Love in Disguise (The Love Trilogy, #1)

by Edith Layton

  *

  “’Course,” the guard on the Thunder said, pausing on the cobbles in the innyard as he checked the passengers’ tickets before showing them to their seats in the coach, “they’ll take ’im back soon’s ’e’s able to get back on the job. ’E’s a fair driver, and they likes a pretty face,” he confided, moving away from the coach to speak with his visitor alone, “since it means more notice being taken of the line. The competition’s fierce these days, twenny coaches at last look flying the Brighton run these days, believe it. Soon, a bloke will ’ave to ’ave all ’is teeth and more curls than a bahlee dancer afore they ’and ’im the ribbons, doncha know?”

  He laughed at the notion before he asked more seriously: “So when’s ’e comin’ back, sir? Not that I think ’e should, ’e’s too good for the game, but if ’e must, ’e must.”

  Warwick Jones looked down at the stocky man and assessed him coolly before he said, honestly, “I’m hoping never, of course, but we must wait on events. He won’t take charity, so I’m hoping to turn his luck for him.”

  “Which is the same thing,” the guard said wisely, “only dressed up diffrunt. Aye, you’re ’is friend, all right and tight. So, I’ll tell you, keep ’im off as long as you can. ’E’s that desperate for the wages, and when they knows it, they uses it. They give ’im the night runs, where they can give ’im the worst nags, since there’s no seeing too good inna dark. It ain’t safe, some of the beasts is ’alf-dead and the other ’alf are sick or ’alf-mad themselves. Night runs is the worst, but ’e takes ’em, though there’s more chance for folly, and they keep ’im working, like the nags, too long and too often. We all live on the road, but ’e, ’e never gets a chance to breathe. Maybe if ’e did, ’e’d do some clearer thinking.”

  “Yes, just so,” the gentleman said thoughtfully, and as he began to walk away from the coaching station, his message delivered as promised, the guard called after him, “And what’ll I do wiv ’is ’orse?”

  “His horse?” Warwick Jones asked, puzzled. “He didn’t mention one.”

  “I don’t think ’e forgot,” the guard said slowly. “No, I reckon ’e thought I’d do for the beast, and so I will then.”

  “No, you’ve done enough, my friend,” the gentleman said gently, thinking of the inroads even a daily supply of oats could make on a guard’s purse. “I’ll take care of the animal. Where is he?”

  “At Chapman’s stables, not five miles from ’ere, where the company keeps all the coaching beasts, but whatever you do, sir, don’t tell ’is nibs I told you, or ’e’ll have my ribs, cracked and on ’is plate too, ’e’s that proud.”

  When the gentleman looked at him oddly, the guard paused to add, before he continued his argument with the fat man demanding an inside seat for half-price since the outside was filled up, “…’Cause a proud man don’t want the world to know when ’e’s got a poor love.”

  There were some five hundred horses at Chapman’s, and yet Warwick Jones was deeply shocked when the Viscount Hazelton’s was brought out for his inspection. The beast was big and beautiful, black as night and with a fine black and rolling eye, but so high-spirited the stableboy could scarcely hold him on his tether.

  “Amazed, I was amazed,” Mr. Conway, who oversaw the stables, said as he leaned on the fence and watched Mr. Jones’s face. “The man knows horseflesh, and still, he pays for stable space for this one. He saw them trying to team the brute up as a wheeler on the night run, and he jumps down and says, ‘No, take him out, and keep him. He’s mine.’ Handsome, I’ll grant, but what could he have been thinking of? A fine-looking bit of horseflesh, but no gentleman, he’s wilder than a wild thing because he knows men and hates them, two months in harness and still fighting for freedom. ‘Another three months and he’d be broke,’” I says.

  “‘Aye, and another three years and he’ll be dead,’ the viscount says. True, true, they go fast when they’re sold into coaching. Bought for a king’s ransom, sold to the company for a few guineas, and in a few years, the knackers can pick him up for tuppence, if the dogs haven’t had him for dinner already. But handsome is as handsome does, and there’s many a gent sells the high-hearted ones into coaching—for revenge, or out of anger because they can’t handle such a prideful beast, and damned to the money lost. That’s why Lord Moredon sold him to us in the first place, because he couldn’t tame him. Who could?”

  “Julian Dylan, for a certainty,” Mr. Jones replied with a grin, understanding his friend’s desire for the animal now, and, handing the man a card, and a sum, added, “I’ll send a groom for him, the viscount’s staying with me, so his horse will as well. Only not in London, I think. I’ve a place in the country that will be more to his liking.”

  But even after his business was done, the gentleman stayed on for a while watching the horses as they came and went, and that was odd, for no one ever looked at job coaching horses, in harness or at their stables. They were like parts of a mighty machine: they did their job and wore out quickly and went unnoticed unless they failed to function properly.

  At length, the gentleman bestirred himself and climbed up on his own fine high-perch phaeton to go. But before he did, he gave the stable manager another modest sum, and indicated the other horse he wanted sent to his country home along with the viscount’s brute.

  “That one?” the man asked, genuinely staggered, convinced that madness was epidemic in the quality. “But, sir, that beast’s half-done-for. Look at that back, have you seen the hocks? Why, she’s not got enough wind left to blow out a candle.”

  “She was once a fine animal,” the gentleman said softly, “I remember her when she was for sale at Tattersall’s, the bidding went high as her heart then. I suppose the winner that day found her too high-spirited as well?”

  “Who knows?” The manager shrugged, dumbfounded. “That was years ago. Why should you want her now?”

  “As you say,” the gentleman said, taking up the reins and nudging his own fine team forward, “who knows? She breathes, does she not? I remember when she did more, and brushed, she might shine where she still has hide intact. I’ve a pasture she’ll ornament,” he said. And he thought, as he left the puzzled stable manager behind: She’s a cast-off, there’s a commonality, I’m in a sentimental mood, and it’s a bad world, but a good deed, wherein a gentleman’s passing moment of sentiment can save a life, however lowly.

  He was feeling oddly sentimental as he drove back to London, and he felt marginally better for his foolish gesture, and so it had been worth twice the price to him. It wasn’t often that anything lifted his spirits these days. The last moments of pure happiness he’d felt, he realized suddenly, had been on the day when he’d taken Lord Moredon down. And even then, he knew now, it had not been pure, but rather a tainted pleasure he’d experienced.

  He still remembered the fierce joy that had overcome him as he’d brought his fists against the larger man, nor could he forget, though he’d rather, that one secret unpleasant moment, that second before some sane man’s voice had woken him to reason and caused him to stop. For in that second before he’d put down his fists, in the midst of his revenge it had been possible, and he couldn’t deny it, that after a while it hadn’t been Lord Moredon he’d been pummeling, but some other large, smug, fair skinned, and red-faced man he’d been about to murder. It might have been, and if it were, then he was shamed for it, as well as for his unusual lapse of control.

  Julian and Susannah, Lord Moredon and that other fair-haired man from his past… Warwick Jones shook his head in wonder at how many light-haired persons were cutting up his peace as he drove back along the country roads to London. Then he laughed at himself, for he realized it was always the blond persons in this world that had given him grief. He had better never voyage to the Northlands, he grinned to himself, or risk becoming either a mass murderer, or destroying himself just as handily, if more pleasurably, by becoming a complete satyr, for if fair men drove him to one sort of excessive passion, their female counterpa
rts had always driven him to another.

  Not always, he corrected himself, growing thoughtful, letting his team set their own pace to carry him home as his thoughts carried him back to an older home. Once he’d been as thrilled and astonished at the appearance of certain fair-haired persons as he’d imagined a Hottentot might be at his first sight of them. For though his mother was a beauty, she was a dark-haired, dark-eyed one, and his father had lived only long enough to leave a fleeting impression of what sometimes appeared in his memory as a mirror image of his own grown face. It was after those first orphaned years, long after influenza had taken his father, that he’d first become particularly aware of fair persons. His mama had decided to give up widowhood, and it was a large blond gentleman who caught her eye, even as he supposed it was her large white mansion and ample dowry that brought him to her notice. For he was a nobleman, and the widowed Mrs. Jones, for all her dark attraction, was a mere “Mrs.,” as all the Joneses from his branch of the family had ever been. And, as Warwick Jones reminded himself sadly, with a shake of his head, just as family wisdom always held, it was only when the usually cautious Joneses wished to cut a social dash that they came to grief, and so it was to be again. Only, since his mother had only married into the name, it was naturally, then, he who was to suffer.

  He hadn’t known that, of course, on the day that the Earl of Camberly married his mama. Nor had he an inkling of it when he’d been introduced to his two new stepbrothers, the marquess and the viscount, and his new stepsister, Lady Caroline. Although, again, it made perfect sense that the widower nobleman would come complete with progeny, since however pressed for funds, a man like the earl would scarcely have wished to sire an heir on a commoner like his mama, however handsome she, or her fortune, might be.

  The first months had been very pleasant, Warwick Jones remembered with a wistful smile; perhaps that was why he had at least one particular problem with blond females. For Lady Caroline had been only a year younger than his own seven, and looked up to him wonderfully for that year’s advantage of her and because, further, he knew all the nooks and crannies, retreats and hidey-holes in his great house quite well and was pleased to share the knowledge with her. Although Lord John and Lord Avery had been several years older, they had been kind, and he, who’d been lonely as an only child of a single parent, had, in very much the same way that their sister admired himself, lionized them as much for being older as for their offhand kindness.

  It was only when the earl, after the honeymoon had shown him his wife was his in every particular (for he’d been pleased to find she was just as pliable and soft-willed as he’d thought), decided to begin to refurbish his own rotting great hall that the trouble began. His wife was happy to leave her home and go with him, that was never the problem. And there were carpenters and stonemasons and architects aplenty, all willing to work, but unfortunately, all waiting to be paid first, as well. It was then, when the earl discovered his credit was in as bad a condition as his ancestral home, that he also discovered that all of the famous Jones fortune was securely tied up. The earl couldn’t lodge a penny of it loose, for the first time he tried, distant Jones relatives came out from the woodwork uttering threats of lawsuits, and masses of dignified men-at-law appeared with all sorts of writs in hand.

  Because, it transpired, the Jones fortune was well-supervised, well-documented, and entirely secure, and all invested in the one small true heir, who had less than a decade of years to his benefit, although he had more than several hundred thousand pounds, along with securities and properties and annuities, to his name.

  The earl’s new wife’s portion was his, but it was doled out quarterly, and at that, scarcely enough to cover his gambling bills for a year. But the mansion was hers to live in, in comfort, for the rest of her life, with her new family as well if she wished, and poor lady, Warwick Jones sighed, though she didn’t wish, she had little choice, since her new husband’s home was fit only for mice and deathwatch beetles. So it was as well that the heir to all that the earl coveted was sent off to school when he turned eight, for he was a sensitive child, and better still that the lawyers, after seeing the earl’s face when he first heard the news of the disposition of the fortune, mentioned that the boy’s legacy would go to a distant uncle if misfortune should ever befall him before he came into his majority.

  But if looks couldn’t quite kill, Warwick Jones soon discovered they might maim. Because the earl and his sons, chafing under the omnipresent knowledge that they lived on the sufferance of a commoner, and a small, slightly built, sensitive one at that, soon found ways to let their benefactor know how inferior he was to them.

  Since nothing could be done for the earl’s thwarted hopes but vengeance, that was done in plenty. A state of war was declared, and Warwick, having seen his idols turn from benevolent friends to treacherous foes, learned from an early age that appearances can be deceiving. His mama didn’t wish to see discord, and feared her husband’s displeasure even more. She was now completely her husband’s creature, and so if she ever had regarded the author of all their difficulties as her own son, she never showed it again. His home became a battlefield, but Warwick managed to survive and soon discovered that he had a knack for it. He made certain he became no male version of a Cinderella, in any event; he realized it was they who were quite obviously beautiful, and he who had the wealth, and he was never cut out to be a gentle, placid victim. Thus it was doubly irritating to his tormentors when they came to realize that he was cleverer, as well as richer than they. And even more insufferable when they found he didn’t fear pain, and, realizing they couldn’t afford to kill him, had learned to bear it long enough to learn to defend himself in physical as well as mental fashion.

  So if his stepbrothers mocked his slight, olive-skinned body when he was a boy, and grimaced to each other and complained in loud tones that the “goblin,” as they came to call him, had too long a vacation and was getting on their nerves when he came home from school, they learned to grumble instead of shout their displeasure with him when they saw how tall and straight he’d grown and learned how strong he’d trained his body to be when he survived adolescence. Even the earl no longer said the word “goblin” or “commoner” in his hearing—his debts had gone unpaid long enough to make his entry into his club an embarrassment—after his stepson began to handle the family finances himself.

  But, in truth, he was a goblin compared with their fair splendor, he’d always seen that. He was long-nosed, olive-complexioned, and even the grace notes of his midnight-blue eyes and soft brown hair were as dun compared to their radiant blond good looks. Perhaps that’s why they’d come to personify beauty, if nothing else, to him. But they signified a good deal more as well. That might have been why, after he’d been amazed to discover his schoolmate, the similarly handsome, similarly noble Julian Dylan, to be such a good openhearted person, he’d become his fast friend.

  And then, of course, there was Lady Caroline, Warwick thought with a reflexive cough, choking on the memory that would never be easy to swallow, not even after nearly a decade. For it was never easy to remember how he’d heard her explain her toleration of his tentative courtship, that day that he’d come cat-footed into the library to surprise his newly grown stepsister with the first daffodil.

  For, “Good God, Caro, we like the place, and have been comfortable here for dog’s years,” the viscount had drawled to his sister, “but it’s rather unpleasant to think of you having to bed the goblin to secure it for us.”

  “But it hasn’t gone that far yet,” she’d giggled, “and if it does, it will be marriage.”

  So of course, it wasn’t, not after that—not that she’d added another word to the subject, nor even disparaged him, nor ever discovered that he’d heard her. But she’d not defended him. And until that moment, he’d never known how badly he’d wanted that. And after that moment, he’d never forgiven her for showing him his one weakness. Not that she’d ever known that either. For he’d picked an odd method for
showing his displeasure. He’d restored their house for them and made them an allowance, and so relieved them of his presence. He seldom saw them again, unless they came to him, gruff and belligerent, needing funds and begging for the money by belittling him, hat in hand. He always gave the money, along with arrogance for arrogance, feeling that he was winning, even as they left feeling they’d cheated him again. But then, he thought, he was undeniably an odd man; they’d always been right about that.

  Having been denied love for so long, he never sought it again—now wasn’t that odd? he asked himself. He sought women, but that was not the same thing at all. He was basically a solitary man, though he had a few good friends, both male and female. But it wasn’t that sort of companionship he constantly wanted. In fact, it was one of the despairs of his life that he had to seek such women out so often, that he was so enslaved by his passions. Because he acknowledged a true goblin trait in himself: the deep and omnipresent need for sensual pleasure, a profound liking for affairs of the flesh. He was, he thought, smiling to himself at the comparison, remembering his studies of Plato, in many ways a driven man, a coachman, very like his friend Julian, but very unlike as well, for he couldn’t be half so adept a whipster, since he was always trying to steer his life with two fractious teams linked together: the white horses of sweet reason, and the dark horses of desire. Perhaps that was why, he thought, throwing back his head and laughing, startling a farmer in the fields into thinking it was a drunken gentleman tooling along the high road to London, he kept driving himself around in such peculiar circles.