Мэри Бэлоу - Someone to Romance

The little girl went tearing after him.

The older boy laughed and scratched his head. “I do beg your pardon, sir,” he said as he pushed himself to his feet. “They are like a pair of wild animals today. It comes of having been cooped up in the house all day yesterday because of the rain.”

Gabriel knew all about the rain. He had driven his curricle through it.

“I am an old acquaintance of your mother’s,” he explained. And yes, he thought, the boy must be about twelve years old. “I am staying not far from here for a day or two and came to pay my respects. Ask her if she has time to see Gabriel Rochford, if you will.”

“Yes, Mr. Rochford.” The boy turned to lead the way toward the house.

Before they reached it, however, a woman appeared in the doorway. She was a bit on the plump side, noticeably older than when Gabriel had seen her last—she had been seventeen then. But she was still fair haired and pretty. The little girl was clinging to her skirt and peeping about it at Gabriel. The little boy came bouncing outside again, jumping two-footed down the steps.

“Penny,” Gabriel said, removing his hat.

She stared blankly at him for a few moments, and then one hand crept to her throat. “Gabriel?” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Oh dear God, it is. I heard you were dead.”

“Who is he, Mama?” the little boy asked, jumping on the spot.

She looked down at the child and blinked, almost as though she had forgotten who he was. “You will mind your manners, Wilbur,” she said. “Make your bow to Mr. Rochford and go up to the schoolroom. Amelia, you go too. Kendall, take them up, if you please, and stay with them there until you are called.”

“Aw, Mama,” the little boy complained. “Can’t we just play outside?”

“You will do as you are told,” she said firmly.

“Come on, nippers,” the older boy said. “I bet I can beat you both at spillikins.”

“Cannot,” they both chorused together, and the little girl reached for his hand.

As the children made their way toward the staircase that was visible over their mother’s shoulder, an older man approached the door. He stopped abruptly when he saw Gabriel, and his gaze narrowed and then hardened upon him.

“Mr. Ginsberg.” Gabriel nodded to him.

“We heard you were dead,” he said. And then, with flared nostrils and barely leashed fury, “Would that you were.”

“Papa, please,” Penelope said. “Wait until the children are upstairs.”

None of them moved until a door closed and they could no longer hear the children’s voices. A flush moved up Penelope’s neck and into her face. Her father’s nostrils remained flared.

“Come into the sitting room, Gabriel,” she said. “And I named you wrongly to the children, did I not? You are the Earl of Lyndale.”

“I will not have that man in my house,” her father said. “I will send for a constable if he does not leave my property immediately. He belongs in a jail cell while a gallows is prepared.”

“Please, Papa,” she said, closing her eyes briefly. “Let us talk about this in private.”

“I did not kill your son, sir,” Gabriel said. “He was my friend.”

Ginsberg, white haired and straight backed, old for his years, glared at him for a long, silent moment and then turned to stalk away in the direction of a room that turned out to be the sitting room. Gabriel followed Penelope inside it and shut the door. Her father went to stand by the window, looking out, his hands clasped behind him.

“Gabriel,” Penelope said again, “we heard you had died.”

“I did not,” he told her. Neither of them sat down. “You too probably wish I had.”

Ginsberg growled but did not say anything. Penelope raised her hand to her throat again.

“I went away,” Gabriel said. “I had been thinking about leaving for some time, but I was spurred on by what happened. I was a frightened boy, and it seemed to me that there was real cause for fear. You might perhaps have cleared up one misperception if I had stayed, Penny. I believe you did not do it, though, after I was gone.”

She clutched her throat and closed her eyes again. Ginsberg turned sharply from the window, his face a mask of fury.

“You are not going to try denying—” he began, but his daughter cut him off.

“Please, Papa,” she said.

It occurred to Gabriel that he might have tried to insist upon speaking to her privately. But he was not sorry he had not done so. His own anger had been suppressed for years, only to be aroused again now. They had been sweethearts, he and Penny—and yes, it was the most appropriate word to use of two young innocents who had rarely been alone together and had never done anything more daring than hold hands when they could and twice share a very brief, chaste kiss. She had been seventeen, for the love of God, he nineteen. They had been children.

“The boy you called Kendall is your son?” Gabriel asked. “Who is his father, Penny?”

She made a sound of distress deep in her throat. Ginsberg took a menacing step forward, only to be stopped by her raised hand.

“I never said it was you,” she told Gabriel. “I let it be assumed that it was. It seemed . . . preferable. I thought Papa would persuade you to marry me, and I did not believe you would really mind. I thought you liked me and would do that for me when I explained.”

Good God!

“What the devil !” Ginsberg bellowed. Again, her raised hand stopped him.

“And then everything got out of hand,” she said. “Orson went stalking off in a rage to find you and hold you to account—or what he thought was holding you to account. And then you killed him. Oh dear God, I was beside myself. I did not know what to do. I was seventeen . Barely that even. Did I cause my own brother’s death, Gabriel, as surely as if I had fired the gun myself? I have always believed I did and that I was responsible for you becoming a killer. But I know it must have been an accident. He was shot in the back . There is no way you would have done that deliberately. Oh dear God.”

“I did not kill Orson,” Gabriel said.

She looked at him with eyes suddenly grown wild, her teeth sunk deep into her lower lip.

“What—” Ginsberg began.

“Who is your eldest child’s father, Penny?” Gabriel asked again.

She huffed out a breath, closed her eyes again briefly, and spoke. “I was going to Brierley with a cake Mama had baked for your aunt,” she said. “She had been feeling poorly. They were in the park too. I think they must have been coming from the tavern. They looked . . . drunk. They were weaving and laughing and . . . I could not hide fast enough. One of them . . . He tried to flirt with me, but when that did not work, he started to kiss me while the other one laughed and told him I was your girl— Gabe’s girl, he said. And then the first man laughed and told me what I needed was a real man. And then he . . . And the other one would not stop him. He just laughed. He was married. I mean the one who . . . He would not have been able to marry me.”

“His name?” Gabriel asked softly. But of course he knew.

His cousin Philip had been a man of loose morals and a frequent drunk all the time Gabriel had known him. It was said—and Gabriel believed it—that no female servant or farm girl was safe from him when he was in his cups.

Manley had been just such another. He was all of five years older than Philip, but they were friends and he had come to Brierley frequently and stayed, often for weeks at a time.

By the time Gabriel went to America, both men were married, with children, but those facts had not changed them. Manley’s child had been left at home whenever he brought his wife to Brierley, and the two wives had been left at the house to amuse each other while the men drank in the village and went shooting out of season and ogled the local young women, married and single, and generally made nuisances of themselves. Lords of the manor. Entitled to whatever or whoever took their fancy.