by Edith Layton
“You’re serious? Yes, by heaven, you’re serious!” Julian breathed in astonishment.
“And you ought to be more so,” Warwick said furiously, struggling for control of the emotion he always rode so hard, but failing this once because of the very incredulity he read in the other man’s eyes. Malice he could have contended with, but this ignorant, blithe cruelty was too much for him. And so he spoke before there was any help for it, and added, the further words torn from him before he could prevent it, in response to that maddening continuing look of offended incomprehension. “Don’t you see the girl adores you?”
Only then, hearing his own words, did he wheel around and stare at the window, reining in all his rage so that he could speak the things he knew he must with the proper detachment, with the correct cool humor that he always used, with the distance he especially must when it was, as it was so rarely, as it was now, his own heart involved.
For it seemed he’d forgotten he had one, he realized as he slowed his breathing. Until she’d come, he thought, as, finally, familiar sorrow banished dangerous fury.
“Admires me? Yes, of course. But it will pass, she’s very young,” Julian said on a half-laugh, which failed when his friend replied in his more usual caustic tones, “Oh yes. Extremely. A veritable infant. I take it then that you’ve conceived of a passion for infants? She’s two years older than Lady Moredon, I believe. And who knows how much senior to that poor drab you pleased yourself with at the inn where we met.”
Julian stiffened in insult. His light eyes grew hard as glinting ice and his white face set as chill as his voice as he said, “At the inn where we met when I was driving a coach for my daily bread. Add that bit, Warwick, for I’ll swear it isn’t far from your mind. And now,” he went on, amazing his host again with how cruel and glacial that graceful smiling face could become in an instant, as he always had on those rare past occasions when he’d lost his temper, “read me the rules I must hew to if I’m to be allowed to stay on with you and take your food and lodging for a day longer. Talk to me about ingratitude, Warwick, lecture me on my duty to my savior. Come, remind me of my obligations…does ‘found in the gutter’ come next? Or will ‘battening on your good nature’ follow? Is ‘parasite’ a word you’re looking for? No matter, if you can’t speak it, write it, and I’ll eventually get it. I am grateful for your consideration, Warwick, or I’d say far more. But in gratitude, my exit line will be more unexceptionable. Thank you, but good-bye, Mr. Jones,” he said, turning on his heel.
“Very well done,” Warwick said with equal coolness, but his arm swung out and he clasped the other man hard on the shoulder. As Julian wheeled about, his hands closing to fists and his expression grim, his host went on coldly, “Before we come to blows, listen. I’m impressed by your righteous wrath. But believe me, I don’t give two damns about whom you’ve been sleeping with, nor do I care what lady, or trull, you’ve plans to oblige in future. Nor do I give one small damn about gratitude, and I’ll finish your lady’s charming brother’s work for him if you so much as dare to hint at it to me again. I’ll swear I deserve better, and not because of my pains with you recently, because I know you’d do the same for me if matters were reversed, but for the sake of all those years when we both only gave friendship to each other, and took only friendship from each other, as well.
“But I do care when I see someone in over her head and drowning. The girl is besotted with you, Julian, and as her brother’s friend, if not as her friend, I have to ask what you mean to do by her, whatever our friendship is or has been. Julian,” he said then, amazement in his expression and words, “have you never looked into her eyes to see anything but whether or not your lustrous hair needed combing?”
“I knew she liked me very well…” Julian said hesitantly, taken aback, his anger vanished, to be replaced by sudden unease, as he said as shamefacedly as a boy, “I suppose I knew, Warwick, but I suppose I didn’t care. You’re right,” he admitted, entirely deflated, offering his friend a self-mocking smile, “I’m a lout and insensitive, but, oh well, it’s rather pleasant, being admired, you know…and…”
“And rather commonplace for you too, isn’t it, poor lad?” Warwick said on a sad answering smile. He took his hand from his friend’s shoulder then, and ruffled his hair as though he were the boy he’d been when he’d last seen him looking so abjectedly contrite.
“How you pretty chaps ever grow a conscience is a mystery to me,” Warwick sighed, as his friend grinned at the old gesture of friendship and Warwick made his hand into a fist and thumped his shoulder gently for emphasis. “That you’ve acquired one at all is a minor miracle at that, and is your one saving grace, my lovely lordship. All your life you’ve but to smile at some poor susceptible creature—and if she wasn’t susceptible before she met you, she becomes so, and instantly dotes upon you…my God, Julian, you might have become a monster, you know.”
“I believe my friends kept me from that,” the viscount answered soberly.
“Don’t believe that for a minute,” Warwick replied just as seriously. “Friends are only drawn to what already is to be found in a man.”
“‘Show me a man’s friends and I’ll show you what he is’? Not like you to be so cliched, Warwick,” Julian said wryly.
“No, show me a man’s friends and I’ll only be able to show you what they like to be associated with,” Warwick corrected him. “Show me a man’s enemies and I’ll show you what he is. But we’re not talking philosophy now, we’re speaking about a young girl who just happens to dote on you. Entirely and transparently. You’ve given her encouragement, that’s what’s alarming me.”
“But I’ve told her about Marianna time and again,” Julian protested.
“Oh yes, I’ve noticed that, in along with all the gossip and conversation and jesting you’ve entertained her with, along with all the smiles and fond pats bestowed upon her in all those hours you’ve passed in her company. Although, I’ll admit,” he said, lowering his eyes as he said it, as if to attend to straightening his shirt cuff, “if there was to be something tangible for her at the end of it, more than a broken heart or a spirited lesson in lovemaking, that is, I wouldn’t care. Something permanent as well as legal, since her brother, after all, had something of that sort in mind when he left her in my care. Make no mistake, she may not be titled or highly bred, but she’s very well-off, Julian. Dowered as handsomely by her family as she’s been by nature, in fact.”
“Whoof,” Julian said, sitting down suddenly on the arm of a chair and gazing at his friend wide-eyed, “there’s plain speaking! All right, my friend, I can match you. I didn’t mean to encourage her, or if I did, it was a thoughtlessness, not a deliberate enticement. Plain speech for plain speaking: she’s a great deal of fun to be with, bright as a sunny morning, good and kind, and so far as attractiveness goes, I can think of few more enchanting things than engaging her in that spirited lesson in lovemaking you mentioned. But I know that’s not possible, since I happen to be burdened with being a gentleman, albeit, yes, a thoughtless one. And I’m glad she’s well-off, but not for my sake—she deserves no less. Yet with all her wit and character and beauty and wealth and the pleasure I find in her company, I don’t love her. So I’ll leave her, thanks. But don’t worry, without a broken heart, for I’ll be kind, but increasingly, and very obviously, very brotherly toward her. Now why do you look so puzzled?”
“I was only wondering…” Warwick answered, and it may have been that it was one of the rare moments when he was being absolutely candid as well, his friend thought, since his dark blue eyes were troubled and seemingly innocent as a child’s now, “If all that you mentioned is not love, Julian, then what is?”
“What I feel for Marianna,” Julian answered at once, his voice softening at the mention of her name. “A sort of worship, Warwick, that’s what it is. An awe, more than appreciation, a kind of wonder. It comes from knowing she’s better than any other female, far better than I, in fact. And…it’s hard to explain, damm
e, Warwick, I’m no poet, you’re the one that always has the words, but I’d have to say it’s knowing that I aspire to her, even when I’m with her.”
“Ah,” his friend said thoughtfully after a pause, “I see. And you don’t feel that toward our Susannah.”
“Lord, no,” Julian laughed, “Sukey’s a friend.”
“You intend to make that clear?” Warwick asked, his head to the side as he awaited an answer.
“Yes, Grandfather,” Julian said merrily. “I promise.”
But after Julian had left, pleased that his friend understood him and that all was well between them again, he couldn’t have imagined that his friend would remain standing lost in troubled thought because he understood, he thought, all too well. For if Julian didn’t as yet know the difference between a dream of love and what love itself was, he did—to his sorrow, he thought, he did. And if Julian was determined to pass up a chance at such a love, then he himself would not—to his consternation, he vowed that he could not.
*
When Susannah had been very young, before her father had decided his money should buy her all the accouterments of a lady, she’d gone on many picnics with him and her brothers and they’d been the delights of her life. She wasn’t an amazingly sloppy little girl, but she was a little girl of means, and so usually lived under stricter rules of behavior than did other children she observed. So she’d especially loved the informality of picnics, primarily because when she went on one no one minded when her clothes were ruined by outdoor calamities, like grass stains or bird droppings or pollen smears or the muddy residue from sudden rainstorms. She was never scolded for such disorder, because she’d always made sure to put on her oldest frocks, the ones ready for the rag basket, or spirited out from it as soon as the picnic basket was packed up, so that such destruction wouldn’t matter either to her clothes or to her governess.
Thus when the morning of the picnic dawned bright and warm, Susannah took her breakfast in her room and then put on an old faded flowered muslin dress that had been outgrown at the ankle and let down to conceal that deficiency, only to have its previously hidden hem revealed to be so brightly colored in comparison to the rest of the frock that it showed the rate of her growth as clearly as any yardstick might, only in tiny pink flowers instead of linear inches. It was also too tight at the bosom and had an interesting asymmetry, since the pink ribands that tied one sleeve high on the arm were missing on the other.
But Susannah’s maid, country-bred as she herself had been, only helped her mistress with the last of the mismatched reluctant buttons at her back and sighed when she was done. “There. Now you’re ready for anything.”
What she was not ready for was the contessa’s shrill shriek of horror when she came to collect her.
And “Never!” and “Oh, my!” and “You mustn’t even think of it!” were the only coherent words Susannah could get from her for the first few minutes. Then, since an argument raged for the next ten minutes, and some sulking of a high order was indulged in, in turn, by both of them for another ten, and then it took yet another half-hour until her chaperon pronounced her suitably attired to be able to leave her room, Susannah was obliged to be late for the picnic. That was not the only reason she wore a truculent expression to go with her violet draped gauze gown, with matching parasol and slippers.
“Forgive Julian,” her host said as he helped her into his open carriage for the short ride to Hove, where Lord Fowler’s daughter was having her picnic, “he was on fire to go, and so left before us.… Well then, if you won’t forgive Julian,” he mused, staring down at what he could see of the obstinate face beneath the floppy violet-strewn brim of her straw Florentine hat, “forgive me. You’re right, I ought to have sat on him until you came down.”
“Oh no,” she cried, looking up from her abstraction into his bemused eyes, “it’s not that.”
“I clash with your slippers, then,” he said mournfully.
She giggled. “No,” she said, smiling up at him at last, and though her face was half in the gridwork of shadows cast by her hat, he could see her full curving mouth well enough, too well for his own comfort as she leaned closer to say, with a glance to her chaperon, who was politely and properly ignoring them and looking out at the hedgerows they passed, “it’s only that I’m being rude and childish. I wanted to dress for a picnic, you see, and the contessa swears that one dresses for the opera for a picnic here.”
He found, as she went on to detail what she’d been originally wearing for the picnic in increasingly lurid terms as she herself began to see the humor in it, as she always did, that he was beginning to forget the stunning fact of her beauty as she entertained him, as he always did. He came close to ignoring how her eyes sparkled as she spoke, and nearly didn’t dwell on her matte white complexion and softly waving sunstruck hair, all but neglected to take his usual imaginary nibble at the tip of her foolish little nose, and almost forgot to torment himself with how the low neck of her gown showed the top of smooth white breasts as they rose and fell with each breath she drew. Her narrative was so amusing, in fact, that soon the contessa had to pretend to coughing to pretend to be ignoring her continuing description of the ragged finery she’d had to take off before she’d been allowed to leave her room.
“So of course, now if a bull becomes enamored of me—as who would not, in my elegance?” she went on happily, watching her coughing chaperon out of the corner of her eye, “or I have to escape a hornet’s nest, or I slide to my knees into the water when skipping a stone, I’ll be able to ruin several guineas’ worth of fabric and fashion, which is, I suppose, the entire point. I assume it’s all because I’m supposed to be making a point of my wealth?” she asked defiantly, chasing all laughter from her two listeners’ minds, “so that I’m considered acceptable here as I was not in London? So be it. I’ll play. See? I’m all rigged out. But I intend to have a good time at the picnic anyway,” she said on a sniff, “and will go berry-picking and hunt up flowers and loll on the grass to my heart’s content like everyone else, anyway.”
She could understand why her two companions seemed shocked, for she’d said an aggressive thing. But she failed to understand why they then glanced at each other, with the contessa holding a gloved hand over her mouth, and Warwick grinning, before they met each other’s eyes directly, and both fell to laughing uproariously, even though this time she hadn’t intended to say an amusing thing.
She understood when the carriage drove through the gates of Lord Fowler’s estate and then was directed to a clearing in the midst of the home wood. She knew why they’d been laughing then, she sighed, with a rueful grin at Warwick, but not, she confided before they stepped down to the grass, why their hosts called it a “picnic” at all.
Several long damask-covered oaken tables had been carried out to the clearing, a wide bland meadow that had been created in the ruthlessly cleared heart of a tall oak and rowan forest. A long white canopy, held aloft by poles placed at periodic intervals, stirred slightly in the light breeze above the tables that stood exactly in the middle of the sun-drenched meadow. A legion of perspiring footmen scurried every which way, adding finishing touches of flowers and candles to the tables, and a trio of red-faced musicians seated in the sun made music for the guests to talk by as they stood in little clots and waited to be called to the table. And that company, Susannah saw, was indeed dressed for the opera or the theater, in laces and silks, jewels and satins, their only concession to the outdoors being the parasols and bonnets the ladies wore, the high beaver hats and high Hessian boots the gentlemen affected.
“It’s a picnic because it’s held out-of-doors, ignorant wretch,” Warwick said in a low voice as he took her arm and strolled forward into the company, “and so should you like to ask that lady to go skipping stones with you? No? Then perhaps it’s because you’re shy. Speak up, now. Do you want me to ask that gentleman to go berrying with you, then?”
She tried desperately not to giggle, because they were passing t
he lady and gentleman he’d mentioned. The lady was enveloped in so many tiers of intricate lace that Susannah doubted the poor girl could move without rippling like a pond surface disturbed by a stone herself, and the gentleman, a young fop with quizzing glass in one hand and snuffbox in the other, looked as though he’d die of shock if anyone suggested he walk anywhere that might get a drop of dew on the surface of his gleaming boots.
But she kept her countenance and looked about with interest as Warwick strolled with her. There were over fifty gentlepersons on the neatly scythed grass, and far more of the common sort to wait upon them. Susannah was looking for one particular glowing head in the throng, but though she saw many fair persons, she was a bit surprised that she didn’t see Julian anywhere. She was equally as surprised at something else she did see.
She’d accompanied Warwick to the theater and a ball, but always with Julian by her side as well. And since Julian always took up her attention, in public or private, she’d never actually observed Warwick in polite society before. He was, she’d been told, reclusive. He was, she knew, scathingly clever and impatient with fashionable fools. What she hadn’t guessed was how much in demand he’d be, what she hadn’t anticipated was how many females would gaze at him.
