Мэри Бэлоу - Someone to Romance

“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 who had fled England thirteen years ago. Too many details were circumstantial at best, and he had a decent though not infallible alibi. But there might be some sort of trouble facing him anyway, in the form of resentment, even outright hostility, from the people living in the vicinity of Brierley. He had always had a decent relationship with almost everyone, but things might have changed at the end and been perpetuated by his absence. He had felt it wise to find out what he could before he went there so that he would know exactly what he was facing. Mary could not be expected to know everything. She lived the life of a near hermit.

He had not intended any great secrecy, then. If he had, he would surely have changed his first name, which, though not unique, was not common either. He wondered if Lady Jessica was the only one who had guessed the truth. Several other people, including Anthony Rochford himself, had heard him own to the name Gabriel last evening.

But he had been asked a question. And a lie was pointless. Lies usually were.

“Thorne was my mother’s name,” he told her, “and that of her cousin in Boston. He officially adopted me as his son after I had lived there and worked for him for six years. His wife was dead and he had no children of his own. My name was legally changed, with my full consent. I had used it when I took passage to America, and I had used it there. I would rather be a Thorne than a Rochford, though I do regret any disrespect that shows to my father, who was a decent man.”

“You are the Earl of Lyndale,” she said. She appeared to be speaking more to herself than to him.

“Regrettably,” he said.

“Why do you regret it?” She frowned.

“I was happy in America,” he said. “I was never happy at Brierley.”

“Why have you returned, then?” she asked him. “Why have you not just let everyone continue to assume you are dead? Or perhaps you still intend to do so. Perhaps you have come here to amuse yourself before returning to the life that makes you happy. But no, that cannot be your intention. Why would you hope to marry me if you intended to resume your life as Mr. Thorne, wealthy businessman from Boston? Your wishing to marry me makes sense only if you intend to be the Earl of Lyndale.”

He moved closer to her and stood looking down at her for a while before setting one booted foot against the edge of the seat beside her and resting one forearm across his thigh. “Why have I returned?” he said. “And why have I decided to stay? Call it duty, if you will, to those who work—or worked—at the house and on the estate.”

“Have you known all this time that your uncle and cousin were dead?” she asked him.

“For most of the time, yes,” he said. “Letters are slow in crossing the Atlantic, especially in winter.”

“So why now?” she asked him. “Just for the sheer satanic pleasure of raising hope in the man who believes he is about to become the earl and owner of Brierley and any fortune that goes with it? And in his son? And then of dashing those hopes at the last possible moment?”

“There is one person at Brierley,” he said, “who is and always has been very dear to me. She lives in a small cottage in the park that surrounds the house. She has been threatened with eviction when the new earl comes into his inheritance. He plans to have a lake created out of the land around her cottage. He plans to use the house itself as a picturesque sort of folly on an island in the middle of it. She has nothing beyond the cottage itself and the small allowance my uncle made her. That has already been stopped, though there is no one at Brierley with any legal right to have made that decision. She is about to be destitute, with no way of providing for herself. It is for Mary I returned, Lady Jessica.”

She was gazing up at him, her eyes wide, her lips slightly parted.

“She is my late aunt’s sister,” he told her. “She was born with a deformed back and foot and hand. She takes in stray cats and dogs and any troubled wild creatures that come her way. The gardeners occasionally bring her wounded birds and she mends their wings and sets them free. She has a garden that rivals this in beauty.” He gestured at the arbor around them. “I have never known anyone so contented with her life or anyone so . . . good. I love her. Not in that way. I honor and love her and would die for her.”

Good God. Where were such words coming from? He felt suddenly foolish. But Mary deserved to be honored.

“But as it happened,” she said, “you were not called upon to die for her but simply to come home. To give up everything you held dear for her sake. A sort of death in itself.”

“For the only time since I have known her,” he said, “she asked something of me. She asked me to come. And here I am.”

He was astounded suddenly when her eyes, still riveted on his face, grew bright with unshed tears. She caught her upper lip between her teeth.

“I would rather keep my anonymity for a short while longer,” he said. “I would like to gather a little more information than I already have. Mary, it seems, is not the only one who has been made to suffer. I blame myself for not having realized the danger of that before I came here—or perhaps of refusing to consider the possibility of it. I am indeed no angel, despite my name. I believe too I would like to meet my cousin again before divulging the truth. The one who is about to be earl.”

She released her lip. “Why has Mr. Anthony Rochford not recognized you?” she asked him.

“He has never seen me before now,” he said. “He was just a young boy when I went to America. Whenever his mother and father came to Brierley, which happened quite frequently, he was left at home.”

He watched her draw a slow breath. “I will not give away your secret,” she said.

“Thank you.”

She looked down at her hands spread on her lap for a few moments and then at the fountain and then back at him. He held her eyes with his own.

“I would have to be a dreadful slowtop to waste an opportunity for a little romance in such idyllic surroundings,” he said.

He gave her time to turn her head away or get to her feet and suggest they go for tea on the terrace. She did neither. She licked her lips in what was surely not meant to be a provocative gesture, though it brought his eyes to her mouth. He moved his own closer and raised his eyes to hers again. She gazed back.

And he kissed her.

It was a mere touching of lips. A lingering touch. He had sensed from the moment she had demanded that he romance her if he wanted a chance with her that she would scorn any aggressive moves to take her heart by storm. Her heart was not easily taken, he had judged. Hence the single rose sent to her each morning and the music he had played for her last evening and the duet. And the touch of his little finger to hers, though there had been nothing deliberate or planned about that.