by Edith Layton
“Ah, might that be the mother superior or the cossack’s fifth wife?” Julian asked curiously.
“It might be either, but it isn’t, it’s the one in Scotland,” Arden answered as his pen waved furiously. He wrote a tight, neat hand, and he covered the sheet with speed.
“Ah, one letter for each eye, very thoughtful,” Julian commented, craning his neck and trying to read over his friend’s shoulder, but finding the pen racing too quickly in the huge hand it was in to make out the words clearly.
“And one,” Arden said patiently, “to our old friend the Duke of Peterstow in Gloucestershire—yes, I’m sending off a line to Warwick too, and as soon as I’ve done, I’m off to Paris—on your horse, I think, since mine, who’d have your head off your shoulders if he knew you’d referred to him as a ‘filly,’ is likely too tired from last night’s wild ride. We covered many acres,” Arden murmured as he sanded his second note, “as I composed these letters in my head.”
“On a hired hack, I think,” Julian corrected him, “because I’m going with you on my horse. I need the ride,” he said negligently as Arden turned his wide neck to stare at him.
“Yes, likely. You’re so jaded I wonder you can sit a chair, much less a horse today, and what man wouldn’t want to haul himself out of a merry bed after an arduous night to go cantering off to Paris?” Arden sighed. “No, don’t worry, lad, I’m not up to bad business again, for either of our profit, or to any danger to myself. It’s actually good business I’m after this time, and not in the least to my own benefit, believe it or don’t. And,” he added in a muted voice, “the only danger to myself is past.”
Julian sat quietly as the second letter was prepared, and when Arden looked up again, he found himself staring into a pair of icy gray eyes as unblinking as if it were a pistol, and not just that affronted, intimidating stare that was being leveled upon him. Although Arden remained still and his eyes didn’t so much as flicker, he finally sighed.
“All right,” he said quietly, “it seems that last night I offered for the baron’s beautiful daughter. Offered marriage, Father, don’t fret yourself.”
“And from your lack of laughter,” Julian said lightly, yet he was surprised to find how badly he ached for his friend’s sake at the news, although he’d never pitied him before, “I take it she turned you down. Well, small loss, she likely has her eye on some other swindle, a gamester’s daughter, after all—”
“Julian,” Arden said softly, “leave off ripping up the lass, eh? She said ‘yes,’ or was about to, anyway. I was the one who respectfully declined the honor paid me, et cetera, I was the one who said ‘no.’”
He rose from his seat and paced the room before he turned to his friend and shrugged.
“She had, after all, led me on. Shamefully. Actually,” he said on a chuckle, “I’m proud of her—she deceived me so well…not many have, you know. Maybe I am growing old. Maybe she is my match, for all that she’ll never be. She purported to be my ideal, you see: a worldly wise widow of some five- or six-and-twenty summers. But it appears she’s only one of your famous dewy misses, who not only has never been wed, but never even shared her bed with so much as the kitchen cat, and has only just twenty-and-one springs to her credit. It was all done, the hasty imaginary wedding and bedding and widowing, along with the extra years thrown in for balance, in order to ensure her getting that wonderful post of chaperone from the Deemses. And all because Papa can’t support her, and I suppose she can’t support acting in the capacity of his lure as your enchanting Roxie does so well. So, of course, why wouldn’t she leap at marrying me? I spoke nicely to her, and, I suppose, am the perfect papa she never had.”
“You’re far more than that to her,” Julian protested. “You yourself said she was wise.”
“Almost supernaturally so, now that I know her true age,” Arden agreed on a smile.
“Why, then, I should think you’d be delighted to find her so young and so untouched. She’s an even primer article than you thought,” Julian exclaimed in wonder at his friend’s bitterness.
“Precisely. And I’m delighted to say that so far as I’m concerned, she’ll remain in that pristine condition,” Arden said forcefully enough to quiet Julian, “because she deserves better. I won’t take advantage of her any more than life already has done. She’s not had the chance she deserves to find the man she deserves. Don’t goggle like that, Julian. Think of your reputation—Greek statues do not sit about, however gracefully, with their mouths hanging open,” he warned on a little grin.
“And I’m not the noble self-sacrificing saint you appear to be about to weep over,” he continued with a sad shake of his head. “I’m practical, as ever. Lovely for both of us, wouldn’t it be, if I rescued her and carried her off on my Clydesdale—for if I’m in shining armor with her on my lap, we’d need one, a palfrey would never bear up under that weight—and after I’ve got her installed in my castle, she finds the parfait young knight of her dreams? What then? No, I know I’m too old, too steeped in sin, and although I’ve a plentitude of them, I haven’t even got one real name to offer her. Julian, I’m never the man for her, she’s far too good for me. She needs to be among her equals.
“So,” he said more briskly, taking up the letters, “since I’ve reason to suspect my declaration in the moonlight may well have lost her a position by this morning’s light—the Deemses having noted our absence together from the ball—I’m doing what I can to find a better life for her. These letters are to assure it. I’ve not seen her since last night or yet today, and before I do I’d like to have a remedy under way. I’ve written to ask for one from my sister and Warwick, the only two decent, wealthy, worldly, and thoroughly crafty people I know in Britain.”
“Another position as chaperone is your idea of a better life than one with you?” Julian scoffed.
“It’s possible,” Arden answered quietly, “although that’s not what I’m asking them for. I’d more the idea of an introduction of some sort for her, a sponsorship and a little push in the right direction. But I’m not at all sure a decent job of work mightn’t be better, at that.”
He stopped in the middle of the room, his booted legs apart, his hands at his sides, head high, as though facing a challenge fully.
“What was I when you met me, Julian, however cleverly I was it?” he asked suddenly.
As Julian sought the right terminology, the correct words to soften the fact, Arden answered himself harshly.
“I was a thief. No, better. I was a procurer—no, more than that. I was a burglar, a footpad, a resurrection man, a cutpurse, a highwayman, a bully-boy, a fencing cully, a cracksman, a dipping cove, a counterfeit, an out-and-out Captain Sharp. Oh, I was a knowing ’un, laddie, living high on the corners of Queer Street and Easy Street, and all for them piles of yellow boys, and all for the gelt,” he said in self-mocking slum accents.
“But so I was,” he said seriously, “all of those things, because I employed all of those persons. I was a veritable king of the underworld, Julian. You could buy a body or a soul from me, cut-rate, I’d sell you anything you could afford to buy, and some things no man can. I know what I was, Julian. So trust me to know what I deserve now.”
“But that was what you were,” the blond man protested. “I was a callow fool and a dreamer when we met, but that doesn’t mean I can’t and don’t want to grow into being a fuller, worthier man someday.”
“A dreamer isn’t a killer, lad,” Arden said, his face a mask, his loud deep voice dropping like lead to end the conversation.
“Ah, well,” Arden said after a moment, his voice again his own, his expression again wry and tilted with a half-smile, “it’s only just as my father, the prince, so often said, ‘When you make your bed, son, make sure you also know who you want to lie in it with you.’ A wise man, but given to tedious maxims, perhaps that’s why I never listened to him. Come along then, Julian, perhaps a ride will do you good, if it’s a wiser, worthier gent you’re after being. Because I don
’t think,” he said as he picked up his letters and folded them in his waistcoat pocket, “that the road to wisdom can be found beneath the sheets. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “I’ve come across some interesting paths to exotic places there myself.”
They rode side by side to Paris, but they seldom spoke. Julian was too busily thinking up cogent arguments to broach to his friend after his initial reaction to Francesca’s deception had softened. He knew it would be difficult to get Arden to change his mind, but knew that for all its usual steadfastness once it had been made up, it was a fine mind, withal, and so always one amenable to reason. He didn’t know Francesca very well, but believed her to definitely be the right woman for his friend, if only because Arden had been so impressed with her, even more, because he could see how the big man suffered, feeling he ought not to have her.
Once, on that long ride, he felt a twinge of annoyance when he remembered that Roxie hadn’t told him the truth he was sure she’d known, but then he shrugged it off. Roxie, after all, owed him no more than he owed her, and what they provided each other, although delightful, was never faithfulness or honesty.
Arden rode as swiftly as his thoughts did, and both his direction and his thoughts turned to the future. His past, after all, did not bear reexamining. Or, at least, knowing nothing could come of regret save more regret, he refused to look back again. But mainly, he admitted, it was because for all his courage, he disliked pain.
The inn was in the heart of Paris and was a gaudy one, furnished in determinedly charming provincial style. No French persons were in it except for the staff; it was thronged with wealthy tourists of the sort that saw the city with one eye on the town and the other on a guidebook, and Arden and Julian exchanged knowing amused glances as they strode to the front desk. A game of chance with any one of the fine gentlemen adorning the front parlor would have netted either of them enough for a month in style in the finest hotel in Paris. But they were done with that, their rueful smiles admitted, and were only here because the inn boasted the most coaches to and from its expensive precincts than any other lodgings in the city. This was the place many English persons on the move often requested their mail be directed, whether or not they were guests. For this inn was such a famous little outpost of their countrymen that a letter sent from here would go to England almost as fast as a man on a fine horse could travel.
It was after Arden had paid for such swift transport of his letters, and after he’d asked after any that might have been left for himself or his friend, that Julian noted the clerk nodding to a tall small-eyed man lounging against the window in the parlor. From the slight, almost imperceptible shift of his wide shoulders and the subtle rebalancing of his feet, Julian knew there was no need to warn Arden, for he was aware of the man from the moment he peeled himself from the wall by the window until seconds later as he came up beside him.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said in a thick London accent, “but do I address Mr. Arden Lyons?”
“Aye,” Arden said pleasantly, turning around, leaning on the desk with all the languor of a coiled snake, for all his assumed unconcern.
“Also known as Mr. Sean Ryan, and Mr. John Tryon, and Mr. Thomas Jameson and—”
“Aye, and five times over, my boyo, and what of it?” Arden asked with unrelenting pleasantness, so sweetly that Julian tensed as well.
“Well then, sir, I’m that glad I found you so easy, for I’ve been asking after you since I come here yesterday. I bear a message for you, sir,” he said, reaching into his pocket and then dropping his hand from his coat, empty, as he jumped back, terrified when he saw the pocket pistol gleaming in Arden’s grip, the other sprung into Julian’s hand.
“No, truly, sir,” he protested, both pale thin hands twitching and waving in the air like an upended beetle’s legs, “I do. I bear a message from your sister, sir,” he said faintly, “I do.”
“Which one?” Arden asked softly, the pistol steady, but apparent to no one but Julian and the tall, perspiring stranger.
“Why, the Lady Millicent, sir,” the man said as Julian’s pistol dropped to his side at the words and he looked at Arden with shock clear in his light eyes.
“Oh, aye,” Arden sighed, his weapon disappearing as quickly as it had been brought forth.
“She didn’t want it going astray, it’s that important, she tole me to get it to you soon as may be, sir,” the tall man babbled, retrieving the note he carried and offering it to Arden with trembling fingers. “It’s urgent, Mr. Lyons. She told me to tell you plain—no time’s to be wasted. Please hurry. It’s your father, he’s taken to his bed and wants you at his side. I’m sorry, sir, but it looks like your father is dying.”
“Oh, my father,” Arden said, nodding, his face still. “Which one?”
11
It would be difficult to be a chaperone if one were never allowed to be within ten feet of one’s charge, uncomfortable staying on as a companion if one’s every polite nod and smile to company was looked upon as an invitation to debauchery, and impossible to get a decent reference if one left a situation without being dismissed simply because one found it difficult and uncomfortable. But at least, as her papa had always said when he’d gamed away his night’s lodgings but had a penny left in his pocket to try to win it back, there was a bright side. The anxiety over what she should do about remaining in her post diverted Francesca’s mind from the bizarre proposal and rejection to her acceptance of it she’d received the night before. For there were periods of all of five minutes together today when she didn’t think about it.
She could stay on, of course. The Deemses, finding her holding their daughter’s best beau’s hand in the dark, might think her a conniving back-stabbing seductress, but being endlessly practical, there was a sneaking admiration for her efforts in their attitude. And, for all their chagrin, it was clear they felt they could still use her. They, after all, monied or not, had only recently become so, and were trying to obtain a toehold in the upper reaches of society. And she, impoverished or not, had been born there. If she felt no advantage and had never known any in her father’s title, she did now. Her employers mightn’t trust her, but they respected her enough to keep her on, she realized, even if she should take to holding more than just a gentleman’s hand in the dark. So long as it wasn’t any part of that particular gentleman again; they’d made that clear.
Mrs. Deems had put it plain, and in so doing had set Francesca’s cheeks aflame.
“Mr. Lyons,” she’d said without preamble when she’d summoned Francesca to her room as soon as they’d gotten back to the hotel, “is a gent whose company we encourage, if you get my drift, Mrs. Devlin. No doubt it ain’t a piece of cake being a widow, and I can’t say as I blame you, he’s a fine figure of a man and rich as he can stare. But hands off, my dear. Anyway,” she said slyly, at the last, “it’s clear it isn’t a marriage bed he’s thinking of taking you to, slipping around as he is in the dark with you. I can’t blame him neither, he’s got no ties, and a man will take what’s offered for free, depend on it. So, if you want some advice, my dear, find a gent who’ll stand with you in the sunlight. But on your own time, my dear, in future, understand?”
She did. Which was why she was packing. She was only going to move into another room in the hotel, though. And there she’d stay until her father moved on or could get her another post. He’d gotten her this one without references, he’d get her another, she’d no doubt, she hoped as she threw the last of her belongings together. He hadn’t been in his rooms last night, and wasn’t yet back this morning, but then, he often stayed out all night at the gaming tables, taking breakfast as well as his winnings at them until his eyes began to close of their own volition. Gamesters lived in a world where the sun and the moon became myth, and weather and seasons belonged to another world. But he was her father, and they were both all each other really had, even though he’d the cards, which had become his family and his life.
After she’d gotten all her things together, sh
e nodded, looked about the room, cast a glance in her glass, and then went downstairs to wait for her father to arrive so she could tell him of her decision, the Deemses to awaken so she could renounce her position, or Mr. Lyons to pass by so she could ignore him entirely, or say something cutting, or pretend she hadn’t seen him, she was so deep in conversation with some other dashing gentleman who might happen by. Such things, she knew, might happen in a busy hotel. Even if they didn’t, something else could come up so that she could make him feel small and hurt as she did now. Because the more she thought of it, the more she realized it was patently ridiculous that he would refuse to marry her because she was young, a virgin, and had never loved another. Mrs. Deems had been entirely right. She would write him off entirely. He wasn’t worth thinking about. She was very proud of the way she wasn’t thinking about him as she went down the stairs.
But she saw no one she knew as she waited in the front room, and although a great many gentlemen tried to strike up conversations that would be enormously satisfactory to have Arden Lyons see her engaged in, they were of the sort that made Arden Lyons himself look like a recently beatified saint by contrast. For, as a gesture of her new freedom, and in a fantasy of making Mr. Lyons keel over from the force of his thwarted desire, she’d put on her new fashionable celestial-blue gown. Its cut made her figure look elegant, its flattering hue caused her hair to appear to shine like polished jet, her complexion to glow, and brought almost as much color to her cheeks as the glances and comments of the strange gentlemen who saw her did.