Earl of Lyndale, owner of Brierley, possessor of a large fortune. And he is tantalizingly close to achieving his dream. I am not so easily frightened these days, however, and I can put up a good defense.”
“It might be messy,” she said.
He ran his thumb across her lips and then kissed her softly. Was she taking fright? Even though she had known before she married him—
“And why should he be given the chance to slink off home if he chooses not to fight?” she asked. “Gabriel! He ravished your boyhood sweetheart and left her with child. He murdered her brother, your friend, in the most cowardly way imaginable, by shooting him in the back. And he is just as guilty even if it was actually your cousin who fired the gun. He tried to put the blame on you. He would have let you hang. Are you going to allow him to walk away now, unpunished?”
She sounded, rather incongruously, like the Lady Jessica Archer of his early acquaintance.
“If anyone deserves to hang,” she said, “it is he.”
He turned more fully onto his back and draped his free hand over his eyes.
“And if anyone deserves to be publicly humiliated, Gabriel,” she added, “it is surely Mr. Manley Rochford.”
He had cut off Mary’s allowance without any authority to do so and was about to turn her out of her home to certain destitution. He had got rid of a number of servants at Brierley, again without any right to do so, and had turned several of them out of their homes. He had not changed in thirteen years. Perhaps he had never again ravished anyone—though Gabriel would not wager against it—or shot anyone else in the back. But he was still a sorry excuse for a human being. Just as Philip had been. How could they have been related to his own father?
“Yes,” he said.
She moved more fully onto her side then and spread one hand over his chest. She moved one leg between his.
“Gabriel,” she said, “what are we going to do?”
We again.
“We are going to let things be messy,” he said, using her word. “We are going to confront him, Jessie, in as dramatic and as public a way as possible.”
She lifted her head, and because she could not hold it up comfortably, she came farther over him, bracing herself with both hands on his chest and moving her leg right across both of his. Her hair fell about her face and over his chest. She was smiling. And looking damned irresistible. Looking and feeling.
“Where?” she asked him. “And when?”
“Ah,” he said, cupping her face with his hands, “those are the questions.”
“We need answers,” she said. “Aunt Matilda and Viscount Dirkson’s soiree? You are to play the pianoforte there, are you not? Aunt Matilda is very excited about it. But no. That is not until the end of next week. Anyway, it would not be public enough. What is coming up in the next few days that simply everyone will be attending? Let me think.”
“There is a masquerade ball on Tuesday,” he said.
She stared down at him. “The masquerade,” she said. “With all the drama of the unmasking at midnight. Oh, Gabriel, it will be perfect. We must find out if Mr. Manley Rochford is going to be there. We must make sure he is sent an invitation—and that he accepts it. Oh, I know. The family committee is meeting tomorrow at Aunt Matilda’s. I will go to it. Oh, they are going to love this.”
“Jessie,” he said, frowning a bit. He did not need to drag the whole Westcott family into what was bound to be a messy scandal, whichever way it went. If anything, her family members needed to be warned to stay away from the masquerade.
Three fingers pressed against his lips before he could say more.
“Oh no,” she said. “You must not object, as I can see you are about to do. No, Gabriel. This is why you married me. Because I am an aristocrat myself and because I have the full force of a very aristocratic family behind me. We can be very formidable when we choose to be.”
And even when they did not so choose, he thought.
“You must not forbid me,” she said. “I would have to disobey, and I promised just this morning to obey you. What a foolish part of the wedding service that is. The whole of it was written by men, of course.” She looked down at him and then smiled,