by Edith Layton
“And she will not wait for you? Then she’s hardly worth having, is she?” Warwick said dismissively, though he remained watchful.
“She would wait, I know she’d wait till Judgment Day, and I know she’ll be thrilled when I tell her of my new prospects. But it’s not her, it’s her brother, he’s the one who wants her to wed high and wealthily. They’ve no parents, he has complete control of her future. Even when it seemed I had all, it didn’t seem to be enough for him,” he said in frustration, his light eyes glowing with suppressed anger. “He’s kept her single two full Seasons, although she’s had spectacular offers for her hand, I suppose waiting for the most spectacular one of all before he lets her go.”
“Come, Julian, with your face and fatal attraction to her sex, don’t tell me you can’t get her to fly in her brother’s face and fly with you?” Warwick smiled.
“No,” the viscount said softly, proudly, “for she, you see, is a lady.”
“Oh, Julian,” his friend laughed outright, “haven’t you learned, with all your experience? Real life is not an Arthurian romance. There’s not that much difference between ladies and serving wenches as all that. No, even I, who am a gnome to your Adonis, have learned that it’s the highest and the lowest who are most willing to kick over their traces and come to a fellow’s bed, whatever society says. The highest, because they believe they can do no wrong; the lowest, because they don’t care if they do. It’s only the poor little ones in the middle, of the bourgeoisie, the kind you’re not likely to meet in any event—very like my merchant friend’s shy sister, who must ask her brother to ask his friend to ask after a gentleman she fancies—who are afraid. They’re the only ones who’ll never come ringless to your bed.”
As he was chuckling at his own jest, he didn’t see the viscount’s expression until he spoke, and then that cut off his laughter abruptly.
“Lady Moredon is not like that,” the viscount said angrily, lifting his chin, his nostrils flaring. “She is a lady in every sense of the word. I don’t think you should even discuss her, Warwick, for I don’t believe you’ve ever met her like.”
“Lady Moredon?” Warwick said immediately, all traces of amusement vanished, ignoring the insult, even if he credited it. “Are you mad? Lady Marianna Moredon? Lord Robert’s sister? Good God, what are you thinking of? He’s a very bad man. And she’s an Incomparable. With twice a fortune, he’d never consent to your suit, he never liked you. Don’t you recall? He was four forms above us in school and never tolerated anyone who wouldn’t bend to his every idiot whim. He’s both greedy and pompous. Actually, I’ve always thought him very like the pink pig he resembles, and he’s as dangerous as a wild boar at that, for he’s no sense of humor, or honor, or humanity.
“Yet,” he added, calming, “I suppose it’s as well that she’s caught your interest, for it’s a safe-enough passion. But, Julian, not for a hot-blooded fellow like you, since it’s bound to be tame as the love for a lady in a picture book. For you’ll never get near her, you know.”
“But I do and I have,” the viscount answered quietly, taking up his friend’s abandoned tankard. “She writes to me, and she meets with me when she can. But only that,” he said at once, with a warning flash in his eyes, the tankard held steady at his lips, “for, as I said, she is a lady.”
“Julian, I’m quite sincere, be careful,” his friend said in deadly serious tones, his thin brows lowered over worried eyes.
“But of course,” the blond gentleman said, taking a large swallow of punch before adding with a small smile, “I can be little else, can I?”
“Aye, there’s that,” Warwick replied, the tension of the moment gone. “Now then, since you’ve stolen my tankard of scent, do you think we can get your, ah, diversion to bring me something decent, like a lovely glass brimming with ginever and lemons? Then we can talk of more pleasant things, and lie a great deal to each other and ourselves and make a delightful night of it, after all.”
The two gentlemen passed the night talking and drinking and toasting each other and all their memories and most of their future plans as the other private dining rooms were abandoned and the patrons of the common taproom began to wander off to their separate rooms or cubbies. They raised a toast to absent friends and present enemies, and laughed a great deal as the inn settled down to stillness, and would have remained there, doing so until the dawn, until they noted the fact that Nan refused to bring them any more tankards of anything but coffee.
“Protecting her interests,” Warwick grumbled. “Remind me not to drink with a serving wench’s lover again. I only got enough to keep me from freezing to death tonight simply because she wanted to ensure getting enough to keep her warm as well.”
“Alas, poor Warwick,” his companion said, causing his friend to grin despite himself at their oldest jest. “My sympathies,” he went on as they finally left the parlor to part for the night, “but you’ve such a hard head, she’d have to serve you for a week before you’d have had enough to notice.”
“Poor lass, how selfish of me, when she was all atwitter to serve you. Good night, my friend,” Warwick said, shaking hands as he took the first stair to his room. “I’m bound for London at dawn, so doubtless I’ll see you then, if, that is, she allows you to rise for anything but her own purposes.”
And on a laugh, they said good night.
Late as it was, they were not the last to retire. For once the hallway was clear and the inn was quiet, Mr. Charles Logan deemed it safe to lead his sister to her rooms after their long night of discussion and decision. He was tired, but pleased, because after an evening of cajolery and argument she’d consented, at last, to go to London for the season. Although, he thought, once he’d left her to her yawning maid, all that had been for the form of it, solely for the sake of face, because he’d known what her decision would be moments after he’d reentered their parlor much earlier in the night. All discussion had been unnecessary, he thought on a contented chuckle as he entered his own room, from the moment he’d given her his news.
For, yes, he’d reported, the coachman was a true nobleman, and the poor lad was down on his luck through no fault of his own, and being as noble in nature as he’d been in birth, he was attempting to better his fortunes by any sort of work he could turn his hand to. And he wasn’t a bit of a snob, for wasn’t his best friend, his old school friend, a mere “Mr. Jones”? And wasn’t Mr. Warwick Jones her own brother’s good friend? And wasn’t that gentleman pleased to know of his interest in his unlucky friend, almost as glad as he was to hear that Mr. Logan had a lovely unwed young sister to introduce him to in London? Well, perhaps his news had not actually been the “news,” Mr. Logan corrected himself, but what was needful to tell her. And most of all, he decided, as a good businessman should, what was right to tell her. Because, he thought happily as he settled down to sleep, hadn’t it made her say yes?
*
Mr. Warwick Jones was a little concerned as he opened the door to his room, not castaway, nor reeling, for he never got quite that inebriated; he was merely a little blurred and a bit less serious than usual. He didn’t feel the chill of the room quite so much when he removed his shirt, and as he approached his bed it might have been that he didn’t regret booking a separate room for the young woman he’d brought with him, even though he usually enjoyed having a bit of company in a strange bed in a strange inn. Because, he reasoned, as best he could under the circumstances of several glasses of ginever, after an arduous night the young woman had nevertheless woken him this very morning in the most extraordinary fashion, and enough, he decided prudently, as he removed his breeches, was sufficient.
So he was somewhat less than delighted when he turned back his covers and heard a light giggle.
“I thought you’d never come to bed,” she said, reaching up for him. “I was so lonely,” she pouted.
“Charlotte, my sweet,” he sighed, “you flatter me.”
“No,” she laughed, “it’s Jennie, your sweet. Charlotte got
tired of waiting and went back to her own room. I saw her leave, that’s when I came.”
Sitting up, he could just see, in the dimness, that there was a great deal more young woman in his bed than there had been the previous night, and that the hair, on her head at least, was red, not blond.
“Nothing could wake the baron,” she said piteously, twining her arms about his neck and pulling his head down to her, “and I got so lonely.”
The baron, he thought a few moments later, must be dead, poor man.
When at last, sometime later, he had persuaded her to go back to the baron’s bed, or bier, to the tune of his insincere insistences that she must, to spare poor Charlotte’s feelings and the baron’s as well, if he still lived, and her fears of a fall from favor softened by the nice cushion of bills he pressed upon her, only as a gift, he claimed, as he knew he was expected to, he lay back and waited for his head to clear, or sleep to come. What he did not expect was another human visitor.
After the door closed as softly as it had opened, he felt a slight weight land on his bed, and a cool hand on his person, and he sighed, but not with the pleasure she’d hoped, and then he laughed, though not from the delight she’d envisioned.
“Charlotte,” he said, brimming with secret mirth, “I thank you, sweet, how considerate of you, but you see, I’ve imbibed so much and it’s so late, I’m afraid I simply can’t oblige you tonight. Really, my dear, you’re as charming and lovely as ever you were last night, but there is a limit.”
Or so he’d thought there was. But then he remembered, when he was able, that she’d said her last steady gentleman patron had been over seventy years of age, and so he supposed it had not so much to do with his prowess as her extraordinary knowledge of anatomy. She might have been a wonderful surgeon, he thought, when he could. But since thinking was never a thing he encouraged in himself at such times, he left off, and as she was remarkably adept, she went on.
It was only after she too had gone, and he was at last alone with his thoughts, that he permitted himself to consider how he’d passed the last of his night. It had been interesting, at the least, different, he rationalized as he settled himself for sleep. The young women had been, for all that he couldn’t say he’d known them in any but the biblical sense, very different too. One tasted of cool wine, the other of warm meats; one had the scent of musk about her, the other of gardenias; one had breasts so large he could scarcely encompass one in his hand, the other had scant pointed ones that fit into his palms like the noses of small burrowing animals. One had been quiescent, lying on the bed like a large pillow, only shifting to accommodate him, the other had been an acrobat. One had only moaned and gasped to encourage him, the other kept whispering, murmuring profanities until they were done. And the worst part of it, he thought suddenly, coming half-awake in disquiet, was that even now, only moments later, he couldn’t remember precisely which of them had done what.
So the last thought which came to him at the border of consciousness, when dawn slurred the sky with grainy light, had nothing to do with satisfaction and satiation. It had to do instead with a real sorrow and profound distaste for his easily gotten and forgotten pleasures of the night. It nagged at him, burning beneath the pleasant exhaustion he’d worked so hard for. So as always, by training, he doused the discontent quickly, by drowning it entirely in sleep.
*
The Viscount Hazelton had not been given a room, there was no point in it, for the innkeeper knew that the coachman always took the same one. There was never any profit in it either, since he always shared it with Nan, and she always refused any payment in coin. She asked for little else either, since she was no fool and knew there could be little else between a gentleman such as he, however reduced in circumstance, and such as herself. She only asked for his attentions, and those he was always willing to give her.
She must be tired this night, Julian thought, what with the Swan having been filled to the rafters and the hour being so advanced. But when he came into her bed she came into his arms without hesitation and without a word, so she must have been waiting awake for him despite the hour. She showed him no weariness, and when she smiled at him he saw nothing but eagerness. She’d kept candles burning at the bedside, and as always, when he moved to snuff them before he moved more boldly to her, she said only the once, “No,” and reached for him again, saying, “Yes, like that, please.”
He shut his eyes at the height of his lovemaking, and so never knew that she always kept hers open wide, with the candles to aid her, for she loved the look of him and had to show herself again and again that it was him, truly him, this beautiful, golden young man, that was with her in reality in her bed, upon her body. It was as well. That knowledge alone of all the things she might have said or done might have kept him from her bed. For he believed their relationship merely a diversion for them both.
When the candles had guttered down to fitful flashes of light and he at last settled down at her side to sleep, his eyes were half-closed as he brushed his lips against her tangled hair and whispered contentedly, “Ah, you’re just the sort of girl I like most, Nan.”
“And just what sort is that?” she asked easily, saucily, refusing to give him an idea of how she hoarded up his words.
“Why, the available sort,” he said on a warm chuckle.
And since it was a jest and he’d meant it as one, she chuckled too, and feeling her laughter shake her breast beneath his ear, he became interested again and bent his head and put his lips to her again. And thus it might have been that he never noted her fleeting expression of pain at hearing his words, since it so quickly turned into a grimace of pleasure at experiencing his touch, as always.
*
It was difficult for a great many of the guests at the Swan to sleep that night, no matter how pleasing their accommodations, for not only were many of them otherwise occupied, many more were unused to staying at an inn, or sleeping in any but their accustomed beds. But that wasn’t why Miss Susannah Logan lay awake. She couldn’t sleep this night because of the sheer excitement of thinking about her tomorrows.
She didn’t wish to disturb her maid, snoring gently at her side in a pulled-out trundle bed, so instead of thrashing and punching her pillow, demanding impossible rest, she sat bolt upright and waited for the dawn.
She sat in her high chamber, in her white nightdress, her long fair hair let down to her waist, exactly like the princess in the tower, and dared at last to dream with her eyes wide open, of London. Of London, and all the fine gentlemen and noblemen that she’d so often read and heard about, the ones she’d been trained up for and then locked away from, the ones her brother had promised she would now actually meet. The first of those she’d already seen had decided her on her future course, and now their names and faces spun in her mind, keeping her wakeful weaving wonderful stories about gentlemen such as the beautiful Viscount Hazelton, the elegant Mr. Warwick Jones—all the cultivated gentlemen with their cultured voices, handsome faces, and high morals and manners.
4
It was scarcely past true dawn, but the courtyard of the Swan was swarming with activity. Curiously, with all the bustle, there was very little chatter. This wasn’t due only to the bleary state of most of the guests who spilled, blinking, from the inn into the daylight. It was because most of them found the sight of the bright morning lowering, if not actually embarrassing. The temperature had come up with the new day, and now there wasn’t a trace to be seen of the hazardous ice that had caused them to be stranded in the night, not a thing left to show there’d ever been any good or sufficient reason for any courageous person to have halted a journey the previous day.
There remained only a thin glaze covering sodden slush, and that transparent skin crackled underfoot before it joined the rest and rapidly dissolved. But even without spectacular evidence, the guests would have been abashed, for as always when the world returns to normalcy after a disaster, the fears and secret terrors experienced at the height of the emergency seem
foolish and overblown in the calm light of a normal day. And it was such an ordinary breezy, early-spring sort of morning that now everyone remembered his place, the coachmen began to take over the world again, and the world shifted back into its real and mundane focus.
Even the elegant gentleman who’d come to the courtyard in his shirtsleeves to see the Thunder off had little to say to the golden-haired coachman who sat on his high box and prepared to set the distinctively painted gold-and-yellow coach into motion. He only handed a card up to the fellow, and said, a smile playing on his lips, “Here is my direction, in case you’ve forgotten. And if you’ve forgotten, I believe you’ll have to forget our friendship as well. For I expect to see you soon, Julian, if not sooner than that.”
“Oh, aye, Warwick,” the coachman said, giving one gloved hand down to the gentleman before he said easily, “Now, go back to the inn before you contract a pneumonia, it’s not your funeral that I expect to see in London.”
But the gentleman disregarded the coachman’s orders. He stepped back to watch the Thunder fill, seemingly oblivious of the cool wind that snapped at his shirt to send it billowing out from his lean form like a sail and scattering his soft hair into even more casual fashionable disarray than his barber had done.
