sunshine and mischief dancing in her eyes. And then she laughed softly. “When you married me, you married into the Westcott family. Now you have to take the consequences.”
“In the meanwhile,” he said, “I will call upon my lawyer. I may need him.”
“To deal with me?” Her eyes were still laughing. She was actually enjoying this, he realized.
“No,” he said. “I think I can manage that without his help. Jessie, did I hurt you? I would not want—”
“Oh, but I would,” she said.
And she slid her hands up his chest and cupped his face with them, bringing her full weight down on top of him and her face very close to his as she did so.
She kissed him.
It was an invitation not easily resisted. He did not even try.
The news spread quickly, as news always did, that Mr. Manley Rochford, very soon to be the Earl of Lyndale, had arrived in London with his wife. Their son, Mr. Anthony Rochford, had been informed of their arrival soon after he arrived at a ball on Thursday evening. He had left immediately, much to the disappointment of many, in order to welcome them, as any dutiful son would.
All three attended church on Sunday—St. George’s on Hanover Square, of course, the church favored by most of the ton while they were in town during the spring. Mr. Anthony Rochford introduced his parents to the clergyman and to as many important personages among the congregation as he could. His father received their words of greeting with an air of gracious gravity. He would, with the greatest reluctance, accept the title and the duties it imposed upon him when the fateful day came, of course. It seemed, alas, that he had no choice. At the same time, that would be a day of grief rather than unalloyed rejoicing, for it would be final confirmation that there could be no further hope of his cousin’s still being alive. It would be the day he had wished fervently would never come.
The ton seemed deeply affected. Mr. Manley Rochford was a dignified, handsome man—an older version of his son without the smile. Nobody seemed particularly to notice his wife, who said nothing. Or, if she did, no one heard. Mr. Anthony Rochford still smiled, but there was a brave, sad tinge to it on that Sunday morning.
“It was a magnificent performance,” Estelle reported to her father and stepmother at luncheon. “I almost soaked a handkerchief with my tears.”
They had not been there. But Estelle and Bertrand had gone to church, as they usually did. They had been brought up by an uncle and aunt who had strict rules about worship. Though, as Bertrand was fond of saying whenever questioned on the matter, he and his sister went from personal inclination too. It was, after all, many years since they had lived with their uncle and aunt.
“He is a distinguished-looking man—I will give him that,” Edith Monteith remarked to the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, her sister, as they rode back home in the carriage.
“And handsome too,” Miss Adelaide Boniface, her companion, agreed. “I admire the graying at the temples that happens to some fortunate men when they reach a certain age.”
“If he had been on the stage,” the dowager commented sourly, “he would have been booed off it for overacting.”
“Pride goeth before a fall,” Mildred, Lady Molenor, said to her husband as they walked home from church. “Where is that quotation from, Thomas? The Bible?”
“The Bible or William Shakespeare,” he said. “It is bound to be one or the other. I assume you are making a prediction about Rochford?”
“He is going to be hideously disappointed,” she said. “I cannot wait to witness it. Our plan—Jessica and Gabriel’s actually, but we all have a part to play—is quite spectacular and quite diabolical.”
“I married a bloodthirsty woman,” he said.
“Thomas,” she said. “He is a—” She looked around to make sure no one was within earshot but lowered her voice anyway. “He is a ravisher. And almost certainly a murderer too.”
“Are you quite sure you wish to accompany me tomorrow, Wren?” Alexander, Earl of Riverdale, asked his wife during the afternoon while she was feeding their baby in the nursery. “I will be quite happy to go alone.”
“After observing his behavior at church this morning,” she said, looking up at him tight-lipped, “I will go even if you change your mind. He would have let Gabriel die thirteen years ago. He would have watched him hang. For something he did. He is