Love in Disguise (The Love Trilogy, #1)

by Edith Layton

  “There’s where you’re out,” his friend argued wearily, “unlike impulse and infatuation, if there’s no rhyme or reason to it, then it’s never love at all.”

  “Going to give me lessons about love, Warwick?” Julian asked icily.

  “I’d sooner give the cat lessons in how to make kittens,” his friend sighed. “I’m only attempting to make conversation, it’s a long night.”

  “It won’t be much longer,” Julian promised, slowing the coach as he took a bend in the road, for the lamps lit only an immediate path and what lay beyond each drastic turn was as secret as the dreaming night itself, “but I’m glad you care for her, for all that you hadn’t any choice. Even a flint-hearted curmudgeon such as you can’t resist her. But who could?”

  “Who, indeed?” Warwick said softly.

  Then they fell silent again as Julian guided them on, concentrating to the point where he began to believe that he was feeling his way along the road with his leaders’ own hooves, and Warwick did everything he could as well to prevent thinking about what had happened to the young woman no one could resist.

  There were four main roads to London; Julian took the new one most of the way, cutting over when he could to his old coach run when he thought inquiries might bear results, despite the time wasted for the diversion from the fastest route. The sleepy ostlers at the King’s Head regretted they hadn’t seen any spectacularly beautiful blond young lady passengers that day, and neither had anyone at the Goat and Compass or the Crown, the Maiden’s Head or the Castle, though many remembered and had a greeting for the handsome viscount-coachman. But some old acquaintances of his at the Silver Swan recalled spying her briefly—“Who could forget such a stunner?” a stableboy breathed in wondering memory. And so then they were off again without a pause for a drink or a reminiscence or a handshake with anyone there, or even a word for the serving wench who pelted pell-mell from out the kitchens when she heard of their arrival, and was just in time to see them go.

  And then, at last, when they came to the Crimson Cat, they found Millie, still basking in the taproom in the sudden celebrity she’d achieved with her tale of abandonment and abduction. They swept her up with them and drove away with her so quickly, that for all that she’d seemed to know them, it almost appeared to all the envious servant girls that the lucky mort was being snatched all over again, but this time by two amazing handsome knaves.

  Warwick joined Julian on the high driver’s seat again when they stopped at the last toll before London. He’d left Millie in the coach in the care of Mr. Epford, the valet having insisted on accompanying them with such violence of feeling that they’d let him, if only to prevent his hanging onto the back of the coach along with the stout footman they’d taken to ride guard.

  “She was taken by hired help,” Warwick reported, “and bad sorts, at that.” To Julian’s sudden look of puzzlement, he added unhappily, “A rogue’s a rogue, but a professional one does his job and nothing else. And I’d rather she fell into that sort of hands than those of some riffraff hiring out for mischief or from desperation, for they don’t know what they’re about and don’t care about their reputation. Of course, there’s honor among thieves.” He laughed bitterly at his friend’s surprise. “Men of any worth are proud of their name and skill in any line of work. Just look at the Lion. And I shall do that,” he vowed, “as soon as we get to London. So we’ll divide it, each to his own level: I’ll track our Lion in the lower regions; you, Julian, will prowl the more fashionable watering holes to seek out Lord Moredon’s direction.”

  “Be sure I shall,” Julian said grimly.

  “No, no, only seek it out,” Warwick insisted, his voice deadly serious. “You must swear to me ’pon honor to do nothing else about it until we meet and compare information, or else we’ll confound each other and not him.”

  He continued to caution his friend until as the coach rattled down through the familiar streets of town, he got his promise on it at last.

  “Past midnight. Good. Neither of us will be hindered by the hour,” Warwick announced, taking out his watch as they came to his own street, “since neither the lowest nor the highest in the land sleeps at the height of the night. One plays, the other preys on them, and as to which is which of them,” he sighed sadly, “it would take a wiser man than I to know.”

  They were puzzled when they saw that the town house was glowing with light as they approached it, and pleased but surprised to find a stableboy ready to receive the dusty coach and horses from them. Before Warwick could raise the knocker to his door, Mr. Fox swung it open wide for him. Mr. Epford delivered Millie to the care of Cook, and Julian was about to take the stair to find a change of clothes in his old room so that he might scour the better clubs and gaming hells in proper attire, when he heard Warwick, in a peculiar tone of voice, sweetly inquire of his butler as to how he’d been so prepared for their arrival. As he’d been wondering the same thing, he paused to hear the reply.

  “No message could have arrived from Brighton faster than we did, or have you developed new powers of observation? I’ll hire you out for the Hungerford Fair and make our fortunes with your telling fortunes if you predicted it from a dream, but then how else could you know, Mr. Fox?”

  The voice was idle, amused, but his master’s face was not, and yet Mr. Fox was not insulted, for he knew that his employer was a suspicious man and had good reason to be.

  “This note came for you this evening, sir, and the singular person who entrusted it to me instructed me to hand it to you the moment you arrived. He seemed to expect you momentarily,” the butler explained, more pleased by the obvious correctness of his decision to believe the shabby fellow who’d delivered the message than by his employer’s absently muttered apologies as he took the note and scanned it anxiously.

  Warwick smiled a thin smile and handed the paper to Julian, who stood arrested, with one foot on the stair.

  “My dear friend Mr. Jones (if it is still correct for me to style you so),” Julian read aloud, “It may interest you to know I have in my care one prime article recently lost, strayed, and stolen. I hadn’t thought you would be so careless, sir. But if you’re interested in recovering this piece of goods, please come at once, day or night, to the southeast corner of Gray Eagle Street betwixt Spitalfields and Shoreditch, and wait upon events. Your most obedient servant, Mr. Brian McCulley Tryon.”

  As Julian looked to his friend, momentarily perplexed, Warwick grinned at last, and said with real relief and some small annoyance, “Two rhymes, I suppose, for emphasis, or luck. Lion, of course, it’s our charming Lion.”

  After the usual trip down false alleys and around blind streets, a passage of time made bearable by the thought of the outcome, and unbearable by it as well, Warwick and Julian were told to leave their coach in a cobbled courtyard behind what appeared to be a decent-looking house. Then, again following the thin man they’d come to recognize as a harbinger of the man they sought, they went into the house. They were admitted to a tasteful study, where a beaming, sleepy-looking Lion, resplendent in a silken dressing gown, greeted them as hugely as if they were his lost brothers and not two grim, dust-covered, bone-weary gentlemen.

  “How good to see you, Mr. Jones, my dear friend,” he said, smiling hugely and putting out his hand. “Or,” he asked in sudden coy alarm, “ought I, may I, still call you that?”

  Warwick took his hand. “For now I’d much prefer it, Lion,” he sighed, his voice slurring with his exhaustion and anxiety, “but damn your hide, is there nothing you don’t know? Where is she?”

  “How gracious,” Lion said with pleasure, extending his hand to Julian then. “My lord, well met, how do you go on?”

  But when Julian only looked hard at him, the Lion dropped his air of bright conviviality.

  “Oh, put up your swords,” he said in an altered voice, gesturing for them to take chairs as he sat down, “she’s well, she’s fine, in fact. Untouched, if that’s what’s concerning you. It concerned me as well
, and I promise I didn’t alter that happy state. She’s safe, upstairs, I just talked her to bed, and now I suppose since I’ve sent word, she’s waking and primping so you can take her back again. Pull in your tender sensibilities, gentlemen, it’s all in order, as much as it can be. It’s my Sally sharing her bed tonight, as much to protect her from me as it is to protect me from the temptation of her charms, because if I so much as glance at her cross-eyed, Sally will have my liver on a skewer. And not for Miss Logan’s sake. A possessive chit, my Sally, not a moral one,” he explained.

  “Lord Moredon had her,” he said harshly, unsettling his recently calmed visitors as he changed his tone with his topic, as he often did. “Or rather, I’m pleased to report he didn’t. That she escaped is all due to her wit and courage. She’s an admirable creature. But Moredon’s completely mad now. Take her home, gentlemen, and don’t let her out of your sight. As to that, don’t let each other out of your sight. He means mischief, and it’s not clear what it’s to be. But he was babbling about that poor idiot who’s riding the high toby on the Brighton and Bath roads again, and he ranted on about your ancestor, Mr. Jones, and your fate as a coachman, Viscount. I don’t know what it all means, whether it’s slander or accusation for other crimes he’s got in what’s left of his mind, but if I were you I wouldn’t like any of it. For all I’ve just welcomed you to London, I’d advise you to leave it now, and stay away. London’s a wonderful city. It’s easy to buy anything you want here. Especially revenge.

  “As to that,” Lion said, stretching luxuriously, “his three handpicked helpers are my meat, gentlemen, forget them, they’re no longer in the game. Don’t pity them neither,” he said coldly, as he saw the viscount’s involuntary expression of distaste, “as Miss Logan does. She’s all full of excuses for two of them because they aided her by coshing the fellow who wanted to sample her on the spot.”

  Now Lion seemed to be having some deliberate sport as he watched the viscount’s ashen face for reaction, as he added, “I didn’t enlighten her, your lordship, because I’m a kindly man, but it’s clear it was only healthy respect for your obedient that caused their courtly gesture. The chipper fattish one she described is notorious for liking the ladies in diverse ways, and the other, the silent respectful slow-witted one she championed to me, is quick enough when it comes to females, and well-known for especially liking those who don’t care for him.”

  “Is there any other sort of diversion you enjoy, Lion, bull or bear baiting, perhaps? Have you any other hobbies, I wonder,” Warwick asked easily, and as the man he addressed turned his head, he went on smoothly, “aside from rescuing fair damsels and tormenting their admirers, that is?”

  “Well put, sir,” the Lion replied with amusement. “You note that I do like to have my little sport with the quality. But well taken too, and I’ll leave off, since the viscount doesn’t disdain so much as he don’t understand me.”

  “Ah, but who could ken the workings of that labyrinthian mind?” Warwick asked, as Julian interrupted him to say stiffly, “I’m grateful for your intervention, Lion, again, although I don’t understand it either.”

  “My father was the fifth son of an earl, and though I grew up in poverty, he drilled an outsize respect for my betters into my head,” Lion confessed sadly.

  “What a crowded orphanage the good fathers ran,” Warwick. marveled, “that they had room for your dear mother, your father, and, no doubt, for your old gran as well.”

  “Yes,” the Lion said happily, “it was cozy.”

  But their banter was cut off when Warwick looked up and saw Susannah as she entered the room. Her gown was crumpled, her glorious hair in sad disarray, her face pale and still sleep-fogged, but so filled with gladness that even Warwick’s thin, melancholy features lit with a reflection of her joyousness as he rose to his feet and stared at her. But Julian arose as well, and his fair face glowed with happiness, and being nearer as well as less constrained, he stepped forward and closed her in his arms and hugged her hard in greeting.

  Warwick stood and stared at their glad reunion, and Lion watched as well, but it was never Miss Logan and the viscount he studied so intently. When Susannah stepped from Julian’s embrace she came forward to give her hand to Warwick. He took it gravely and gazed into her face, and what he saw there made him nod and he said only, “You relieve my mind, Susannah. I’ll not let you come to harm again, I promise.”

  “1 didn’t come to harm,” she corrected him, “but thank you for coming for me.”

  “Oh well, it was tedious,” Warwick said lightly, “but we’d nothing better to do, true, Julian?”

  “Very easy for you to say,” Julian answered peevishly, taking his cue. “I had a good seat at a hazard table myself.”

  When they’d done laughing, Lion complained, “Ah, the quality think they’re the only ones who had sport spoiled this night. I missed a good ratting and a cockfight. Well,” he said innocently, “falconing’s passé, and there’s seldom cricket matches hereabout. The hunting, however,” he said slyly, “is always in season.”

  On that somber note Warwick ordered Susannah to the coach, after looking at his watch and exclaiming in horror at the hour.

  “I want you home and asleep within minutes of getting there,” he said sternly, “for like it or not, you’ve had enough of London’s nightlife for a while, and we’re going back to Greenwood Hall tomorrow.”

  But she only smiled at him and they shook hands all around, and Julian gave her his arm and led her out to the coach.

  The Lion stayed Warwick with one touch of a finger.

  “We were talking of your family, the little lady and I,” he said, and as Warwick’s heavily lidded eyes opened in alarm, he added at once, “Only your ancestor that swung for his sins, that is. I tell no tales you’ve omitted to tell, reasoning that as a reasonable gentleman you’ve some good reason for whatever you do, or don’t.”

  “Thank you, it’s early days yet, and I choose to pick my time for revelation, true. But there’s nothing you don’t know, is that the point?” Warwick asked carefully.

  “No point to it at all,” Lion answered thoughtfully, “except to let you know that I’ve never held a female in higher esteem, for all that she’s too tender a heart. She had tears in her eyes when we spoke of Gentleman Jones’s sad fate, and so I told her she’d never have suited that antique gent. To divert her from sentiment and acquaint her with reality—for there’s nothing romantic about a hanging, nor should a man’s hard death be taken lightly even after a century—I let her know that sometimes the bravest bad fellow to walk out on the air at Jack Ketch’s prodding won’t drop down quick enough to end it clean. That’s when he expects his loving lass to help him by helping him into eternity the faster. I told her that what he needed most then wasn’t tears or a fine lady to hang on his arm, but a female who loved him enough to jump up and pull on his legs as he dangled on the end of his rope in the sheriff’s picture frame, so that he wouldn’t be all day dying. And she, I said, was clearly too much the lady to have done it for him. The diversion worked. Because she agreed. Not a tear in sight. She was in a fine rage instead, and said she’d have jumped all right, but it would have been the hangman’s legs she’d have gone for.”

  The ginger-haired man roared with laughter before he subsided and said seriously, “Oh, Mr. Jones, do you know what a treasure she is? I myself offered for her, in a joke. But if she’d have said yes, there’d have been no joke about it. ’Struth, a man ought to aspire to such a female.”

  “Indeed,” Warwick answered softly, “my friend Hazelton is a lucky man.”

  “Ah yes,” the Lion replied, his eyes growing distant, suddenly bored, suddenly too weary to speak any longer, as he yawned a farewell to his guest. “Yes, sir, if that’s the way of it, good night and good-bye and much luck to you.”

  It was a good night for most of them, since weariness brought sleep to everyone in the Jones town house almost as soon as they laid their heads down upon their pillows. But
although Susannah sank into the familiar bed with a heartfelt sigh of gratitude, her sleep was uneasy, clogged with bits and pieces of odd, unresolved themes. She dreamed of highwaymen and hangings, and wakened from sleep only to fall back to be menaced by lions and leering madmen, and cried out once in the night before she turned on her pillow to dream of lords and ladies, and then at last found herself lost in a sweet embrace she didn’t want to wake from, until she did, only to find herself alone, staring into the dreaming night, weeping, bereft of terrors as well as love.

  So of course she was hollow-eyed and subdued the next day, giving Julian a good-morning in the same sad voice she gave Warwick her condolences in. They were so understanding that she wanted to weep again, for they never knew it was her own teeming brain that had frightened her from her rest, and not the memory of her dangerous adventure.

  They left London after a light luncheon, after Warwick had left all sorts of instructions for a great many persons, including the absent contessa, should she ever admit her folly in leaving her charge so precipitately and return to them again. Mr. Epford had gone on ahead to prepare Greenwood Hall for their arrival, and Warwick sat with Julian again as the coach returned the way it had so lately traveled. Susannah shared the interior of the coach with Millie, and as the maidservant was not one to miss out on her rest, she deserted her mistress in sleep as soon as the coach wheels began turning. Yet though Susannah was so tired it seemed to her that she was moving in a haze as she headed back to Brighton, she sat awake and tried to face her phantoms, so that she wouldn’t doze off and have to face them that way again.