are so very right about everything, Wren,” Anna said.
“Hear, hear,” Bertie said. “Will he creep back home?”
“He had not made any move to do so up to the time we came here,” Netherby said. “My man outside his house and the one outside his carriage house had a tedious night. So did the mysterious stranger who also had an eye on the house.”
“Stranger?” Gabriel frowned.
“Alas,” Netherby said. “My man was unable to identify him when he spotted him. And then he disappeared—or seemed to.”
“We are on it,” Riverdale assured Gabriel.
“What I would like to do at the very least, with apologies to the ladies,” Gabriel said, “is pound Manley Rochford to a pulp. Bertie, will you serve as my second?”
Jessica, he noticed without actually turning his head in her direction, clapped both hands over her mouth.
“It would be my pleasure, Gabe,” Bertie assured him.
“You are right about this not being appropriate for the hearing of ladies,” Dirkson said. “Remember that Rochford would have the choice of weapons if you were the challenger, Lyndale.”
“Women, Charles,” Anna said, “are not such delicate creatures as men believe. But . . . surely there is an alternative? Duels are not the answer to everything.”
“They are not, Anna,” Dorchester agreed. “Unfortunately they are the only answer to some things.”
“How good are you with a pistol, Lyndale?” Molenor asked.
That was when Jessica’s forehead thumped onto the table, narrowly missing her coffee cup. She had fainted.
By the time Jessica returned to full consciousness and convinced Ruth that she had no intention of being an invalid for the rest of the day or even for one more minute, Gabriel was no longer in their suite of rooms. Apparently the breakfast meeting was over and everyone had dispersed.
It seemed a little suspicious to her that neither Anna nor Wren at the very least had insisted upon coming with her when Gabriel apparently had carried her unconscious form upstairs. It was also very suspicious that he had not remained himself to hover at her bedside. Instead he had disappeared the moment she stirred but before her mind was clear enough to allow her to do anything constructive with her consciousness—like make him swear upon his most sacred honor that he would not be fighting any duels.
When Ruth had finished tidying her dress and repairing the damage to her hair, Jessica stepped into the sitting room and found Mary waiting quietly for her there.
“Mary! Do you know what’s happening? Gabriel has gone out to find Manley Rochford and challenge him to a duel and shoot him,” Jessica cried in a voice that sounded frantic even to her own ears. “But instead, he is the one who will end up shot. I have to go out and find—”
“Now, dear, calm down. Gabriel had to go out on some quick business,” Mary told her, sounding infuriatingly calm. “Just some very tedious business of the sort men always have to see about. He will be back here before we are, I daresay.”
“Before we are?” Jessica asked, determinedly ignoring the buzzing in her ears. She was not going to faint again. How very humiliating that she had done so earlier, and in front of half her family, who would by now have carried the delightful news home to the other half. Anna and Wren had behaved like warriors during that meeting, while she had . . . fainted. But it was not their husbands who were about to have their brains blown out.
“Well, Jessica,” Mary was saying, smiling, “your dear grandmama and her sister are taking me out to show me the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, and then we are going to a tea shop, which is apparently very fashionable. And you are to come with us. This is such a treat for me. Who would have thought I would ever be in London and attending a masquerade ball and visiting the Tower of London with the Dowager Countess of Riverdale? All my animals will be very impressed indeed when I tell them about it.”
“Mary,” Jessica said, sitting down on a sofa before she could fall down. She knew just what was going on, of course. There was no way on earth Mary could be this insensitive while smiling so very placidly at her. “I cannot go.”
“Yes,” Mary said. “You can and you will, my dear. You are the Countess of Lyndale. You are the sister of the Duke of Netherby—and what a very formidable gentleman he is, by the way. I like