by Edith Layton
He turned abruptly, and although the Lion gave the nod, a look at the gentleman’s face might have been enough to cause the two guards to let him pass by them anyway. Then it seemed as though he didn’t notice them at all, his own expression became so bent in upon itself.
“Aye,” the Lion sighed softly to himself as he watched the gentleman rush off, already walking less erectly than he had when he’d come, already moving with a certain jerky, erratic gait, “make haste, my lord, you’re right, there’s little time left. All eternity wouldn’t be enough for you, poor fool, since a man can never run fast enough if it’s himself he’s running from.”
Lord Moredon hurried to his own town house. Once there, he shut himself up in his library for hours, and paced and thought, and made notes, laughing to himself at times, only to stop laughing to look up and around the room in puzzlement at who had been laughing at other times, before he fell to feverish planning and pacing again. At nightfall, he let his valet change his garments, and then he went to his club for dinner, and ate it in silence, never seeming to care that not a few gentlemen nervously noted his lips moving as though he spoke to someone, although no one had greeted him, much less joined him at his table.
Then he took a hackney coach to an address on Curzon Street, and still murmuring to himself, rapidly took the stairs and let himself into a small house there. The girl who had been resting on the recamier in the small salon had been thumbing through a book of fashion plates, but when she looked up to see the gentleman who’d entered her lodgings standing in the doorway staring at her, she gave a glad cry and rushed to meet him.
She was genuinely glad to see them. For she knew she was young, entirely too young for the position he’d hired her to fill, and was grateful for the employment. Although she had an attractive face and a quantity of pale hair, she’d been underfed for too many years, and had too few of those years to her credit to have attracted a protector before she’d been raised up from the streets by this tall fair gentleman. He’d taken her in a doorway, and then, instead of merely paying her her shilling, he’d established her in these rooms, the most sumptuous she’d ever seen or imagined in all her brief life. If the gentleman brought her nowhere else, she expected no more; if he visited certain painful indignities upon her person, she expected no less; she was, after all, only fourteen, she had, after all, no other way to earn her keep. He provided her with food and clothing, and so she was beholden to him enough to allow him anything he wished in the month since he’d installed her here.
He said nothing to her, but then, he seldom did, unless it was to order her to do something for him or to him during his play. This time, he frowned as he removed his clothing, so her own hands shook as she undid hers, and her thin body trembled when she saw he was ready but that he remained only standing and frowning down at her as she awaited his pleasure tonight.
Her body was still as slender and straight as a boy’s, her attitude just as abject as he’d wish, there was nothing about her that was feminine in the least except for the absence of one salient feature, and the presence of that profusion of billowing waist-length, thin, light hair that had first attracted him. He turned suddenly from contemplating her and marched into the bedchamber, and she followed, shivering, and watched as he rifled through the chest of drawers until he found what he was seeking. When he strode toward her then, she did not quake at the sight of the obvious evidence of his arousal as she often did and always tried to conceal doing, but she put her hands up before her face and whimpered as he approached her with the shears. But before she could gasp more than “Oh no, sir, oh pity,” he’d grasped her by her hair, and pulling her head back, he brought the shears to her throat.
She trembled with relief when he cast the scissors aside after having only sheared all her hair off where he’d clasped it, at the nape of her neck. She didn’t even mind that he’d left her head cropped closer than his when she saw him gazing at her with desire, and she was so incredibly relieved at his loss of anger and renewed interest that she stepped right over the discarded pale puddle of her hair without a regret as she sought to enter his arms. But then when he spun her around with hard hands and laughed, she began to know that she’d no reason to be glad. None at all.
He’d saved her from starvation, taken her from plying her trade in doorways, and given her food and safety from the streets filled with those who’d preyed on her since she’d been old enough to run. She had thought herself lucky, whatever his demands had been. Where she’d been bred, without protectors, girls starved, if they were lucky. She wasn’t a fool or she wouldn’t have reached her age, and she’d known that a little pain was fair payment for all that he gave her.
But as soon as he’d at last fallen into an exhausted sleep, and as soon as she’d realized that tonight he slept like a dog, so that all his moans and twitching wouldn’t wake him, she dragged herself up and painfully dressed herself. Then she put all she could into an improvised sack and stealthily let herself out into the night. She crouched on the doorstep for a scant second to look up to the house where she’d been so pleased to be allowed to live. There were a great many dangers awaiting her this night in London and she knew it. But young and uneducated as she was, she had survived much, and so she knew, as she crept off down the dark street, that there was far worse waiting for her in that beautifully furnished bedchamber she’d just left forever.
*
Susannah fled the garden, laughing. Julian had threatened to put a daddy-long-legs down her neck, and she’d gathered up her skirts and run, her rippling laughter floating behind her, all the way through the entry hall, all the way to the morning salon. There she stood, sheltering behind a small writing desk, catching her breath and reviewing her defense, as she waited for her tormentor to approach dangling the unfortunate insect between two fingers, as he’d done in the rose garden.
“It’s the poor bug I’m worried about, honestly,” she cried at once, cowering away as he entered the room, “for though it wouldn’t be pleasant for me, it would be hideous for him, poor thing, and…” And then she saw that he’d nothing in his hand but a letter and he’d forgotten their play entirely, he was so absorbed in it. Then he looked up from it to her with such a look of luminous joy that her heart sank, and she knew at once, of course, what it was about without even seeing it.
They’d been at Greenwood Hall for a week, although to Susannah it was more like being in Eden for twice as long. She loved the countryside far more than the city, and Warwick’s home was as comfortable and welcoming in actuality as it had been in appearance. In the days she’d rested here, there had been so much laughter that she’d had no time to wonder if she should stay, or question why she, who was supposed to be being introduced to society, should be remaining in the sole company of her chaperon and two bachelor gentlemen. For they passed the days exploring the grounds, and the nights singing and laughing and talking and playing at cards or charades, and day or night, there was nothing but pleasure in her visit. Warwick was an excellent host; he always made her laugh and kept her company whenever Julian was not at her side. But Julian often was there as well, telling her stories, twitting her, and accepting her as a friend. Unless, of course, he thought of Lady Moredon, and then he took her for his confidante and poured all his hopes and dreams into her ears. She was pleased to listen, if only so that she could watch him as he spoke. Now, from the softened look in his light eyes, she knew whom he was about to speak of, so she sighed and sat down at the desk.
“It’s another invitation, Sukey,” he said with some excitement, “to a picnic, and I think I’ll go, but where the devil is Eaton Hall?” he asked, going to a drawer of the desk and rummaging impatiently through it before he found what he was seeking. Spreading the map out upon the desk, he ran his finger down it, saying, “Thank heaven for this map Warwick’s always guiding me to. I’m an excellent coachman, but I must know where I’m heading…yes, here it is, Eaton, Eaton Hall… Hove, it’s to be a picnic in Hove, fine.”
She looked up from the map and laughed at him. “Oh, Julian, if it were to be a picnic on the moon, you’d say ‘fine,’ so long as you knew she’d be there.”
And if there’d been a little sorrow in her voice, she’d learned to laugh to cover it, and so he joined her. It was the sound of their merriment which drew the observer to the door of the salon. He’d been in the library reading, or trying to, since he’d determined that he should leave them alone together when he could. That, after all, had been the whole point of inviting her to his home in the first place, as he reminded himself time and again. And she, after all, noticed no one else when Julian was with her anyway, as he never had to remind himself. But the laughter had drawn him to its source, as surely as a man left in darkness is drawn to the light.
Now, seeing Susannah all in white, her shining flaxen hair bound with a white riband, beside Julian in his white shirtsleeves, his golden crop glinting in the sunlit room, a man, Warwick thought, could go blind from the glare given off by the pair of them, if not deaf from the noise they created. And so he said as they stopped laughing when they noticed him watching them. He didn’t mention that a man might also be so dazzled by the joy he saw in their faces that he might do anything to warm himself at even a small part of it.
But as they began to interrupt each other in their eagerness to tell him what they’d been doing, he remembered that in that odd instant he’d also seemed to see all three of them as if from afar, the two bright persons as well as himself—the intruder who’d caused their laughter to die. But he’d seen this as if from some odd vantage point outside of himself. Then to his own eyes it was as if he saw an envious goblin, as green with envy as he was olive-skinned, standing at a half-open door, peering through the darkness to watch two of the fair folk at their joyous and incomprehensible, eternally private play.
“Julian’s been invited to a picnic in Hove,” Susannah explained, “so we were looking over the map to find where it was.”
“It’s not at all far. I might even be able to walk there if you intend to be mean about a carriage,” Julian put in easily.
“My dear,” Warwick said, settling himself in a chair, “according to the good doctor, you could vault there, stopping off every half-mile to lift a heifer in the air or loft a mill-stone across the road.”
“That’s jealousy speaking,” Julian said knowingly, nodding to Susannah, “for he knows I’ve got lumpy ribs now, the doctor even said so. If I weren’t a gentleman I’d show you, or tell you to run your fingers across them to feel the ridges there, they quite ruin my symmetry, you know,” he complained archly, “but though all he’s been left with is that spider’s thread of a line across his cheek, he’s been spiteful to me since the bandages came off. Very vain is our Warwick, don’t you know.”
“On the contrary,” Warwick said loftily, running a finger along the thin red line left on his cheek, “I rather like it, and hope it doesn’t fade. A tiny flaw suits me. Perfection being so boring, you understand.”
The two gentlemen grinned at each other. Although it was obvious spoofing, it was the sort of raillery Susannah seldom joined in. For when they mocked each other, though they never took offense at what was said, she often thought they came too close to the edge of civility, too near to real insult, for her to dare to participate.
As if in answer to her thoughts, Warwick added, “Doubtless then, Julian, my pretty, you’ll have your shirt whipped off in a trice at whatever tea you’ve been asked to grace, and will be soliciting eager little fingers to discover your wounds.”
“Jealousy speaks again,” Julian confided loudly to Susannah, “since he knows that because of their location, searching for my injuries will make for far more interesting sport than seeking out his.”
“Too warm, Julian, my pet,” Warwick said lazily. “You forget our innocent guest. But so far as that goes, there might be a great many females who’d find the examination of my face far more interesting than letting their fingers roam over your entire corpus.”
“Oh yes,” Julian laughed, “but taking into account the size of your nose, my friend, they’d have to be blind ones. And blind one’s you’d lied to, at that. For if they found that great prominence interesting, I’d wager you’d have told them that it was your, ah, corpus they were examining, and not your face at all.”
“Far too warm!” Warwick frowned, sitting up sharply. “Susannah, forgive us, you’re so much of a friend that we sometimes forget you’re a lady.”
“But she isn’t,” Julian protested on a laugh, and then, hearing no other laughter, but seeing Warwick glower and Susannah staring down at her hands suddenly, he took up those two hands in his, and looking down upon her bent head, said gently, “Sukey, my little friend, is he right? Do I have to offer a thousand apologies for one warm jest, or beg forgiveness for a thoughtless comment? I didn’t think I’d have to put on a hair shirt for the joke, and never imagined I’d offend you with that last comment that’s got Warwick scowling at me so. You know very well what I meant by that at least, or you ought. I only meant you’re not a titled lady, and that’s all to the good.
“Because,” he said, smiling tenderly at her, “I’m very glad you are what you are, because I never have to watch my tongue when I’m with you. That’s not to say you’re not well-bred, or well-versed, or the most well-tempered little soul I’ve ever found wearing skirts. I’ll swear I’m so comfortable with you I forget you’re just as female as any ‘lady.’ No, that’s not true either, you’re nothing like a gentleman friend. You’re unique and that’s why I love you, but if I have to apologize every time I forget to stand on ceremony, why then—”
“‘Standing on ceremony’ is a bit different from making the sort of jokes she can’t join in,” Warwick snapped, cutting off his friend, diverting his attention from the suddenly pale girl whose hands he still held. “Only think, aside from the propriety of it, if she laughs at such jests, she looks underbred, and if she doesn’t, she seems priggish. What a position you put her in!”
And if she doesn’t understand, then she’s embarrassed to admit it, and if she does, she knows very well that she oughtn’t, he thought to himself with some amusement. But then he frowned because he knew it wasn’t any of this that had made her lose her faint color or caused her to bite her lip. It was the fact that Julian still held her hands, and had called her his “love,” yet had vowed nothing like the love that could be so clearly read in her transparent face as she raised it to him.
That look fled as she turned from Julian to smile at Warwick and say with such strained merriness that he winced, “There’s no need for apology. I didn’t find the conversation ‘warm,’ Warwick, for I didn’t understand a word of it. So would you please explain it to me?”
As Julian gave a shout of delight, and a grudging but admiring glint appeared in Warwick’s eye, he gravely explained that he hadn’t understood Julian either, but from knowing the fellow for so long, had expected the worst. Then, before a triumphant Julian could ruin the temporary peace with another jest, Warwick mentioned that he too had gotten an invitation to the picnic, and told her that he expected, of course, that she’d come along with him as his guest. She hesitated just long enough for him to nod in satisfaction and say, “Very good, I knew I could count on you to keep me company.”
They made light chatter about the people who might be at the picnic, decided it would probably be rained out three times before it was actually held, and when Susannah was given the first opportunity, she pleaded letters she must write and escaped the room. Julian watched her graceful figure go, and smiled. But the smile slipped from his face as quickly as she’d exited from the room when he heard his friend say harshly, in low, angry tones, “Damme, Hazelton, if you aren’t an idiot!”
14
The two young gentlemen were alone in the room but the fair-haired one spun around on his heel and gaped at his host with as much shocked surprise as if he expected it was some other person who had spoken to him. For if there had been none of h
is friend’s customary underlying humor in the rough exclamation he’d just heard, there wasn’t a trace of it to be seen in the shadowed, brooding face either. Warwick’s dark visage had a dozen eloquent ways of expressing sorrow, real and counterfeit, and more than that many more to show haughtiness, amusement, and pleasure. But anger, real anger, was unusual for it. Now his blue eyes blazed and his thin brows drew together over that high arched nose his friend had so recently jested about.
“Good God, Julian,” he said in exasperation, rising from his chair in one fluid motion to stand and face the blond gentleman, “have you no eyes? Ears? Soul?”
The two young men were both cleanly made, agile and fit. And though Warwick was leaner and the taller by a few inches, as they stood there toe-to-toe and confronted each other, they were, in a fashion, like reversed mirror images: the dark and light reflection of each other’s temperament and passion, for one was fair as an angel in his innocent puzzlement, and the other, glowering and in his brooding humor, lowering as his elongated cast shadow.
