sister,” Gabriel said. “Giggling, but otherwise mute.”
“Doubtless they were intimidated by your solemn grandeur,” Lady Jessica said. “And your advanced age.”
“Do you think?” he asked.
“I think,” she said.
“I suppose,” he said, “I ought to have realized that if the hothouses were recommended to me, they would be recommended to multitudes of others too. Shall we forget about them? Go to the rose arbor instead?”
“To see a thousand roses?” she said. “By all means. It will make a change from gazing upon a single one.”
“Are you offended by those?” he asked her.
She turned her head to look at him again. Her parasol made a lacy pattern of sunshine and shade across her face beneath the brim of her bonnet. She was very beautiful. It was not an original observation, but her good looks were a constant source of wonder to him.
“No.” She hesitated. “Quite the contrary.”
Crowds seemed to be gathering on the terrace and the reason became obvious as they drew closer. Tea was being set out on long tables covered with white cloths, and it did indeed look like the veritable feast Lady Vickers had predicted. Servants were setting up small tables and chairs on what was left of the terrace and on the lawn below.
“Are you hungry?” Gabriel asked.
“I would rather go to the rose arbor,” she said.
Interesting. She might have lost him easily enough among the crowds gathering about the food tables—if she wished to do so, that was. Apparently she did not.
He expected that the rose arbor would be crowded too, and probably it had been until a short while ago. Now there was only one group of people on the lower tier, deep in animated conversation. The second and top tiers appeared to be deserted. Tea had been deemed of more interest than roses.
It was an impressive part of the garden, running along the whole width of the house as it did. There were trellises, archways, hedges, flower beds, low walls, the wall of the house itself, all of them loaded with roses at various stages of blooming. A high hedge, cut with geometric precision, extended all the way down the side of the arbor farthest from the house, giving the impression of deep seclusion and the reality of breathtaking beauty. Even the sounds of voices and laughter seemed muted here.
“I think,” Lady Jessica said, “this is what heaven must smell like.” She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly.
“We will have to be very virtuous for the rest of our lives, then,” he said, “so that we may enjoy it together for eternity.”
“Which might be an embarrassment,” she said, opening her eyes, “if I should end up with a different husband and you with a different wife.”
“Impossible,” he said.
“Do you always get your own way, Mr. Thorne?” she asked, cupping a yellow rose in both hands, though she was not quite touching it, he noticed.
“Only in the important things,” he said.
“And I am important?”
“Yes.”
She looked around until she saw a wrought iron seat close to the wall of the house, with its climbing rose plants, and went to sit on it. She left room for him beside her. The floor of this top tier was paved with pinkish brick. There was a small fountain in the middle, its granite basin shaped like a fully opened rose.
“Is Thorne your real name?” she asked him.
Ah.
“Yes,” he said.
“Not Rochford?” she asked.
“No.”
She closed her parasol and set it down on the seat beside her. “I believe you are lying,” she said.
“You think I am the long-lost earl, then?” he asked her. “Just because I share a first name with him?”
She looked up at him as he stood by the fountain, his hands clasped at his back, and her eyes roamed over him. “Are you?” she asked, her voice so soft it was hardly audible.
He gazed back. Secrecy had not been his original plan when he decided to come to London rather than go direct to Brierley. He had merely wanted to be better prepared to go there. He had wanted to look like an English gentleman for starters. He had wanted to hire a good lawyer and agent and acquire an experienced, reliable steward. He had wanted to find out what he needed to do to verify his identity and establish his claim. He had wanted, perhaps, to find out if there might be any trouble awaiting him—legal trouble, that was—though he did not believe there would be anything he could not handle. He was no longer the frightened boy