by Edith Layton
“I’d hope not!” Arden said, sitting up straight. “There are few odder sights, I’d imagine, than that of a coy elephant. All right, I’ll be brief. I need to find a safe harbor for the Honorable Miss Francesca Carlisle. Her papa’s sick unto death with the gambling fever and she’s no other family, and thanks to him, no dowry or funds at all, of course. And yes,” he said gruffly, staring into the fire, “she thinks she fancies me, but that, of course, only shows how abject and hopeless her position is.”
“Of course,” Warwick said smoothly, even as Julian did, and though they looked to each other and smiled then. Arden only nodded and went on.
“But she’s got good breeding and manners and education and staggeringly good looks, as you can see, even if she’s momentarily deprived of good sense. So I’d be grateful if you’d think of some way, somehow she can find her proper place in life and make a good marriage. That’s why I’ve landed on you so precipitately, for all that I love you, and that’s why our lovely Julian’s returned to England now as well. The boy’s a bur,” Arden said on a sudden thought, frowning. “You never mentioned that when you suggested I travel with him, did you?”
“Why do you think I offered him to you?” Warwick asked with even greater pleasure as he saw Julian’s mock-affront. “It was either that or try to pass him off as my shadow, and no one would ever believe I had such a paltry shadow. After all, one’s shadow should have even a longer nose than oneself.”
“Quite impossible,” Arden agreed. “The poor lad is bereft in that department, obviously.”
Julian ran his finger down his classically perfect nose, and sighing, whimpered something about handicaps. They were all still laughing when Warwick said pleasantly, so unexpectedly that it even took Arden by surprise, so that he almost answered without thinking, “And so, since it would be far simpler, why won’t you take her to wive, Arden? She is, as you say, wholly admirable. Even at such short acquaintance, one can see her quality. She’s very beautiful, bright, charming, and most old-fashioned and admirable of all. I’d venture she’s a good person, too. So wouldn’t that be the simplest solution, especially considering her one aberration—her obviously discernible and wholly unaccountable (to me, at least) prejudice for you? Or do you dislike her?”
“I expect you know better than that,” Arden said after a pause to get his bearings, hunching his shoulders and sitting forward and shooting a knowing look to Warwick. “You’ve a way of seeing around corners. But you’re absolutely right and exactly wrong. In either case, it’s impossible. Because I know very well that I do not deserve her, it was madness to try to attach her in the first place, and that was before I really knew her or her real place, which would never be with me. And before you hasten with a dozen arguments about my better noble nature et cetera to the point of nausea, as our Julian has been fond of doing, I’ll say right off that it’s my past—and it’s more than you know and more than I think she could bear.”
“However much more, I cannot say,” Warwick said thoughtfully, “but she’d be marrying what you are now.”
“No one weds the present without taking the past to the marriage bed as well,” Arden said softly, becoming fascinated by his fingertips, “and, too, I fear the enemies of that past might someday reach out to harm her, the blameless, in order to harm me: the most blameworthy gent you know. For certainly,” he said, so low both gentlemen in the room had to listen close to catch the low thrum of his words, “that would be the surest way to destroy me. So it would be a lie to say I don’t know fear for myself, because for all I’ve never minded risking my own thick skin, I’m terrified at the thought of having harm come to her, through me most of all, but in any fashion at all.
“At any rate,” he said more briskly, looking up at the duke, “I’m not willing to make that likely. Will you take her to stay with you, Warwick?”
“No,” Warwick said calmly, and as Arden looked up in surprise, as did Julian, he added, “not yet. I don’t ask to know all of your history, my Lion, but if you grant that I am, as you say, a canny gent, I’d be willing to wager—as willing as the Honorable Miss Francesca’s father, and I’m not a gambling man—that the past is not quite what you think…if only,” he said, forestalling Arden’s objections, “because no man’s past is just as he remembers it to have been. I won’t go on to add that I believe it to be in your case the fault of your greatest handicap of all—that distressing rudimentary conscience of yours. Yes, I’ve noted it, despite all your best efforts to conceal it from me and yourself. It is that, I think, that makes you see the past differently from what it actually was. Take her with you to Cornwall, Arden. If I’m mistaken, there’ll always be a welcome for her here with us. But first, let her see for herself.”
“And London as well?” Arden asked with a mocking smile.
“And London,” Warwick agreed.
“My London or yours?” Arden asked with a hint of quiet menace that made both his listeners remember how he could inspire fear in men with a single syllable. “Park Lane, Rotten Row, Hatchards, Almack’s, and the opera dancers cavorting at the new Drury Lane Theater? Or Spitalfields, Shoreditch, Newgate, and the spectacle of men swinging by the neck at the new Tyburn Hill there?”
“Both,” Warwick answered calmly. “You can protect her from everything, I think. Snobbery and thievery both. But with all your bravery, Arden, I wonder if it’s fear of facing her judgment that makes you hesitate even as you claim to know what it would be. Could it be fear of her disliking you that you fear most of all, I wonder? Ah, yes,” he went on as Arden stared at him, sitting still and alert as he did, “far easier, I’d think, to be noble and leave her all for her sake, although it might wound you and her. But I’d venture it would be even more painful for you to finally have her actually look at you with all the disgust you believe you so richly deserve.”
Arden remained silent for a long moment as the last of the wood in the fireplace sighed warning of its imminent death.
“A very canny gent,” he breathed at last, and then, fixing Warwick with an amused look, he shrugged.
“So be it,” he said. “She’s had enough of cowards, I think. Her first love ran off at Waterloo and left her brother to die alone, you see. Perhaps it would be better if she could forget me as a bad misstep she almost took than to grieve for the fantasy that might have been.” He looked at his host quizzically. “You knew all the while that the certain way to make me do anything would be to call me coward, didn’t you?” he asked wryly.
“Say rather,” Warwick answered on a little smile, “that I assumed that if you let me live, you’d listen.”
And as Arden chuckled, Warwick turned to Julian and smiled at him, but knowing the quality of that smile, Julian braced himself.
“And you, dear Julian,” Warwick said sweetly. “Do you wish to leave your guest, Mrs. Cobb, here with me too?”
“Scarcely,” Julian said, glancing away to his boots as Arden chortled low. “The entire purpose of our, ah…friendship is that she keep me company, you know.”
“Oh, really?” Warwick asked with lively interest. “Is that why her title is always prefaced with an ‘ah’?”
“You don’t approve,” Julian said flatly, looking beleaguered, “Why is it that I seem to have suddenly acquired more fathers than even Arden claims?”
“On the contrary,” Warwick said, “I approve entirely. A sportive widow is just what you need right now. In fact, she’s a perfect ‘here-and-now’ sort of companion.”
“Just so,” Julian said, relieved. “She’s pretty, and gay as a linnet, and she amuses me. I really don’t yearn for impending fatherhood or any sort of permanent arrangement right now.”
“The thing that worries me is that she might not realize how fleeting a moment ‘right now’ with you is,” Warwick said thoughtfully.
“I spelled the thing out chapter and verse, so plain that it even embarrassed me,” Julian said doggedly. “It’s completely a matter of gainful employment. Why, you didn’t think
I’d be a cad about it?” Julian asked in amazement.
“Lad,” Arden said as Warwick poured himself another glass of port to drown his rising laughter in, “it’s never your taking advantage of the lady we’d fret about.”
“I am nine-and-twenty,” Julian said haughtily, and with some real annoyance, “just as old as you are, Warwick, I remind you. And only a few years junior to you Arden. I don’t know why you both worry over me as though I were an infant or a mindless clot.”
His two friends looked at him as he rested his chin on his hand and looked sullenly into the dying fire. The glow of it fell on the planes of his face and form, causing his slightly overlong golden hair to seem to frame that beautiful but masculine countenance like a nimbus, and outlining his muscular form so as to set it off like a freshly cut marble representation of a sulking young athlete beloved of some god, or goddess, posed on his pedestal.
“It’s because you’re so damnably…collectible, Julian,” Arden finally said on a sudden inspiration.
“Just so!” Warwick exclaimed. “That’s it exactly. You are, you know, eminently so, Julian. And we’d rather, when the inevitable time comes and you decide to deprive the females of the world of your random attentions in order to concentrate on just one supremely lucky lady, that it be your choice, and not your trap, do you see?”
But then the duke could not see very much himself, as his golden friend lofted a chair pillow at him. Warwick roared with laughter as he dodged it, as Arden joined in, until the viscount grew a shamefaced, understanding smile as well.
“And now,” Warwick said, stretching and yawning, “to bed, I think. If you’d rather, I’ll look the other way and you can nip into your ‘ah, lady’s’ room tonight, Julian. You can take advantage of my kindly offer only for a few more weeks, mind, because when I have a child about the place, no doubt I’ll not let you so much as kiss her hand, in the garden, in the dead of winter, and in the dark of night,” he said, his head to one side as he thought on it, “and at the eclipse. For I intend to be an uncommonly moral papa, the irony of it is too delicious to pass up. But you may visit her tonight, if you tiptoe,” he offered as they all rose and went to the door of the study.
“No, thank you,” Julian said loftily. “A duke’s house is no place for fun, and well I know it.”
“Indeed not,” Warwick replied, nodding vigorously.
They parted at the top of the stairs, on a handshake all around, but Warwick walked Arden to his door, as Julian went off to his room alone.
“Arden,” the slender nobleman said seriously, and in a whisper, as they paused in the variable light of a wall lamp, “Arden, my wise friend,” he said gently, “only remember, if a man cannot come to terms with his past, he can’t enjoy the present or hope to find peace in the future. And you deserve all that, whatever you insist on believing.”
“But, Warwick, my clever lordship,” Arden said in his rich and velvet undervoice, “I have come to terms with it—that’s precisely the problem.”
“Is it? Have you? I wonder,” the duke mused, “if only because I wonder if you’ve ever seen it clear. A man may get so far from a thing that he needs help in seeing it. There are spectacles to use for the printed word, but only fresh eyes will do for the past. Take her with you, Arden. Even if you’re right, it will do no wrong just to look.”
“Isn’t that what Pandora said?” his friend asked with a smile so filled with bitterness that it could even be seen in the diminished light. He sighed before he said, “Yes. All right. Let be. Have done. I shall. Damn you…your grace.”
“Do you know,” Warwick said, enchanted, “all the rigmarole and pomp and nonsense involved with acquiring the title is well worth it when I hear you speak like that.”
It was as well that no defenders of rank were present in the hall to see the huge man give the duke a single buffet on the shoulder, but it was a measure of his control and aim that the duke only laughed, and gave back as good as he’d gotten before the two parted for the night, in charity and in complete understanding.
“Warwick?” the duchess murmured sleepily when she felt the light weight settle beside her in bed.
“I should hope so. Whom were you expecting?” he chided softly, gathering her in his arms as much as her bulk would allow, stroking her hair, and giving her a light kiss on the brow before he admonished her. “You ought to be asleep,” he whispered, “and for all I’ve never held with the nonsense of separate bedrooms for fashion’s sake, perhaps you’d be better off if I made my bed in the old duke’s room until you’ve done with all this breeding nonsense.”
“Oh!” she cried, struggling up from a comfortable sleepiness to alarm, as she sat up. “Do I…does the sight of me distress you? For if it does, then I understand, and by all means—”
“By all means you are an idiot,” he said on a smile, holding her and calming her. “It was for you, my dear fool. I’d prefer to stay here with you if you grew to Arden’s size and I had to sleep on the floor. Rest easy, Sukey, and hush now, go to sleep if you want to produce a nice plump new Jones for me.”
“Warwick,” she asked drowsily against his chest, “Julian is over me now, isn’t he?”
“I’m sorry, my love, but he seems to be, although I can’t understand it.”
“Good,” she breathed. “And I’m glad you don’t understand it too.” Then she asked softly, “He’s not interested in that…ah, Mrs. Cobb, is he?”
“No,” he replied, grinning at the widow’s commonly used impromptu title, “except, ah, for obvious temporary reasons.”
“Good again,” she sighed. “He deserves far better. And Arden,” she asked with interest, growing more wakeful as she gossiped, finding tattle more diverting than sleep, “what seems to be the problem there? Francesca is the dearest girl, she’s a delight and just right for him.”
“And so she may be, yet,” he said.
“Such good news tonight then,” she said on a wide yawn, “because for all he’s always gone on about his wickedness, he’s never shown anything but a kind face to us.”
“But he has many faces, love, and he does not always lie, in jest, or not. Still, any man may walk a higher path; there’d be no point to redemption, else. Why, look how I’ve reformed. I scarcely recognize myself—doting husband, preparing to be an absurdly proud father. If I weren’t enjoying myself so much, I’d quite disgust myself. And now,” he said firmly as she tried to conceal another yawn with her giggle, “not another word. Sleep now…time for chatter in the morning.”
But for all she smiled, nodded, and laid her head down and began to drift off again, it was her husband who spoke again, fretfully, as he lay on his back and held her close with one arm around her, his hand resting on the immense satiny bulge that separated them as he stared at the ceiling of the moonlit room.
“The best things are worth waiting for,” he sighed, as though to himself, as the expanse beneath his hand surged to one side at his touch.
“The babe is coming soon,” she murmured, feeling his large hand rise to trail up over her swollen breast, hesitate, and then leave it to circle a caress upon her smooth shoulder instead.
“I wasn’t talking about the baby,” he said with enormous sorrow.
Understanding, she gurgled with delighted laughter, and circling her arms about his neck, breathed “Thank you” and a light kiss into his ear before, smiling, she finally went to sleep.
15
The morning came too soon for Francesca. She dressed before her maid had rubbed the sleep from her own eyes, and then saw those eyes widen when the girl tiptoed into her new mistress’ room to waken her, only to find her already washed and gowned. Even though Francesca knew she’d never win a servant’s respect that way, she’d little concern for it; she was far too anxious to know what had happened in the night she’d just tossed and turned her way through. And so when her maid answered the door and took the message, and told her that her presence was requested in the morning room, Francesca leapt up and cam
e down the stairs so quickly she almost collided with the large gentleman standing there waiting for her.
“We keep running into each other.” Arden smiled. “Fortunately for me. But I thought you mightn’t know where the morning room was after I’d found it myself—this house is handsome, but it’s a regular warren. Warwick’s children will be able to play champion games of hide and seek, and woe betide their nurse when it’s time to give them a bath. I had to speak with you,” he said more seriously, and she was glad she was at his side and not before him then, for she was sure her face would have told him her terror at his words.
Even when they’d reached the privacy of the morning room, she avoided his eye, and looked around the pleasant room instead, and out the windows to the lawns, and only turned her eyes to him at last when he looked away from her. He wore traveling clothes, she noted with a sinking heart as she gazed at him with fear and longing. Aside from his gleaming white shirt, he was all in earth colors today, with a snug-fitting fawn coat that clung like the bark of a sturdy tree to his wide shoulders and long back, and dun pantaloons, and high brown boots, and a scarf knotted about his powerful tanned neck. A deceptive man, looking as solid and rudely healthy as a great oak, rough-hewn and hearty, although the tawny eyes that turned to her before she quickly looked away again were keen and clear, as sensitive as any poet’s.