The Lyon's Den in Winter: The Lyon's Den

by Whitney Blake

  But he was not sure which of them was which.

  He looked at Mr. Black. Mr. Black looked at him.

  Neither moved.

  “Wonderful,” said Mrs. Dove-Lyon, ignorant of, or ignoring, the look between the men. “If you’ll take a seat, Doctor? This is Mr. Malcolm Black.” His only option was to sit next to her, which placed him squarely between the two of them. It was, he imagined, purposeful. He arranged his jacket carefully and sat.

  “I must say that I came here prepared to get myself out of that wager.”

  “And now?” she asked.

  “I am more amenable.”

  Duncan glanced at neither Miss Black nor Mr. Black. He kept his focus on that no-nonsense black veil. He did not wish to insult the daughter or bait the father when the genesis of his hesitation went beyond the people in this room. Somehow, he did not think he would be given the grace to explain himself. That was not the point of this meeting.

  “I am happy to hear it,” said Mrs. Dove-Lyon. “For I do not allow people out of their agreements. Think of the pandemonium it would create. Not all of them are so quickly or as well-met as yours, but providence has smiled upon us.”

  A maid brought a small tea service with gingerbread alongside. As she laid it for them, he took a moment to think. He considered that it would not be bad to be married to Miss Black, or so his base desires said. He liked her as much as one could like another on such a short acquaintance, and he was indubitably attracted to her.

  But if she was here, her father meant to see her married off because he—or she—had no other choice.

  Even upon considering it only briefly, Duncan thought he would not want her married to someone else. Supposing he could persuade Mrs. Dove-Lyon to excuse him, Miss Black would be passed to the next man she had in mind.

  Off what he knew from Watson and the acquaintances he’d made in the Lyon’s Den itself, he surmised it was how these deals went for the women.

  They had to be compromised in a fashion, though standards between men and women were hardly equal. A man could get away with much more and still marry respectably.

  Then he could marry respectably and get away with much more after that.

  Surreptitious in his movements, Duncan tilted his head and glanced at Mr. Black. It was hard to say how old he actually was. Old enough to have sired Viola, of course, who couldn’t be more than thirty. They were both in good physical condition and seemed very keen, alert, quick. Family traits, perhaps.

  Duncan’s clients were wealthy, but most of them did have conditions that played out on their faces and bodies. There was nothing wrong with it, but it meant he was sometimes off the mark in judging age. The more he covertly studied him, the more Duncan believed Mr. Black might be near to sixty.

  Then he glanced at Viola, thinking someone so independent might not wish to have him at all. She might not want to take on the responsibilities of mothering another woman’s child.

  What are you doing here, Duncan?

  Watson had warned him.

  He should not have lost his wits. He wondered if he’d been scouted or noted as an easy conquest, perhaps lured into the thing. If he were Mrs. Dove-Lyon, he would make certain to assess all the men he considered catching for wealthy ladies. It would make sense for her to lure the ones she liked or deemed acceptable. Possibly, the fact that he was a widower with a daughter helped her make the choice.

  It might have signified stability and, for the most part, he was militantly stable.

  He so rarely lost control. He should be kicking himself.

  He sighed.

  If Miss Black was in peril or had a bad reputation, perhaps he could at least be helpful. They had already met. They possessed some kind of affinity.

  He was being ridiculous. But then, all of this was incredibly outlandish. If it were not her, he would be arguing with Mrs. Dove-Lyon now.

  Since it was his inscrutable fae queen, he found himself drawn to the prospect.

  Curious, he said, “May I ask why…”

  “You may not,” said Mr. Black.

  Duncan ignored him.

  “Mal, if you’re both to be family, I do think Dr. Neilson has the right to some preemptive questions,” said Mrs. Dove-Lyons.

  It was clear who had more power in their relationship, Duncan noted. He did not think that Mr. Black was accustomed to not having the upper hand in much of anything, though.

  “Miss Black, are you in some kind of trouble?” Duncan did not know what to ask or how to ask it. But he wanted to know more and simply dove for a question.

  “Depends on your definition, Dr. Neilson,” she said. “In the sense of some other ladies who have traversed these halls, I would expect not.”

  “Did it have to do with the robbery?”

  She sighed. “I suppose so. That seems to have galvanized my father.”

  While Mrs. Dove-Lyon seemed able to let them converse without interruption or judgment, Mr. Black was scowling at each of them in turn. Duncan hoped it was merely how his face looked when he was in thought, and not a judgment upon him.

  “You may as well air the truth, too, Viola,” said Mr. Black. “I am not ashamed of it.”

  Truth?

  “I write plays, Doctor,” said Viola. She thrust her chin toward him. He found it endearing. “I think this entire scenario would fit a play better than my own life.”

  “I’m a writer,” said Duncan, though it was not the first thing he should have said. It was not even the fifth. He likely should open with his daughter, who was growing to be more well-educated than well-behaved. She sorely wished for more women in her life.

  He was relieved that Viola’s secret was no more than that she wrote. Perhaps it was why her father had hired the Black Widow to procure a husband.

  “Oh,” she said. “Of… articles?”

  “No, Miss Black. Of poetry. Stories, sometimes.” He wished he could say something more impressive. In that instant, he did wish he wrote articles or texts for men of certain professions, not nonsense about fairies and shadows. Or the moon. He’d had a period when the moon struck him as inspirational.

  “I should like to meet better poets,” said Miss Black. Her voice was arch, but she dimpled as though pleased with his response. “Perhaps you will be the answer to my dilemma.”

  Even Mrs. Dove-Lyon apparently peered at him with renewed interest, although that was hard to gauge without seeing all of her countenance.

  “I am not, obviously, a successful or published one.” He shrugged. “But I cannot always be dressing wounds and assessing…” he shook his head. “Parts. I find the expression within the words is useful and necessary.”

  Miss Black appeared to understand. She nodded and rested her chin on her hand, considering him.

  “This match may be more splendid than either Helena or I anticipated,” said Mrs. Dove-Lyon, most of all to Mr. Black.

  “Where do you practice medicine, Dr. Neilson? I do anticipate regretting the question,” Mr. Black said after an unamused glance at Mrs. Dove-Lyon. “But if I’m to give my daughter over to a poetic doctor who merely stuffed the largest number of hot peppers in his mouth, jumped over a bed of spikes whilst reciting a naughty ditty, or—”

  Duncan interrupted him. “Edinburgh, Mr. Black, and it was drinking. I couldn’t hold my drink.”

  “Why am I unsurprised that you could not? If you’re from there.”

  “I didn’t say that was where I was from. I suspect the drink was laced with an opiate or something more exotic.”

  “Are you from the borders, perhaps? You’ve that sly look about you. Like a turncoat.”

  Duncan scoffed.

  Viola interjected before he could speak. “Really, if I am going to be forced to relocate entirely without any say in the matter, I don’t care if it’s Glasgow, Edinburgh… if it’s John o’ Groats or Maidenkirk, or wherever else. I’d like a choice.”

  Duncan wanted to speak up for his home but didn’t. It was beside the point.

&
nbsp; It must be distressing for her to be in this position. He stared at Mr. Black, who stared back at him. Duncan could not guess what he did for a living, but he did not seem like anyone of the upper echelons. One didn’t need to be of the ton in order to have money.

  Yet the only way he would be within the Lyon’s Den was with means.

  “Gentlemen… and lady,” said Mrs. Dove-Lyon. “Pride in one’s country may have its place in other discussions. But for now, let us explore the reasons for us being brought together. I would guess that Miss Black wishes things to be concluded.”

  Mr. Black’s expression softened at her words. Maybe there is another way he could be here, Duncan thought, covering his smirk with the palm of his hand. Rumors about Mrs. Dove-Lyon abounded. He supposed some of them held facets of truth.

  She had, after all, supposedly been widowed for a long enough time to take lovers in the plural. Perhaps Mr. Black was once one of them.

  “Now,” she said. “Dr. Neilson comes to us a consulting physician in good standing with his clients. He is in possession of a reasonable and steady income, one which I gather is enough to support a wife… seeing as he supports a daughter, her governess, a housemaid, a cook, and a secretary.”

  Duncan’s mouth fell open. “I beg your pardon, but I have no memory of ever discussing any of this with you.”

  “One needn’t speak too loudly here for me to hear it, Doctor.”

  He shut his mouth.

  Mr. Black looked heartened by his speechlessness.

  And Duncan opened his mouth, again, spurred by his wish to dissolve Mr. Black’s good cheer. “Look, I would not have agreed to anything so serious.”

  “But you did,” said Mrs. Dove-Lyon.

  “At least you had a contest,” said Viola. “I was told we’d be visiting a friend of Papa’s.”

  A friend, indeed, thought Duncan.

  “How did you get in?” Mr. Black said.

  His fingers flickered with movement on his knee. Duncan wondered if he was left-handed. The right didn’t move. Only his left. Mr. Black’s insinuation was clear: being a physician was fine, but it didn’t normally generate the sort of income that got anyone into Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s decadent sphere.

  He felt Viola’s eyes on him, and he said, “My oldest friend has been gracious enough to, ah…”

  “See your way?” Mr. Black’s fierce, gray eyebrows rose.

  Bridling at his skepticism, Duncan said, “If you must know, this is my first visit to London in years.”

  The austere woman who’d shown him in—not from the main entrance, but what was actually the side entrance for ladies and those who sought matchmaking services—appeared in the doorway bearing some kind of ledger. She presented it to Mrs. Dove-Lyon without a word, then took her leave.

  He looked at Mrs. Dove-Lyon, expecting her to have something to say, but she nodded at him in a wordless gesture to continue.

  “I lost my wife in childbirth. I cannot say I ever had the hope of making a home here, but I did fancy my visits when I could take them. This is the first time I have been back since she passed. I didn’t think it ethical to leave my daughter, you see, and I have been trying quite diligently to build us a good life.”

  —

  Papa seemed properly cowed by the divulgence.

  Viola wanted to go and shake him by the shoulder.

  She could not guess why he was suddenly so combative. It could not only have been Dr. Neilson’s origin. There were plenty of men from Edinburgh in London. Or not from Edinburgh, she thought. Dr. Neilson said he wasn’t actually from the city.

  She hoped the foul mood meant Papa regretted his decision to engage Mrs. Dove-Lyon, who was—evidently—not going to budge at all. Oddly, Viola respected the backbone. One could not run a business if one budged on every little thing. There had probably been scores of unhappy people in this parlor: sad, confused women who tried to worm their ways out of marriages as much as their mamas, or they themselves, had tried to worm their ways into them.

  Viola was spending half of her thoughts on plans of escape, and the other half on Dr. Neilson’s dratted brown eyes. And his hands.

  So, her thoughts were more in fourths, perhaps. They were one-quarter exit plans, one-quarter hands, one-quarter eyes. Now the last quarter was pity for a widower. She worried she was superficial, that her pity could be so easily instigated by keen eyes and expressive digits. But it was a little more than that, she thought, as she watched those very fingers gesticulating. He would have made a good orator.

  She wanted to know what those hands felt like on her, more than she wanted to see him speak in public.

  “I am sorry for the loss,” said Papa. It jarred her from her sensual introspection.

  He meant it, realized Viola. She was not surprised by his sincerity, but she knew others might be jolted by the switch in registers. He could go from sincere to scathing quite quickly, or the other way around.

  Dr. Neilson tilted his head. “Thank you. My friend urges me to try to move beyond my grief. He has been trying to help me for quite some time. But I still do not talk much of the past.”

  “You told Titan of your late wife, and I believe you even told Bottom, and Tom,” said Mrs. Dove-Lyon. “As well as Oberon one evening. Before the one during which you could not hold your drink.”

  At that, Dr. Neilson smiled wanly. “I imagine spirits loosened my tongue. I think about them often, but do not generally discuss them. The… my wife and my… son. It seems self-indulgent, in a way, that a man should so openly display his feelings.”

  Viola did not know what to say. She could not imagine such a death, in part because she had never been married or in love.

  With apprehension, she thought that Duncan might eventually just view her as vapid and naive, even if she said she did not think there was anything self-indulgent about his grief.

  She wondered if, because he was a physician, he had been present at the birth. Some fathers did not choose to be in the room, and others were not allowed by well-meaning relatives or midwives. I believe he was, she decided, studying his face. There was a heaviness to how he spoke that made her think so, and she tended to be an excellent reader of people.

  Anyway, it did not shock her. Nor did the fact that he had a daughter. Despite nursing no special interest in securing a marriage proposal for any reason, she did like children. Especially ones at the age where they were curious and could have opinions about the world.

  No, that his life seemed fuller than hers was not a problem. It was certainly no more complicated than her own.

  The night she and Dr. Neilson met, he’d been rather warmly perplexing. Instead of allowing it to cool her interest, she found it intriguing. There was an understated intensity to him. He did not speak overmuch and when he did, he seemed kind. But it took a wealth of self-confidence not to crumble under Papa’s scrutiny. That he was older, paired with the paradoxical situation they now found themselves in—which seemed like it would have been instigated by the whims of a much younger, wealthier man—was… interesting, she concluded.

  Interesting was better than dire, or boring.

  Then the fear that any husband would make her give up her ways came bounding back into her head like an overenthusiastic, untrained puppy.

  But he said he wrote.

  No. Even then, he still might not understand. She could not see a way in which she would be able to be married and keep writing. Her work was not prestigious. It was not even prolific. Still, it was hers.

  Yet Dr. Neilson seemed like a calm man. He was also a man she could easily imagine taking to bed. That was not enough to make her feel any better, for every moment she thought she might be reconciling with Papa’s plan, another second of terror immediately followed.

  She couldn’t very well keep writing for London companies from Edinburgh, at the least. Even if some perfect scenario existed where Dr. Neilson approved of a wife who wrote, she would have to find new collaborators if she resided so far away from the ones she
’d gathered. Not that she would have time to write if she were to be a mother.

  It was not his daughter’s fault, naturally. But even the most forward-minded men expected certain things of women they married.

  “Miss Black?”

  Mrs. Dove-Lyon was speaking to her.

  She swallowed. “Yes?”

  “You seemed very far away, just now. I was saying that you might like to see the ledger?”

  “No, I… I trust Dr. Neilson’s word.”

  That earned her a small smile from said doctor. She would love to earn more of them, she thought, as she took a breath.

  Why must this be so… her mind tried to secure a good, descriptive word. Much?

  Mrs. Dove-Lyon set the ledger aside on a gleaming marble-topped table. Her head turned toward Viola, then Dr. Neilson. “Very well. I suggest you away to Gretna Green at your earliest convenience, then.”

  Viola stared. Like many things this evening, she also did not expect such an offhand response. She’d expected a full set of instructions involving special licenses, clandestine weddings, and all. Possibly a blood oath made with a special letter opener.

  She could not say she would be taken aback if all of this had a more occult element.

  “You mean to say you have not actually made any arrangements at all?”

  “I make them on a case by case basis, Miss Black. And in this one, I do not think your father will brook your refusal. More to the point, I do not think you will refuse.” There was another of those verbal smiles in her words.

  Viola almost protested until she looked at Dr. Neilson, who sat unobtrusively, waiting for her to make the choice. He did not say that he waited.

  But she took his silence better than she would have anything else.

  If Papa wished to see her married and Dr. Neilson was the person to fulfill that wish, she knew she could do worse.

  That he seemed to goad peevishness in Papa was an added incentive.

  You cannot have it both ways, Papa.

  “You really have not made any more restrictive parameters?” Papa asked.