between them with one arm about her shoulders. The little bareheaded nun had removed her wimple as well as her mask. She looked steadily and reproachfully at Manley.
He recognized her instantly. So did his wife.
“It is Miss Beck,” she said.
“Be quiet, Marjorie,” Manley commanded, his voice harsh. “You are a long way from home, Miss Beck. Gabriel was always a great favorite with you, I recall. But you may wish to consider well before perjuring yourself in order to save him from the gallows.”
“I never have to consider for long before telling the truth, Mr. Rochford,” she said in her calm, deep voice. “Truth is the only thing to be told, at all times. Gabriel was at my cottage for several hours of the afternoon when poor Mr. Ginsberg died. He was helping me tend a wounded fawn one of the grooms had brought me. The groom remained too and remembers. I have a letter from him in safekeeping.”
It was currently locked inside a safe in Netherby’s study at Archer House.
“I have a firm alibi, you see,” Gabriel said. “You were mistaken, Manley. It was not I who murdered Orson.”
“Alibi!” Manley said scornfully. “It is easy to get your friends to say anything you wish, Gabriel. I demand that this man be arrested.”
The crowd no longer seemed so eager to pounce.
“Besides,” Manley cried, trying to reestablish his hold on them, “he is a ravisher as well as a murderer. I daresay he has no alibi for that.”
“Oh, I say,” someone said. “Remember there are ladies present, Rochford.”
“Even for that rape,” Manley said, repeating the word at least one of his fellow guests had found offensive, “he deserves to die.”
“And I have a letter,” Gabriel said, “written by the lady herself and witnessed by her father and her husband, exonerating me from that charge. You were mistaken again, Manley. It was someone else who ravished her.”
That letter too was in Netherby’s safe.
He waited for the renewed swell of sound around them to die down.
“She does name that someone else in her letter,” Gabriel added, his eyes fixed upon Manley.
Manley had turned even paler, if that was possible. His lips looked almost blue in contrast.
“You brought a fortune from America with you, Thorne,” Anthony Rochford blurted suddenly. “How much did you pay the strumpet? And her father and husband? How much did you pay Miss Beck? And the groom who wrote a letter—if he did write it? In my experience grooms do not write. Or read.” He looked triumphantly about him.
But his words fell flat. And Manley seemed lost for further words. His wife set a hand on his arm again, and again he shook it off.
“We are done here. For now,” he said, speaking with an awful dignity. “If no one among you is man enough to hold this man until the authorities can come to arrest him and haul him off to jail, where he belongs, then I will have to make those arrangements myself. Come, my dear. Come, Anthony.”
A path opened up for him, though he did have to lead his wife and son around Gabriel and Jessica and Mary in order to reach it. They left the ballroom unimpeded. Everyone else simply watched them go.
Gabriel looked down at Mary and smiled. And he looked over her head at Jessica and . . . saw two persons combined. One and indivisible. He saw Lady Jessica Thorne at her most haughty. He saw also Jessica, the lovely, warmhearted woman he suspected had become indispensable to him for the rest of his life.
“My felicitations, Lady Farraday.” It was the voice of Netherby, bored and aristocratic, not raised above the level of ordinary conversation by one iota but nevertheless commanding the attention of everyone in the ballroom. “I daresay your costume ball will go down in the annals of social history as one of the most memorable entertainments of the decade.”
And a small group of ladies began a round of applause, there were a few cries of Hear, hear, a man whistled piercingly, and Lady Farrady almost visibly let go of the conviction that her precious masquerade was a disaster. The floor was clearing, the orchestra was readying its instruments, but still there was a cluster of persons in the middle of the ballroom.
“I believe we are done here too,” Gabriel said to the two ladies beside him. “Are we ready to leave?”
“Yes,” Jessica said.
“In a minute,” Mary said, looking apologetically from one to the other of them. “I must first thank