Мэри Бэлоу: Someone to Romance

“Whatever you say, my dear,” Sir Trevor said as he followed them up the stairs.

Albert Vickers— Bertie to my friends and long-lost relatives, he told Gabriel with a hearty laugh as he shook his hand—was delighted to make Gabriel’s acquaintance. Even before his mother could ask it of him, he insisted upon taking Gabriel about town and showing him what was what and introducing him to a few capital fellows.

During the coming days Bertie did just as he had promised, with the result that Gabriel visited White’s Club and Tattersalls again and Jackson’s boxing saloon and a fencing school among other places and made a number of male acquaintances, none of whom questioned his right to be one of their number.

And the ladies had not been excluded. Lady Vickers enjoyed herself enormously—or so she informed Gabriel—spreading word of the arrival in town of her handsome young kinsman and godson, who had recently returned from America with a sizable fortune. Gabriel began to receive invitations to ton events, most notably a ball being given by Lady Parley in honor of the coming out of her eldest daughter.

“The first grand ball of the Season,” Bertie explained to him when Gabriel told him of the invitation. “It is gratifying that you have been invited, Gabe. Everyone who is anyone will be there. You can count on it. It is bound to be a dreadful squeeze. But once you have put in an appearance there, you will be invited everywhere. Wait and see.”

Gabriel accepted the invitation. And if Anthony Rochford was in truth the darling of the ton , which was one term by which Lady Vickers had described him, then it was altogether probable that he too would be in attendance at this grand squeeze Bertie predicted. He must put himself in the way of meeting the man, Gabriel thought. He had no fear of being recognized. They had never met.

But the knowledge that Rochford was in town had been a mere distraction from Gabriel’s real reason for wanting an in with the ton and a chance to attend the more select social events of the Season. His primary focus while he was here in London during the Season must be to find himself a wife—assuming, that was, that he would not really find it possible to slip off back home to America and put this all behind him like a bad dream.

He found himself wondering if Lady Jessica Archer was indeed in London and if she would also be at the Parley ball. On the whole he hoped she would not be. He had not liked her at all.

At last Jessica was at the first grand ball of the Season, standing at one side of the ballroom close to her mother, who was in conversation with a couple of older ladies, waiting for the dancing to begin. It would not be just yet. Sir Richard and Lady Parley and their daughter still stood in the receiving line, welcoming more and more new arrivals. Some gentlemen had begun to gather about Jessica, all of them familiar members of what it amused Avery to call her court. The ballroom was filling, and looking and smelling very festive indeed with the myriad colors of ball gowns and banks of flowers and one mirrored wall to multiply them all to infinity. Crystal candelabra overhead, each holding dozens of candles, cast a rainbow of light over the newly polished wooden floor and the gathering guests. Conversations were growing louder and more animated. The orchestra members were tuning their instruments.

This was often her favorite part of any ball, this eager anticipation of music and dance and feasting and forgetting the cares of everyday life. How very privileged she was to be here and to belong in these surroundings and with these people, Jessica thought as she flicked open her fan and plied it slowly before her face.

And how very old she felt.

There were a number of people she had not seen before, mostly young girls making their first appearance in London society, gowned almost exclusively in white, and some fresh-faced young gentlemen newly down from Oxford or Cambridge or up from the country. One such gentleman was Peter Wayne, Aunt Mildred and Uncle Thomas’s middle son, who was across the ballroom with his older brother, Boris, trying unsuccessfully to look like a jaded veteran. She smiled and lifted a hand in greeting as she caught his eye. He grinned back, forgetting his chosen role for a moment. She met the glance of one of the young girls and thought she read envy in her expression. Well, that was cheering. Perhaps she did not look quite like a fossil after all.

Sir Bevin Romley reminded her that he had reserved the second set with her, to the loud complaints of those gentlemen who had not. Mr. Dean asked for and was granted the third set. Compliments meanwhile were being lavished upon her, many of them deliberately outrageous and provocative of laughter from the other men, and sharp retorts from her. Comments were being made also about other guests, some of them kind, some not, some witty, some not. She did not contribute any of her own.

It was all very familiar and really rather endearing. She might just as easily be a wallflower at her age and must be very thankful she was not.

Was one of these gentlemen going to be her husband? Oh, she really could not imagine it. She liked all of them to varying degrees and for varying reasons. But there was none she liked more than all the others. Sadly.

She laughed lightly at something that had just been said, fanning her face as she did so and glancing toward the door to see if the flow of new arrivals had slowed. There was still a trickle of guests moving along the receiving line.

And there was one man between Jessica and the door, his shoulder propped against a pillar, his eyes gazing very directly at her. He was not a member of her usual court. Indeed, he was a stranger. He did not immediately look away, as most people would when discovered staring. Neither did he move.

Jessica raised her eyebrows and fanned her face a little faster. He was an extremely good-looking gentleman, tall, broad shouldered, slender hipped, long legged, and elegantly and fashionably clad in black and white, his tailed evening coat looking rather as though he must have been poured into it, his neckcloth very white and arranged in a perfect, intricate fall. His silk breeches and stockings hugged shapely legs. His curly brown hair was short and expertly styled to look fashionably disheveled. His features were more harsh than perfectly handsome, perhaps, and his complexion was sun bronzed. But it was an attractive face nevertheless. Everything about him was attractive, in fact. Jessica felt an unexpected frisson of awareness and interest.

But his manners were not all they should be. He was still staring at her. Or, rather, he was gazing lazily, as though he had been doing it for some time. His whole posture was lazy, in fact, or perhaps relaxed was the more appropriate word. And informal. One did not lean one’s shoulder against pillars at ton events. Jessica raised her chin and looked haughtily back at him, just as another gentleman approached him and he looked away and straightened up to give the other man his attention.

Strangely, bizarrely, it was only at that moment that Jessica recognized him—the man who had been staring at her, that was. He was the man from the inn. The one she had taken for a cit, a member of the middle classes, with his overlong hair and unfashionable, ill-fitting clothes and inelegance of manner. He had looked at her boldly then too, from her head to her feet, with an expression that had bordered upon the contemptuous. And he had been ungracious about vacating the private parlor for her use. He had spoken openly in her hearing about the money he had paid for it. He had made her a mocking half bow.

She must have been mistaken on that occasion. No mere cit would have received an invitation to a ton ball. Not even if he was a wealthy man. But how very rude of him to have stared at her as he had just now, even if he had been as surprised to see her here as she was to see him. Who on earth was he?