by Edith Layton
But though those two salient points of her own figure were high and well-shaped, a person, she thought on a small disgusted laugh, would get so tipsy he’d have to be carried from the table if he drank from but two glasses modeled after them. Of course, none of her frocks fitted the way they were supposed to because of them, and because of the way her hips insisted on rounding out a saucy bit before they dutifully curved back in at her waist. And she refused to contemplate how unladylike an image she presented from behind; one look over her shoulder at her departing form in the glass was almost enough to make her return to her room at once. A lady, she knew, ought not to have, however small, such a high, definite posterior. In fact, she mourned, a lady ought not to be noticed as having one at all; she ought to look as though it was a wonder she could even sit down.
Such ripe conformations might make the gentlemen sit up and take notice, she couldn’t fail to have always noticed that, and it wasn’t unpleasant. But it was scarcely fitting either, unless she contemplated a life on the stage. The ladies noticed too, of course, and she couldn’t help but feel they scorned her for it. Neither group could guess at how she yearned to be taken for a lady and rued how her looks betrayed her in that, even as her birth had done. The coloring and hair of a princess, but the face of a cheeky street urchin and the body of a peasant—what else might she expect, coming from a family that couldn’t trace itself further back than the day her father had sold his first haddock, as a girl from school had once been pleased to remind her? At least one aspect of her hodgepodge heritage that worked in her favor was her eyes: dark-lashed and brown, and not blue as robin’s eggs, as everyone expected them to be, she thought defiantly.
But still, whatever her mirror or spiteful schoolmates told her, she knew that this morning Julian Dylan would attempt his lopsided smile and tell her softly that she looked beautiful. He’d approve her hair and face, and being too much the gentleman to remark upon her form, would then nevertheless say her presence alone would speed him to recovery and hasten his leaving his bed. And then she’d laugh and tell him that was no compliment, my lord. And he would color up, and tell her that was never what he meant, and she’d relent and they’d laugh again together…and oh, she thought, but that was yesterday.
Before she could discover what today would be like with him, first she’d have to enter the small dining room and encounter her host, Mr. Jones, And he’d look up from his paper or his breakfast plate, and he’d greet her coolly and inquire as to the night she’d passed, and her plans for the day, and if there was anything she needed or wanted, all in that haughty, faintly bored manner of his that made her yearn to stagger him by replying that she’d slept in a tree, planned to walk nude down St. James Street, and needed a quart of ginever, thank you kindly. But all she’d do would be to reply softly and politely, and all the while, he’d never look at her, or if he chanced to, then he’d quickly look away, as though the sight of her offended him.
Perhaps it did, she thought sadly, but she was very hungry, and it was breakfast time, and it might be that today would be her lucky day. Since she’d lingered here as long as she dared, it might be that her host had already broken his fast, and left his house, leaving her to enjoy her breakfast in peace. It was hard to take on a plate of eggs when merely chewing up one’s toast made one feel like an interloper. But taking breakfast in her rooms would be rude, and not taking it at all would be painful, for, she thought resignedly as she made her way down the stairs to the small dining room, she had an appetite, at least, to match her background. True ladies might be able to pass up dining, for all she knew, and for all they pretended, they might gather their sustenance from sunbeams. She, however, didn’t care to miss her meals.
So it was a truculent expression that she wore as she took her seat at the table and noted that her host had not yet touched his plateful of breakfast meats. After he gave her good-morning and saw that she was served, he immediately began eating with some enthusiasm, and she felt very small when she realized that he’d been waiting for her, not wanting to leave her alone at the table. For he said, between bites, “I’m afraid the good contessa cannot join us this morning. She has the headache, she suffers from it badly, periodically, I understand, and yet was so anxious to be of use to you that she sat here this morning looking rather like poor Julian around the edges, until I insisted she take to her bed until she felt more the thing.”
Susannah bit her lip in distress. She ought to have noticed the poor contessa was absent from the table, she supposed she ought to have asked after her immediately. But truth to tell, although the lady had been omnipresent since Charlie had hired her on right out from under Mrs. Pruit’s red nose, she had also been almost invisible as well. The contessa, whom Mrs. Pruit had insisted on calling “Tessa,” was such an innocuous person, Susannah realized in some further shame, that even a sober person like herself had difficulty remembering her given name…ah, “Miriam,” she believed it was. But it was simpler to call her “the contessa,” and indeed, more apt, for running away with a dashing Venetian count in her youth had been the one interesting thing the woman had ever done, for the shock of actually having done it seemed to have quelled her forever after. Perhaps if her impoverished husband hadn’t died soon after that thrilling episode, she might have gone on to more adventures. Perhaps if she hadn’t had to return home to England with nothing but his title, having to live off better-off relatives or work at companioning for the rest of her life, she might have developed a personality. But the poor lady seemed to have been thoroughly bested by life. And though she was kind and sweet and of tolerable education and far better lineage than her present charge, her present charge found her intolerably dull. Always present, without ever being precisely completely there, Susannah thought she might have been considered the perfect chaperon by a more proper lady. But whatever Miss Logan’s background, she did know the proper thing to do.
“Oh dear,” she sighed, laying down her fork, “then I suppose I ought to go and see how she’s faring.”
“Since she said she’d cope by lying in the dark with a wet towel on her head, I don’t believe that’s too good an idea,” Warwick Jones said calmly.
A half-dozen excellent witty, nasty retorts sprang to Susannah’s mind, but she only nodded, and looking up from her plate to see him watching her expressionlessly, she ducked her head down again and moved a bit of omelet to the opposite side of her plate so it could get a better view of the mushrooms there.
There might have been compassion in his voice when he said suddenly and softly, “Are you quite happy here, Miss Logan? I know there’s little for you to do as yet, since you know no one in London but the viscount and myself. And he’s not in the sort of condition to be vastly entertaining at the moment, and I never was. Good heavens, I just realized that you were dragooned into sickroom duty—does it depress your spirits? Would you rather wait and visit with him when he’s a bit better, or at least more seemly looking? I’m sure he’d understand—”
“But I wouldn’t!! Absolutely not!” she burst out, forgetting herself in her consternation. “What sort of paltry creature do you think I am?”
She stopped as she recalled herself, and then bowed her head and mumbled, “So sorry, I didn’t wish to be rude, but…” just as he was saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you…” He smiled at her then, for the first time, she realized, since they had met. A smile was a wonderful cosmetic for most people, but she found it quite transformed Mr. Jones’s lean face, entirely banishing haughtiness and arrogance. As it was a knowing half-smile, it lent a certain sad charm to his lofty countenance. She couldn’t help but to smile back at him, and he gazed at her, his own smile slipping away. Then he said, in more of his usual dry accents, “That’s very good then, I know he looks forward to your morning visits, and your afternoon ones as well. Actually, I think if the doctor permitted you to go wafting into his rooms at night like a phantom at the stroke of three, he’d quite enjoy that too.”
Seeing ho
w she flushed at that, he smiled again, this time a little less humorously, as though at himself, for he shook his head in rue as well, before he proceeded to entertain her better than he’d done since she’d come to his home, by telling her wonderful stories about Julian’s school days until breakfast was a memory.
It was when they’d finished with their meal, and were on the threshold to the viscount’s room, that her host paused and said pensively, “No chaperon this morning. Hmmm. This presents a ticklish problem. What do you say, Julian?” he asked, as his valet admitted him to the room, signifying that the gentleman was ready to receive visitors. “The contessa has the headache and here’s Miss Logan—dare I leave you two alone?”
“Maht as well, Warach,” the viscount answered as best he could, for he found that his jaw still tended to stiffen up in the night and so had some trouble when he first began speaking in the morning. Some of the wilder swelling in his face had begun to go down, the contours of his cheekbones had begun to assert themselves again, and thanks to Mr. Epford’s diligent applications of leeches, the black and purple bruises on his face were beginning to turn to a light green tint. But he still moved with difficulty, and so moved only when he had to, and laughter seemed to bring him equal parts of pain with his pleasure. Still, now that his eyes were returning to their normal shape, it could be seen that they were alight with merriment.
“Doubt Ahd be able to compromahse her, but Ahl try if you lahk,” he said, with one side of his mouth rising.
“Your head’s been rattled more than I thought, Julian,” his host replied with a sniff. “In the first place, the question’s never about what I’d like, it’s what she would, and in the second place, that’s far too warm a tone to take with Miss Logan.”
“Devil a bit,” the viscount replied, wincing for the sake of clarity, “Susannah’s not a prig.”
“‘Susannah’?” his friend asked thoughtfully. “‘Susannah,’ is it now? Have things progressed so far then? And you still in plaster? I had errands to run, you know, but now I think,” he said, “that for the sake of my old friend Charles Logan, I had better stay right here.”
He sat down in a chair near the window and stared straight ahead, and then, casting a quick glance to Susannah and Julian, waved a careless arm at them, saying, “Go right on, go ahead with your visit, children, don’t mind me. You hesitate. I don’t make a satisfactory duenna? Here then,” he said casually, and lifting an oval lace runner from the bottom of the viscount’s invalid tray, he promptly draped it on his head and then crossed his long legs, and sat back to watch the dumbfounded pair.
His elegant attire, his shining Hessian boots, and his high-nosed arrogant face were so at odds with the foolish imitation of a spinster’s cap he blithely wore that soon Susannah found she had to bite her lower lip hard to contain herself. When one squeak of a giggle escaped her, he fixed her with a stern stare, the effect quite ruined by the frothy bit of lace that hung down over one eye to half-obscure that dark blue glare, just as he’d intended. Then Susannah couldn’t restrain herself any longer and went off into peals of laughter. It seemed he would have been pleased to stay as he was all morning, in a parody of vast displeasure, just to hear her rippling laughter. But he snatched off the bit of lace and rose immediately when he saw the viscount’s hands go to his sides and his face contract with something other than his own unrestrained laughter.
“I do have some things to see about this morning,” Warwick said then, “and as you’ve failed the test, Julian, I don’t believe I need stay on to chaperon, as yet. But have a care, Miss Logan, it’s obvious that he can be killed by kindness just now. Tell him dull stories or read him the Times, it’s all the same, and I’ll see you again at tea this afternoon.
When he’d left, Susannah found herself chatting comfortably with the viscount again, even though she offered to read him the paper, just as her host suggested.
“Mr. Epford can do that,” Julian said, giving her a bright glance from one almost clear light eye, “but you can gossip with me, after you apologize for misreading Warwick’s character. No sense denying it, you thought him a sad loose screw, didn’t you? Your face is a book, Susannah, never try to lie. But he’s a splendid chap, isn’t he?”
She found herself agreeing, and not just to placate her patient. For now, suddenly, it seemed that her stay in London was getting to be a better bargain every day. She allowed herself to think for a moment (starting a grin that aroused the viscount’s curiosity to the point that she had to invent a tale about someone she’d known at school to cover it) that perhaps few other young women would be so ecstatic at being forced to spend their days in the company of a clever but caustic gentleman of leisure and a handsome, noble, impoverished invalid. But she was, she thought as she finally won a chuckle from the viscount. Oh, yes, she was.
But he was an invalid, and so after only an hour she arose and let Mr. Epford in to tend to him and hector him into attempting to nap. Susannah was allowed to leave only after promising that she’d return at teatime, or else, the viscount threatened, as fiercely as he could under the circumstances, he’d refuse to take any of the other, less effective medicines the good doctor had suggested. She left with a smile, and when he was finally left entirely to himself in the half-shuttered, darkened room, the viscount smiled at the thought of her as well.
She was a very good sort of female, he thought drowsily, allowing the doctor’s evil draft to have its way, far more clever and much better educated than either her background or her extreme good looks implied. And it was pleasant to have her company while he mended, for he was a gentleman who appreciated women, even if he couldn’t at present precisely utilize them as he most enjoyed. Not that he’d ever think of approaching Susannah in that fashion, he thought, fighting up from the fog of sleep in alarm at that dread notion. Lovely as she was, and he was a fair judge of her charms, a gentleman never involved himself with a female from her station in life. Maidservants, shop girls, tavern wenches, complacent wives—all could be dallied with and then left with a kiss and a promise. And he’d done that, he mused sleepily, often enough.
He’d always appreciated females, and they, he was grateful to say, had always reciprocated his interest. His late mama had doted on him, perhaps because he’d been her only child, perhaps because that was her way with any male, but he’d soon found she was not alone in her preference for him. From the governesses he could wheedle out of any sweet he wished, to the serving girls and maids he had similar luck with, with more discreet treats later in his boyhood, he’d always known feminine approval, and always valued it. In fact, he remembered mistily, on a huge contented yawn, he’d enjoyed them all almost equally too, from the farrier’s daughter who’d been the first one to show him precisely what wonderful thing he could accomplish with her, to his schoolmaster’s housemaid, who educated him on some finer points in that line of endeavor, to Mrs. Pritchard in town, who’d been the first to teach him some fascinating variations… He stopped further reminiscence with a sleepy chuckle. Some men, he remembered, counted sheep.
No, for all her charms, he’d never consider Miss Logan in that category. For a leg put over the bed of a bourgeois young woman meant a cap over the windmill. They didn’t dally, they married. And when he thought of weddings and promises, and the one face he most wanted to see at his bedside, sick or well, and the only face he’d ever dreamed of seeing at his side at the altar, he thought of his first true love, his only real love, the Lady Marianna, and only then, fell to sleep on a smile.
So it was odd that when Miss Logan came to his door in the late afternoon for her promised tea, she heard him raging within, with such naked grief rising in his uplifted voice that she rushed into the room, thinking he’d taken some sort of turn for the worse.
“Damn you, Warwick!” he was shouting, sifting up, holding one hand on his chest. “How could you do this to me?”
“Stop! What can you be thinking of?” Susannah cried all at once, seeing the viscount’s distress, and
the way his friend seemed to loom over him. She ran to the bedside and stood there, chin high, glowering up at her host, as though defying Mr. Jones to strike her. Warwick’s eyes flickered, but by no other movement did he show how enchanted and enormously entertained he was by her flash of spirit. She’d shown a flare of similar courage earlier when he’d suggested Julian’s appearance might have depressed her, and then he’d been beguiled by the discovery that her milk-and-honey coloring disguised a fire-and-brimstone miss. He would have laughed aloud for her fierce expression, caught as he was between complete enchantment with her and the complete ludicrousness of the situation, but her mobile features turned too quickly to abject apology for him to begin.
Because Susannah had noted that both men had grown silent at her interruption, and she paused, now knowing to her profound embarrassment that whatever had happened, no one had done anything aggressive in this room, except for herself. She began to murmur horribly garbled apologies, as Julian attempted to reassure her, when Warwick said calmly, “You needn’t fear that I attacked him, I only made the mistake of telling Viscount Hazelton the truth.”
