by Edith Layton
When the gentleman didn’t betray any emotion, save for a faint cool impatience, evinced by a bored look which he allowed to come into his shadowed eyes, his host grinned the wider and nodded appreciatively.
“Here we have a true gentleman, Sally,” he commented to the girl again. “Mark him well, you’re not likely to see his like around here again. He won’t oblige me with a shudder, not if I threaten him with hot tongs. I wonder what it would take?” he mused. “Well then, how do you do, Mr. Jones?” He smiled. “Yes, I’m Lion himself, there’s nothing that goes on in this ken that I don’t know about, or profit from, I hope. So what can I do for you tonight?”
“It used to be Bawdy Jack who ran Seven Dials in my time,” Warwick said thoughtfully, “but then I understand he took to dancing. He became quite enamored, I believe, of the gallows trot, as did my own ancestor. Then they said it was Billy Bedamned who had the running of the place, until, that is, the night that a runner stopped him for questioning, unhappily enough, forever, and with a pistol. And then they said it was Sam Quirt, until Jimmy Leech decided it was time to take the reins and Sam found himself swimming in the Thames, to his great distress, since he didn’t know how to, and could scarcely learn with his arms and legs tied so securely behind him. And now it is you. How pleased I am to meet you then,” Warwick said, without a trace of pleasure in his cool voice, as he met his host’s now narrowed gaze, “and delighted to find I’m still able to ask you about recent events.
“I’d like to know who paid two ruffians to instruct my friend Viscount Hazelton in courtship methods last night, before they attempted to remove his handsome face entirely. It seemed a rather rigorous lesson. In my day,” he added, “such things were accomplished with more grace.”
The large man remained silent, studying the slender young gentleman who stood poised before him. Then he threw back his head and roared like his namesake.
“Good God, I like you, Jones,” he laughed. “Indeed, I do. No wonder they let you run tame about here, where they have a gentleman for breakfast, and pick their teeth with his bootlaces. Such audacity! I’ve only seen broadsheets about your ancestor, but you do have the look of him, he must have been such a jolly rogue. Here then, my friend, pleased to know you,” he said, leaning forward to extend a hand, “and have a seat, will you?”
“Ah, thank you, but not yet,” Warwick replied with some reserve, not moving at all as the man’s smile and hand both slowly slipped downward, “for I’d hate to befriend a man that I must then call enemy.”
“And how could that happen?” his host asked with such gentleness that the girl seated near him squirmed, and the two guards at the door suddenly straightened.
“Easily enough,” Warwick replied steadily, “if you were to say you’d allow such a thing to happen again. For I’ve learned of the gentleman who engaged you, and plan to take action against him. But I’d like to make it clear that I wouldn’t appreciate your running his errands again, before I do. You see, I intend to handle the matter man to man, and I’d hoped to prevail upon you to let it remain a matter between gentlemen, finally settled in that time-honored one-to-one fashion.”
“Gentlemen?” the other man said bitterly. “I’m very glad then that I’m not of your number, Mr. Jones. If I’d a score to settle, I wouldn’t hire two fellows to get my man down and then proceed to try to kick his face in. No, and I, who am about as far from a gentleman as you can get, wouldn’t allow it last night, either. I stopped Lord Moredon, because I suppose I wasn’t gentlemanly enough to let him get on with it. I’d do almost anything for money, and have done, as a matter of fact, but there’s nothing I’d ever do, or permit my people to do, for that ‘gentleman’ again, for any sum.”
“Then we’re speaking the same language,” Warwick said, putting out his hand, “and it’s you that I have to thank for saving my friend’s life.”
“Not his life,” the other man said, grinning again, “only his pretty face, but then, it’d be the same thing, wouldn’t it? Jealousy aside, even a fellow with a phiz like mine can understand a man would hate to lose his looks so young, especially when they’re so prodigious wonderful.”
“And especially when they’re all he’s got left,” Warwick agreed, still holding his hand out. “Thank you, ah, Lion.”
“Stephen Patrick Francis O’Brien,” the other man said, finally taking his hand in his huge clasp, “and is that all you’ll ask of me?”
“All,” Warwick agreed. “I’ll take care of the rest myself.”
“Mr. Jones,” the other man said, regarding his visitor solemnly, “take very great care. I happened along last night because there was something in the man’s manner when he made the arrangement that alerted those he’d struck the bargain with. They’re cautious when dealing with the upper classes, and so, wisely, alerted me. It was a good job they did. You didn’t see Lord Moredon’s eyes last night. I did. There was more than hatred for your handsome friend there, there was perhaps a bit for himself and how he couldn’t help feeling about the young Adonis.”
“Ah, thank you,” Warwick said on a nod. “It’s much as I’ve always suspected. But I scarcely think I have to worry. I am not, in case you hadn’t remarked it, precisely a ‘young Adonis.’”
“No, you’re more in the style of a Medici prince, aren’t you?” the other man remarked on a smile made the wider for the fact that he’d finally surprised his elegant visitor into raising one brow in astonishment. “Ah yes, the dear fathers were kind to an orphan boy; there’s an education I had to overcome to get the position here. So I’ve some learned advice for you. You’ve successfully bearded me in my den, to state the obvious obviously,” he said on a wry grin, “but then, though I don’t style myself a gentleman, I’m pleased to think I’m a reasonable man. But do have a care for that particular gentleman, Mr. Jones, he’s no manners at all, and you’re the amazing pretty viscount’s best friend. And I won’t be there to help you.”
“It won’t be necessary, but thank you for your kind thoughts anyway,” Warwick said sincerely, “so if I may, a word of caution for you as well? You’re too wise for the position, Mr. O’Brien. I heard an explorer speak here in town one day,” he went on as the gentleman looked at him curiously. “He’d come from the Ivory Coast to talk about his discoveries. He said that the fiercest creatures in the jungle are not the brave, bighearted ones, like the mighty lion, but rather the small, mindless droves of tiny ants, which together can fell the noblest of beasts. Take care yourself, Mr. O’Brien.”
After leaving the giant king of thieves shaking his head in amusement, and the two guards at the door in confused thought, Warwick followed the shifty man who materialized at his side again when he’d left the room. He was led down the stair, out the door, and then left alone again in the night.
Mr. Warwick Jones went directly to his town house, and then straightaway to his bed. He slept soundly, and woke with the dawn. Then he washed and dressed with enough care to gratify his valet, visited with his friend Julian long enough to argue him into taking his medicine, drank only coffee to break his fast, thus nearly breaking his cook’s heart, and then left his town house quickly again. He’d done everything with precision. In fact, everything this bright spring morning had gone according to his preconceived plan, and so he’d no way of knowing that an unexpected event was occurring even as he drove away from his door.
For his own light phaeton had driven right past Mr. Logan and his sister as they approached his house in their carriage, and being so distracted by his own thoughts, he didn’t see his business acquaintance frantically trying to wave to direct his attention to them.
“No matter,” Mr. Logan said, pulling his head and shoulders back in from the carriage window and sinking back into his seat. “We’ll see him when he returns. But, devil take it, Sukey, what sort of thing did they teach you at the Spring academy? You pinched me so hard,” he complained, rubbing his arm, “that I don’t wonder if Miss Spring didn’t get Gentleman Jackson to instruct you
girls in self-defense.”
“I couldn’t have you shouting out the window, Charlie,” his sister said unrepentantly. “Bad enough you’ve landed me on the poor man so soon. If you started screeching my name out the window, we’d both have been embarrassed to death.”
“Ah,” Mr. Logan said contentedly, gazing at his sister, an eye-filling vision in blond lace this morning, “nothing about you would embarrass any man, Sukey, though it’s very likely you’ll be the death of several.”
Susannah sighed, and made a face she was sure would turn cream, but it only made her brother grin.
*
It was the life of only one man that interested Warwick Jones at that same moment. It was a subject which engaged his interest entirely all morning, although anyone who might have watched him throughout that morning might never have guessed it. For the young gentleman seemed only to be amusing himself as so many of his contemporaries might do. He rode slowly through Green Park, he visited Manton’s shooting gallery, he stopped in at a few clubs, he dropped by Gentleman Jackson’s salon to watch a few young men of quality spar with each other under the famous retired prizefighter’s expert instruction. Only someone who knew him well, and that would have been a rare person, would have known how odd his behavior was. For Warwick Jones never did that which all young gentlemen of leisure did, unless he had a reason. It was almost noon when he at last found that reason, in the midst of a clot of other men at Gentleman Jackson’s establishment.
Lord Robert Moredon was an impressive gentleman. He was tall, but seemed taller still from the way he held his square shoulders high, and his proudly carried noble head showed even features and a healthy pink complexion. He and his sister were acknowledged to make a charming pair, for she was dark as his mama had been, and he as fair and light-skinned as their late papa. Lord Moredon was as regular a sight in London in the Season as his beautiful sister was. But he was an adornment at society parties as well as at the Cyprian Ball where no lady ever set slipper, a frequent dance partner to the latest ton beauties, as well as a frequent patron of Madame Felice and Mother Carey’s less correct but no less popular and exquisite employees. Unwed as yet, he also often had some gaudy creature in his keeping, oftener still, one that many another gentleman envied him for. But he seldom kept any female very long, and though he had a dozen best acquaintances, he was known to have no one friend. He had little patience with his inferiors, and it was apparent that he found their number legion. But then, he was a popular, perfect ornament of society, and so not at all exceptional in any way.
Mr. Warwick Jones, however, stood and gazed so long and hard at the gentleman that it seemed he found him a rare and exotic object. His unblinking stare had such force that some few of the men surrounding Lord Moredon found themselves stepping back from him, as though that unrelenting gaze had heat as well as intensity, and they wished to remove themselves from its path to ensure that they weren’t the object of that pitiless gaze. At length, even Lord Moredon, who seldom noticed anyone he had not specifically summoned, noted Mr. Jones. He looked up from a tale of an obliging wench he’d been regaling his comrades with, to meet a direct pair of dark blue eyes that he pretended he had difficulty recognizing at first.
“I say, Jones,” he laughed after a moment, “what ails you? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost. Or is there some insect crawling on my vest? Devil take the fellow,” he whispered sotto voce to some man at his side, “damned insolent the way he keeps staring.”
“Oh, no,” Mr. Jones said languidly, his voice so at odds with his expression that several gentlemen moved still further away from Lord Moredon. “No, there you’re out, Moredon. I may be looking at a phantom, albeit perhaps a few moments prematurely, but I know I’m looking at an insect.”
A silence came over the group of gentlemen at that, as each digested the slender young man’s words, and then drew in their breath in excitement, not wishing to make a sound or miss a thing, realizing they were witnessing something shocking, and certainly something worth talking about later.
“Are you foxed, man?” Lord Moredon demanded.
“Most certainly not,” came the cold reply. “If I were, I might be able to bear the sight of you, thinking it only the sort of horrors one gets after too wild a night.”
“Are you mad?” the gentleman asked, amazed.
“Most certainly maddened, enraged that we share the planet, Moredon,” Mr. Jones answered with a sneer.
“I will have satisfaction,” Lord Moredon said at once, with a sudden smile, “but you may name the instruments and the hour, since you’re so mad for execution, of the deed, if not yourself,” he joked, looking to his friends and adding, for their benefit, “An odd, peculiar fellow, always was, even at school.”
“Yes, I’m all impatience, so let us have it here and now. And with our fists, to have done with it at once,” his antagonist said as he began stripping off his tightly fitted jacket.
But Lord Moredon, thinking smugly of his scores at Manton’s shooting range, and his skill with sabers and famous eye for other sorts of swordplay, cried scornfully, “Certainly, Jones, you may back out if you wish, we all have brave moments, later regretted, I’ll understand, we’ll all understand,” he added with glad mockery, sweeping his arm to indicate the large openmouthed audience they’d drawn.
“Really?” Warwick Jones asked, casting his neckcloth aside and beginning to remove his vest. “Are you so anxious for exile, then? I’m not. And I remind you, that’s the penalty for the sort of dueling you prefer. Only think, that way even if you win, you lose. Are you eager to leave your lovely sister alone, without your so fond protection, simply for the pleasure of somehow putting a hole someplace vital in me? Or is it rather that you fear taking me on without some deadly instrument to hand? Perhaps it’s that you only know how to fight a man when you’ve got two others to hold him down for you. But I can’t think the Gentleman here would approve your usual method.”
Gentleman Jackson himself, who’d been spiritlessly giving pointers to a beardless youth on how to hold up arms that he’d been silently grieved to note had no more muscles than a plate of macaroni, had stopped to listen to the altercation and now hastened to the two gentlemen, murmuring soothing noises intended to calm them. But by then Lord Moredon, his face having grown pale and then bright red with rage, was tearing off his own jacket and shirt, and his pale blue eyes held such a murderous expression that the proprietor of the club turned to Mr. Jones, hoping to find a more reasonable ear. There was nothing but cold, calm reason in the younger man’s dark blue eyes, and something in the faint smile he wore caused Gentleman Jackson to stop and appraise the situation more calmly. The opponents were gentry, it would be witnessed, and on the whole, safer to have the argument settled in his establishment than beneath some oak tree at dawn. Then too, whatever fears he might have had about an unequal, unfair match because Lord Moredon was so much larger and more bellicose, vanished when the Gentleman, a man who knew how to take the measure of another by more subtle means than judging the way he spoke or bespoke himself, saw what advantage Lord Moredon stripped down to.
For when the larger man stood, poised, huge fists up and torso bared to the waist, a keen eye could see it was not muscle which rippled at his midsection, nor were the thick arms thickened with sinew. And when Mr. Jones’s jacket and shirt were removed, the shape of the man did not go with them, as was the case with so many other men of fashion. The shoulders remained wide, the chest developed, the waist narrow, and while there was no extra flesh, that which was there didn’t move as the man moved forward, as his opponent’s did, except when the motion of his arms caused the long, strong muscles to slide smoothly beneath the taut olive skin.
The proprietor of the boxing salon stepped back as the opponents in the impromptu match stepped forward. Sudden wagers were placed, with the odds heavily on Lord Moredon, the money going to size and apparent passion. The first two blows that were landed, great slapping punches that sent Mr. Jones’s head back,
sent the odds flying up further. The next blow, a heavy thump to Mr. Jones’s heart, which backed him up a pace, sent the bettors into a frenzy, trying to take sides against the few who’d wagered on the upstart Jones. But those who took a moment to clear their throats before they shouted their bets lost all their chance, though they were soon glad of it. For Mr. Jones, it seemed, had only been taking the measure of his man, and from then on he only went forward, mercilessly forward, patiently and systematically pounding Lord Moredon’s face back, and back further.
“For God’s sake, Jones,” someone shouted after several moments, unable to watch the gory rout any longer, “finish him for mercy’s sake and be done with it.”
Then, as though the words had caused him to see through the black mist which had narrowed his vision, Warwick saw Lord Moredon shake his dazed head again and again to clear the blood from his eyes, and so, with a sound very like a disgusted sigh, he took the unknown Samaritan’s advice and landed a blow to the other man’s stomach and another to his jaw, to finally bring him crashing to the floor at his feet.
