Love in Disguise (The Love Trilogy, #1)

by Edith Layton

  All of this might have shown in her face then. She didn’t take care to conceal it, she was so taken with what she now saw in his face in the daylight. He’d changed, something had altered. The morning light showed the lack of sleep and the amount he’d drunk the night before, but it wasn’t only the slight smudges under his eyes or the sadness to the set of his lips, it was something that shone from his eyes, it was a change in his very soul she saw in the full glare of day. But it made him no less beautiful to her. So she used the last of her rehearsed renunciation speech at last, to save some remnant of her soul from his possession:

  “Then, good luck to you, my lord,” she said, “and goodbye, and a good life to you as well.”

  “Would you like to come?” he asked.

  She gasped. It was not only at his words, for he’d said it expressionlessly and she didn’t know if he jested or not, but at some terribly lonely thing she glanced for just one moment, something she knew quite well, having found it at the bottom of her own soul whenever she dared to look.

  “Oh, aye,” she scoffed, for she knew how to fend off honest feeling better than anyone, “it would be wise of me, nice secure post, that, runnin’ off around the world with a noble gennleman.”

  “I’ll sweeten the pot,” he said, still emotionless, still as sincere or insincere as he’d been. “Marry me, then. Why not?” He spoke as much to himself as her as he added, with a new, small twisted smile quirking his lips, “It would be pleasant to hear ‘yes’ for a change, and I’m about to change my entire life.” Then, at last, he laughed. “You’d be valuable to a roving man, even that black-haired wench at the Crown hasn’t got your talents, nor can she shave a man half so smooth, I’ll warrant.”

  Once, when she’d been young, in that brief hour, Will, from down the road, had asked her to come berrying with him, though she’d known very well what he’d meant. And she’d been afraid. So she’d asked that stupid Annie Hanks to come with her so that she’d not have to face it all alone, not yet. But soon she’d tired of Annie and left her on the road, and gone on with Will and what was to be her life. She knew too well what it was to want something so badly that you ran away from it, and so much that you couldn’t stay away from it neither, and how it felt to try to avoid what you knew you must do. And she’d never be any Annie Hanks, not for any man, especially not if she cared for him.

  And she was a realist. She knew he never meant it even if he thought he did. Pain made anyone say foolish things.

  “Oh, lovely bride I’d be for you, my lord,” she laughed. “I couldn’t sign the marriage register, I’d have to make my mark. Can’t read, nor write. I can shave you just fine, and do a great many other fine things for a man, the only thing I know good is carin’ for a man’s body,” she added, just to see him wince, even as she did saying it. But when a thing had to be ended, it had to be sure.

  “So thank you, my lord, but no thank you,” she said, laughing, making it all a joke for both their sakes, “and I hope you don’t compliment all your barbers that way.”

  “All things come in threes, my luck’s bound to change soon,” he said, making no sense to her, and he bent and kissed the tip of her nose. “Thank you, Nan.”

  After he’d dressed and gone downstairs to eat and said good-bye to the landlord, he asked Nan to come with him to the door. He gave her a purse, over all her denials, but though it weighed far heavier on her heart than it could ever in her hand, she took it at last, when she realized he must end things in his own way too. The payment, she thought, would certainly make his proposal a jest. But then, she had to reconsider, and she had the rest of her life to do it in.

  For at the last, before he left her, he looked down into her eyes and whispered, “You know, Nan, you’re exactly the sort of girl I most like.”

  “And just what sort is that?” she asked saucily, knowing the answer and hating that he needed to erase everything tender this way.

  “Why,” he said seriously, watching her closely, as closely as he’d observed her that long-ago night when she believed he hadn’t, “the wise, and kind, and loving, generous sort, of course.”

  *

  “Did you tell him about Ben Compton?” the landlord asked as she stood at the door and waved at her last look at the Viscount Hazelton as he rode out of the courtyard.

  “No need,” she said flatly, for indeed there’d been no need to tell him she was marrying another coachman on the Brighton run, “he ain’t coming back for years. And when he does, I’d be too old for sport.”

  “Ben’s dark as a Gypsy,” the landlord commented, for all it was none of his business, he was a friend and knew he could pry. “Last night might have been pleasurable, but was it wise? Be something fierce to pay if you presented Ben with any kind of a golden baby that wasn’t in a purse.”

  “Ben’s already started ’is own, why do you think I’m marrying ’im?” she said savagely as she turned away, bitter at being reminded that there again she’d lost him, and so had no chance to ever have anything to remember him by, except for all her dreams, for all the rest of her life.

  * * *

  It was a macabre place to wait, but Warwick, Julian thought, on a shake of his head, had an unusual sense of humor. When he’d heard that his friend planned to visit the Silver Swan one last time before he left England, Warwick had made him promise to wait here on this last morning so that he might send a farewell gift to him. He’d agreed to the odd request, Julian thought, if only because he’d been so anxious to leave that wedding yesterday he’d have promised to wait at the gates to hell in order to escape the merriment, and not just beneath the hanging oak where Gentleman Jones and Lord Moredon both had met an end.

  He sat his horse in the shifting shade and waited, glancing up and down the long road, and at length, he frowned. It wasn’t for the futile waiting; he had, after all, nothing better to do now. His scowl was for the painful reminder of how Warwick must have passed his wedding night last night, for Warwick never forgot anything, drunk or sober, and yet this time he clearly had forgotten that last word he’d had with his friend. Pleasure, Julian thought with the uncomfortable admixture of hurt and happiness he felt for both his friends since he’d seen them wed, evidently could make Warwick forget his word in a way that everything else he’d experienced in his life had not. If he felt some consolation in the thought that Warwick had previously encountered very little real pleasure, after all, and certainly deserved some, he soon forgot it as he tried to block the next natural images that occurred to him when he considered the subsequent activities of the happy bride and groom. He was so busily doing that that he didn’t lift his head to see the rider coming out from the trees behind him until he heard the hoofbeats.

  “Three times dead, and buried twice over. I could’ve had you down and out before you turned round the first time. Good God, my lord, have you an army at your back that you can be so casual of life?” the rider said, drawing rein as he came up beside him.

  “No,” Julian answered, embarrassed, for he was right, “it’s only that I didn’t expect more blood to be let at this tree’s roots. And,” he added, deciding to give truth because it was due, “I was deep in thought and blue-deviled, and perhaps didn’t care very much for my neck just then. But thanks for sparing it, Lion. But never say Warwick’s pulled your teeth?” he asked, his amazement growing as the large man’s appearance began to register upon him. “You’re not his messenger now?”

  “They’re bright and shining as ever, my lord, but I do bring his message as a favor,” he answered, and taking a paper from the bag at the side of his saddle, he handed it to Julian, adding, “Best if you read it now.”

  Julian scanned the paper and looked up to find the other man studying him just as closely.

  “But,” he said in confusion, looking from the paper to the larger man, “you? You are the gift Warwick gives me, as he says, ‘…to take with you on your travels, for your comfort, safety, and future success’?”

  “So it would appea
r. He gave me you, by the by, when he gave me a similar letter.”

  Julian checked, as the Lion went on ruminatively. “And I too would’ve refused his generosity at once, if it weren’t for the fact that I admire the duke very well, damned if I’ve ever met a cannier fellow, and if he claimed you’d be of worth on a journey, I was forced to think it over. Then I determined at least to carry out his first wish in the matter. For as it happens, I’m leaving dear Mother England on the first fair tide too.

  “Yes,” he said on a sidewise smile, “I too have some notion of rising in the world, if not,” he added, looking pointedly up to the tree they rested beneath, “quite so far as all that. Which is almost the reason entirely. It seems Lord Moredon left me a hard legacy, for some of the information he laid with Bow Street interested them far too much. And then, our friend, the new duke, was entirely right. ‘Lion,’ he said, ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, and uneasier the one that makes too many crowns at your game.’ Quite right,” the sandy-haired man brooded, “and when I considered that not only Gamy Leg Bob and Whitey Lewis were after my position, it gave me some pause. I only took on my post by accident, I’m not a Londoner born, but it was such a ripe tasty ken that I fell into it, so to speak, and never gave a thought to the future.

  “But I’m versatile. And tired of the game. It might be, too, that I grew even more tired when a certain lovely lass who lately became a duchess let me know she thought I was too good for it. I’m not a sentimental fellow, but I never met her like before, and I think I might like to again.”

  “You never shall,” Julian said softly, “she has no like.”

  The large man looked steadily at the fair-haired young man and saw the sudden pain glance in those astonishingly light eyes. The lad had changed, he thought, and it added something to him, not that anything had been lacking. But now he’d grown a look of vulnerability that no Grecian statue could attain, and it made his beauty more human, more heartbreaking and accessible, and so perhaps even more invulnerable to age and time. Did he know, the man known as Lion wondered, that that face of his, unleashed against the world, could build or topple empires?

  “Don’t tease yourself, my lord,” Lion said sincerely, his voice sounding so different in that mode that Julian stared at him. “You never had a chance. She was born for him. From the moment she first drew breath, she was his. If you’d asked for her at once, she’d only have discovered it later and so brought pain to everyone.”

  “And so, then, I’m to be left with you?” Julian laughed lightly as he put the thought away to think on deeply some other time.

  “So, at least, the duke would have it,” Lion answered, continuing to gaze at him appraisingly, “for he took care to give me both letters, one for myself and one for you, before I left the wedding.”

  “You were there?” Julian asked, completely astonished. “But you’re far too large to overlook. I never saw you. Where were you, beneath the altarstone at the chapel?”

  “Rude fellow,” Lion said on a grin, “didn’t you note the chap who took Great-Aunt Harriet’s fancy at the wedding feast?”

  “But he was an old gentleman, heavyset, in stays and laces and a great moth-eaten periwig…he had her in raptures…good Lord, Lion,” Julian said sincerely, “I’m all over admiration. You might have proposed to her and run off on the spot, your impersonation was so complete.”

  “No impersonation, I liked her very well. Had I twenty years more and she forty less, I’d have made a match of it.”

  Julian stared at the other man, now taking care to examine him aside and apart from either his occupation or reputation. Today he looked a solid, amiable, prosperous man of business. And yet last night he’d been a creditable octogenarian, and before that, a convincingly ruthless criminal, and a dashing highwayman too. Today he seemed of an age with himself and Warwick, and the easy air he’d adopted overlaid all hint of his strength and cunning, but then, he could obviously be any age, Julian thought, or anything, he wished. Realizing this, he was as impressed with Lion now, for the first time, as Warwick, he conceded, had been from the very first.

  “Our mutual friend said that you were bound for parts unknown, seeking your fortune,” Lion commented slowly.

  “I’d thought perhaps the Indies or the Caribbean or the colonies,” Julian said just as slowly, still assessing the other’s reactions. “Aside from warmth and little yellow birds, I’d had a mind to meet up with some of the undiscovered jewels and trade and riches to be found in the East and in the New World.”

  “And how did you think to earn them?” the Lion asked carefully.

  “By luck, but failing that,” he said on a white-toothed smile, “by the labor of my back and my wit and wisdom.”

  “Not a bad idea, but I had thought of the Old World myself,” Lion said thoughtfully, “and of the riches and opportunities changing hands as the world’s boundaries are changing. Bonaparte may be on Elba, but there’s a great many unsettled things to be saved and sold and settled in the courts of the Russias and on the Continent.”

  “And how had you planned to settle those matters?” Julian asked with interest.

  “Less with luck than with skill, more with wit than wisdom, yet with luck to lead me, with some hard work as well. The work I’ve been doing was lucrative, but far too dangerous. I’ve a sudden yen, it seems, for respectability. I’ve a mind now to build me a manor house right here in England someday, find an interesting bride, and infest the world with evil children.”

  Julian laughed. “And Sally?” he asked.

  “Ah, Sally’s an ambitious chit, but has no daring. She elected to keep her throne by going with the new king, and belongs to Gamy Leg Bob now, or Whitey Lewis.”

  Julian laughed; he’d been so intent on his conversation that he was surprised to find that his horse had begun walking, and that he rode down the road slowly now, with Lion by his side. It felt, he thought, companionable.

  “Are you entirely set on the Old World?” he asked conversationally.

  “No, I thought I’d ride to the docksides and tarry there, picking up gossip and lending an ear, until I found which way the wind was blowing more fair. And you, my lord, are entirely decided upon those little yellow birds?”

  “Not at all,” Julian said. “I hope I’m not so stubborn as that. I just wish to make my fortune, and return home someday to…whatever I’m ready for then, I suppose. I’ve recovered my fortunes somewhat, with Warwick’s help. I’d like to do the rest on my own. Even this lovely animal I ride is a gift of his, a beast I rescued after Moredon sold him into coaching, and that Warwick saved again for me. Moredon tried to master the poor brute with pain and anger; I found he yielded to patience and hard work. The world’s more fractious than this horse, but I reason if I could alter him, there’s hope I can alter my own state as well.”

  “The duke said you could learn,” the Lion said after a silence as the two horses ambled on together.

  “He was right,” Julian replied, “but he ought to have added that I have to.”

  The other man eyed him with growing approval.

  “I have some education, write a fair hand, can fence and spar, wrestle and play cards with the devil without going to hell, and I’ve some Latin, passable German, and exquisite French,” Lion said negligently.

  “I have less education than I should, but I can fence and spar, and though I’m a disaster with cards, I can dice, I’ve Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and some Spanish. And I can drive a coach through the teeth of hell,” Julian replied.

  “I see, my lord,” the Lion said thoughtfully.

  “Friends call me Hazelton, friends of my heart say `Julian.’ You may call me what you wish,” Julian said at length, never looking up from his horse’s ears as he did.

  “Ah. Well, Julian, my lad, friends call me by what they knew me as when they met me, and that has changed frequently. Friends of my heart are so scarce I can hold them all in that one organ and still give them room to dance, but they call me A
rden, believe it or don’t, when they do. Whatever you call me I will answer to,” he replied, at once, for a large fierce man, looking very conscious as he concentrated on tending to his mount’s reins.

  “Well then, Arden,” Julian said, “that’s a mountain of horseflesh you’ve got there, do you think he can put on any speed? It’s a fair way to Portsmouth, but there’s an inn there that has a way with beef, and invariably obliging twin, would you believe it? Twin bar wenches. Of course, one’s uglier than the other,” he mused, “but the novelty of it draws from miles round.”

  “This fellow,” Arden replied, much offended, “is never such a work of art as that black gentleman you’re astride, but like his master, if he’s told there’s a meal at the end of the road, you may believe he can move. Twins, did you say?”

  “Aye,” Julian laughed, as he spurred his horse, and then Arden did, and so they raced down the long road, side by side, as if someone had just reminded them that the sooner they arrived at their destination, the sooner they might, someday, be able to return.