by Edith Layton
“Oh, Father,” she said, holding out the pack of ornate and decorated cards to him. “No, these…these are your talismans, your favorite—”
“The luck’s out of them for me,” he said. “I never used them anyhow. I kept them close because you were too young before. Remember how I chased you away when you and Bram found them that time? And then how angry I was when I found you’d hidden behind a chair to hear me tell him how they were used?” He smiled at the memory, before he went on, “But now they’re for you, it’s time, you are one-and-twenty after all. And it’s only fitting, for I had them from a lady to begin with. She was a great lady, very imperious, very imposing…except in private,” he said with a smile that took the years from his thin face, “and one of the best dealers at the game. At any rate, it’s a grande dame’s, a lofty dowager’s deck. That’s how to use them, as she did, with absolute and perfect assurance and complete haughtiness, that’s the key. They’re not so bent as to land you in a Newgate parlor, but winners nonetheless, if you play them right. Even if you don’t, keep them to remember me by. Not a very great legacy, perhaps,” he said, his smile fading, “but an apt one from a gamester to his daughter.”
He left her holding the packet in her hand, but paused at the door to look back at her.
“But I haven’t a penny to give you, my dear,” he said, “or one to bless myself with. Roxie’s on her own now too, but she’s got young Hazelton and she’s experienced enough to find someone else by nightfall if he falls by the wayside. And never fear for me, neither. I’ll find a mark before sunset, and who knows, I may be rich by next week. Come give me a kiss of peace and farewell. I’ll write to you in care of your school, they’ll forward my word, no doubt, wherever you are.”
She walked to him hesitantly, and he kissed her cheek and hugged her once before he let her go. There may have been anguish in his eyes before he smiled again and tapped her cheek with one finger.
“Take heart,” he said, “there’s always a chance I’ll be fortunate enough to keel over dead at the tables one day when I’m winning, and then I’ll make it all up to you. I trust in chance, you know…ah, but you do know, all too well, don’t you, my dear? I’m sorry,” he said once, briefly, before he shook his head, and smiling sadly, left, leaving her alone.
He was gone for several moments before she accepted it. And then she walked raggedly into the hall, trying to contain her weeping until she reached her own room. All those who loved her were leaving her for her own good. How lucky she was to be so loved, she thought. And so when she discovered herself running blindly toward her door, only to run up against a warm, hard chest with a pair of strong arms wrapping about her tightly, she looked up into that craggy stern face and tried, through her tears, to tell him of all her good fortune before she laid her head down against Arden’s chest and wept. It seemed there was nothing else she could think to do.
“Blast,” he said, holding her close and trying to hush her broken sobs, “and damn propriety. I can’t take you to your room, nor mine, and we must speak alone. Come, come along, Francesca—I have it—we’ll go to your papa’s room. He’s likely gone by now, but I won’t take advantage, I’ll swear it…hush, do, your name will be safe, as you will be there, no one else will know he’s gone if he is…ah, so he is? I know, I see, hush, please, Francesca, it will be all right, I promise,” he kept saying in a murmurous undervoice as he walked her to the room she’d so lately left.
Once there, he closed the door and simply held her close for a long while, and told her to weep all she liked, and she did until it seemed she could cry no more. Then she continued to lean against him until she recalled herself, and then, suddenly, all in a flurry, she lifted her head, looked at him, and grew red with embarrassment.
“Here,” he said, “another handkerchief…Lord, but you’re an expensive chit. You barons’ daughters think linen grows on trees—but it does, doesn’t it?”
She gurgled something from beneath the large square of linen he’d handed her, and emerged at last, muttering something of an apology for weeping on him and something about how ghastly she must look, all red-faced and swollen-eyed and blotchy, as she protested, as though she couldn’t make up her mind whether she was more embarrassed at having broken down in front of him or at having him see her looking so broken-down. But he remembered the warmth of her in his arms and the shape that he’d held so close and wanted to do nothing more than take those swollen lips beneath his, and take that long ripe form similarly, so he coughed, and looked away and saw a pitcher and basin on a table and told her there was no harm done to her pride, for hadn’t he once offered her his broad shoulder to cry on? And then told her she could repair any damage to her face as he spoke to her.
She’d just immersed her heated face into two handfuls of cool water when she heard him say it bluntly.
“You’re coming with me to England,” he declared, and she looked up with sudden hope and then was glad her face was blurred with streams of water when he added, “You’ll be safe from me, as well as from gossip. I’ll hire on someone to act as companion, or, since I’m in such a hurry, we might get Julian to ask Roxanne along, for the look of it. We’ll take on a maid for the form of it too. Actually, your coming like this saves me time when I most need it, it resolves matters more than I could have hoped to do in the next few days. I wouldn’t have left things hanging, of course.
“You can’t remain here,” he said gruffly, “not alone, and certainly not with the Deemses. Not any longer. Once I’ve gone they’ll be off about the Continent again, and with your papa gone as well, you’d have no security from their displeasure. I’ll find a safe harbor for you, Francesca. I told your papa that, and I promise you that too. Can you leave day after tomorrow?” he asked abruptly, finding the impulse to reassure her in more concrete fashion almost overwhelming, aware of the door closed on their privacy more than he wished to be as she finished drying her face on a towel and looked to him with indecision.
“Arden,” she said, her normally husky voice so low from her weeping that it almost overset his resolve. It seemed, he thought with grim humor, that this woman could reach his body with her voice as well as her own sweetly curved body. “Arden…” she said, paused, thinking rapidly, and then, confused, beset, and weary with carrying her burdens alone, she decided to trust him entirely. “There’s something else. I’d no time to tell my father—no, I didn’t dare, I think. I didn’t know what use he’d make of the information. But I do trust you,” she said, but then hesitated, wondering if it were fair to trust Harry’s secret to anyone else, even this admittedly wicked, strangely noble man.
So she decided to trust him only a little, only as much as she dared, and went on, prevaricating, “I’d like to go with you, if only because you’re right and I fear being alone. But I can’t leave just yet. There’s something I must do first. I don’t know how long it will take to find…I have to speak with a certain gentleman before I go. I owe it to him,” she said firmly, explaining it to herself as well as to him, as she thought aloud.
“The young gentleman you were staring at in the parlor this afternoon? The one you goggled at as though he’d just risen from the dead? Henry Durham?” he asked. And as she looked at him with incomprehension, he added, “A few coins to a few low-paid persons, and anyone’s secrets are divulged. He’s known as Henry Durham, and he’s been uncommonly interested, it seems, in me, as well as in you. I’d planned to take certain steps, but from your expression, I wonder, ought I to be as alarmed as you, and go prepared for danger?” he asked curiously, as the color left her face.
“No,” she blurted. “No, he means you no harm, Arden, please, don’t hurt him—it was Harry…Lieutenant Harry Devlin. Ah,” she breathed in dismay, closing her eyes, now that it was out so easily, wondering if she’d wanted to be tricked into revealing all, after all. “I think I wanted to tell you all along. It’s my Harry,” she said miserably, not noting how his jaw tightened at her possessive word more than any other. “He was
never dead, it seems. Well, obviously,” she added bitterly, “I only just found out myself, the other night. He…he left the battlefield at Waterloo, alive, because he wanted to remain so, he said. He wants me to stay on here with him. But I can’t. Still, I owe it to him to tell him. I can’t just leave without telling him.”
“And do you love him still?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know if I loved him ever,” she said wearily, “since I don’t know if I ever knew him.”
“Then would it be all right if I spoke with him? I promise to be good,” he said. “I only want to let him know you’re not alone and that my intentions are not dishonorable, or honorable,” he added lightly, “but that I’ll see to it that you’re taken care of honorably. I can find him soon enough,” he promised, “and I give you my word that’s all I’ll do.”
“Yes, then, and thank you,” Francesca said, looking to him with such gratitude in her great dark eyes that he immediately swung open the door, and after looking about to see if anyone was in the hallway, took her arm and led her toward her room again.
“Be ready to leave day after next,” he said when they’d reached her door. “I’ll have your dinner sent up tonight. Then get to sleep. Don’t worry about the Deemses, you can see them tomorrow or pen them a note if you wish. I’m the one who’ll have to duck flying crockery,” he sighed, making her laugh, before he added, “and I’ll see your Harry before you leave. And, oh, Francesca,” he said as she began to close her door, “be easy. His secret’s safe with me. I’ve neither the time nor the inclination to play informer just now. But more important, please believe all your secrets are safe with me.”
“There aren’t any more,” she said on a shaken sigh.
“Oh, no?” he asked with great disappointment. “And here I’d great hopes for you never boring me.”
“Oh, I’ll try not to,” she laughed.
“Don’t try too hard,” he warned, and left her then, and taking a last look at her weary, grateful face, was extremely glad he had, and enormously glad she’d shut the door just then, as well.
He found Julian at once. The fair-haired gentleman was in his room, grimacing over his neckcloth as he prepared to go downstairs for dinner, as he called for his friend to enter. It took only a few words to apprise him of the situation. Julian said nothing as Arden spoke, but his handsome face was eloquent. Lieutenant Harry Devlin wasn’t the only one to be making a return to the living these days, Arden noted, for Julian seemed to be slowly coming back to life; the more they planned and plotted, the more lively and interested he became. When he heard of the baron’s decamping, he chuckled and then grew thoughtful before he lifted one dark gold eyebrow at hearing of Francesca’s accompanying Arden back to England, and then, at the last, when he heard of the fate of Lieutenant Harry Devlin, his gray eyes grew wintry and he became cold and still.
“I’ll handle it,” Arden said flatly. “I promised to do it gently and in secret, for all that I understand, from the baron, that his son and our Harry were in the twenty-ninth Light Dragoons together. Yes, we do have some friends there, don’t we? Or did,” he corrected himself more soberly. “Nonetheless, whatever we may feel, I’m a man of my word, so it’s forgotten, eh, Julian?”
“What is forgotten?” the viscount asked, returning his interest to his neckcloth.
“Thank you,” Arden laughed. “And are you coming to England, as well? You needn’t, you know, if you don’t choose to.”
“And here I thought it was till death did us part,” Julian said in some annoyance. “Don’t be a flat, Arden, I’m coming—as if I would not.”
“And the fair Widow Dobbs?”
“As you say, you need a chaperone…Lud! You needing a chaperone!” Julian gave a shout of laughter. “This grows more entertaining by the day. I’d not have missed it even if you weren’t my friend. And I do believe I will ask Roxie along, as well. Now that the baron’s loped off, I think she’ll be only too glad to seek new employment. But Roxie as a chaperone! That’s almost as wonderful as you needing one.”
“Be careful, my pretty fellow,” Arden said seriously, “that she knows as well as you that it’s only new employment. Because I think she’d go with you even if the baron won his fortune and asked her to stay on to help him win another.”
“I am in many ways a fool,” Julian said softly, “but I believe I can explain the difference between love and lust, employment and matrimony, to any female, Arden.”
“Oh, indeed,” his friend agreed, “forgive me…acting as a papa has quite ruined my judgment, I found myself carried away, that’s all,” he said humbly, before he added, “…son.”
They parted laughing. Arden to go about his several self-appointed tasks to make ready for their journey, Julian to seek out Roxanne.
He might have wished his friend had been more forthcoming, Julian thought as he took the stairs to Roxanne’s room to see her down to dinner. He would have liked to know what the big man meant by asking which father of his it was that was failing, he’d have preferred to know how it was that Arden had a sister who was a lady, he might even have wanted to know precisely where it was that they were going. But all directions were the same to him now, he reflected on an interior shrug, and he knew the past was the only thing his great-hearted friend had never offered to share with him. He respected him enough not to press the matter. In any event, he told himself, he’d soon know all. Curiosity was never why he was going with Arden. He was accompanying him because he had to; Arden was his friend and he’d never let him face that daunting past, or any present pain, alone.
Yet now, although he’d not thought to go home for all the two years that he’d been gone, he found himself growing excited at the thought. He was as a boy in his sudden anticipation, filled with unexpected homesick yearning. He wanted to go home again. It was time, he realized, and past it. And so he was in high spirits when he tapped on Roxanne’s door. He’d broach the matter to her at dinner, along with a fresh bottle of her favorite wine. She was, he recalled on a grin, always exceedingly compliant after her second bottle was decanted.
She called for him to enter when he announced himself, and when he did and closed the door behind himself as directed, he found her room darkened, the curtains drawn, and only a few candles burning. She had the headache, he thought, sobered and disappointed as he drew near the bed where she lay. But when he’d got halfway across the room, he saw that she lay there entirely naked, except for a single red rose, in a remarkable place.
“Good God!” he said, pausing and looking down at the bed, caught between laughter and lust. “What if there’d been a thorn?”
But he didn’t wait for her answer before he plucked the flower exactly as she’d intended him to, and so made her forget the clever answer she’d prepared for his question.
It was more than an hour later, as he lay on his stomach and looked ruefully to the ruins of his discarded neckcloth on the floor, that he finally remembered to mention the matter to her.
“I didn’t know the baron flitted,” she sighed when he’d done, pursing her lips in a whistle so that her breath made his clean bright hair rise and fall even as his head did upon her breast with every breath she drew. “I suppose it’s in the note he sent that I haven’t read yet. Poor fellow, his luck’s run out entirely. But mine hasn’t,” she said gleefully, craning her neck so that she could plant a loud and merry kiss upon his brow. “I’ll come with you, Julian, of course I will.”
He stirred, and raised himself up on his elbows and looked down into her face. When she wriggled suggestively with his change of position he held her fast and frowned down at her.
“No, listen, love,” he said seriously, “and understand, please. I intend to pay your way, food, clothing, entertainment, and anything else you choose, you understand? I enjoy your company and so I offer you a paying position now, as my…ah, companion, as well as Francesca’s supposed chaperone. At that,” he said, touching the tip of her nose, and grinning as she wrinkled it a
t him, “it’s an honor. Do you know?” he asked, his handsome face grown grave with discovery, “I’ve never had a…paid companion before. It’s always been briefer or less formal arrangements that have suited me. So I’m impressed even if you aren’t, wretch,” he said as she stuck out her tongue. “But listen,” he added, serious again, hovering over her, straight-armed, looking down into her face with serious clear eyes, “I won’t lie to you. It’s a paid position, and I think a good one, and I hope it lasts a good while. But I don’t guarantee it. And I do not offer any advancement.”
“Oh, yes, yes, I know,” she complained, “talk, talk, talk,” she murmured in a line down his collarbone and beyond, until he quieted her as he knew best how to do. And all the while, she grinned. And while he may have thought it pleasure, which it partly was, for she enjoyed this sort of thing more with Julian than she had with any man, it being less obligation and insurance than surprisingly pleasant in his arms, she smiled because she was remembering that once he’d promised her only a night, and now look what he offered. And now, she thought as she made him lie back, stunned with pleasure, she’d only have to be clever enough to ensure what he’d think to offer next.