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

by Edith Layton

  She carefully counted out the sum into Madame’s hand, and it was a generous one to be sure, but she’d enough, though it left her with very little.

  “Don’t vex yourself,” he said kindly as they left the shop after she’d given Madame the direction for the gowns to be sent. “It was a great deal of blunt, but not wildly extravagant. One of Cee-cee’s gowns would pay for the lot. And your papa really did suggest I guide you to a fashionable modiste, you know.”

  “Oh, doubtless,” she sighed, “after it was pointed out to him that I looked frightful. I know,” she went on quietly, “I really do, you know.”

  “…that he loves you? Or that he does not?” Arden asked softly.

  “Oh,” she said, her odd husky voice breaking. “Both. All. He loves me in his fashion. I can’t ask for more.”

  “Although you want more,” he commented as they walked slowly down the avenue. “Did you find what you wanted with Devlin, then?”

  She couldn’t be angry at his presumption this time. It was too personal a question, to be sure, but it was too kindly put, too gently framed in that great, gentle voice, for her to take offense. Rather, she found she grew angry at herself for having to deceive him in her answer. So she kept her head down and answered him with as honest a lie as she was able.

  “I lost what I wanted with Devlin, then,” she said.

  They walked the next streets in companionable, thoughtful silence. Until they reached M. Leroy’s establishment and before the door was opened to them, she looked up and saw the sympathy in his eyes and the warmth of his smile, his look filled with fellow-feeling and not a trace of lechery. Then she was abashed and almost glad when Mrs. Deems rushed to greet them and carried him away.

  They secured three new dresses for Cee-cee too, and then four dishes of ices at a café and it was not until they were on the way back to the hotel as she watched Cee-cee explaining to them all just why she liked her new frocks so very well, that Francesca realized she’d just passed yet another day in the fabled city of Paris, and still had not seen it.

  *

  Francesca had no new gown for that evening, but at least she’d still her post, and the Deemses had asked for her escort for Cecily at dinner. So she threw her old shawl about her shoulders, and seeing Roxie’s paisley one folded on her chair, caught it up to return to her before she joined the Deemses downstairs. She hurried through the corridors, for once not looking forward to an evening in France just to see it through to its end. She hurried because she didn’t want to stop and question herself, or her new excitement and hope, to find out why a mere day purchasing gowns, however lovely, should have set her to humming all the while she’d dressed, should have got her heart to beating so, should have made her so interested in living every moment before her again. A body in motion, she repeated to herself, as she’d been repeating all sorts of quotations and silly shreds of songs, as though words could block out the questioning words beginning to form in the back of her mind, tends to remain in motion. A body at rest, she went on, blithely missaying her lessons, tends to sulk. She was actually giggling to herself when she came to Roxanne’s door.

  And so she didn’t notice how long it took Roxanne to answer her door. Nor did she note the interested looks she’d received from various gentlemen as she’d come down the hall to stand at the door. For her color was high, she held her head up, and her eyes sparkled, and, sad old dress or not, she was in as high good looks as she was in spirits. But Roxanne, she finally noted, when the door cracked open at last, did not look herself at all. She did not look badly, only entirely different.

  Her blond hair was not carefully, artfully disarranged as it always was, rather it was prettier, although in true tousled disarray. She wore none of the subtle cosmetics she usually took trouble to apply, but her lips were swollen and blushed pink, as did her cheeks, and her blue eyes were dreamy as though she’d been interrupted from sleep, though they were more unfocused with some inner, dazed content than seeming to be confused at a sudden transition to wakefulness. She looked warm and pleased and secretive, and she clutched a wrapper closed at her neck and looked at Francesca with a smile.

  “Your shawl. Thank you,” Francesca said, suddenly afraid of something she knew but would not recognize, thrusting the shawl at the petite blond woman. “Are you coming down this evening?” she asked as Roxanne took the shawl but still said nothing in reply.

  “I hope not. “Roxanne laughed, her voice almost as low as Francesca’s usually was.

  “Are you all right?” Francesca asked nervously, anxious to be away from something unknown and personal that she thought she ought not to be seeing.

  “Never better,” Roxanne replied, and then when a voice behind asked a soft question, she spoke back to the room, “Only Mrs. Devlin. I’ll give your love.”

  And then she looked at Francesca again, and unable to stop herself in her happiness, and perhaps because she wanted to boast, added, grinning, “And neither has he been, I’ll reckon. So tell Arden and your papa that his lordship won’t be down tonight either. If I can help it,” she said on a wink, and closed the door on Francesca’s wide-eyed dawning disbelief and comprehension.

  “That was unnecessary,” Julian said, annoyed, beginning to rise from her bed as she came back into the room.

  Roxanne flung the shawl across the bed, taking care not to cover his nakedness. She did that in another, unexpected fashion.

  “And is this unnecessary too?” she asked when she moved her mouth from him again.

  “No, damn you,” he said softly. And forgetting his annoyance, he remembered what he liked most these days—oblivion—and, relaxing, let her remind him again.

  But Francesca couldn’t forget. She’d seen nothing that was going on in the room, but could imagine it all. Or rather, she could not imagine it all, which made it even worse. Roxanne had taken a gentleman to her room, she’d always suspected she did such things, but knowing the gentleman and knowing Roxanne, she couldn’t take it with the aplomb she wished she had. She felt betrayed, as though the grown-ups had done something she wasn’t supposed to see. She felt complicitous for having seen it, and somehow less virtuous herself for knowing, however obliquely, just what it was. And she was frightened, for if Roxanne could so easily take the charming, civilized, amusing Viscount Hazelton and bring him to her bed, and reduce him to a sexual jest—as he would no doubt similarly estimate her—then she herself was vulnerable. If not more so, since she knew nothing of the matter as Roxanne so clearly did.

  In order to rid herself of the distaste and fear and childish unease she felt, she focused instead on what she knew, and what she could judge. The viscount had taken Roxanne as a lover, and that was wrong. He, or any other gentleman, would not have dared take Cecily or any other protected female. He wouldn’t have even walked her unescorted through the streets of Paris. It wasn’t difficult to reach the next natural conclusion, so she hurried downstairs so that she might have enough time to roundly snub Arden Lyons before dinner.

  She saw him at once; indeed, the only benefit she perceived in knowing him now was that he was always so easy to locate. He was deep in conversation with a tall, thin, distraught-looking young gentleman. She was so eager to engage him in dispute, or get his reaction in any way to the scandalous message she bore, all the while half-hoping he could somehow laugh it all away as she badly wished to do, as he was always so very good at doing, that she walked straight up to Arden’s broad back as he stood listening to the young man. But then she stopped abruptly as she listened too.

  “Please,” the young fellow was pleading in a quavering voice, his face white, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed hard. “Please, Mr. Lyons, I must have that deed back. Indeed, I was badly foxed the other night, I ought never to have sat down at the table, I mislaid my reason with my coins. I’d foresworn gambling entirely, only the drink led me to it, that, and the ease of the game. And now… It’s not the money I ask for, that was fairly won, and I’ll not dispute it. But my home
!” he cried in pain. “My legacy, my birthright! Gone. And what’s my poor sister to do now? Sleep in the gutters that I have brought her down to? Oh, please, Mr. Lyons, I must have my home back again.”

  In his despair, he clutched at Arden’s sleeve, his thin hands showing white knuckles, and tears starting in his wide, frantic brown eyes.

  She couldn’t see Arden’s face, but she could hear the cold contempt in his deep voice, and she could all too clearly see the way that large tanned hand callously plucked the thin and shaking one from his sleeve and flung it away, and then brushed off his cuff as though it had been dirtied by the young man’s desperate hold.

  “It was not just your money you lost, I remind you,” Arden said, “as it was not just your house, as you say. No, no more. Go home, Lord Waite, I’ll have nothing to do with it, or you.”

  “What’s the point in living, then?” the young man cried, fumbling in his jacket pocket.

  “So you can lose again, I suppose,” Arden said, shrugging, and lightly, as lightly as though he were taking a dance card from a lady, he plucked the chased-silver pistol from the young man’s hand as it emerged from his jacket. He examined it, and then handed it back, laughing as if he’d been told some enormous joke instead of seeing a man half-crazed with despair. “And hope to earn enough to buy a better firearm. The only way you could destroy yourself with this, my lord, is if you beat yourself repeatedly on the head with it. It might do, if it knocks some sense in,” he added as he turned to walk away.

  And then saw Francesca standing staring at him as though he were rising from the young man’s blood-spattered corpse, rather than simply cutting him dead in a hotel for gamesters.

  Something flickered in his eyes as he took her arm and led her away as well. But it was only concern and deep sincerity she saw as she gazed up at him.

  “The boy’s a gambler,” he said as she looked back to see Lord Waite, white-faced still, and still as the grave, standing staring after them. “He’d gamble his homeless sister away as well, if he could, if she were here. I helped him once, and see the good it did. Good God, girl! The way you look at me! He applied to me because I won it back for him once before. Credit me with some sporting instinct, if not morals. I did not win it from him,” he said urgently, shaking her arm slightly, to take her gaze from the boy.

  “Everyone here gambles,” she said, trying to understand, for when she was with him she badly wanted to.

  “And everyone here drinks. And dances. But some can live without it,” he said carefully, watching her closely.

  She nodded, thinking about this, and let him lead her toward the dining salon.

  “Oh,” she said then, the confusion in her face causing that hard, impassive face that turned to her at her slight utterance to look down with a deep frown. “Yes. Roxanne told me to tell you that the Viscount Hazelton won’t be down tonight. If she can help it,” she added, turning her eyes away, sorry she’d mentioned it.

  She missed his wince, but heard the anger as he said abruptly, “There are all sorts of addictions, aren’t there?”

  And then Mrs. Deems spied them, and took his arm and led him to Cecily, who stood, as shy and expectant as a bride, waiting for him, as he bowed down low over her hand.

  All through dinner Francesca kept to her silence, but then, there was nothing remarkable about that; that was her place, after all. But she never so much as laughed politely as a spectator should, for she wasn’t attending to the conversation despite the fact that Arden had the Deemses and her father aroar with his humor tonight, while all the while he watched to see if he could get her just to smile. But she was listening to her own inner counsel now, and it was a harsh and hurtful lecture she heard, and all to do with what one got for putting faith in gamblers, cheats, and easy gentlemen.

  She stood at her father’s side that night after Cecily had gone to bed ablush from Arden’s gallantries. She stood where Roxanne usually stood, but didn’t mind, because she didn’t notice, she was so involved with her own thoughts. So much so that her father realized the beautiful but silent woman in black at his side was not only distracting his opponents as much as he’d wish, but even more so, but deterring them from playing with him, since few men choose to game at a funeral. When he dismissed her, she wandered off, but before Arden, who’d been watching thoughtfully all that time, could reach her, she stopped and stared into the crowd like a woman who’d had an amazing revelation. And when he did reach her, she was trembling.

  But she said nothing more than that she was tired, and she so clearly was that he was only too glad to escort her to her room. He was only sorry that she didn’t seem to wish to listen to him tonight, for he tried to open the subjects of Lord Waite and Julian again, however explosive they were, just to clear the air. But though he broached both topics a dozen times, she wasn’t attending to him.

  He didn’t take her hand to his lips at the doorway this night. Instead, he reached out and held one large cool hand against her forehead. When she looked up at him at last as though she finally saw him again, he sighed.

  “There’s no fever,” he said gently. “Go to sleep. Other sorts of healing often come with sleep too, you know.”

  And then, as naturally as he would if she were a child, he bent and brushed a soft, cool kiss against her cheek before he left her.

  But there certainly was something terribly wrong, she thought, closing the door behind her. She was too frightened to weep, or to tell anyone about it, for she’d heard all the tales about Bedlam. Because tonight, when she’d been so grieved with herself and the life she found herself in, she’d begun to remember, there in the noisy gambling room, what had been and what might have been. The click of the wheel had become as soothing as the trickling of the stream they’d stood by, the laughter of the excited gamesters very like the bickering birds that had been calling in the trees around them, and the warmth of the blatantly lit circle where she stood, in the midst of vast darkness, like and unlike the sunlit clearing they’d been within. But for all her fantasy, she couldn’t forget that she was lost now in a strange land, surrounded by gamblers, seducers, liars, and cheats, so confused she’d begun to turn to the worst of them for comfort. She was homesick to the heart for the home she’d never known. And she thought so hard about Harry then that she almost wept aloud.

  She’d turned her head to the door to leave, and through her drenched lashes had seen him. Seen him clear as day, clear as night, clear as any reality she’d ever known. Seen Harry himself, whole and live and as sick with longing as she was, standing there staring back at her. So she’d blinked and blinked, and then Arden had come, and Harry was gone.

  She sank to sit on her bed, and wondered if madness began this way, from the need of it, to escape real sorrows by retreating into truer ones that the heart at least knew were past, and so could bear. And she looked up at last, though a misery now too fearful for tears, to see, at last, the slip of paper glowing white upon the floor.

  She was afraid to read it, but when she’d done so several times, and felt the crispness of the paper beneath her fingers, and heard it rattle in her shaking hands, she knew that this, at least, was real. And so was joy.

  “Francesca, my darling,” it said, “I am here, I do live, I must see you. But I must not be seen by your father, nor anyone else, not just yet. All can be explained, all will be explained. I’ll meet you tonight. Stay awake for me. There is a garden here, behind the kitchens. Come at first dawn. Trust me. For I have not forgotten, any more than you have, ‘Mrs. Devlin,’ my own, my darling.”

  And it was signed, unmistakably, for she’d saved and memorized each and all of his letters: “Your devoted Harry.”

  7

  The night was loath to leave, or so it seemed to Francesca as she hurried down the stairs in the odd quiet of the dark hotel. For though it was almost dawn, the darkness clung, as did an eerie silence. It was always noisy here; it had always been filled with people morning to night, and the bustle and voices and the severa
l sounds of gaming, or gossip, or people entertaining themselves, had been as much a part of the furnishings of the hotel as any carpet or couch within it. Now it seemed oddly empty and echoing, for in this last hour of night, in this breath before dawn, all the guests and servants were equals: those who’d frolicked all night had gone off to bed, and those who’d soon arise to ready the place for tomorrow were deep in slumber, just as unaware of the approaching day.

  Still, even if there’d been anyone awake, it was doubtful that the whisper of her slippers could have been heard as she raced through the main floor of the house to discover a back entrance, because she ran so quickly it was as though they touched ground only for an instant before they slid away again. She’d been pent up in mad imaginings all night, and so as soon as she’d seen the blackness of night begin to transmute to a blearier, unfocused sort of darkness, she’d leapt to her feet to keep her appointment with the dawn.