by Edith Layton
In fact, there was that about him that bespoke a cutting edge. There was his taut, muscled figure, and the dangerous easy grace with which he moved. And then even when he appeared to be at his ease, there was that glint of light that could flash unexpectedly from his fathom’s deep blue eyes, sometimes so brilliant that it seemed to be struck from the spark that arises from the clash of steel upon steel. No, not a very comfortable fellow, the Marquess of Severne, but not one easily forgotten either.
But his voice contradicted all that his wolfish face and form implied. If there were some instrument that could erase his countenance and form and leave only his voice remaining, one would think of velvet and deep safe places, it was so low, seductive, and smooth. But now he had no chance to exercise it. For the moments dragged on, and no one greeted him, or sought a word from him, until his host’s daughter, whose party it was, broke off from her conversation with the earnest young man and attempted conversation with her newest, most silent guest.
He looked down at her with a slight smile upon his lips as she began to speak, and it may have been more than mere courtesy, for Lady Leonora was a taking creature. No, she was rather more than that, for everyone said that she was as sweet a looker as could stare actually, and it was a constant wonder that she was still unwed. The lady had hair almost as dark as that of her guest, but there all similarities ended, for all that was spare and lupine in his aspect was lush and gentle in hers. They looked so well together, that dark couple the Marquess of Severne and the Lady Leonora, so oddly matched and yet so perfectly at odds in their appearance, that unwittingly the Honorable Miss Merriman began to frown, and Jane Turnbell closed her hand so tightly about her fan that she snapped two of its ribs.
The pair attracted even more attention when Lady Leonora brought her female companion, her cousin Miss Greyling, closer and into their conversation. For that dainty young woman was day to their night, being small and fair and flaxen-haired. Seeing the attractive trio close together, Jane Turnbell looked so ill and near to weeping that Lord Bigelow took alarm and wondered if his dear girl was going to expire before he ever got the chance to declare himself. But he needn’t have fretted on any score, for in a trice the Lady Leonora brought the conversation, and the encounter, and the brief visit of Lord Severne to her house to an abrupt ending.
It was a pity, observers were to complain later, that the viscount had done such a superior job of warding off sensation seekers, for no one was close enough to the participants to actually hear what was said. Sir Phillip had been, of course, since he had just left off speaking with Lady Leonora. But he was an earnest, honorable young man and the gossips’ despair, for wild horses couldn’t drag what he’d overheard from him. But there was no doubt when the thing was said, for everyone was observing the scene closely and it unfolded as clearly as a well-acted pantomime might have done.
They were talking, and the marquess was asked a thing by the Lady Leonora, and he answered, with a small smile. And then Miss Greyling breathed a few words, for she was a shy little creature and seldom said a great deal. And that made Severne smile again. A brief silence followed in which Lady Leonora looked uneasy and then she said something. The marquess’s smile faded, and he looked at her sharply. She seemed unaware and then slowly aware of something wrong, since Miss Greyling turned a delicate but distinct shade of pink and fell to inspecting her fingertips. Lady Leonora’s gloved hand flew to her lips and she looked aghast. She said something else, while shaking her head in denial. And then the marquess forced a smile that nevertheless looked rather grim, said a few more words over the lady’s continued protests, and then, bowing, he took his leave of the pair, and then his host, and then the house.
“Not that I’m complaining, my dear,” the Duke of Torquay murmured as his coach started up and his passenger sat back in his seat, “for you’re something in the way of being our savior tonight, if you’ll forgive the heresy. When we saw you reaching for freedom, we other prisoners took heart and made our break as well. The last I saw of Cyril, he was whistling down the avenue like a schoolboy skipping classes, and Sinjun was on his horse and down the street like a streak, for he’s newly wed and quite naturally eager to be back in his bride’s embrace. The only thing powerful enough to have drawn him forth tonight would have been Gabriel’s trump or Talwin’s summons.”
When his companion gave no answer, the duke went on imperturbably, “I’m glad, actually, that Sinjun hasn’t got to do any more havey-cavey business. He’s risked his neck enough abroad, it’s only right that he should act as advisor now he’s settling down. Cyril has no ties so he’s happy enough to waltz off to the Continent in his stead. I’m far too old, and far too far under the cat’s foot to don my cloak and slip my dagger into my pocket. And my duchess would use that instrument on me if she thought I was about to risk so much as one of my lovely long eyelashes, even in the service of my country.”
“Ah,” commented the marquess from his corner of the darkened carriage, “you have my sympathies, Jason, you truly do.”
“Thank you,” the duke said, with the merest hint of laughter in his voice, before he went on laconically, “And so I am happy enough to simply evaluate information as you other retired agents do, and will be pleased to continue to until Bonaparte’s fate is sealed ... For pity’s sake, Joss, what in God’s name did the wench say to you?” he appealed suddenly in livelier tones. “I’ve been sitting here and chatting as though I couldn’t care a rap, and all the while restraining myself from leaping up and throttling it out of you! How do you expect me to go home and face Regina without knowing what happened under my very nose tonight? It’ll be all over town by tomorrow and though we’re rustics, she and I, we do draw breath, you know. Out with it.”
“The lady,” the marquess answered in thoughtful tones, “has been pursuing me, it seems.”
“A novelty for you, no doubt,” the duke said dryly.
“Well, yes,” the marquess responded musingly, “for she is a lady, you see. Still, for the past two weeks or so, since she arrived in Town, I’ve been running into her and her shy pretty little companion quite by accident in the oddest places: bookshops, street corners, and the like. I’ve begun to develop a rather outsize caution of the outdoors.”
“Poor Joss,” the duke sympathized, “I know just what you mean. What’s London coming to these days when a fellow can’t stroll the streets without fear of some exquisite young female accosting him?”
“Not some young female, Jason. Talwin’s daughter,” the marquess answered. And to the thoughtful silence which followed, he added, “I met her years ago, when she first came on the Town and was well on her way to ruining herself. I saved her one night then, I think, from making a fool of herself, or worse. I can do no less for her, for her father’s sake at least, now.”
“And her interest in you is so disastrous?” the duke asked mildly.
“Why, yes,” his passenger replied, “because I fear she hasn’t changed much at all. She must still be wild as bedamned and dead set on making a sensation. For she doesn’t know me at all really, and that means that there’s only one thing about me that interests her. One large and pertinent thing.”
“Braggart.” The duke laughed. “Have you no shame, if no modesty?”
“And that one thing,” the marquess went on in his soft, rich voice, “is precisely what she let slip tonight when she sweetly asked me why I seemed so—” and here he raised his voice a treble note and mimicked in mocking falsetto tones—“ ‘... divorced from the company ... ah no, d-d-d-detached, that is to say, my lord ... Oh lord, forgive me, for I never meant to say that at all.’ ”
“ ‘Oh lord,’ indeed,” groaned the duke.
“Yes. It’s not delightful, you know, to be valued for the one thing that you least value. The one thing that you can do nothing about. The one thing that is, like it or no, such a rarity that it is become your most outstanding characteristic,” the marquess said in tones that were not so much saddened as resigned.
“I meant my divorce.” The marquess sighed.
“I know,” his companion said seriously for once, “I was only attempting to lighten the subject.”
“I know,” the marquess replied; “consider it lightened.”
“And as to the lady ... ?” the duke asked in an off-hand manner.
“Why, since I refuse to oblige her, I suppose I’ll just have to wait it out until she becomes interested in some other chap’s outstanding characteristic,” the marquess said, his teeth showing white in his smile even in the dim light.
The duke chuckled, and then after a pause in which they were absolutely silent, they both began to chortle, and then they burst into laughter together just like the lads the lady’s father had named them. And their relieved laughter hung in the soft night air even after their carriage had rolled off into the April night.
TWO
The fair-haired young woman lowered her hand from the door and let her arm fall to her side in a sad little gesture of defeat Although she uttered no sound, her whole countenance was so abject that the whisper of her light blue skirts as she backed away from the closed door was as an involuntary sigh. She had just turned and begun to walk away down the long carpeted hall when the door she had approached swung wide and a lowered voice called excitedly,
“Annabelle! Belle! The very one I was hoping to see. Oh Belle, you have no idea how I’ve wished you would come. Come in, please do. And quickly.”
As Annabelle turned and came into the room, the dark-haired young woman who had summoned her made rapid little gestures with her hands, signifying stealth and speed. Once the blond young woman entered the room as she had been bade, the other closed the door quickly behind her and then rested her body against it as though to hold it even more securely shut.
“Good lord! Belle, you can have no idea of how desperate I was,” she breathed. “I couldn’t send word through the servants, for then the fact that I was up and about would have gotten to my father. I know that I’m to have a peal rung over me, believe me I’m aware I deserve it. I’m not trying to evade that, but I wanted to have some time to myself before I entered the dock. I’m that embarrassed. I pretended I was still asleep when Katie came in with my chocolate, but dressed as soon as she had left. Then I waited and waited for you to appear. I was going to slip out and creep to your rooms on my hands and knees if I had to.”
“I was here an hour ago, cousin,” Annabelle said in her soft voice, not reproachfully but rather with a sort of sad surprise. “I supposed you were still asleep.”
“It’s probably because you scratched at the door, didn’t you?” her cousin accused. At the smaller girl’s weak shrug and downcast eyes, she went on with a note of exasperation, “Good heavens, Belle, how many times must I tell you? You’re not some sort of lower servant. Knock upon my door, kick and bang it if you must. But a weak little scratch and a whispery little ‘Leonora’ won’t get you anywhere. And I wasn’t sleeping,” she said on a gusty sigh, “for I couldn’t all the night. Good lord, Belle, how old do I have to grow before I stop making such a clunch of myself?” she asked with such a note of sincere misery that her cousin’s pale brows went up in alarm.
“Here I am at three and twenty,” railed the dark-haired lady as she left the door and paced across her room, “and still committing social errors so ghastly that I stand apart and watch myself as though I were seeing some other person—at some other person hell-bent on destroying myself at that—take over my body. And now still hiding from Papa as though I were a guilty toddler because of it! Oh, Belle,” she cried wildly as she sank to sit on the edge of her bed and stared at her cousin, “shall I never grow up?” Since it was an unanswerable question, Lady Leonora did not wait for a reply, but only went on to say feelingly, “What a dreadful thing to have done. And to such a man as Severne, as well! I don’t see eye to eye with Papa on many things, as you well know, but in this case I shouldn’t blame him in the least if he shipped me off home this very day. It would put paid to all our plans, but I don’t think I’d blame him in the least. No, and if he shouted the house down over my head before I left as well, I shouldn’t blame him either.”
As the lady sat and hung her dark head as though the thoughts it contained made it too heavy for her to hold erect, her cousin said in puzzled tones, “But cousin, it’s nothing like that, I assure you. I went down to breakfast this morning. And your papa came in when I was halfway done. He asked after you, and your mama said you were still abed. She did say that she thought you might be avoiding him,” Annabelle added consideringly, “but he said nothing further until your mama asked if he knew what you had said to Lord Severne, and if he was very angry at you for it.”
“And ...?” Lady Leonora prodded, some life and animation coming into her eyes.
“And,” Annabelle said calmly, “he said he hadn’t the slightest idea, nor did it matter. ‘For it’s only more of the same,’ he said, ‘and only what I’ve come to expect from her. And Severne is a grown man,’ he said, ‘and well used to slings and arrows.’ Then he left for the day, for his club, he said.”
“Ah,” Lady Leonora breathed, as all energy and color fled from her face, “but that is even worse.”
She sat with her eyes closed a moment and then opened them and met her cousin’s wide blue and uncomprehending stare. “It would have been better to have been scolded,” she explained softly. “Even a sound thrashing would feel better, I think, than that cold disappointed resignation of his does. But you don’t understand, do you Belle? I suppose it’s because you lost your father so young. And I, on the other hand, lost mine so late. No, don’t look so shocked. I know he still lives, silly, and a long life I wish to him, too. But I lost him long ago, you see. No, you don’t.” The lady sighed. “Well, no matter.”
She rose and seemed to give herself a little shake, and then turned a singularly gentle smile upon her cousin.
“The light blue frock,” she commented in a brighter tone, and with evident approval as she inspected the other girl as she too stood up. “Now if you go and get your figured rose wrap, the new one we picked out at the Pantheon Bazaar last week, and your biscuit-colored bonnet with the rosebuds on it, you’ll do very nicely. Then we’ll go off to the booksellers, and have a long stroll while we’re about it, so that we may meet up with some of the young gentlemen you were too unsure to say boo to last night. We shall make a social success of you yet, my fair and timid lady. And then,” she added with a wry grin, as much to her cousin as to her herself, “I can go home and live content, with no one to scandalize but the geese.”
“But you haven’t had your breakfast,” Annabelle protested as her relative ordered her to the door.
“No,” Lady Leonora said as she shooed her cousin off down the hall to her own room, “but then, I don’t deserve one.”
As she watched Annabelle obediently leave to fetch her wrap and bonnet from her room, which Mama had insisted on being located in that netherland somewhere between the servants’ quarters and the best guest rooms, Lady Leonora sighed again. It had been useless to argue that Annabelle ought to have accommodations as fine as her own, for Mama had steadfastly insisted that impoverished distant cousins do not belong in, or feel comfortable when being accommodated in, lavishly appointed bedchambers. But then, Leonora thought as she turned to go back to her own bedchamber to await Annabelle, Mama did not understand that the only reason her daughter had agreed to return to London after all this while was so that she might see to that same impoverished distant relative’s future.
She had been happy enough, she thought, as she went to her wardrobe to get out her own wrap, to live quietly in the peace of the countryside and watch the seasons turn and listen to her birthdays tick away. Not “happy” precisely, she frowned now to herself, for she was a stickler for honesty, even when only arguing with herself, but content No, not that either exactly, she thought, but living on all those acres in
the North, so far from London and society and past shame, had numbed her nicely.
There was society in the countryside, of course, but not precisely suitable for young, wealthy, nubile noblewomen. And so of course, rather than going to London again, she was resigned—yes, she smiled to herself, there was the exact word, “resigned”—to stay at home and wait until she was old enough to properly sink into the local whirl of matrons’ teas, church bazaars, and charity work without a ripple.
There were gentlemen in the North too, of course. But if she’d refused to have any of the most eligible partis from the cream of ton society when she’d had the chance, the best of a few remaining bachelors of the proper age that her small district had to offer weren’t likely to make her long for wedded bliss. Especially since she spent a great deal of time avoiding them, as well. No, attracting the gentlemen, wherever she happened to be, had never been the problem. Or rather, it had always been a problem in itself.
The fact was that she always had difficulty with the way she interested gentlemen since she’d come of age. Although she knew it wasn’t fair, it always annoyed her when a male immediately responded to her looks. Then too, she knew, to her sorrow, that her physical appearance often dissuaded other females from befriending her, even if her reputation did not But just as she often felt that she stepped outside herself to watch in horror whenever she committed some social suicide, as she had last night, she always felt as though her physical person belonged to some other female. And one, moreover, that she did not care for at all. It wasn’t surprising that she was not the greatest admirer of her own style.
Her hair was dark, and that was the fashion this season. But it wasn’t black as a daw’s wing such as the Incomparable Miss Merriman boasted. It was only very dark brown, so dark as to appear to be made of smoke when she brushed it out at night It didn’t curl riotously as Caro Lamb’s did, though, but rather it lay smoothly until it came to the end of its length, and then it tended to spring up in frothy waves, as though it regretted its earlier sobriety.
