The Game of Love (The Love Trilogy, #2)

by Edith Layton

  “Then I’m most fortunate,” Mr. Lyons said contentedly, looking to Cecily, “for I’ve a tremendous advantage over other gentlemen in that respect, haven’t I?”

  Cecily looked up from her ices at that, and gave him a shy, uncomprehending smile, as her mama cried at once, “Oh, no, Mr. Lyons! Why, for all your jokes, you haven’t an ounce of fat on you!”

  This praise and Mrs. Deems’ spirited defense were almost too much for Francesca, and she was glad of a napkin she could hide her smiles behind. It even seemed to be too much for Mr. Lyons, for it stopped him in his traces. He paused for a moment before he shot a bright look across the table at a startled Roxanne, and at both the viscount and Francesca as they struggled to stifle their laughter, before he said suddenly in a smug, high, prissy voice, “Oh, do you really think so? So kind of you to notice. For I’ve the teensiest waist, you know. I daresay a girl could encompass it in her two hands if she’d a mind to, don’t you think?”

  “Two arms, maybe,” the viscount managed before it became too much for him and he dissolved into laughter.

  It was difficult to dislike him as much as she wished to, Francesca thought later, while she walked behind Mr. Lyons as he escorted the Deemses toward the cathedral. The viscount and Roxanne were also ahead, deep in conversation.

  Mr. Lyons had a Deems female on each arm, but it was his wide frame Francesca trudged behind when she discovered how effectively it blocked the cool wind from nipping at her. She saw the tilt of the broad shoulders that strained the good wool in his blue jacket as he listed to one side to address a remark to Cecily, and noted his well-shaped head, with its fashionably overlong mane that strayed over the back of his high white collar as he turned to hear the reply to his remark from Mrs. Deems. He curbed his long steps to match their little paces, but his strong long legs could clearly have eaten up miles in his steady stride.

  Although he wasn’t at all handsome in the style of his magnificent friend, Francesca realized that he loomed so large one even forgot the beautiful viscount in his presence. And he wasn’t precisely unhandsome either, she thought, remembering his blunt, even features. His size caught the eye, but then he held it.

  Francesca frowned more fiercely as it occurred to her that he had literally blotted out all other thoughts for her today, even as he obscured the sight of the street before her. But he troubled her. Observant, but unobserved, she saw a great deal more now. Clearly, with each passing hour, Mr. Lyons was making a dead-set at Cecily, which was not exceptional, since she was a lovely young girl. But Mr. Lyons was very clever, and so could be under no illusions at all about the lovely young girl’s intelligence. He was more amused than enchanted, more interested in Mrs. Deems’ approval than her daughter’s charms. And so, given this—his manner, as well as the manner in which he had met them—there was but one inescapable conclusion: Arden Lyons might well have been infatuated, and that could be why the courtship had commenced. But it was love of Miss Deems’ fortune, not herself. A gamester’s daughter who placed no wagers, still Francesca was willing to bet her soul that it was Cecily’s money that thrilled him, not her face, and the delicious figure he lusted after the most was on her bank statement, not her person.

  And, of course, there was nothing Francesca could do about it.

  Within the cathedral it was chill, and the high vaulted ceilings seemed to hold the weight of centuries over them. The ladies’ footsteps were reduced to a dampened shuffle, but the gentlemen’s bootsteps rang out and seemed to affront the brooding silence. Occasional torches didn’t reduce the grim gray dimness, the highly placed and colored stained-glass windows twisted the light into subdued and chastened tints before it fell to the great gray stone slabs of the floor, and even the decorations on the enormous stone columns failed to lift the mood of solemnity, for they seemed to have been tortured rather than chiseled into their odd and fretful shapes.

  Francesca paused to let the others go on ahead. She pretended fascination with a carving on a pillar, and from the side of her seemingly abstracted eyes watched them out of sight, down a long gray alley of wall vaults with stiff stone effigies of knights and saints. The last she heard was Mr. Lyons as he lectured the Deemses, mother and daughter, on the history of the place, using terms and speaking of times they likely didn’t understand any better than she could now, as she heard only the low rumble of his speech drift back to her and could make out nothing of the sense of it. Then the vastness of the place swallowed up the rest of the sound. There were no other tourists she could see, no priests or parishioners present; she seemed to be alone in a citadel that only an egotist or a very brave believer would dare utter a mere personal prayer in. The atmosphere suited her mood exactly. She was lonely and disconsolate, so much so that she took gloomy pleasure in roaming the place alone.

  But after a while even the soles of her slippers grew as chilled as her body, and even more uncomfortable than her thoughts, and she drew her pelisse about her and breathed a sigh that became a cloud of white before her face. She stood staring down at a bronze marker on the floor, wondering what the long-dead gentleman she was evidently treading upon would have thought of this, his gloomy last cold place.

  “Myself,” the voice at her side said in a rumble that scarcely disturbed the dust, though it seemed to vibrate through the very bones of the old cathedral, “I’d have preferred the shade of an old apple tree. But then, I am not a knight. Poor fellow, after all his wanderings in the sun, to have to spend his eternity here.”

  “I’d hope not,” she answered slowly, still wandering somewhere in the back of her mind, and so thinking of the words and not the person voicing them. “That would be a poor reward for a pious life.”

  “Precisely what Cecily said,” Arden answered pleasantly, “in context, if not text. For she went on at some length about clouds and harps and the like.”

  Francesca looked up abruptly, and then around. “Where are they?” she demanded at once, seeing no one but Arden Lyons as he looked down at her with the same bemused, considering expression that she’d had, had she but known it, as she pondered the fate of the man under the stone beneath her feet.

  “Gone,” he said simply. “I got hungry again.”

  She stared at him.

  “Well, you looked at me as though I was an ogre and you believed every one of those stories they told you to get you to eat your porridge,” he explained. “You couldn’t expect me to resist.”

  Seeing her steady stare, he relented. “They’re all snug in the carriage, wondering whatever became of the truant Mrs. Devlin. Cee-cee thought you might be saying a prayer for your husband,” he continued, watching her closely. “I’m not at all sure you weren’t. Should you like me to leave you for a little longer?” he asked gently.

  The sudden heat in her cheeks dispelled all the cold in her body. The strong face before her was softened by sympathy and she felt a complete cheat. She swallowed so loudly that this time she knew he could hear it before she blurted all at once, “Oh, no. Not at all. In fact,” she went on hurriedly, trying to rid those knowing eyes of their sad understanding, “I wasn’t thinking of Harry at all just now. He’s not…he wasn’t…we’re not of this faith anyway. I was thinking of the man I was standing on. The dead one.”

  “Oh, that one,” he answered, a quirked smile appearing. “I’d imagine he’s pleased with his lot, even if we’re not, knights being the sort who enjoy sacrifice, you know,” he said pleasantly as he offered her his arm. She took it automatically as he strolled on with her. “No idle lolling about under some fruit tree like yours truly devoutly hopes to do until Judgment Day, for that fellow. No, he’s made himself useful here, holding the floor together, becoming something not only to tread on, but interesting to point out and talk about by tourists tired of exclaiming on how many years it must have taken to build the place. Why is it, do you think, that everyone always asks that in a cathedral? Just once,” he mused, before she could answer, “I’d like to be told: ‘Two weeks, sir. We’d an incenti
ve for the workers, don’t you know—only four whiplashes instead of seventy a day for a good quick job of it.’”

  Changing his voice from the cockney slang he’d affected for the proud imaginary tour guide, he went on thoughtfully, “Although I’d imagine I had more in common with that fellow you were walking all over than not. I’m more in his style, you see. Warrior, crusader, armor and warhorses, and lopping off heads and the like. Well, it would be most disappointing to discover the Crusaders had all been spindly little persons with squints and round shoulders, wouldn’t it?” he argued, although she didn’t say a word to this flight, but only stared at him wide-eyed.

  “No, no, they must have all been whopping big fellows like me. How nice it must have been for them,” he continued as they reached the door to the cathedral, “to have been in fashion. I’m quite out of style, you see, and have been all my life. But I ask you, pretty as they are, can you see Brummell or any of our town beaus, all those lean and languishing lads, pounding along on a charger’s back wielding a sword and harvesting infidel heads? No, no, it was chaps like me…the ones who could give the chargers a ride when they got weary…ah, but I’m born too late,” he said dreamily.

  It was too much. She began to laugh, as he had intended. They’d stepped out into the sunlight and she laughed as she hadn’t in days. And only stopped when she realized he was not, but rather was standing looking down intently at her.

  “Brown!” he said with an air of great discovery. “In the daylight they’re brown, not black to match that witches’ hair, as I’d thought, and yet in the full sunlight there’s gold in the depths of them too.”

  He stared down at her, and his hazel eyes never left off gazing at her eyes, until they traveled down to study all her face, and then seemed to focus with especial interest upon her lips. He looked at her assessingly, questioningly, his invitation clear. Then, as her own eyes widened, he reached out one great finger and brushed it against the top of her cheek, and as she drew back, alarmed, he held the finger up before her eyes. One lash clung to it, a tiny curved black line that looked like a miniature scimitar as it clung to that great expanse of flesh.

  “Blow on it and make a wish,” he said softly, looking back into the shocked eyes he’d just been describing.

  She looked beyond him to see the carriage waiting in the street, but realized its occupants couldn’t see them—the supposed gentleman and the impecunious supposed widow he was dallying with—since they stood behind the pillar where he’d stopped with her. And realized too that he’d known that very well when he paused there.

  “I wish,” she hissed angrily, “that you would leave me alone!”

  The force of her breath sent the lash flying and he looked down at his empty fingertip before he smiled at her.

  “Oh, too bad,” he said softly, still holding her arm gently, but so securely that she couldn’t flee him. “You wasted your breath. You must never tell your wish, you know,” he added helpfully as he walked her to the carriage.

  *

  “…and then,” Mrs. Deems was saying eagerly to Mr. Deems, “there’s the shipyard in Southampton, and the two merchant ships he’s got half-interest in, the land in the Caribbean they’ve both invested in—”

  “Aye,” Mr. Deems interrupted, for he was a man of few words, but he spoke up when he had to, “I’ve been offered shares in a new island they’ve been buying up. Seems profitable.”

  There was a respectful silence for that word, before Mrs. Deems hurried on, “And the mine in Wales, mind, and don’t forget the mills.”

  “Shan’t,” Mr. Deems said seriously, nodding.

  Francesca felt as though she might faint. She’d never done so before, not when she’d not been burning with fever, and never just because of words. Not even when she’d gotten the letter telling her about her brother, nor even when they’d told her next about her Harry. Those had been events to make one ill enough, but they’d been done, and over, and nothing could be done about them but grieving, so mere seconds of unconsciousness wouldn’t have helped. But now she would have welcomed swooning, if only to escape the situation for a few moments. Although, perversely, she knew she wouldn’t have wanted to miss a thing that was going on beneath her nose.

  And this dreadful conversation was going on, almost literally, beneath her very nose. For Mr. and Mrs. Deems sat in Cecily’s room and plotted how to nab Mr. Lyons for her wedded husband even as Francesca stood above them watching the child herself as her golden hair was being brushed out, as innocent and unaware as a pretty little white mouse being chosen for a snake’s supper.

  The Deemses were content with their daughter’s large suitor. He mightn’t be a titled gentleman, but gentleman he surely was. Mr. Deems had made certain inquiries and it seemed the viscount was by no means the only noble friend Arden Lyons had. No, his connections were as fine as his fortune, and if some were not, why then that was only another mark of a true gent. For only they, Mr. Deems said sagely, could afford to sink into such low company as they occasionally did.

  It was almost more than Francesca could bear. In fact, it was. So much so that when the Deemses had done with going over Mr. Lyons’ supposed assets, and had got on to agreeing that they were willing, his suit was welcome, and that Cecily should be permitted his constant company, and then rose in accord to announce their approval before bidding their daughter good night, Francesca lingered on with her.

  Ordinarily she’d have been glad to leave too. Not that her duties were onerous or that she’d anything to do when alone but read or write letters, but because she’d seldom much to say to Cecily, and what conversation they had was usually uphill work. She’d known her charge for only a week, and they were far closer in age than the other girl knew, with only three years between them, but it might as well have been thirty. For if Francesca had discovered that Cecily wasn’t precisely stupid, and was a sweet girl and a kindly one, she’d also realized rather sadly that there was really little more to know of her than that.

  “Cee-cee,” she said now, after the girl’s maid had left her for the night, “may I ask you something?”

  Cecily saw her companion’s face in the looking glass before her and it was clear that Mrs. Devlin was troubled. She spun round at once, looking just as troubled as she said immediately, “Certainly, Mrs. Devlin. But I doubt I know very much. I’ll try, though,” she added anxiously, for she liked Francesca very well. Her eyes might have told her over and again that Mrs. Devlin was not that much senior to herself, but she never relied on their reports. She was a good girl and always went by what she’d been told.

  “How do you feel about Mr. Lyons?” Francesca asked bluntly, knowing no other way to put it, and not wanting to hint at the subject, knowing Cecily and knowing she’d be at it all night if she did.

  “Oh,” Cecily said, much relieved. For a horrible moment she’d thought the question might have to do with mathematics or history. “I like him very well. He’s very amusing,” she added when she saw that Mrs. Devlin expected more.

  “I meant,” Francesca said, becoming bolder because she thought she’d right on her side, proprieties be damned, “do you know that your parents are considering him as a suitor for your hand? As a prospective husband?”

  “Oh, yes,” Cecily said.

  “And how do you feel about that?” Francesca persisted, reminded again of why it was she always left Cecily as soon as she was dismissed for the night.

  Cecily frowned. Francesca immediately began to plan for midnight coaches and wild rides to the coast and thence to the sheltering arms of some elder, wiser relative of Cecily’s. But before her active imagination could plot past Dieppe and the ferry there, Cecily smiled. She’d only been thinking hard.

  “I like him very well,” she repeated. “He’d be an amusing husband. He’s very wealthy. And very kind.”

  “But he’s so much older than you!” Francesca blurted.

  “Husbands are,” Cecily replied, puzzled.

  “But don’t you wan
t someone handsomer…?” Francesca asked, wondering if she should mention “love,” curiously unwilling to.

  “Oh, like the viscount?” Cecily asked, and when Mrs. Devlin nodded, she said, “That would be nice, but I think Mr. Lyons is well-looking too. And I will never have to worry about him outshining me,” she said, remembering her mama’s clever comments. “And he’s large,” she added when she saw Mrs. Devlin’s defeated look, and trying to cheer her, added, “Big men are very protective, you know. Was Mr. Devlin large?” she asked softly. “Do you miss him awfully?”

  “No,” Francesca said, rising, weary and frustrated, wondering why she wasn’t satisfied, obviously Cecily would have been happy marrying an elk if her mama thought it a good idea, “not large. And yes, awfully.”

  Francesca went directly from Cecily’s room to her father’s to have a word with him. She noted that he must have been successful in the past few nights at the tables, for he’d a valet again. Her father’s valets were a clear indication of his fortunes; as soon as he’d more than the lining in his pockets, he’d hire one. He’d no need of most worldly pleasures, aside from his gaming, but having been raised a gentleman, there were some few things he regarded as necessities. A valet and a good horse were the two things he considered indispensable, or at least dispensable only if absolutely necessary, as when he’d two aces and was sure a third lurked in the hand that was surely going to be dealt to him next.