by Edith Layton
A chaperone who now saw she was in need of a chaperone, she finally arose and drifted to the back of the room, and positioned herself by a window. By gazing out of it as though mesmerized by the back of the bland drive, except when she glanced at the mantel clock every sixty seconds, she was so well-occupied that she was let alone and left to watch for the arrival of what she was so obviously awaiting. It was only too bad, then, that no one came.
The shadows in the weak spring sunshine moved from right to left and then disappeared entirely, only to begin to fall to the other side when they reappeared, as the sun rose to its zenith and moved on to the west. The Deemses must have taken their lunch in their rooms, Arden and Julian might have dropped off the face of the earth, Roxanne likely had decided to pass her day as she best liked, in her bed, alone or not, and not even her father’s valet came belowstairs to enliven Francesca’s day. She felt so alone that there were times when she wondered about her own reality.
That might have been why, despite all her plans and best intentions, when she finally turned to see Arden’s huge frame filling the doorway, her first expression was one of enormous relief and spontaneous gladness. Then, of course, all her subsequent frowns and hauteur and the fact that she’d swung her head back to the window so quickly as to make her grimace as her neck pinched, did no good. He came to her side at once.
At least she spoke before he did.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she said immediately, addressing his cravat as he took the seat opposite her, his back to the windows. “I imagine, from your expression, there are a great many cunning things you’ve got to say. But please believe me, I don’t want to hear them. It doesn’t matter anyway. You don’t have to worry about meeting me or seeing me everywhere, sir, for I’ve left the Deemses employ, or will,” she said, correcting herself, “as soon as they wake up so I can inform them that I have. I’ll be traveling on with my father, and it is a wide world, sir. And one in which I devoutly hope we shall not meet again. So good day.”
And so, enormously relieved and pleased with herself that she could cry, she stared resolutely out the window again. Discovering that his wide shoulders now blocked that riveting view, she swung round to stare with great interest at the front parlor, in particular at the mantel clock.
“Francesca,” he said in a deep soft voice, all velvet at its heart and reverberating so that she looked at him despite herself. She saw the sadness in his face and the eloquent futility he expressed wordlessly as his hands lifted and then fell to his lap again, for all that he, as she immediately reminded herself, trying to look away again, was as helpless as a thunderstorm, and about as predictable. Untrustworthy, she told herself sharply, and pursed her lips over the word so that it was there, at the ready, should she begin to waver.
“I never meant to make an enemy of you,” he said soberly, more somberly than was his habit of speech. “Indeed,” he went on in his usual lighter accents, “I don’t need any more, thank you, my plate’s already full. But aside from that, I consider myself your friend. That’s why I can’t be your husband, in all conscience, however much I might wish it. But I’d very much like you to consider me your friend instead. In time you’ll see you’ve the better bargain, believe me. Ah, I see you don’t. Believe me in anything, that is, or, at least”—he chuckled—“your profile tells me so. Nevertheless, I’ve been busy in your behalf today. I’d like to be that friend in truth, and do what I can to lighten your load and relieve your situation before I go. May I?”
“Go?” she asked all at once, forgetting everything she’d heard but that, finding a queer panic at the pit of her stomach at that one word.
“Yes, back to England, though it’s the last thing I’d like to do. But my father’s ill, and is having the relatives stage a classical deathbed scene, complete with willow branches and black-edged handkerchiefs handed out at the bedroom door, no doubt, and obviously has ordered up a fatted calf as well, for my delectation. I don’t care to go, for more reasons than that, but I must. Needs must when the devil drives, and the old chap’s driving me hard. I’ve a conscience these days, it seems, or perhaps it’s just that I want to make sure he’s mortal, after all,” he added in an undervoice, scowling.
For all she’d planned a hundred ways to rankle and belittle him in the hours that she’d waited for him, she had to hold her hands tightly together to keep herself from saying what she impulsively wished to do—which was to ask him to take her with him. Not only did she want to go home again, to whatever home she could find in England, but she realized, amazingly enough, that she was afraid of being left here without him.
He may have seen all that in her suddenly white face and wide, frightened eyes.
“I’ve written to my sister and another good friend of mine. If I know them, they’ll soon send a reply. I’d like to find you a position in one of their households. And not just as a jumped-up servant, but as a friend. With your charm and grace, education and birth, I know you can find an eligible match before the year is out. I’ll dance at your wedding, Francesca, and you’ll thank me for this day yet,” he said with a smile crossing his weary face.
He was weary, she noticed; he looked tired unto death, and maybe because of that, or perhaps because she forgot everything but the fear of his leaving her here among strangers, she didn’t flare up.
“Thank you. But I’ll stay with my father,” she said quietly.
When he looked hard at her, she said quickly, again, before he could interrupt with some excellent reasoning to make her change her mind, “I do thank you, Arden. But I think I’d be no better at taking charity than you would, sir.”
Even he found that unanswerable. But after a pause, as he tried to think of a way to refute it anyhow, as she knew he would, she nodded sadly, and to regain composure looked back across the room again.
He hadn’t thought she could get much paler, or tremble more. But her face grew ashen and her hands clenched hard in her lap as she looked at the young man across the room who was looking at her. His gaze was not flirtatious or lecherous, rather he stood still and simply raised an eyebrow and wore a small wry half-smile before he turned away and went out the door. He’d been an unremarkable young man, neatly dressed, and with a thin, neat, ordinary face that Arden remembered immediately because it was his business to remember such things, and more, because once, in the dark, he’d seen Francesca angry with the young man, and so had memorized that face and filed it in his mind, never to be forgotten.
“A friend?” he asked her casually now as she stared after the young fellow.
The face she turned to him struck him to the heart. Her eyes were as terrified at his question as the eyes of one who’d just looked on death, but her face was composed as she answered, after a moment, in her huskiest tones, “Oh. No. Just someone I thought I knew. When…when do you leave, Arden?”
“Within two days. But not before I clear up some business matters. I’ll ask you again, Francesca. I’m persistent,” he said, rising.
“Godspeed then, sir,” she said, arising as well and giving him her hand and a weak smile. “I thank you, and I do understand. But for all your persistence, I’m afraid I am resolved.”
As she watched him stride away, she realized that she was just that—afraid. Yet she was no worse off, she told herself as she sank back into the chair and deep thought again, than she was before she met Arden. Except for the fact that in a few weeks she’d discovered how it felt to be a servant, as well as a rejected lover.
Now it was just herself and her father again. And Harry. And she didn’t know how to go on and find another position, or handle the resurrected love of her life, and the one man she might have liked to ask for help, offered friendship…which she didn’t trust him enough to give. All she had for him was love, which he decidedly didn’t want from her.
As the time passed, Francesca realized that Roxanne wouldn’t be seen until dark, and the Deemses were likely showing their displeasure with both Arden and herself by remaining
in their rooms until evening as well. Then, knowing how the Deemses thought by now, she reasoned they’d likely issue forth with a flourish and Cecily in all her glory and be monumentally forgiving of Arden, so that, they’d hope, he’d be overwhelmed at their graciousness as well as at their daughter’s loveliness. She could, of course, Francesca knew, seek them out in their rooms and give in her notice to them there. But there she would be alone, entirely at their mercy, and suddenly she was weary with being alone. She’d wait until she’d seen her father, she decided, and so might as well go to her room to rest until night, when it was inevitable that he would have returned.
But as she rose to take the stairs, a last glance to the window showed her what was unmistakably her father’s valet walking at the edge of the drive, carrying his portmanteau by his side. She hurried out into the late afternoon to intercept him before he disappeared down the long drive.
“Madame,” he said, bowing, perfectly correct, except for the excessive coldness in his face and tone when she’d stopped him by crying out only “Monsieur,” because he hadn’t been with her father long enough for her to have remembered his proper name.
“You are leaving?” she asked breathlessly.
“So it would appear, madame,” he said icily.
“My father dismissed you?” she asked, hoping he’d say “yes” and stride away, and yet knowing with a horrible sinking feeling that he would not.
“He did not,” he said, with the first suggestion of a human expression that he’d worn, but as it was a nasty smirk that played about his thin lips, she looked away as he continued, “I gave in my notice, madame, for I am accustomed to being paid for my services, not being,” he said with vengeful spite, “accustomed to being a charitable institution. Good day, madame,” he said, and bowed and left her standing in the drive, her eyes closed in pain.
And then she took to her heels. She only slowed when she reached the hotel, so as not to call attention to herself, but once there, she took the stairs with uncommon speed to make her way to her father’s door. There was no answer to her scratching, or knocking, or shaking at the door, and so finally, looking up and down the deserted hallway to be sure no one else was there, she knelt and whispered at the keyhole, frantically, “Father, Father, it’s Francesca…Father, it’s me, please.”
The door swung open. There was no one to be seen in the room. But she stepped in anyway, and when the door closed again, her father was there, where he’d been standing behind it all along. She went into his arms in a rush, not weeping—she was beyond that now. Because she knew. Before he spoke, she knew.
“It was a great deal of money,” he said wonderingly as he held her and felt her trembling. “I haven’t had so much in years. I kept telling myself I would make it more, but all along I think I knew what would become of it. When I was young,” he said wistfully, petting her hair absently, as he would any smooth and gracious texture beneath his fingers, “I would have held on to it for long enough to live in style for a while. But now, I imagine, my control is relaxing, even as my judgment is. I lost every penny. Every franc. And more. I’m sorry, Fancy, but I’m afraid I must be going now, while I still may. Debtors’ prison is never a lovely place, but worse in France than at home, I’ve heard. In any case, I shan’t remain long enough to find out for a certainty.”
She disengaged from him and stood back, taking in a deep breath.
“Then I’ll come with you,” she said. “I was going to tell you I’m leaving the Deemses anyway. Arden Lyons, you see, offered for me…yes, he actually did, but then he changed his mind…it’s a mix-up and a pother,” she went on quickly, in what she hoped were dismissive accents, “but the result is that the Deemses have made their displeasure known, and though I can be a servant, Father, I truly can, I can’t under such conditions. So I’ll come with you tonight. What luck! I’ve already packed,” she jested on a weak smile.
“No,” he said, shaking his head, and smiling just as wanly, “I’m afraid you can’t. Not only because I don’t plan to skip out in the dark of night—what do you take me for?” he said gently, and as she flushed, he went on, still smiling, “Every innkeeper expects gamblers to sneak off in the night. Doubtless our host will have word of my dramatic fall by then and will be lurking, waiting for me to decamp all through the night tonight. No, I’ll walk out in broad and blameless daylight, this very afternoon, sans baggage, and wave him a cheery greeting as I do, as if I were only going for a stroll. And then I’ll never return, of course. A clever fellow can wear several changes of clothes at once—you didn’t note I look a wee bit plumper today? All to the better, luggage is never so important as freedom. I’ve done it before,” he said with a shrug, “a great many times before,” he murmured as he turned away from her.
“And you can’t come,” he said more harshly, not looking back at her. “It wouldn’t be safe. I know all about the Deemses, my dear, Arden spoke to me this afternoon, he only just left, in fact. He offered me financial help,” he mused, and as Francesca’s spirits began to lift, he continued, “I refused. I’ve some notion of being a father, Fancy, not much, but some. I won’t have you in his debt through me. Not that I believe he’d take advantage of it, and not that I don’t think he wouldn’t be the perfect chap for you in any event,” he said at once, wheeling around and looking at her keenly, “for he would be. Perhaps not if I’d been a proper father, true, for then you’d have had a come-out and a place in society and your choice of titled gents. There’s no way to know now, of course, yet I believe even if that were so, he’d still suit you admirably. But never if you were in his financial debt. You may do anything for a friend or lover, but money changing hands changes everything,” he sighed sadly. “No, he may well be wrong in thinking you’re so far above him, but I won’t have him ever thinking you’re beneath him. It may all work out. In any case, I think you ought go with him to his friends in England, that’s a favor that may be taken. Or stay on with the Deemses, if you prefer—they’re crude, but not dangerous. Both are safer courses than remaining with me.”
“Oh, Father,” Francesca cried, catching her lower lip in her teeth to keep her startled laughter from becoming sobs, “how can you imagine that? You’re my father. I’m not such a puritan that gaming distresses me to the extent that I’d leave you.”
“But I am so much of a gamester that I insist,” he said sharply. “Listen well, Fancy, my dear, you don’t know what you’re saying. When I’m at the tables I know nothing but the game. Honor, respectability, duty, and love are all one, and all mean nothing then. I’d knock down a man who dared to insult you with so much as a word in my presence. But when at the gaming table, with the fever on me, I’d put you up as a wager against a penny-piece to any man who had it in his pocket. Do you understand?” he asked, his eyes hard, his voice rising. “I’d never sell your honor, your name, or your body, when in my right mind. But I’m not in my right mind when I game. That’s why I do. As I love you, I’ll leave you now, Fancy, believe that.”
He turned once about the room as she stared at him, shocked.
“When I was young,” he said, his usual gentle smile in place again, “we all wagered, every man jack of us. At school, at university, and after. All the bucks of the ton would bet on anything. Lud,” he said, grinning like a boy himself, “and what mad wagers they were. I lost a packet on a race once, I recall—everyone was in on it, from Prinny to the Beau. I chose the geese to win over the turkeys,” he laughed, “and would’ve won too, but I’ll swear someone lured them off the course. We played at everything, all of us, faro, whist, rouge et noir, hazard, deep basset, why, even patience, noughts and crosses, and jackstraws. Name the game, it didn’t matter then, we’d bet on a card or a race or a number or even on who would marry first among us, and die last.” He smiled reminiscently. “All of us. Only some of us did it only as an amusement—and some of us couldn’t leave off once we started.”
His smile slipped, his face changed, and he looked hard at his daughter. “I don�
��t blame your mama,” he said, and she took in her breath, for he seldom mentioned her, “for all she left me. For I lost everything we had, and then made one last wild wager and lost her. She had, you see, more honor than I, for all she left me to wed another while yet married to me. She was only a bigamist, you see. I was far worse. Don’t ask more, Francesca, only believe me. And now,” he said, clearing his throat, picking up his greatcoat and his walking stick, “I shall hop it neatly, so that I can leave without too much further shame to you, and not so incidentally, also without incarceration for me. I gambled more than I had, and there are several debts outstanding. But the wheel turns, and when it does, I can pay my creditors back. Gamesters have convenient memories, and a full pocket always buys forgiveness. And I know from experience that one country doesn’t cooperate with another in these matters, and that free, my luck may change…well,” he sighed, “it can’t get much worse.
“I’ve something for you, my dear,” he said, putting his hand in his greatcoat pocket, and withdrawing a small paper-wrapped parcel, he gave it to her. But she could only hold it and didn’t try to untie the string until he urged her, “Go on, go on.” When she opened the parcel, she laughed, although she wanted to weep.