avuncular feeling coming over him again. Was he seriously considered husband material for girls who were only just beginning to leave their childhood behind? All upon the strength of an undisclosed American past and an unconfirmed fortune—and the fact that he was Sir Trevor Vickers’s godson?
Lady Estelle Lamarr, strolling past on the lawn below with her brother, must have assessed the situation at one glance. “Mr. Thorne,” she called, beckoning with the hand that was not holding a parasol over her head, “do come walking with us. We are going to look at the boats to decide if they are safe to ride in.”
“You are going to decide, Stell,” Bertrand Lamarr said as Gabriel approached them. “You are the one who is so afraid of water it is a wonder you ever even wash your face.”
Lady Estelle linked her arm through Gabriel’s. “The trouble with having a twin brother, Mr. Thorne,” she said, “is that he will blurt out one’s deepest, most mortifying secrets to the very people one is most trying to impress.”
“You are trying to impress me?” Gabriel asked.
“But of course,” she said. “I am intended for you, am I not, by all the aunts and cousins from my adopted family? Oh, you need not look so aghast, Bertrand. Mr. Thorne and I had a frank chat about the whole thing last evening and understand each other perfectly.”
Her brother and Gabriel exchanged grins over her head.
“I did not initiate that conversation, I would hasten to add,” Gabriel told him.
“Of course you did not,” Lady Estelle said. “You are too much the gentleman. But everyone with eyes in his head—or hers—ought to have been able to see last night that it is Jessica and you, Mr. Thorne, not me and you.”
“Stell!” her brother scolded. “You will be putting Mr. Thorne to the blush, and all because he and Jessica played a duet together on the pianoforte last evening that ended in disaster and laughter. And—to change the subject—you see? I count five boats, and none of them have capsized. None of them are sinking or rocking out of control. No one in them looks anywhere close to panicking.”
“But how do we know,” she said, “that there are not supposed to be six boats out there? Where, oh where is the sixth?”
Gabriel laughed.
And rowing one of those five boats, he saw, was Anthony Rochford. Sitting facing him, her posture graceful and relaxed, was Lady Jessica Archer, the picture of summer beauty in a flimsy-looking dress of primrose yellow with a matching parasol that was raised over a straw bonnet. She was smiling and saying something. Rochford—it hardly needed stating—was smiling back with dazzling intensity.
Lady Estelle had seen them too. “Do you think, Mr. Thorne,” she asked, “that the missing earl is really dead? Or has he remained in hiding because he fears the consequences of making himself known?”
“If he is dead,” Gabriel said, “he must have died young. Of what? one wonders. And why should he fear if he was an innocent man? Perhaps he had nothing to do with whatever happened to his neighbor’s daughter or with the death of her brother. Or perhaps he was guilty in both instances and was the blackest-hearted of villains. Perhaps he simply died of his sins. Perhaps we will never know the answers. Would that be so very bad?”
“Indeed it would,” she said. “Curiosity demands satisfaction.”
“But as Papa remarked last evening on our way home, Stell,” her brother said, “it was not at all the thing for Rochford to tell such a story concerning his own family. And with ladies present. I can only applaud Alexander and Elizabeth for pointedly changing the subject, though I know you wish they had not.”
“But it was such a fascinating story,” she protested. “A wronged woman. Her irate brother. Imagine if it were you and me, Bertrand. A killing—a shot in the back. And his supposed killer fleeing for his life and disappearing off the face of the earth only to become in future years a missing earl. An earl about to be declared dead and replaced by another, more virtuous candidate. A new earl with a handsome son who is pursuing Jessica with all the charm he can muster. I have not been so well entertained in years. And that is nonsense, what you implied about a woman’s sensibilities being so delicate that she cannot hear about death and mayhem without swooning. It is no wonder our lives are often so dull. Leave it to