiter replaced it. “I probably have a foolishly suspicious mind,” he said. “That is what Wren told me last night anyway. She pointed out that Rochford is an extraordinarily handsome man—her words. She also added, however, that if he were applying for employment at her glassmaking works, she would reject him even before studying his credentials. Any man who smiles so much, she said, must be assumed to have a shallow, even devious, mind.”
“I must be careful not to smile overmuch in the presence of the Countess of Riverdale,” Avery said with a shudder.
Alexander laughed. “I cannot imagine,” he said, “that Wren would ever accuse you of having a shallow mind, Netherby. Or of smiling too much. She admires you greatly. But what of Thorne? If he is not making a play for Jessica too, I will eat my hat.”
“Not the gray beaver,” Avery said, looking pained again. “It sounds like a recipe for indigestion.”
“What do you know of him?” Alexander asked.
“Next to nothing,” Avery told him. “Little more, in fact, than I know of the missing earl. He has good taste in horses and curricles. He is of that rare breed of mortal that can produce exquisite music from a pianoforte without any formal training at all, or even any informal training, if Jessica is to be believed. He favors single-flower tributes to ladies he admires rather than bouquets so large it apparently takes two of my footmen to convey them to the drawing room. I believe, before you can demand an answer of me, that I must like him. Though being asked to express any sort of affection for someone outside my own family circle has a tendency to bore me.”
“Ah,” Alexander said. “But if Thorne has his way, Netherby, he will be a part of your inner family circle, will he not? And a Westcott by marriage.”
