by Edith Layton
“I won,” she said on a great sigh of happiness. “Two out of three, I won.”
It was more than incredible, it was unthinkable. He’d not felt so crushed since his unit had fallen the first time at Ciudad Rodrigo. For he didn’t wish to pay his penalty; with every grain of his being, he didn’t wish to pay his penalty. But he knew as a gentleman he’d no choice.
And all business now, she persisted. Prettily, but she insisted.
“His name,” he said at last, beads of sweat upon his brow, “is Lieutenant Harry Devlin, for all he calls himself Georges Donat now. My friend’s batman saw him and almost fainted, for he was supposed to have fallen at Waterloo. But he’s no ghost, he lives, and stays on in a garret on the northeast side of Gravel Lane, number three,” he said as her rosy lips moved soundlessly, repeating and memorizing the information. “God knows why he’s angry at Colonel Lyons, they were in different units and never served together—but there it is. And now, my dear, let me take you back to the duke’s house.”
“Not right now, thank you,” she said briskly, scooping up her belongings and signaling to her maid, “for I’ve errands, Captain, but thank you.”
And before he could argue it, she’d gone in a whisper of roses and spice.
“Jermine’s!” he shouted, raging out from the room a few moments later, hot on the trail of the proprietor, “how dare you stock such cards for your customers, sir? I thought you were a respectable fellow.”
Fuzzed cards were a terrible accusation, and the proprietor looked long and hard at the front and back of the decks before he handed them back with a superior smile. Really, the way some chaps carried on when they lost. “There’s nothing amiss, sir, that I can see,” he said.
“Nothing amiss?” the captain roared. “What do you call this pornography, nothing?” he shouted, and then quietened as he looked at the two blameless, ordinary decks he’d given the proprietor.
*
“Number three, on the northeast corner of Gravel Lane,” Francesca commanded the coachman she’d hailed, “and please don’t argue, for I do want to go there,” she said as she hurried her maid within the carriage and then seated herself. And thank you, Father, she said soundlessly, for your legacy. It might be all you ever leave me, but it will do, she thought as she gazed at the dowager’s pack she’d secured in her drawstringed reticule again. It has done, thank you. And now I must do half so well.
20
Dinner was announced and she wasn’t there. But then, she hadn’t been belowstairs for the past few hours. Arden had known that, of course. He’d felt her absence like a rebuke, and so avoided asking after her. For he dreaded the hurt, questioning look she’d give him, the mute suspicion he’d earned as she wondered why he’d suddenly locked her out of his confidences. But he could no more tell her why than he could tell her who it was who had brought him so low.
He was a coward; he acknowledged it as he made light chat with Julian and Warwick and as he jested with Roxanne and looked beyond her shoulder, watching the doorway, hoping she’d be there, hoping she’d not. And of course he’d earned a coward’s reward for it, suffering all the remorse and pain he would’ve if he’d faced her rather than hiding from her, by thinking about little else all the while.
Still, he reasoned that it wouldn’t have been any easier enduring her silent hurt, nor could he see how it would have helped her, either. When it was over, well, by then he might have found a way to tell her about her old love’s act of cowardice. Or if not then, then perhaps someday long after, when she was content and happy enough in whatever new life she found to afford to be forgiving and understanding of an old memory, and of both her old, mistaken loves. Until then, he was prepared to endure, as ever, because he had no alternative.
But there was a limit to even his endurance. Because Roxanne was here, their sherry had been taken, their dinner growing cold, and still Francesca was absent. Warwick looked oblivious, Julian chattered on, Roxanne was oblivious, and it became clear that as he was her sponsor, and as they suspected he was far more, they all thought the next move up to him. Now he began to grow more worried than guilty. This no longer looked like petulance, or even spite. It was altogether unlike her.
He sent word to her room, asking for her presence or her excuses. And the word that came back was that she wasn’t there. Or within the house. She was gone, without word, and without leaving a word behind her.
“At least her maid is gone as well,” Julian said, as Arden called for writing paper, and Warwick called for all his servants, so that they each in their different ways could begin the search.
“Oh, yes, great help a maidservant will be to a lady in the night in the heart of London,” Arden agreed, writing out his fifth hurried note, his face so grim it was as though a rock chose to speak.
“Does she know anyone else in town?” Julian asked as he paced, and hearing his own question, he grew still, as did both Arden and Warwick, and they all looked to each other.
“There’s no way she could know…” Warwick said, thinking aloud while rapidly reviewing all the leakages and boltholes in his great house. “I had this door closely watched all the while Shipp was here.”
“But it is possible that somehow Devlin got word to her,” Arden exclaimed bitterly, crushing the note he’d just begun, as though he closed his hand over the thought. “Yes. And who knows what he told her. She’s so trusting…Good God,” he vowed, “I’ll kill him twice over if he harms her.”
“Don’t be a fool, Lion,” Warwick said coldly, as Arden rose to his towering height, his eyes glittering with fury. “You’re in no condition to go coursing out into the night to do vengeance yet.”
“Oh, yes,” Arden replied as he strode to the door, “I suppose I should call in Bow Street? And after they take the information down in their occurrence books and after they take my coin, and after they nose out the street and wharf rats who’d tell me the time straightaway, and get lied to by them—why, then they’ll find her right enough…in a year or two, dead or alive, safe or defamed. Oh, yes, Warwick. Well, Duke, I leave that course to you, for I’m on my way now.”
“But not alone,” Julian spoke up. “For all your wit, dear Arden, you can’t drive a coach even when you don’t have a hole in your back. And two heads are better than one hot one, or have you forgotten our partnership along with your pistol? Or were you thinking of facing the night barehanded?”
“And were you both thinking of facing it empty-headed as well?” Warwick asked acidly. When they turned to look at him, he went on, “I applaud your zeal, and am moved to have my man fetch my hunting clothes immediately too, but first, I’d like to know just where you’re going. Even if she’s met with him, where would that be? He’d hardly ask her to his rooms. He’s in the lowest slums now, and as he’s supposed to love her, he’d scarcely let her see him there, if not for her good opinion, then if I estimate him correctly, because he’d fear the task of protecting her from his neighbors.”
“I’ve half a hundred villains to interview this night,” Arden said tersely, “but believe me, one will know her direction. Nothing happens in this great city without some of my old lads sniffing it out. London may be vast and wide, but it’s small enough for those who make their livings from such knowledge. She may be as a pebble dropped into a lake, Duke, but trust me, there are those who watch for every ripple on it. Though it takes until dawn, I will know.”
“Yes,” Warwick agreed, actually smiling, “it never does to underestimate you, Lion,” and as he tugged at a bell-pull, he added, “but tonight it does to ensure you don’t overestimate yourself. You’re immensely threatening, my friend, especially when in full roar, indeed you even terrify me now. But precisely because you do, you’re exactly what’s needed to make the fellow pull the trigger without waiting for you to turn your back this time. I thought you’d learned that size and virtue aren’t proof against bullets. I’m coming to, of course, just as soon as my man fetches my pistols, and yours.”
Rox
anne stood silent and watched the three men arm themselves and send word for their carriage, and all the while she chewed her bottom lip and thought furiously. She might have spoken when they turned to go at last, but then the front door was opened to admit a visitor.
Captain Shipp had lost weight and gained years in the few hours since the other gentlemen had seen him. Or at least it seemed he stood less tall and bent at every straight angle, although it might have been only the amount of alcohol he’d taken on that made it look so. He was wilted, and seemed even more so as he’d tried to pull himself together to face Arden.
“Col’nellyons, surr,” he slurred, and then, red-faced with the effort or the embarrassment of it, he pulled himself up a fraction higher and went on. “A ghastly thing happened after I left you. I lost a wager…withalady,” he said quickly, in the smallest voice Arden had ever heard an officer use, unless he were dying.
Arden was a man of endless patience, he’d made many friends by the hard-earned forbearance he’d been trained to, and with the agonizing patience he’d cultivated in order to exist in a world of men of slower minds and smaller size. But he was at his endurance’s end now.
“What in God’s name are you blathering on about, man?” he shouted, making the tiny Dresden shepherd and shepherdess on the edge of the Duke’s mantelpiece take tiny shaking steps forward toward their doom.
Captain Shipp grew a white face to contrast with his red cheeks, and standing stiffly at attention now, made a staccatoed report from whatever front he’d been lost upon. “The lady, your lady, Miss Carlisle. She sent word to me and met me at Jermine’s this afternoon. She…gamed with me for the information I delivered here today.”
“Well, then,” Arden sighed, turning to his friends, “there’s hope she’s not in danger yet. For it seems she’s only after knowledge, and poor lass, if she’s got her maid with her, all she’s got to lose is her money, her time, and her temper.”
“I lost,” Captain Shipp said, wincing.
When they all stared at him, and Arden did not so much as utter a word, he found the courage, for he was a much-decorated officer himself, to go on. “I lost to her, Colonel. At ecarte. I never lose at ecarte,” he babbled, as he’d done to himself as he’d armed himself with enough spirits to come here to confess, “but there was this extraordinary pack of cards, I couldn’t let her see them clear, so I couldn’t keep my mind on the game, so as to divert her—”
“Like father, like daughter?” Julian asked, frowning. “Hardly,” Arden said thoughtfully. “It seems she’s a good gamester.”
“No, Colonel,” Captain Shipp protested, “never. She’s dreadful. Threw out a jack she needed, tossed away all her royals whenever she’d got them…that’s what overset me. You ought to have seen them.” He fixed his boiled-egg eyes on Arden, desperate to make him understand through all his shame and the mists of good clear gin, as with juniper-scented breath he explained, “The cards. They were…so creative. So…unique. The royals, y’see, were at the rites of Venus,” he whispered, looking to Roxanne. “They were rogering madly…they were having at each other in incredible ways,” he moaned loudly at last, “but not so plainly as to note all at once, mind, it was all hid in the design, and I never wanted her to see. When she left, they were gone with her. But I didn’t imagine it, for I’d never seen the like of those cards, they’d have made my fortune in the Peninsula, and I’d only taken on some claret before, I never broach my second bottle until sunset…” he explained, as he’d done to himself over and again since it had happened.
And then Arden’s great grim face gave way to comprehension, and incredibly, he threw back his head and roared—with laughter.
“Good God!” he shouted to the startled captain. “She’s got hold of a dowager’s deck! The wench, the cheat, the adorable cheat,” he said to a vastly amused Julian, “and she pulled it off, too!”
“Packs of naughtiness, portable pornography,” Warwick mused. “I’ve heard of them, but never met a lady with enough dignity and desperation to use them—a rare, heady, and winning combination.” He smiled, as though congratulating Arden for Francesca’s guile, as Arden continued to chuckle.
“And so in all honor,” the captain said, unsmiling, “I had to tell her all.”
The laughter fled from Arden. “Who he is?” he asked incredulously, as the captain nodded miserably. “Where he lives now too?”
“Forgive me,” the captain said humbly.
“No need,” Arden answered absently. “You were gulled. Go home, sleep it off, and remember never to trust a female any more than you’d trust a man, and count yourself fortunate that it was only your information she was after. But she,” he told Julian and Warwick as the captain bowed and slunk off, “may yet regret that hard-won information profoundly, if we don’t make haste.”
“You don’t believe he’d harm her?” Julian asked.
“Will he, won’t he?” Arden’s face was drawn. “I won’t play that game. But he lives on Gravel Lane, a bone’s throw from Leadenhall Street and Angel’s Alley, between Whitechapel and Spitalfields, and whatever he will or will not do, I shouldn’t want her there at dawn with my cavalry unit behind her, much less alone at night. We must hurry.”
“I didn’t know!” Roxanne spoke up at last, in a high, frightened voice, causing the men to pause in the doorway and turn back to look at her. She might as well have it out now, she reasoned as she trained her great blue eyes on Julian, for sooner or later they’d wonder how Fancy got to Jermine’s even if Fancy kept her word and kept her mouth shut. And anyway, she decided, see how they admired Fancy for her derring-do, obviously a cheat in a good cause was acceptable to them. She’d think about that useful bit of knowledge later, for now she’d a clean breast to make of it before Julian found out for himself.
“I thought it all a lark,” she said in a shaking little voice. “She said it was a jest, so I told her of Jermine’s and promised to keep mum. Oh, dear, is she in any danger?”
“You knew all along,” Julian asked, amazed, “and yet listened to us wait and worry and never said a word?”
“But I gave my word,” she said, as though amazed at his question, “…of honor,” she emphasized, in case he’d forgotten the way his friend had just forgiven the errant captain for the sake of honor.
“Oh, Roxie,” Julian sighed, knowing it was too late to go into the matter of wisdom and honor with her now, as he shook his golden head for her foolishness, if not for her treachery, and left her.
Neither Arden nor Warwick chastised her either before they went, and though she counted herself lucky and saved, as she sank into a chair after they’d gone, Julian knew from his friends’ very silence that they considered her not worth their scorn—which was far worse than earning it. But then, he’d expected no less from them, or more from her.
Julian drove, Warwick sat opposite Arden, who sat lost in thought, as though his concentration would speed the coach along. But it wasn’t long before he left the reins to Julian, and the concentration to Warwick, and began to let his fears fly away, as a man must do before battle. Instead, he thought of Francesca, and the whole mad coil that had brought them to this night. He’d done everything, even to renouncing her, so as to spare her danger from his unclean past. And the gods, forever mocking him, had, of course, brought her danger from her own blameless history.
It was enough, he thought, remembering her voice, her laughter, her face and form and then her friendship that he’d have given half his life to turn to more. Enough and past it now. No man could be expected to endure more than that. He wanted her. And for all he’d wondered how he could ever let her go so as to let another man protect her, he knew now he could not. For so little as he trusted himself, he trusted no man more. She was his, for so long as he lived, she was his, he’d known that even as he’d been prepared to sacrifice his dreams for her, for her safety.
He had learned to do without a great many things in his life. But there were some things that mattered more than
his life, and she, it seemed, was chiefest among them. Now, he thought, changing his position in an attempt to ignore the pain that threatened to bore through his back into his heart to join the other ache there, he’d had enough of fear, as well as futile desire for her. That was too potent a combination. If it was possible she could want him—oversize, illegitimate oaf that he was, with so ruinous a past as he claimed—then he’d resist no longer, he’d make her his. And devil take the hindmost. For, he thought, whimsical again, since the devil was determined to take the foremost, he might as well make the most of it for himself. Then so long as he lived, she would be his in name and in actuality, and not just in his secret heart. If, he thought, sitting up the straighter, despite the pang it caused, if she lived, he must convince her of this. Because now that he was decided, he realized it was never enough to surrender; he would fight for what he wanted now, as ever.
*
Now she knew why the coachman had argued with her. But-now it was too late. The carriage halted on a street that the approaching night was kindly blurring. The buildings that leaned over the street above the coach were more like ruins that dwellings, but their filth and decay made them nothing like the marble relics of lost civilizations she’d seen pictures of, and there was little hint of any evidence of a higher civilization anywhere in the district they’d driven through.
