by Edith Layton
He stood and gazed out the window now, as comfortable here as he seemed everywhere, from gambling hell to stately home to squalid tenement. He’d dressed as a neat gentleman, in a handsome tight-fitting new biscuit jacket she’d never seen, fawn pantaloons, and high brown topboots. His ginger head almost touched the low ceiling and his wide shoulders hunched suddenly as he saw the men troop into the pub, but then he straightened and was his amiable self again, so amiable, in fact, that she knew he was at his most dangerous.
The four tall men who swaggered in were so proud and radiated such authority that if it weren’t for their shabbiness, she’d have taken them for some sort of royal guard. But they looked at Arden and then away, and from their expressions, for all their bravado, she knew they’d taken his measure and were wondering if the four of them were enough. The king they protected entered after them. He was a slight, whey-faced, dapper man with straight light hair and a crooked smile. And he smiled as much as Arden did when he saw him, and for the first time Francesca was frightened.
“Lion!” the small man said with great pleasure in his voice and face, extending his hand. “Then the rumors were so, eh? I’m glad of it, I am, so I am.”
“Of a certainty,” Arden said pleasantly, “just what everyone wants, when the dead resurrect and threaten the living. But have no fear, I’ve not come to reclaim my throne—it’s yours, and welcome to it…no, I speak the truth, I swear it. I’ve a different ken now, Sam, and want no part of the past—except for the truth of it—told to this lady here. Only that, for old times’ sake, that favor.”
“Favor?” Sam spoke in wonder. “Likely, eh?”
“No, I mean it, indulge me please, tell the lady what I was to you, and who I was when you last knew me. And then I’ll leave you in peace and with my blessing, lad, and from what I hear you’ll need it,” Arden said.
“There’s truth,” the smaller man murmured. “’Ere, lads, be off. Lion and I are old news. Let us be.”
The four men slouched off, if no further, Francesca noted, than outside the door, leaving them entirely alone, for they’d removed the other patrons of the pub who hadn’t disappeared under their own locomotion, hauling them out by the scruffs of their necks as simply as putting out the cat. “’S truth? You want me to spill to the gentry mort?” Sam asked Lion then.
“Aye, but she is a lady, so I’ll not introduce you, if you don’t mind, lad, and no flash patter, neither, for she won’t understand a word of it. Take your time and say it right, and spare no details. It’s important.”
“Aye, well then, lady,” Sam began, taking no umbrage at his lack of introduction, as though he quite agreed with Arden and wouldn’t have considered her a lady if he’d gotten one. He spoke carefully, and well enough, when he didn’t hurry and lapse into accents difficult for her to understand. “See here,” he said, “the Lion was top of the heap, see? He ran it all. Aye, well, not all. He’d have no part of Mother Carey nor none of the fiercer bawds, for he’d take no share of any house where they was unhappy workers, pressed into service, so to speak. Nor any part of the kid lay, see? But as to the rest, why, he saw to it and us. And he did it fair. He was best o’ the best. Aye, Lion,” he said, turning to Arden suddenly, “no fooling, you’re a sight for sore eyes. Things ain’t been the same since you gone. It’s divvied up betwixt three of us now ’n we fight like dogs for the scraps. We could use you here, that’s truth. Here,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper, “I’d work for you again, I would, for I’d rather have a sure safe slice of the pie ’n keep my neck than try for all ’n lose it, I’m nobody’s fool. So what do you say, Lion? Is it a go?”
“Sam, I meant it. I’m retired now. But tell the lady about me, and spare the flattery, eh?” Arden said impatiently, like a man angry that his noose hadn’t been tied securely enough.
“It ain’t no flattery,” Sam protested angrily, then in conciliatory tones went on, “I’m telling true. You was good to us, ’n we need you again.”
“Tell her what I did, exactly,” Arden roared at him, so loudly that the four men out-of-doors looked in the windows and looked glad when their master waved them back again.
Sam shrugged. “You want me to nose on you? Fine. He done, did, all the crafts, lady. Or that is to say, he watched over all of it: the resurrection game—that’s all in the south, Lion, we don’t see a cent in it no more—the scamps ’n cracks ’n sneaks, the hoists ’n rushers—”
“I sold dead men for anatomy lessons,” Arden broke in to translate coldly, “and might have created some, for I took care of the pickpockets and thieves and burglars of every stripe—from those who entered through windows to those who only stripped slow-moving wagons, I held the reins on every pander and whore, every counterfeit and fence, I saw to every criminal here, save, as Sam said, for the more perverse and vicious of them, for I had some vestigial morals left then, but don’t absolve me of it, for I don’t. Because I could afford those scraps of honor, my dear, since I made a great deal of money without more,” he concluded, leaning over the table and staring into Francesca’s eyes, his face cold and hard as his voice had become.
“Just so!” Sam cried exuberantly, rising to his feet in his excitement, “’n you did it good, Lion. That’s what I’m trying to tell you! You kept the boys from the topping cheat, ’n kept them from being teased ’n lagged too. No hanging nor whipping nor transporting the lads when Lion saw to us, lady,” he explained, turning his attention to Francesca. “That I can tell you. You kept us safe, Lion,” he told Arden fervently. “Why, half the lads you knew are in Edinburgh cut into ribbons, or moldering in potter’s field since you cut out on us. Come back, Lion,” the pale man pleaded in a low whisper. “There’s need of you now!”
Arden was so taken aback by this round commendation and offer that for once he stood speechless. Francesca sat still, as appalled as she was amused, and yet never surprised, for she knew that whenever Arden did something, he did it well.
“No, thank you, Sam,” Arden finally said, taking Francesca’s hand and helping her from her chair. “I’m out of the game. You might try the same if things are getting too hot,” he added.
“Aye, and do what?” Sam said on a thin smile. “Become a gent like you? Likely, eh? You was always a true gentleman, Lion. I’m born ’n bred to the rope. Still, think on it. If ever you want in again, you call on Sam Towers, hear?” he said, his air of insouciance returning, his swagger and his mocking smile back in place, no hint of his desperate pleading to be seen as he finally took Lion’s offered hand. “’N we’ll see what we can do, eh?”
“Take care, Sam,” Arden said gravely as he led Francesca out into the street again.
The four men and Sam Towers left as well, and as quickly as a shadow crossing the sun, they were gone, blended into one of the many twisting alleyways behind them. But Arden stood and looked down at Francesca, his face unreadable, his voice soft as he bade her farewell.
“Go on home now, Francesca,” he said evenly. “Now you know. I’ll walk awhile, and then return to see you safe enough, never fear. I’ll send you to Warwick, or my sister, and they’re clever enough to invent some tale to cover the fact that you’ve traveled with me these weeks, and one day you’ll thank me, as well as your lucky stars, for my forbearance. But this is the last time we’ll really speak, I promise you. I wanted you, Francesca Carlisle,” he said on a sigh, “too much to take you, in any way. Remember that. Such memories warm a lady in her declining years, I hear, so remember it well, and don’t forget the big bad man who loved you as well.” He smiled and touched a finger to her quivering chin.
“Nothing has changed,” she said staunchly, refusing to plead with him as Sam Towers had done, but refusing to leave him as well.
“I was a criminal,” he said angrily, “and low as any I sheltered, even if I didn’t do precisely what they did. At that, did you know how I met our friend Julian? Ah, well, then it’s time, is it not? Warwick knew him from school; I encountered him at a different sort o
f lessons. We met one night as my associates were at the job of half-killing him for a fee, for a nobleman afraid to dirty his hands. I saved Julian’s face as well as his life, by terminating the contract, for there was cruelty and dishonor in the work that I wanted no part of. But I was no better than the men who held him so that he could be so soundly beaten.”
“But Julian is still your friend,” she said, her lip quavering, unable to say more in the face of his rage, unable to take it all in, only clinging stubbornly to her inner perceptions which told her without doubt that this man she wanted so badly needed her every bit as much as she needed him.
“We made our peace when I took up his cause, but it makes no matter,” Arden said, his eyes bleak as he tried to wrench them from the sight of her, for she weakened his resolve. “Men pride themselves on their hardiness and can excuse anything in the name of that masculinity,” he said on a depreciating smile. “But you…Francesca, my one wild little Fancy,” he said tenderly, “I’d never harm you. But my past might, don’t you see? Even if all else could be forgiven, repented, and washed clean, there’s still that. I made enemies, and I’m glad of it. For a man with no enemies can have no true friends, and certainly no morals. But my enemies are legion, and they come no lower. No, I can’t put you in such danger. You’re young, you’ll find another, worthier man. Have done, my Fancy, and let me go now, so that I can go on later.
“Get into the carriage, love,” he said softly, lowering his head to hers for a last kiss. But he tasted salt tears on her lips, so he pressed his mouth to her clean, scented hair instead, and then let her go. He stepped back, and then turned, and then, never looking back, strode off to one of the dark, turning alleys that led away from where she stood, her hand to her mouth, in front of the coach that would take her away.
“Arden!” she called as he strode to the mouth of the alley. “Lion!” she cried, such wretchedness in her voice that low as it was, he heard it, as though he’d been attuned to her every breath, for it was a soft voice, not made for such efforts as shouting, nor made to bear such distress. “Don’t leave me!” she cried, and he turned at last to look back at her. And he stood at the mouth of the alley, wavering, and gazed at her, indecisive then, as she stumbled forward, her heart clear to read in her eyes, her eyes only upon him.
And that was why neither of them saw the man step from the shadows of the doorway behind Arden, although both heard the blast from the gun he raised, straight-armed, and fired. When the smoke thinned, Arden still stood tall, his eyes no more filled with pain than before, but he shouted, “Go! Go now, Francesca!” as he came forward at a run to warn her off.
He managed to take her arm and pull her to the coach and push her within to safety before he turned to seek his assailant and fell at last to his length in the gutter, blood welling from the back of his ruined new biscuit jacket, to pour in a thin runnel down among the broken cobblestones.
18
He was breathing. She could ascertain that much, for though nothing else moved, and indeed it seemed as though the world itself stood still as Arden lay in the street, she could see that the huge frame rose and fell, and it was that motion as much as anything that caused the blood to trickle from the wound she would not look upon. She averted her eyes from the back of the fine new jacket he wore, because she knew that if she saw it close, she’d lose all her control, and she needed it all just then.
She tried to think as he would.
“Coachman,” she called. “Coachman!” she shouted, going up to him and tugging at the ends of his long coat as he sat upon his box and stared, stupefied, at the giant man downed by the side of his carriage. “Go now, at once, you hear? Go, and tell Julian Dylan, the Viscount Hazelton, of what has happened. Go to Stephen’s Hotel if he is not at the house where you picked us up this morning, and tell him. And tell him to get a physician and wait at the town house for us. Go now,” she said desperately, “or it will go badly for you, I vow it will!”
That seemed to reach the coachman, and he raised his whip as though in a daze and then brought it down hard on his team and the coach leapt away. Then Francesca turned to see the crowd that began to appear, inching up out of the shadows of the maze of alleys. She sought out the brightest pair of eyes, the most nimble frame. “You,” she commanded in her husky voice, pointing to a sharp-looking bone-thin boy of indeterminate years, a boy with a face like a ferret’s all quivering whiskers and pointed ears, “a golden guinea for you, my word on it. If you go at once to Sam Towers—aye, him—and bring him here double-quick, and tell him the Lion is shot and downed in the street,” and as the boy prepared to race away, she added harshly, “But he lives, tell him that the Lion still lives, be sure to tell him that.”
For, she thought, trying to think like the man at her feet, although she doubted Sam Towers was responsible for this, she could not know it. But guilty or not, he’d come running, he’d not dare do otherwise—if he knew Arden still breathed. A request with a threat bedded deep in it, like the hook beneath the breadcrumb that she’d used as a child when angling for little fish, she thought giddily—that took the place of reason half the time, it seemed.
She bent down over the quiet man, and then she sat down upon the cobbles and drew that great heavy head up, and stroked the dirt from the side of his cheek as she rested it in her lap, and refused to look at the wound as she spoke low to him about how she was there, and all would be well. For she didn’t dare think otherwise, she simply would not think it. And so she waited, watching him breathe, counting the breaths so as not to think about it.
Sam Towers came running seconds later, days later, she could not know, and he’d his four strong men with him, and more, and they carried a door between them.
“He lives,” she said defiantly as Sam looked down at her.
“0’ course ’e does,” Sam said quietly.
She must have told him where she wanted them to take Arden, she thought, as Sam helped her to her feet at last, and she must have warned him to be careful, for he was still swearing he meant no harm and asking her please to step aside, when she realized what he was saying, and stepped away to let them lift Arden and place him on the door. And then, somehow they must have bundled Arden into that great open funeral coach they’d gotten from somewhere, and she was still shaking with anger and wild laughter over it, for Arden was alive, she reminded Sam over and again, as they pulled up to the town house door and Julian, his face white and his eyes wild, helped her down from the ancient vehicle so she could follow Arden into the house.
But when they’d laid their burden down upon the bed, and the fattish little man with his sleeves rolled up that Julian called a surgeon began to strip Arden’s coat from him, Julian took her by the shoulders and walked her to the door, to Roxanne, who had appeared from nowhere to cluck her tongue and widen her eyes and say nonsensical things as though they would comfort her.
“I’m not leaving,” Francesca said, wheeling about. “He would not leave me,” she told Julian.
“Very well,” he said, and she came to stand with him over Arden then.
“Not the lung, for see, the blood’s not red and bubbling, there’s luck,” the surgeon muttered as he cut the last of the shirt away to expose the broad muscled back, with the great bloody dimple newly sprung in it, “and yet not out the other side, so we must dig to see where it is. Against the bone if we’re lucky, but at least he’s out, it would take a team of horses to hold him down else, and I don’t want to take the time to strap him to the bed, so we’ll act at once—hold her head down, my lord,” he went on in the same low drone as he cut deep into the smooth tanned flesh, and Francesca saw the world blacken around the edges and lost the sound of his voice in the throbbing thunder that filled her ears.
“No,” she said when Julian sat her on a nearby chair and let his hand up from the back of her neck, and she heard him ask someone to help take her away, “No,” she protested on a sob of a breath, fighting up from darkness, “let me stay, I won’t look at it,
but I must stay with him, please.”
She came round to the head of the bed then, as Julian suggested, and held on to one of Arden’s outstretched hands and looked down only at the still face, sidewise upon the pillows, as the surgeon continued his work. And that was when she saw the perspiration on that broad forehead, and saw the lashes twitch and the clear eyes open to look blankly at a distant shore.
Then he gazed at her, as though he’d felt her stare, and he returned to his pain-drenched eyes then and something like a smile flickered across his broad mouth.
“Canny girl,” he whispered, “brave lass,” and the surgeon stopped in mid-stroke at the utterance. But then the surgeon shook his head and grunted, “Sorry, my friend, but I must,” and Arden tried to nod permission. “‘Lay on, Macduff,’” he recited, “‘and damned be him that first cries.’” He drew in his breath as the surgeon grunted and bore down upon his knife. And then he closed his eyes on a shuddering sigh and lay still. It wasn’t until Francesca heard a new indrawn breath replace the air he’d sighed out that she breathed again herself and stroked his forehead and whispered, “‘Hold enough,’” to finish the quotation for him.
