“You ran away,” she said. “What was I supposed to think? I have always believed it must have been an accident, that you did not mean to kill him. But . . . you ran away.”
“I am going home to Brierley,” he told her. “Not immediately, but soon. I may need you to tell this story to other people, Penny. At the very least I may need to tell other people that they can confirm the truth of my story by speaking with you.”
She was shaking her head, her eyes wide.
“I am guilty neither of ravishment nor of being the father of your son,” he said. “I am innocent in the death—or murder—of your brother.”
Ginsberg moaned softly into the hand he had spread over his face.
“The story must be told in some form,” Gabriel said. “It has become imperative that I go home to Brierley. I have work to do there, and I do not wish to find myself hampered by old assumptions and old charges that might after all require me to fight for my life in a court of law. I do not wish to have to deal with the hostility of skeptical neighbors. I donotwant Manley Rochford to continue living at Brierley and throwing his weight about there, destroying innocent lives. You ought not to want it either, Penny, surely. I am putting up at the posting inn two miles or so from here. I cannot for the life of me remember what it is called, but you must know the one I mean. If you choose to write out the story you have told me this morning and send it there, perhaps it will save you from having anyone else come here to question you in person.” He waited through a brief silence.
“I will ask Mr. Clark what I should do,” she said. “No. I will do it. I will send a servant.”
He nodded curtly to her and turned to her father, who was still sitting slumped on his chair, his hand shielding his face.
“Good day to you, sir,” he said. “I did not come to stir up trouble. I came only to discover the truth and build my defense, should one become necessary.”
Mr. Ginsberg did not reply. Penelope had nothing more to say. Gabriel found his way out of the house and along the garden path to where young Timms was walking the horses back and forth while they waited.
He knew now who had got Penny with child, Gabriel thought as he drove his curricle back to the inn. But who had killed Orson Ginsberg? Manford? Philip? One of them had surely done it. But only one of them was still alive to provide the answer. And he was a liar.
He tried to forgive Penny. She had been a frightened girl—just as he had ended up being a frightened boy. She had silently assented to the story she had thought most beneficial to herself. She had believed he would be persuaded to marry her. And perhaps she had been right. Things had not turned out the way she had hoped, however. Instead she had been forced to live ever since with the ghastly and disastrous consequences of her implicit lie in not correcting the assumption her father and brother had made.
It was hard to forgive her. Except that he was himself in need of a great forgiveness. There were people in and around Brierley who were suffering today because for the past six years and more he had ignored them. He had done it because Brierley had brought him very little happiness and some misery when he was a boy. Yet it was not they who had caused his unhappiness. He had neglected his duty, and it was not for him now to take the moral high ground and condemn a woman who had once been frightened by an unbearable crime that had been committed against her.
Thirteen
There had been only the one yellow rose, the day after the garden party. Since then the rosebuds had been pink again.
The romantic gesture no longer meant anything to Jessica. Quite the contrary. She was angry. Quietly furious. For the flowers were theonlyevidence that the Earl of Lyndale, alias Mr. Gabriel Thorne, still existed somewhere on the face of this earth. And even they were not proof positive. He might have ordered them in advance and left a little pile of signed cards to be delivered with them. He might be anywhere by now, even six feet underground. He might be on the high seas, making his way back to Boston to count his piles of money while he was being declared dead in England. She hoped there was a ferocious storm in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, tossing him about, breaking his limbs—preferably both arms and both legs. And his head. She hoped it would turn him a bilious green at the very least.
How dared he.
Howdaredhe toy with her affections and make her begin to think that perhaps, just maybe, there was a possibility she might marry him and expect something like happiness with him? How dared he pretend that he intended to marry her, only to desert her when she was starting to lose her common sense? How dared he send her roses and play the pianoforte for her until she felt he had sucked her very soul into wherever it was the music came from? How dared he stroke her little finger? And kiss her among the roses, his booted foot on the edge of the bench beside her, his fingertips resting against her jaw, making her want to burst with . . . withdesire?
Wherever he had disappeared to, she hoped he stayed there—forever. And she hoped it was a nasty place, overrun with snakes. And rats. If she never saw him again it would be too soon. No, that was a silly overworked expression. She never wanted to see him again. Full stop. Shoulders back, chin in air,nosein air, and all the rest of it. Lady Jessica Archer, ice maiden, unapproachable, unassailable—or something like that.
And then there was Mr. Rochford—that smiling liar. Far from being discouraged by Avery’s refusal to give his blessing to a proposal of marriage, the man was bearing his disappointment with tragic fortitude. He had come the very next day—much to her mother’s delight—to beg her to drive in the park with him, and she had gone because she did not want to admit to herself that she was disappointed it was not Mr. Thorne who had come. He had sighed and smiled and smiled and sighed and declared that the end of the seven years since his cousin the former earl’s unfortunate demise could not come fast enough for him.
“For His Grace, your brother—or ought I to say half brother?—assured me, Lady Jessica,” he had told her, “that he will welcome my suit with open arms once my father is officially the Earl of Lyndale.Thenyou may expect to see me upon bended knee, setting my heart at your feet.”
The thing was, though, he had notasked.Therefore, she had been unable to refuse. She had come to dislike him quite heartily. It was hard to understand what it was about him that so enchanted virtually every other lady in London, old and young alike, those of her own family not excepted.
And really, could one imagine Avery welcoming any man with open arms? It was such a ludicrous idea that she had been hard-pressed not to laugh aloud.
Oh, this Season was turning out to be one huge disappointment. She had launched herself into it with such high hopes for her future. And what had she got? Her usual court of admirers, all of whom were amusing and endearing, but really not husband material: Mr. Rochford, who was dazzlingly handsome and relentlessly charming but really a bit of a bore—not to mention the fact that he was a malicious liar; and Mr. Thorne, about whom the less said, the better. Who cared that when he had stood before her at the garden party, one booted foot propped against the seat upon which she sat, one arm draped over his thigh in its skintight pantaloons as he mentioned romance and then kissed her, he had exuded such raw masculinity that she could easily have suffocated—or swooned—from the sheer physicality of it? Really,who cared?
At least now, tonight, she was on her way to Vauxhall Gardens—her favorite place in all of England, with the possible exception of Bath, where Cousin Camille lived with Joel and their large family. But Bath was a whole city, while Vauxhall was a pleasure garden on the south bank of the river Thames, and stepping into it at night was to step into a magical world, a sort of paradise. One could not possibly remain depressed when one was going to Vauxhall. At least, she hoped one could not.
She was mortally tired of being depressed.
It promised to be a warm evening and she had been able to wear the gauzy dark peach–colored gown she had been saving for a special occasion, with the fine cashmere wrap that was only a shade or two lighter in color. Aunt Viola had invited her with the promise of an enjoyable evening with a small party, mainly family members, in a private box, from which they could listen to the orchestra and watch the dancing and even dance themselves. There were even to be fireworks later.
She was in a carriage with Boris and Peter Wayne, her younger cousins, who had assured both their mother and hers that they would guard her with their lives and bring her home in one piece sometime after midnight, when all the fireworks had been shot off. Really, though, they had wanted her as a sort of chaperon for the other occupant of the carriage: Alice Wayne, a young cousin on their father’s side, who had recently arrived in London and was about to share a come-out ball with the two daughters of a friend of her mother’s. Her eyes had been sparkling from the moment she stepped into the carriage with them. Jessica felt eighty years old.
She wondered who else would make up the party. Was she doomed to be the eldest, apart from Aunt Viola and the marquess? There would be Estelle and Bertrand, of course, and the four of them who were in this carriage. Perhaps one or two more. But they were bound to see other acquaintances there. They were sure to have a good time. She felt desperately in need of a good time. She wanted to be appreciated, admired, flirted with. She wanted to appreciate, admire, and flirt—something she almost never did. She wanted to dance and laugh and stroll along the main avenue through the gardens, reveling in the wonder of colored lanterns swaying in the branches of the trees on either side. She wanted to be a part of the gaiety of the crowds that would be there. She wanted to feel young and attractive.
Oh, she had waited too long to seek her own happiness. She was twenty-five years old. Ancient. Abby had married two years ago at the age of twenty-four. She was happy and in love. She had children and a home and a garden and neighbors and a husband who, for all his dour outer appearance, was absolutely besotted with her. As she was with him.
