“I do.” She smiled. “How do you do, Mr. Rochford?”
“Considerably better than I did a minute ago,” he said, making her his usual elegant bow and favoring her with the full force of his dazzling smile. “And Mrs. Westcott took the words out of my mouth. You should always wear green.”
“Thank you,” she said. She would gain fame as a walking tree.
“I see that Matilda and Charles have arrived,” Cousin Althea said. “Do please excuse me.”
And Jessica was left alone with Mr. Rochford. Again.
“I was exceedingly gratified when Lady Hodges invited me to her party,” he said. “The invitation card described it as a select gathering to welcome the return to town of the Earl and Countess of Riverdale. You would not have received a formal invitation, of course, Lady Jessica. You are a Westcott through the Dowager Duchess of Netherby, your mother, I understand. I believe most of the guests here this evening are either Westcotts or have a direct familial connection to them. I am deeply honored to have been included among those who are neither. I wonder to whom I am indebted.” He gave her an arch look that was clearly meant to be significant.
Jessica could hazard a guess. He was a young and handsome man. He was about to be very well connected indeed. Before the summer was out his father would almost certainly be the Earl of Lyndale, all the formality of declaring the incumbent earl officially deceased over with. He had been determinedly singling her out for attention. The Westcotts, many of whom she knew were concerned about her continued single state, could always be depended upon to intervene whenever it occurred to them that one of their number might need a helping hand. She would almost wager upon it that they had decided to do some active matchmaking. She could just picture the usual committee—Grandmama, Aunt Matilda, Aunt Mildred, her mother, Cousin Althea, possibly Aunt Viola and Great-aunt Edith—convening over tea somewhere and putting their heads together to decide what could be done to prod dear Jessica into marriage with this extremely eligible and personable young future earl who would surely turn his attentions elsewhere if she did not snatch him up before it could happen.
“I would imagine,” Jessica said in answer to his implied inquiry, “it is my cousin Elizabeth herself—Lady Hodges, that is—whom you have to thank.”
“I have already expressed my gratitude to her,” he said. “I cannot imagine anywhere I would rather be this evening than just precisely where I am.”
His tone made it clear that just precisely where he was meant not Elizabeth and Colin’s house in general or even the drawing room in particular, but this precise spot in the drawing room, alone with Jessica, space all about them even though there were enough family and guests to more than half fill the rest of the room. Even Grandmama and Great-aunt Edith, surrounded by people who had come to greet them, seemed to be some distance away, though Jessica could not recall moving away from them. But this was not going to happen again, she decided, not as it had at the soiree a few evenings ago. She had no wish to spend the whole evening virtually alone with Mr. Rochford in plain sight of a couple of dozen or so interested family members and others tactfully keeping their distance. If she was going to allow the courtship of Mr. Rochford, it was going to be on her own terms. She was not going to let her family and the whole ton start to see them as an established couple and then find that she had been backed into a corner from which there was no easy escape.
She reached for a glass of wine from the tray held by a passing servant, though she did not really want it, and at the same time took a few steps to her right, bringing herself into the orbit of a group that included Alexander and Elizabeth and Cousin Peter and . . . oh, and Estelle and Mr. Thorne. Mr. Rochford moved with her.
So much for her relaxed evening with family and close friends, she thought rather crossly before seeing the funny side of the situation. It was as though some malicious fate had learned of her decision to choose a husband this year and had sent her two candidates, both of whom had shown interest in her without any effort to attract on her part and