by Edith Layton
“I care,” was all she managed to breath at last. But from the look upon his face, and above the dizzying relief she felt, she knew they both knew she’d said a great deal more.
* * *
Lord Deal came into his own entry hall with as sprightly a step as though it were a brisk autumn day, although his butler, like everyone else he’d passed as he’d gone jauntily through the simmering streets, too preoccupied to notice the weather, was clearly wilting as he approached his master.
“I took leave to allow the gentleman to wait in the drawing room, as he said he sought either you, my lord, or your guest, Mr. Rossiter, who has not returned as yet,” the butler intoned, and as his master frowned down at the limp card he’d picked up from the salver, he added quickly, “and offered him refreshment, it being quite warm today.”
“What? Oh yes, quite right,” Barnabas said distractedly. The name ought to have been familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it, although the address caught and held his eye. “Mr. Franklin Godfrey, 2 Pearl Street, New York City, N.Y.,” it read.
As he entered his drawing room the gentleman who’d been sitting in a chair by the window tapping his foot as he’d gazed out at the street, sprang at once to his feet. He was well, almost nattily, dressed, although clearly more a man of action than a dandy, no matter how well tied his neckcloth. He stood at average height, and his tightly fitting jacket showed an admirably lean and muscular form.
His appearance personified the American contradiction of class, for while close fitting pantaloons displayed a working man’s sturdy, heavily muscled legs, his highly polished boots were a gentleman’s dream of excellence. His age too was indefinable, for though his dark hair was merely brushed with gray along the temples, his decisive, chiseled features bore the mark of far more years of exposure to the sun than just the tan acquired on a recent sea voyage.
“Lord Deal?” he asked at once, putting out a strong and shapely hand that had known hard use. “I’d know you anywhere. I just arrived in town this morning, and see London’s enjoying a New York summer. I looked to find Will here, but I’m delighted to meet you. As the cliché has it, ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’ ”
Lord Deal took the fellow’s hand and had a moment to be amused at his unknown guest’s barely contained energy. It seemed that he was not the only one unaffected by the unusual heat of the day. Then, as they grasped hands, he chanced to look into the gentleman’s bright gray eyes, and then he saw a vague reflection of something else in the smiling mouth, something that he knew very well from his frequent thoughts and very recent experience.
“Good heavens,” he said then, as the puzzle fitted together and awareness dawned upon him, and he exclaimed, before he flung back his head in unrestrained, boisterous laughter, “it’s Grandfather!”
FIFTEEN
The setting sun, like a giant yolk newly pricked, smeared a disorderly, vivid stain across the sky and it dripped gold all over the gray rooftops of London, but neither of the two gentlemen seated by the open window did more than give it cursory notice. They had been far too busily engaged in taking the measure of each other. And now that they’d ordered dinner, had it served to them, exchanged common pleasantries and queries about the one’s recent ocean voyage and the other’s recent activities, they sat back in their chairs and grinned. For each counted himself well satisfied with what he saw in the other.
“It’s as well things worked out this way,” Franklin Godfrey said, without preamble, for they’d just been speaking about the price of French brandy. “Faith has no idea I’m here, and neither does Will. Not that I wish to spy on them—I don’t. But I think, my lord, that you can give me a fairer, or at least a more impartial, view of what’s going on. Their letters tell me nothing and everything. I feel there’s much more that never gets to paper.”
“Fair perhaps,” Barnabas Stratton said thoughtfully, “but impartial, sir? I’m afraid not, no, in Faith’s case, not at all.”
“Ah!” the older gentleman said cheerfully. “Ah well, then, there’s a bit that lurked between the lines that I did read right. That pleases me, my lord, not that I make snap judgments. But I do.” He laughed. “I flatter myself that it’s my strength. And that bit of news pleases me right down to the ground upon which I stand.”
“Ah, but there’s nothing settled,” his companion said with the faintest frown, “though I’m pleased to have the opportunity to go about things the proper way and announce my intentions to you. That’s all I’ve been able to do with Faith, as well. It’s early days yet for us, though I would wish it were later, or would go more quickly. But I hesitate to hurry with a girl like Faith. I reason the wait will be worth it, so I wait, but impatiently, sir.”
“Then,” said the elder man, “I reckon you’ve figured out what ails Faith. I hear it in what you haven’t said. Aye, that daughter of mine and that coxcomb she calls husband had no right having children, but I’m glad they did. At least I got Faith from them. If they contributed nothing else to the family, or the world, that would be enough. I think you’re man enough, and have heart and brain enough to convince Faith marriage is not the misery they showed her it was. That’s all she needs, all she ever needed. But for all we’re close, I’ve been too busy building empires to do more than tell her the way of it. I never had time to show her. She never knew her grandmother.”
The American gentleman frowned then, and pursed his lips and shifted in his seat, and drew his dark brows together in a frown, before he sighed and breathed, on a loud exhalation, “Aye, that’s why I’m here, you might say. That’s why I’ve come.”
Then he straightened and looking Lord Deal levelly in the eye, he said more forcefully, opening his hands wide as though he were literally laying everything out on the table before him, “I’ve a problem, my lord, and that’s why I’ve come.”
“I thought you might.” Barnabas sighed, and when the older man gave him a curious look, he explained gently, “Things were going far too well lately, sir, you see. Why, things were going very smoothly for at least three hours.”
The two gentlemen continued their discussion as they walked the city streets from Lord Deal’s club back to his townhouse, as it appeared the American gentleman was the sort of vigorous fellow who must move as he sought to express his thoughts. And in all, Lord Deal mused privately, it was better that his lively visitor had an entire city to vent his energies upon than if he were forced to merely pace the patterns out of his library’s carpeting.
“I wed her grandmother early,” Franklin Godfrey said, as though he were continuing a statement he’d just made, when in fact he’d kept silent for several moments, marshaling his thoughts. When he finally spoke, the words burst from him like staccato puffs of steam escaping from a boiling pot. “I was only a lad, eighteen, imagine. It was folly, of course. Mine considered itself a good family though poor, and hers, why, she was a miller’s daughter. I had to wed her, and so I had to leave with her as well, to make my way in the world. But I’m not sorry a bit for it, not for her, she was the best thing that ever happened to me, not for coming to New York, for it suited me. I made my fortune there. But I lost her, you see, not six months later, to a fever while she was still in childbed.
“I didn’t re-wed. I hadn’t the time, nor the inclination. Not that I avoided women,” he said, glancing at his companion sideways, “but not that sort of women, if you take my meaning. I was prudent, of course. I had a young daughter to raise. But she was raised motherless, and damned if our sins don’t come back to haunt us—she raised her own daughter motherless as well. After a while I stepped in to make sure Faith was raised fatherless as well. A paltry fellow my daughter met through my business, damn his eyes,” he said, and shook his head as if he would waste not so much as one more word on his son-in-law.
“Well,” Mr. Godfrey sighed, so wrapped in his tale he never noticed his companion’s fleeting smile at his interjection, “the fact is that Faith was born when her mother was eighteen; history repeats. I took c
harge of her and raised her as though she was my daughter. Maybe I felt guilty for the way I’d mismanaged her mother, maybe I was older and wiser. Reckon too, I had more time, as well as more money for the job then.
“Blast,” he said in exasperation, shaking his head, “it’s a good thing I met up with you, my lord. I find you a comfortable, quick-witted fellow, and still I can’t spit it out. Imagine if I tried to explain it all to Faith, raw! I need your help, Lord Deal,” he said, coming to a halt in the middle of the street.
“You have it,” the tall gentleman said simply and calmly. That seemed to satisfy the older gentleman, because he nodded and walked forward again.
“Well then,” Franklin Godfrey said decisively, “understand that I’ve six and fifty years strung together for myself now. When Faith left, I was lonely, but I was determined she have her chance. The fellows at home hadn’t made much of an impression on her. But maybe that was because she was too comfortable with me. I could see her getting ready to settle down to be my partner and companion. That would’ve been dead wrong for her. I shipped her off for her own good, but I was left at sixes and sevens, I’ll tell you.
“If she chose Will, and I admit I threw them together in such hopes, it would have suited me fine, but I’ll admit, she’s done far better. Not that Will’s not a capital fellow—he is, he is. But you’ll fit her like a glove. Ah, there’s no way of gentling the thing into conversation. Lord Deal,” the older man confessed, looking both shame-faced and proud at the same time as he swung his head around to stare at the younger man, “the long and short of it is that I’m getting married. And that I’m running true to form, because I have to, and I want to, as well.”
He glowered at his companion fiercely, as though daring him to reply. Lord Deal stopped still in his tracks. And then, after a pause, his smile showed white in the dimming light as he put out his hand and said, merrily, “Why, sir, all my felicitations. I’m happy for you, of course, but as we’ve barely met, you’ll understand that it’s good news to me in other ways as well.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Franklin Godfrey said, shaking hands bemusedly, “but there’s something in that, all right. Maybe,” he added doubtfully, “because Faith’s not predictable, you know. And my bride used to be her companion, Molly Cabal. Well, I was alone,” he said defensively, “and lonely and wandering about the house in search of a friendly face. And there was dear Molly, a tenant in my own house for seven years,” he said wonderingly, “and I’d never passed more than the time of day with her before. But she’d a broken leg, my poor lass, and was a ready audience. And well,” he said on a slight abashed smile, “you can see, she became far more. She’s been a widow (blessedly, from what I’ve heard of the chap) for ten years, but still she’s only five and thirty. I told her and I told her she was too young for me, but she denied it, denies it still,” he said proudly.
“The thing of it is, and I’m still amazed at it myself,” he said, “that I’m to be a father again, and I tell you, my lord,” he said in a burst of loquaciousness, “I couldn’t be more excited, I couldn’t be more thrilled, no, though I can hardly believe it half the time. All I thought I had ahead of me was old age, and at the best, a chance to become a great-grandfather before I died. And now I’ve that, and a wife, and a whole new family coming, as well. I did a poor job with my daughter, and a better one with Faith. So I have the highest hopes for the new babe, be it boy or girl. But there’s still Faith, you see.
“She’s bound to feel betrayed. She’s sure to feel left out. I know she’ll feel displaced. I still love her, of course, and always shall. But no question, it will be different. And bless Molly, but she’s no fortune-hunting schemer. She’s refused to wed until Faith gives her permission, her loving permission. So I’ve shipped out hastily, and I’ll do my best to sail back on the first fair tide. But what’s to do with Faith, my lord?”
“I would hope,” Barnabas said thoughtfully as they finally approached his front door, “that she’d find me consolation enough.”
“But there’s a difference lad—ah, my lord,” the other gentleman said quickly, “and take my word for it, though you’re a canny fellow, I’ve lived some decades more than you, there’s a world of difference between taking something because you want it, and accepting it feeling you have no other choice left open to you. I may have made it that much harder for you, and I’m sorry for it, but she’s a proud lass.”
“Precisely her charm,” Barnabas agreed on a grin. “So, as you’ll be my guest tonight, of course, sir, we’ll have the night to thrash it out between us. For I’ll help you, Mr. Godfrey, if you’ll help me.”
“Done!” said the older gentleman at once, offering his hand on the bargain. “And here’s to a profitable partnership, my lad ... my lord.”
“Barnaby,” the tawny-haired gentleman corrected him softly as they shook hands.
The gentleman was dressed exquisitely. There was no other way to describe him. His valet was radiant as a bride, and took the congratulations of the entire staff with a becoming attempt at modesty, but then the creator of a masterpiece can well afford to put on a humble face, knowing that in no way will it humble him. Then too, whatever his artistry, even he had to admit the sum total of his efforts would have been less than perfection if the subject were less comely himself. “After all,” as he so tastefully put it that night when toasted at the servants’ table, “one can dress a toad to a nicety, and still not have a prince to show for it.”
And there was little doubt that Florizel himself might have given a crown to have looked remotely the way Lord Deal did that memorable morning. His appearance was a tribute to the collaboration of valet and master. For though his valet may have labored over the laundering of the pantaloons so that their oyster-white purity was unblemished by so much as a flyspeck, only the gentleman himself could be accountable for the strong shapely legs, trim hips, and flat abdomen they displayed. The blue frockcoat was fitted just as precisely and tightly as the nether garment, but there again, it was the wide shoulders that showed the excellence of the tailoring. And whatever the accuracy of the scissors which had snipped away the excess from that tumbled crop of hair, it was the gentleman that had grown it, and sunned it from taffy to its present streaked and shining glory.
The valet, of course, must be credited for the glossy shine upon the high brown hessians, the intricate folds of the snowy neckcloth. The choice of a subtle glowing yellow and peach striped waistcoat was his, as was the brilliant idea of handing his distracted master a walking stick just as he was about to set foot out of the house at noon. That way, he did not refuse that final touch the way he ordinarily shunned such affectation, and with the top hat in his other hand, he set all that saw him, not only his enchanted valet, to sighs of content and admiration. If there were sighs of longing as well, they would have been balm and best payment to his man’s ears, though they were wasted on their recipient.
There was only one person whose reaction mattered to Lord Deal today, and it wasn’t her response to his attire which concerned him at all. It was true he’d consciously attempted to present his best face this afternoon, although he knew it was all for form’s sake. For it was also an ironic fact that he’d never have been so apprehensive regarding the lady’s reaction to him if for one moment he’d believed she would have altered it in any fashion because of how he was dressed.
But the sight of him did make her catch her breath and turn her head aside in that first instant so that she could control her emotions. Because it seemed to her most unfair that he should appear to be so spectacular this particular day, just as she was preparing to give him up forever.
He didn’t note her moment of weakened resolve; he’d been too occupied, from the moment he’d been shown into the little salon, with controlling his own reaction to the sight of her. For she’d dressed with especial care as well. When her grandfather had done visiting with her this morning, he’d gone to confer with his partner, Will, and his sometime partner
, the Duke of Marchbanks. But he’d told her that his host, Lord Deal, was planning to come to pay a call as well. And she’d gone to her room and dressed with the exaggerated care that anyone might take for a farewell performance. She might be saying good-bye, and she might be resolved that it was for the best, but she was only human, and she wished to be remembered with longing and with fully as much regret as she herself felt at the leave-taking.
She wore an apricot gown that could have been expressly designed for her purposes, since it was created to insinuate certain promises that might never be fulfilled. It was low at the breasts, to both hint at their creamy texture and boast of their buoyancy, and then it fell to drape softly about her torso to show her grace of movement. A single, simple, burnt-umber ribband caught her hair back from her pale and great-eyed face, and then let it free to fall to her shoulders in one long streaming slide like poured-out honey. It was never the fashion, and perhaps had not been since the Medicis had reigned, but then, she wished to show him that she was unique, true to herself to the last as she had been from the first.
They both had spent a great deal of time and effort for this meeting, and so had dressed with as much thought for an afternoon visit as others might have taken for a ball. Their efforts had not gone in vain, for though both were too distracted to realize it, there were several long seconds of absolute silence between them before Lord Deal, who, after all, was a very facile gentleman, took her hand, bowed over it, and said, “I realize my appearance must be an anticlimax after your surprise of this morning. I was tempted to come along with Franklin, your grandfather that is, but I wanted nothing to take the shine out of his visit, and knew you two would want to be alone. He’s quite a fellow, Faith, you do well to be proud of him. But what a turn I got! ‘Grandfather,’ you said, and ‘Grandfather,’ you quoted, and all that sagacity and wisdom coupled with the name made me expect some doddering old gentleman, and never that lively fellow.”