by Edith Layton
“I don’t want to leave,” she said childishly, snuggling down into the chair with a rebellious pout, since tonight, it seemed she could say anything to him.
“And I don’t want you to either, but you shall.” He smiled. “But not just yet,” he added, and she sank back again with a relieved grin. “We’ll think up a suitable revenge before you go,” he said lazily as he seated himself on a hassock he dragged up close to her chair, and arranged his robe decorously around his legs. “Yes, absolutely, and we’ll wake Will, too, to get his opinion. But in time,” he reassured her and himself, “all in due time. Let’s let them all stew a while longer, the duchess and Lady Mary, and Methley, too.”
When her grin faded at the mention of the earl’s name, he decided to pull those fangs first. And the best defense against dread, he decided, was disrespect.
“Methely,” he said, “is a corkbrain. I suspect it’s possible he thought you might find the view he’d exposed you to either inspiring or incriminating enough to move you to immediate wedlock. It was fortunate then, that as it happened, even less was seen of you than you saw of the activities there. Ah, yes, our illustrious longlegs is much more of a misguided clunch than a villain. Unless, of course, he was just a blameless patriotic sort of fellow who felt that Mother Carey’s establishment was a must-see on any American tourist’s itinerary, second only to the Tower in historic value. It might have been that he took you there to impress you with Britain’s supremacy in vice as well as virtue.”
“But we have such at home too, you know,” she murmured over a suppressed giggle.
“Oh, really?” he replied, noting that her color had returned in force, and beginning to wonder if there wasn’t a deal more in Methley’s method than he’d previously supposed, since she now was recovering very nicely indeed. But then he understood that the combination of her relief, the cordials, the warmth, and the absurd hour of the night was making her giddy, and was very glad of it. So he refused to make Methley’s mistake and stifled an impulse to tell her he knew the places she spoke about only too well, and said negligently instead, “But I doubt you’d take tourists there, would you?”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t have to,” she said airily. “We’re much more modern. We run regular tours of such places on Saturdays and holidays at home.”
He rocked back in soft laughter and then smiled his approval at her. Though they sat close, the room was so still they unwittingly spoke in ever diminishing, subdued voices, and when, now and again, one of them laughed, even that sound was automatically muted in respect for their privacy and the dreaming night surrounding them. What had begun in fear was growing into a shared mood of increasingly high spirits. It wasn’t long before they reached a point of night and mood where silly things seemed exquisitely clever, and the merest jest attained heights of hilarity the sober day could never equal.
He congratulated her on her homeland’s superior wisdom, and began to complain at how it was just his luck that he’d missed the tour when he’d been there, and although his conversation remained within the limits of delicacy, of course, his topic could not. She suffered an onslaught of muffled giggles when he agreed that it was a splendid idea and asked her if she’d have been more comfortable this evening if Methley had gone about the thing the open, frank new American way and appointed the duchess as her guide.
“Methley said,” she finally said thoughtfully, gazing down fixedly at her lap, ignoring his question as she rightly should, “that if I looked close, I might even discover you there—at Mother Carey’s tonight, I mean.”
“Oh,” Lord Deal said, and wondered if his own color was rising, for absurdly, he felt as discomfitted as a schoolboy. So he gave her truth for truth. “Perhaps if you’d looked several years ago, you might have. But even then you’d have had to go to the upper regions of the house and throw open a door in order to do so, I’m afraid. I’ve never thought lovemaking was an art for public exhibition. I believe an audience of one is sufficient for any man,” he said primly, while privately he was scarcely attending to his own words, as he was rapidly realizing this was becoming the most unorthodox conversation he’d ever had with any female, lady or not.
It was decidedly titillating, while it was not intended to be, since knowing he couldn’t touch her he didn’t speak with the purpose of arousing her, although it was definitely having the opposite effect upon himself. He was, he discovered, enjoying the experience enormously. It was novel and liberating, as well as exciting to speak with a woman as though she were a man and yet all the while remain acutely and delightfully aware that it was a warm and beautiful female he addressed and not a male friend.
But then she brought him down to earth.
“It certainly isn’t for public display,” she agreed vehemently, remembering the scene and pleased to see that a man agreed with her, most especially this man whom she wished very much to explain herself to. She went on rapidly, forgetting all her humor in her anxiety to make it clear, “It’s frightening to see such violence of emotions, such lack of control in ordinarily proper people, such wild abandon. And that’s only what there is to see,” she laughed nervously. “The noises, the racket they make, they could wake the dead. Such ugly noises, and the protests, the promises, the florid, half-finished threats, I find that perhaps as terrible as...” Her voice trailed off as she heard what she’d been saying, and saw, even in the dim light, that he was no longer smiling. He sat before her, very still, his clear, knowing eyes suddenly studying her keenly. Yet when he spoke he seemed as troubled as he’d been when he’d first tended to her.
“Faith,” he said softly, looking at her so steadily she could not drop her own gaze through the force of his, “Mother Carey’s is always crowded. Mother Carey’s is so noisy, there’s such a constant party in progress, that I doubt you heard very much from the unlovely couple, even if they were coupling in such an abandoned fashion—which I very much doubt, since you said you only saw them for a moment before you turned away. Faith,” he said seriously, “will you tell me about it? If it was not seen on the mythical tour we jested at, it was something similar, and very real to you. Don’t retreat from me. It’s late and dark and there’s only the two of us here. What does it matter, after all? Just speak it as you recall it. What was it you were telling me about just now?”
It was indeed late, and dark, and she’d had a great many things happen to her in a very short space of time. And something this night had disturbed something in her memory. Something had been rudely jogged loose and would not fit back into place again, and that was an excellent excuse to deafen herself to all the warning voices and at last this late night let the dark thing out into its own element for him, as he’d asked.
“Well,” she said in an attempt to be flippant, but very quickly so that she’d have the thing out and said before there was any help for it, “I was young, you see, and visiting with my mama at my father’s home in Virginia. They’d gotten together for my birthday. I was ten, and that was the last time they tried a reconciliation at his house, so I remember it well. There was a thunderstorm that woke me in the night, and I went wandering the halls, because I never sleep well in strange surroundings, and the slave that was supposed to watch over me was dead asleep, poor girl.
“I found them in the salon,” she said on a brittle, artificial laugh, “though they never saw me, of course. And then I ran back to bed, that was all there was to it, it was never so much actually, but still you see, I suppose that’s why it’s true I’ve always disliked the thought of that sort of behavior. It’s an unlovely thing to witness. At Mother Carey’s, or anywhere else.”
She lowered her head and gave her empty glass sudden acute scrutiny, unable to speak another word lest her heart leap from her mouth, as she was amazed to discover it beating so rapidly she thought it must burst its bounds.
All the while, he attempted to think very fast. He’d asked for the moon and gotten it, and now wondered at whether he could bear up under its weight. For if he knew anythin
g, it was that whatever he said next would be of prime importance to them both.
“Not quite like Mother Carey’s,” he commented with forced casualness. “It’s not as though you went looking for the experience.”
“I heard voices,” she said at once, in a little voice, with such a palpable plea for absolution in it that he knew that somehow he had stumbled across the right path to take to lead her to reassurance, at least, “and noises, dreadful noises, too. At first, I thought he was beating her. She looked in pain. I didn’t see his face, but he seemed insensible, unreasonable. Luckily, even though I was only a child, something in the drama of it, something in the steady pace of it, alerted me, so that I knew it was none of it for me, and ran.”
“You weren’t snooping, love,” he assured her gently then. “Unfortunately you were only looking for comfort at the same moment they were.”
Heedless of her gasp, he went on lightly, never giving a hint as to how he groped for wisdom, knowing only as he heard each word he said that he was saying the right thing because it sounded very right to him. He could do no more for himself, and no less for her, than to trust his own innate good judgment now.
“It’s odd actually,” he said thoughtfully, “because when we imagine our ancestors’ lovemaking, it’s the epic stuff of high romance. When we consider it between our grandparents, it’s quaint, but when we think of in between our parents, it’s obscene. It’s not, of course, it’s only shocking. And in your case, unfortunate. Still, it’s strange, even for you bold Americans, to find a couple, bare as Adam in the garden, disporting in the salon at midnight.”
“Of course they weren’t bare,” she snapped at once, surprised to find herself defensive. “They were completely clothed, or as much as they could be under the circumstances, I think. Well, I’m not an expert in the matter, and it was night, and there wasn’t much light, only now and again lightning flashes, but there wasn’t much question what was happening. Or,” she admitted more quietly, seeing at last just why she’d finally told the thing she’d never let herself so much as reflect upon before, “well, when I saw that couple tonight, I finally knew exactly what it was I’d seen then, only I suppose at that time I’d guessed and heard more than I’d actually seen.”
“I’d suppose,” he said carefully, “that you guessed a great deal more.”
He wished he had the age or sagacity or expertise to explain the matter to her and himself, because he so badly didn’t want to fail her. And then, because it meant so much to her and to him, he told her precisely that, and added, “I’m at a disadvantage, because it’s scarcely the sort of thing gentlemen and gently bred women are supposed to talk about together, although I imagine they should. But Faith, I don’t think it really mattered what you saw that night, not at all. It’s what you thought you saw that matters. And I believe that would depend on what you saw afterward. If, in the morning you’d seen your parents smiling and behaving lovingly or even pleasantly to each other, you’d have put the thing away and counted it a dream. But if you saw them battling still, your father swaggering and triumphant, and your mother bitter and resentful, for example, why then...” He let his voice trail off.
“I’m no all-seeing eye,” he admitted as she stared at him astounded. “Will told me how it was with them. But good heavens, girl, if their entire life together is an angry contest, what would you expect their lovemaking to be like? It isn’t how it should be, or could be, or is, for everyone. Faith, no more than every marriage is the same. Or every act of love. But you never saw an act of love, my girl. Methley took you to see what money can buy. Those years ago you chanced upon an ugly glimpse of sudden lust. Neither night had anything to do with the way it could be for you.”
And me, he thought, but there his courage failed him.
“Faith,” he said seriously, “we humans don’t learn everything by direct observation of our parents. It may well be why we make so many of the same mistakes, but,” he grinned unexpectedly, “it may also be why we make so many wonderful new discoveries for ourselves as well. I should be very surprised if you looked forward to wedlock after witnessing the battle your parents were locked in for years. But,” he added, determined to be absolutely frank with her, “I’d also be more astonished if you threw over the whole idea of it because of them.
“And,” he said with conviction, “if you’ve used what you saw one stormy night as a reason to shun all of us fellows all of your life, why, Faith, I tell you, you disappoint me. Because it was never those few moments you spied by chance that was half so obscene as what went forth between that man and that woman for all those days and nights, through all those years of your life. And that, my dear, is what you oughtn’t to have seen.”
Then he rose to his feet before her and spoke like a pretentious orator because he was weary with solemnity. “And as a male,” he intoned in aggrieved accents, “I speak for all of us when I say that it’s hardly fair to us. We’re an excellent group, as a class, and just because some of our efforts in certain physical matters aren’t always considered to be particularly picturesque, we oughtn’t to be dismissed as totally unseemly. Besides, most of us are wonderful creatures. There may, of course, be a few whose behavior doesn’t speak well for the rest of us. But I resent your being so prejudiced against us because of the actions of one, or perhaps two ... or maybe three, no more, surely than four ... or possibly five or six of our number.”
She didn’t know how she could laugh so heartily now. She’d supposed he’d guessed it might have been her own attitude that had prompted the earl’s actions. She’d as much as confessed her aversion to intimacy to Barnabas, and he hadn’t turned a hair. Then she’d told him the most dreadful thing, and immediately experienced deserved shame and embarrassment, along with feeling terribly traitorous and foul-minded. But then he’d taken the incident as commonplace and when it was discussed as a commonplace, for the first time, it seemed to become one. Then he made her laugh at the absurdity of it, and himself, and herself, and the whole foolish world she’d taken too seriously, it seemed, for far too long.
“Now,” he said, nodding in approval at her merriment, and then listening to his mantel clock strike two long, lonely notes and looking down at his bare feet, “time to prevent your peeking further at my lovely ankles, wicked thing. I’m going to get dressed and roust Will up and tell him about this night. Not all about it, of course, there’s things in it that only concern we two,” he said at once, before she could ask him to keep her confidence, “and I want you to sit back and be comfortable, and do not stir, and certainly do not leave this room under my threat of several instant and extremely creative forms of death.
“And oh,” he added, as he began to exit, making a show of wrapping his robe around himself with such exaggerated prissiness that she had to hold her hand to her mouth to smother her mirth, “if any young women happen by on the way back from an abduction, with a pressing problem or two to thrash out, please give them each a number and a chair, and tell them to wait for me. I shan’t be long.”
He’d reached the door when he heard her say in a small voice, “Barnabas?”
“Yes?” he answered, instantly serious, instantly concerned.
“In the morning, in the daytime, shall you be shocked at me?”
“No, Faith,” he said, the warmth in his voice as evident as his relaxation, “no. The time of day makes no difference in my attitude. I’m tediously constant, unvarying as the evening star, which shines in the day just as it does in the night, whether you can see it or not. I’m not shocked at you now, nor will I be tomorrow.”
I only shock myself, he thought as he took the stairs two at a time, and congratulate myself, too. For in all this time, from the moment you sat in my chair, I never once touched you, as I longed to do.
At three hours into a new day, Lord Deal and Mr. Will Rossiter escorted Miss Faith Hamilton to the Duke and Duchess of Marchbanks’ London home. It was a quiet, if a spectacular reunion. There seemed to be a great deal more left
unsaid than ever was spoken by any of the persons in the ornate and echoing entry hall.
Lord Deal explained simply and smoothly the great good fortune of their happening to meet up with Miss Hamilton shortly after she’d gotten separated and lost from her companions in the crush at the Vauxhall Gardens. As he went on to explain, it seemed quite natural then that the three of them should have decided to order dinner and wait for the duchess, Lady Mary, and the earl to return. After the concert and the dancing, they’d waited until almost every last soul had strolled out of the gardens and the management had almost begun to fold up the tables, stars, and grass about them before they’d decided they’d not likely find her companions at Vauxhall again this night. Then they set out to return to the noble Bolton townhouse.
And then, of course, only foul luck, in the form of a shoe cast by the leader of the team that graced Lord Deal’s carriage, prevented them from carrying out their plans immediately. After the horse had been tended to, after it had been replaced, of course, they’d come directly to their destination. But how time flew!
A red-faced, confused duke accepted the tale, the trio seemed sincere, Lord Deal was a nobleman, and there was no evidence of anything else besides. It was irregular, but it would do. But all during the narrative the duke continued to dart suspicious glances to the others who’d been standing watch with him for Miss Hamilton’s return.
The duchess then explained again, with a self-correction as frequent as a stammer to impede her speech at every other word, that as Miss Hamilton had gotten herself lost, she and her daughter had gone on to their appointment at the Swansons’ in the hopes that the earl, who’d stayed behind to find their guest, would soon deliver her to them there. The earl, strangely subdued, only said that it was incredible he’d not come across the trio, since he’d thought he’d covered every inch of the place twice over in his night-long search for the young woman.