passing glance at Mr. Gabriel Thorne, merchant trader from Boston.”
“Is that who you have been all these years?” Sir Trevor asked, frowning and shaking his head again. “When you ought to have been here for almost seven years past as the Earl of Lyndale? There is clearly something I do not understand about your way of thinking. I suppose we can introduce you to the ton as our godson. My name carries some weight in this town.”
“You forget, Trevor,” Lady Vickers said, “that I had some family connection to Gabriel’s mother. I never did understand quite what it was and neither did she. We had a good laugh about it once, I remember. Third cousin twice removed, I believe it was, or something absurd like that. But without having to resort to any outright lie, Gabriel, we can present you to society as our godson and my kinsman. And I do boast a viscount as a second cousin. Trevor, of course, has his own credentials—a baronetcy and an influential position in the government. Leave it to us. You will be accepted by even the highest sticklers before we are done with you.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Gabriel said, grinning at her. “I would much appreciate your help.”
“It will not hurt that you are also a handsome figure of a man,” Lady Vickers said. “But why are we standing here in the visitors’ parlor, Trevor, just as though Gabriel were a passing stranger instead of our godson and my kinsman? Your arm, if you please, Gabriel. We will go up to the drawing room. Albert is still at home, I believe—our son, that is. I will send up and ask that he join us. You were three years old when he was born, I remember. It was not long after the death of your poor mother. He is a dear boy, but he has a large circle of friends and acquaintances and I think it will be safer if we introduce you to him just as our godson and my distant cousin. Do you not agree, Trevor?”
“Whatever you say, my dear,” Sir Trevor said as he followed them up the stairs.
Albert Vickers—Bertie to my friends and long-lost relatives, he told Gabriel with a hearty laugh as he shook his hand—was delighted to make Gabriel’s acquaintance. Even before his mother could ask it of him, he insisted upon taking Gabriel about town and showing him what was what and introducing him to a few capital fellows.
During the coming days Bertie did just as he had promised, with the result that Gabriel visited White’s Club and Tattersalls again and Jackson’s boxing saloon and a fencing school among other places and made a number of male acquaintances, none of whom questioned his right to be one of their number.
And the ladies had not been excluded. Lady Vickers enjoyed herself enormously—or so she informed Gabriel—spreading word of the arrival in town of her handsome young kinsman and godson, who had recently returned from America with a sizable fortune. Gabriel began to receive invitations to ton events, most notably a ball being given by Lady Parley in honor of the coming out of her eldest daughter.
“The first grand ball of the Season,” Bertie explained to him when Gabriel told him of the invitation. “It is gratifying that you have been invited, Gabe. Everyone who is anyone will be there. You can count on it. It is bound to be a dreadful squeeze. But once you have put in an appearance there, you will be invited everywhere. Wait and see.”
Gabriel accepted the invitation. And if Anthony Rochford was in truth the darling of the ton, which was one term by which Lady Vickers had described him, then it was altogether probable that he too would be in attendance at this grand squeeze Bertie predicted. He must put himself in the way of meeting the man, Gabriel thought. He had no fear of being recognized. They had never met.
But the knowledge that Rochford was in town had been a mere distraction from Gabriel’s real reason for wanting an in with the ton and a chance to attend the more select social events of the Season. His primary focus while he was here in London during the Season must be to find himself a wife—assuming, that was, that he would not really find it possible to slip off back home to America and put this all behind him like a bad dream.
He found himself wondering if Lady Jessica Archer was indeed