“It was very gratifying,” Jessica’s mother murmured. “And he was very deferential to Mama and Aunt Edith.”
“A little too deferential?” Jessica said, and her eyes met her brother’s across the table. He raised his eyebrows. “What do you know of his cousin, Avery?”
“His cousin?” he said. “The missing earl, do you mean? Next to nothing except that he is missing and presumed dead.”
“His name was Gabriel,” Jessica said—and, when his eyebrows remained aloft, “It is Mr. Thorne’s name too.”
“Ah,” he said. “Are you seeing some intrigue at work, Jess? Are they one and the same, do you suppose?” He waggled his eyebrows at her.
“I do not suppose it for a single moment,” she said. “Gabriel is hardly a unique name.”
“Quite so,” he said, but his eyes remained thoughtfully upon her while Anna talked of Mr. Thorne’s playing last night.
“I could listen to him for a whole evening without growing weary,” she said. “Did you notice, Jessica, that his eyes were closed much of the time while he played Bach and there was a slight frown between his brows? It was clear he felt the music right down to the depths of his soul.”
“I did notice,” Jessica said. “I was very glad I had played first.”
“Until now,” Anna said, “you have resisted all attempts to pay you serious court, Jessica. Is this year to change all that? With Mr. Rochford and his charm and his lavish compliments and large bouquets, perhaps? Or with Mr. Thorne and his mysterious silences and single roses and heavenly music? With both?”
“Or perhaps with neither,” Jessica said. “Are you tired of having me forever underfoot, then, Anna?”
“Oh heavens,” Anna cried, reaching across the distance between them to squeeze Jessica’s hand. “Never. Oh, absolutely not, Jessica. I could never have too much family. Nor could I love the one I have more deeply than I do. That was not my meaning at all.”
“I know it was not,” Jessica assured her, squeezing her hand back.
Anna had spent twenty-two of her first twenty-five years at an orphanage in Bath, knowing herself only as Anna Snow, Snow being her mother’s maiden name, though she had not known that either. When she had discovered that she was Lady Anastasia Westcott, the legitimate daughter—and only legitimate child, as it happened—of the late Earl of Riverdale, it might have been expected that she would be bitter, that she would resent the family ties and the life of privilege all the other Westcotts shared. Instead she had loved them resolutely and fiercely almost from the first moment, even while some of them had resented her.
Jessica had hated her—she had come, seemingly from nowhere, to wreck Abby’s life as well as Camille’s and Harry’s, and to destroy her own dreams. It had taken her a long time to accept Anna as part of the Westcott family, then as Avery’s wife, her own sister-in-law and cousin. It had taken even longer to love her.
Avery’s eyes were resting upon Anna across the table. It often shocked Jessica to note that despite the almost bored expression her brother wore habitually in company, there was something in his eyes whenever he looked at his wife that spoke of fathomless depths of . . . Of what? Love? Passion? Passion seemed too strong a word to use of the indolent Avery, but appearances could be deceptive, Jessica thought. She was sure there must be a well of passion in him that very few people would suspect.
Oh, she thought with a sudden wave of unexpected yearning, how could she possibly be planning this year merely to settle for an eligible match? She wanted what Avery and Anna had. She wanted what Alexander and Wren had and Elizabeth and Colin. And Abby and Gil.
She wanted love. Even more than that, she wanted passion.
And she thought of that silly little detail that had kept her awake through most of the night, tossing and turning in her bed, punching and reshaping her pillow. She thought of Mr. Thorne’s little finger caressing hers upon the pianoforte keys, very lightly, very deliberately. Very briefly. How idiotic in the extreme that such a thing could have robbed her of a night’s sleep. If she were to tell anyone, she would be laughed off the face of the earth. She had felt that touch sizzle—yes, it was the only appropriate word—through her whole body, warming her cheeks, setting her heart to beating faster, creating a strange ache low in her abdomen and down along her