by Edith Layton
And Roxanne laughed gaily and applauded and thought glumly that there went her chance to do some more shopping, because if Fancy stayed on and they all thought it wonderful in her, what choice had she but to stay and enjoy whatever it was that was supposed to be so interesting.
*
They were, even Warwick had to agree, an interesting collection of humanity, those few who were assigned to speak for so many as they made their pilgrimage to Arden’s bedside.
Portwine John, so named obviously for the birthmark that adorned the right side of his face, had obviously not deemed it necessary to bathe as carefully as he’d dressed for the occasion of his visit to his old friend, the downed Lion. For though his garments were so beautifully cut and fashioned that even the duke’s butler could find no fault in them, from the scent of the beautifully dressed tall dark-skinned fellow it was altogether possible that he was not half so swarthy as he appeared to be.
He paid his respects, and commiserated on Arden’s condition, while all the while everyone else in the room save the patient, trapped in his bed, subtly shifted position to get safely upwind of the visitor. But for all he gave his sympathy with as much force as he did his ripe aroma, he shed no new light on the identity of Arden’s assailant.
“I dunno who done you, Lion,” he swore in his whispery voice. “It ain’t no one I know, that’s sure. But it won’t be easy to find ’im, neither. As much as you want the bastard—s’cuse me, ladies, but I’m a plain-spoken man—there’s many another who’d like to tear ’is legs off and beat ’im over the head with ’em. You’ve that many friends, Lion, and it ain’t no secret you’re missed in the game. I’m looking,” he said at the last, ominously, as he bowed himself out, and Julian and Warwick rushed to the windows to throw them open.
“He may be a captain of crime, Arden,” Julian breathed as he drew in great gulps of wet spring air, “but I doubt he got his start as a sneak thief or pickpocket, however stealthily he moves. You could tell his coming for a mile without ears or eyes,” he gasped.
“But he’s clever and resourceful and as wonderfully devious as he is soiled. He mistrusts water, but I’m honored. For I do believe,” Arden said with great hauteur, “that he dusted himself off entirely before he came here.”
They never laughed when Mrs. Crowell came to call. Julian was enchanted by the sweet old woman and Roxanne and Francesca hung on her every perfectly articulated syllable. She was an ancient diminutive creature, dressed all in grays and lavenders and scented as softly as a whisper of potpourri wafting from a cedar press.
“How glad I am that you survived, my dear,” she told Arden after she’d greeted him, pressing her handkerchief to her soft gray eyes. “What a turn I got when I heard the news. I’ve asked all my children to keep an eye and ear open for suspects, but all to no avail. The only clue I’ve gotten, and that from a drunken fish seller and a hint more via a dustman, is that he’s a stranger, and that only because one has been seen in the rookery with too much sobriety and caution for the role of poor artist he plays. I’d like to be the one that finds him, dear,” she said softly as she rose to leave, “for I vow I’ll hand him to you without his ballocks if I do,” and still sweetly smiling, as Francesca and Roxanne gaped at her, she drifted out of the room.
“She is,” Arden explained to the ladies with an admirably straight face as Warwick and Julian fell about with laughter, “quite a successful bawd, as you know. Or rather, as you ought not to know.”
Barthelomew Bell brought a bower of flowers, along with word that he was on the trail; Fishhouse Jim brought greetings from all the denizens of his ken, along with a sack of mackerel as a gift to confound Warwick’s cook and appall his butler; Jenny Gently wept at seeing Lion again, and bawled the harder when she admitted she’d nothing but rumor to offer him along with all her best wishes and a quantity of gin. They came in great numbers, they came in their best attire and on their best behavior, they came for brief visits, bearing odd gifts and awed reverence, as pilgrims to a shrine, but they all, to a man and a woman and a child, came empty-handed when it came to real word of Arden’s would-be assassin.
It was on the third day that someone arrived whom Arden did not know, and so did not so much weep with joy at his recovery as he came to meet him and offer up some news.
Ben-be-Good was such a handsome young man that Roxanne sat up sharply as he bowed his way into Arden’s sickroom. Slender and jaunty, well-dressed as any blood on the town, with a cocky smile on his fresh young face, he bowed to the ladies before he addressed the gentlemen and made himself known to Arden.
“You don’t know me, sir,” he said, sounding every bit the gentleman, until one listened close to hear the too-perfect enunciation that told of the hard work that shaped his speech, “but I remember you well. I ran messages for Whitey Lewis, and did the odd job for whoever tossed the highest coin for me. I run several interesting industries now, and want more, but then, who doesn’t? I understand you’re done with the business, and can’t say I blame you. But you’re missed, sir, I can tell you that. You saved my life.”
“Much as that pleases me, for I can see it’s an estimable life I was about preserving, I can’t say I remember you,” Arden apologized. “I’m sorry.”
“You wouldn’t,” Ben-be-Good said on a little smile, “and I ought to have said you saved my life several times, and yet even so you wouldn’t remember, for you never knew it, or me. And you are the estimable man, sir.” He leaned close to Arden then, ignoring the others in the room to look at him with concentrated intent. All his good humor vanished, his face so serious that Warwick and Julian became alert and tense, his face so grave that it could finally be seen that without his ready laughter, it was a slum child’s ageless face, with the overlay of pain and wisdom that robbed it of its youth.
“I count it five times I survived because of you,” he said earnestly. “The first, when I’d lifted my first silk handkerchief from an old gent as he was about bargaining with a tart, and when I went to sell it to the fence I’d been told about, Mother Daltry, I found she’d been warned out of the business—by you. Because you discovered she’d been selling little chaps like me to bigger gents. Again when I tried to join up with dashing Lawrence French, whom we boys so admired, only to find he was out of town permanently after you found he was bundling his lads out to the navy for a fee. Again when you closed down Martha Love for paying off her boys with opium instead of extra cash, and I was of an age and a mind that I wouldn’t have minded until too late, and then again when you shipped George Gibbons for taking money for information on us lads, along with our jokes and brag at the flash house he ran.”
He paused, his eyes downcast.
“That’s four,” Arden said quietly.
“And again when you thrashed my father for daring to try to sell you a corpse that was far too lately living,” he said quietly, “so that he feared you more than going without drink, and left us, my mother and me, to go off with his cronies and never returned, and so let us, my mother and me, live. You looked after us all, Lion, in like fashion, all of the unknown little rats of the East End. And when you left, it all fell apart. I’m building it up again. I’m trying to be like you.”
“Good God, lad, do not!” Arden said angrily.
“Who else will look after the little villains, sir?” the young man asked with a twisted smile. “The judges and the hangmen? It’s death to steal a watch, as you well know, and transport for swiping a cheese, the rope for forging a pound note, and to the Antipodes for eternity with those who borrow a meal without asking. No, I didn’t come for permission, but only to say thanks, and to try to repay you with word of the man who shot you, for he offended us all when he did.
“He’s gone from his lodgings, so I can’t give you that, nor his name, for it was doubtless a false one he used, nor have I ever set eyes on him myself. But he wasn’t one of us, nor hired by any of us, neither. For even your enemies would not dare, not if they have to live among us. It’s a gent
from your new world, sir, and an Englishman too, for all he says he’s French, and—”
“Ben, my boy,” Arden said quickly, “I’m sorry to cut you off, but could you hold that thought?”
Ben-be-Good stopped abruptly, and as Arden went on to say in an urgent whisper, “I heard a noise outside in the hall, please look, Julian.” and as Julian did, no more than a look passed between the young man and Arden, but it was enough, for the young man was quick.
“No one…I think,” Julian reported in a worried tone when he returned, although he flashed quite a different look to Arden, for he was quick as well.
“But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. I’ll have the staff kept from this area unless on business,” Warwick said, frowning, for he too was never slow to hear that which wasn’t said. “We may have been too casual, your life was threatened once, my friend, and I’ll not have it again, and certainly not in my house, until we know more of this mysterious gentleman.”
“But there is no more to say, at least that I know. I’m sorry,” young Ben-be-Good said.
The company all grew still then, before Ben began to reminisce with Arden, and flirt a bit with Roxanne, and entertain them all wonderfully. All except for Francesca. For she, too, wasn’t slow to comprehend. And knew, of course, that there was more Arden didn’t wish for her to know. There’d been no noise outside the room; she sat closer to the door than Arden, and she’d swear to it. It was the conversation in the room Arden wanted immediately stopped. The possible reasons why troubled her almost as much as the fact that she was being deceived, even if he thought it for her own good. Most of all, sensing Arden’s thoughtful gaze upon her, she knew that he wouldn’t have sundered their intimacy and friendship by excluding her for anything but what he’d think was good reason. Any of those reasons she could imagine were hard for her to bear, harder still because now she knew she’d have to bear them alone.
*
He walked with his head down, and didn’t venture out until dusk, but still the dark was too light for him. He walked quickly; it was a brave thing he was doing, and it frightened him enormously, but it had to be done. When he reached the end of the street, he paused and looked up at the town house in one quick nod of his head, almost as if he’d a tic, before he lowered his chin and marched on again. So that was the house, he thought, so that meant it was impossible for him to do more until the giant left the house again, since simply coming to see it had taken up all his courage for the day.
Still, he was proud of how far he’d come, because every step had frightened him. But each time he survived the fear he felt, he grew stronger and so knew he was doing right. When he’d fired the gun he’d thought his own heart had split from the sheer terror of it, and there was no shame in it for him that he’d waited until the man’s back was turned. Because even that had been beyond his ability once before, when that same back had been turned, as both a challenge and an insult, upon him. But this time he’d grown brave enough to finally answer that dare, if belatedly, and as courage grew from courage, next time, he thought, he’d be able to do even more.
He’d be able to free Francesca, he thought, rescue her and take her back to France with him, and live in peace and love with her, as he’d always thought to do before fear had chased all joy from his heart that terrible morning. Because fear, he was discovering, could be overcome. Thinking of that, he began to walk tall again for the first time in a long time.
“Excuse me, sir…” the gentleman passing by said, pausing in the street to gaze hard and questioningly at him.
“I speak no English,” Harry Devlin said in a rush, and ducked his head, and scuttled down the street and away into the shadows again, leaving the man to wonder what he’d done to frighten the foreign gentleman so badly, and whom he could ask the time of next, for he’d mislaid his watch and if he was late to dinner again, his wife would never forgive him.
19
“He mendeth the fastest who walketh the soonest,” Arden insisted, holding the banister tightly.
“He flattens the soonest whose foolish friend falleth upon him,” Julian countered, standing on the step below. “Walk if you must, idiot, but not on the stairs. Warwick hardly needs a dungeon in his front hall, and if you crash, you’ll go straight through to the basement, you know.”
“But I wish to receive my visitors from a chair, belowstairs, like a living man, not lying in state on a bier,” Arden explained, clinging to the rail, for his back throbbed as though someone was drumming on it now, and the stairs had become treacherous since his feet refused to acknowledge his head, “and I refuse to be carried down like a log, thank you,” he added, as Julian offered his arm, and with the surprising strength he concealed so well, helped hold him up as he negotiated the rest of the stairs.
When on solid ground again, he sighed and straightened his cuffs, for he’d just passed an entertaining hour putting on his clothes without falling on his face, and didn’t want his work to go for nothing now. And then he looked up to see Francesca arrested in mid-step in the hallway, staring at him, her hand to her heart, her eyes wide and troubled.
“No, truly,” he said at once, “it’s a certifiable fact. I noted it in the Peninsula, those lads who got to their feet the fastest kept their health the best. Bed’s fine for many things, but not recuperation,” he added, hoping his unexpected reaction to a pang of pain would be taken for a leer.
“Oh, lovely,” Warwick said, coming into the hall behind him. “War stories to justify suicide now—what an entertaining houseguest you are, to be sure, Lion. Do you have a thrilling deathbed speech prepared, as well?”
“I’m rehearsing a more mundane farewell, which I hope to deliver soon as may be,” Arden growled as he made his way as steadily as he could toward the drawing room and a chair he focused on, hoping he’d arrive there before his entire field of vision became as dark as the edges of it were growing.
He found Julian on his left, and Warwick on his right, and without another word they walked him to his destination. The pain of settling in the chair was as nothing to the effort of concealing it, and it was a moment before he spoke again. And then he laughed.
“A damned fool thing to do,” he conceded, now that he’d achieved his goal. “You’re right. But it had to be done. And not just for the look of it, because it’s true that lying about after injury brings worse evils, or so I saw it then. And true too,” he added, with a look to Francesca, who still appeared stricken with concern for him, “that because of it I was afraid to remain in bed.”
“Very fearful is our Lion,” Warwick agreed.
“It doesn’t take courage to try to save your own skin,” Arden said testily, before he laughed again and commented, “Lord, now I understand how old gents get so crusty—it’s damned annoying to have to creep about and listen to yourself creak as you do. Maybe that’s why the good die young—it saves them the embarrassment of old age. At any rate, Warwick, I was thinking of you, believe it or don’t. Because the sooner I’m quit of you, the sooner you can get back to the bliss of dandling your infants on your knee and frightening Susannah with the prospects of more, or whatever it is that you do in your countrified fastness. Since you refuse to leave until my problems are solved, the gents I’m seeing today should help me in removing myself from your tender mercies the faster.”
“Major Kern, Lieutenant Adjutant Miller, and Captain Shipp,” Warwick said, “all late of his majesty’s Light Dragoons, and each given an hour’s audience. Wouldn’t it have been simpler, considering how well you’re feeling, to have them all to tea together?”
“Easier, but far less effective,” Arden sighed. “When old army men get together, lock up the port, get out your nightcap, and put out the cat, for they blather on for an eternity with reminiscence that grows progressively fantastic, and enlivening only to each other. No, the three of them in the room together would be amusing, but I wouldn’t get a sensible word from any of them. It’ll be hard enough as it is, so I’d like to make it as uns
ociable an occasion as possible.”
“I’ll withhold tea, refuse them water, and have the footmen remove the chairs,” Warwick promised promptly as Julian eagerly offered to insult them roundly too.
“Not quite that unsocial, I believe,” Arden sighed, “but nearly so.” He gazed at Francesca with a show of regret. “So pray don’t take it amiss, Fancy, that you’re not invited to join us. A pretty lady is all an army man needs to get him to ignoring everyone else in the room, twirling his mustaches and coming all over coy, and then hanging about until she gets too weary to say no.”
“But,” Francesca said, speaking up as innocently as she could, though her eyes had narrowed during Arden’s excuses for her coming dismissal, “I’d like to hear about your army career.”
“A gem of a girl,” Warwick confided loudly to Julian.
“My dear,” Arden said blithely, “it wouldn’t do. Once they’d seen you, I might as well leave the room for the day. Remind me to tell you my army experiences tonight, at dinner,” and as Julian and Warwick groaned loudly, he added, pointedly ignoring them, “Until that fascinating moment, suffice it to say I was clever and bold, brave as I could hold together, and a brilliant tactician. I kept my boots shined beautifully too,” he added smugly.