by Edith Layton
“No, and I still don’t. It must be quite some time since you’ve dealt with young ladies, Julian, for I assure you, these two are not of their number,” he replied lightly. “No, they are women of business, my dear, I believe one of them even has a card printed up,” he mused, as his friend choked on a swallow of punch, “or is it a broadsheet? No matter, the point is that I haven’t had much to do with ladies of late, either. Or gentlemen, for that matter. That was why it was so good to see you tonight.”
“Oh yes,” the viscount said, his handsome face grown expressionless, “quite a gentleman, driving the Brighton coach and touching my hat to the passengers for a generous tip.”
“Is that all you get to touch? Poor lad,” Warwick sighed as he won a grin from his companion, “but if a frog can be a prince, I have no trouble recognizing a gentleman in a coachman. It’s not the way of it that concerns me, it’s the why,” he said, fixing his friend with a sudden long and serious stare as he waited for his reply.
“As I said,” the golden-haired young man answered, the flickering firelight giving his face its only change of expression, “not a penny to my name, Warwick, I’ve lost it all, and so, as you see, I wield a whip for the horses and chat up the topside gents for my bread now.”
“Driving the Brighton coach after you’ve driven yourself down the road to perdition? No, I don’t see it, Julian. I haven’t seen you for a while, true, but you were never a gamester, not a fellow to lose the family home on the turn of a card. And you’ve always had ample companionship, so you’re not a fool to throw it away at the feet of some enticing adventuress, and you look remarkably healthy, so I doubt it was opium-eating that brought you to ruin. I know it wasn’t Jamaican punch,” he added with a haughty sniff down his long nose at the tankard, “so what was it? You were well enough to grass when last we met.”
“No,” his friend said slowly, “actually, Warwick, there’s the whole of it, I wasn’t. I hadn’t been for years, you see, only I didn’t see, I didn’t know.”
And then, keeping his voice as calm and steady as he was able, he told his friend all of it. There was little enough to tell, he thought when it was done, and his friend rose and stood against the mantel looking down into the fire, his thin face set, obviously thinking deeply. For it was a simple, trite enough tale, he thought, even as he’d said.
His father had no head for business matters, but even that was commonplace enough, few gentlemen did, he only needed a good man of business to keep his estates in good heart and his fortune intact. Only, it transpired, his father had engaged a rogue, or at least, to be fair, the fellow had turned into a rogue after decades of good service. He’d run at the last with the last of the funds he could squeeze from the estate, knowing a noose or a transport ship awaited him when his clients found him out, and he’d been entirely successful, for only his body had been recovered when Bow Street located him, swinging from the ceiling of his rented room in Houndsditch. His light lady friend had taken what remained of the money they hadn’t squandered or gamed away, and where she’d got to, only her creator knew.
At least the matter had been kept quiet; if his father had known nothing else, he knew the code of the nobility and realized such things must be kept in the family. But since his remaining family consisted of one charming, adorable wife whose pretty head ought not be troubled with money matters, and one young growing son whose shoulders were not yet broad enough to bear the truth, his father had kept the matter to himself and his new man of business.
“I believe the burden hastened his death,” the viscount said softly, as his friend nodded, “you remember, Warwick, for at his funeral, Mama said that he had been in a decline in the past months, before the attack that carried him off.
“And then, of course, it was up to Higgins, as his lawyer, to tell Mama, but then, of course, you remember Mama, she was beautiful and gay and utterly lost when serious matters were spoken of. And as Higgins was an old bachelor, and as she could never restrain herself from flirting, God,” he said on a reminiscent smile, “she would flirt with the gardeners when they brought in a rose. How was he to know it was just her way? Perhaps it wasn’t, maybe she was interested in him at that, he certainly thought so. That’s why, he said, he didn’t tell her. He didn’t want, he said,” the viscount said in a louder voice, with a trace of temper coloring his speech, “to coerce her into accepting his suit. That’s why I didn’t know that the fellow was secretly footing all our bills, keeping me in school, and keeping the estate solvent as he paved the way clear to making her his wife.
“It wasn’t charity, I suppose,” he said bitterly at last, as his friend looked up at him with a disconcertingly vivid blue stare, “as he was only feathering his own nest, thinking he’d be her next husband. And as to that, I would’ve been in gravy if he’d become my new father. Higgins was a wealthy man. Is a wealthy man,” he corrected himself.
“And I wonder,” he added, lowering his head so that he could avoid his friend’s complete and piercing gaze, “if I’d have protested if when he’d married Mama, he’d continued to keep me in the state I was raised to think was natural. Would I have requested a look at the books any more than I’d have asked it of my father? I never did ask him, you know. Would I have asked any pertinent questions if my pockets were left full and my tailor’s bills paid and my club fees in on time? I don’t know, Warwick,” he said at last, shaking his head so violently that his fair hair rippled in the firelight and obscured his light, suspiciously glittering eyes for a moment. “We were taught to be gentlemen, and nothing else, weren’t we?” he asked in an unsteady voice.
After a silence, he raised his head and went on more easily in his usual light and natural tones. “That’s hardly fair, you were always something more, weren’t you? But no matter, none of it matters actually. There was that stupid carriage accident, and she was gone before I could get home to say good-bye. That was over a year ago. I was living in London in our town house then, in quite the grand style. And as she was gone before Higgins could finally nerve himself to ask her to be his wife, by the time I got home I discovered that everything had gone with her.”
“Nothing is left?” the other man asked into the quiet.
“As usual, Warwick,” the viscount sighed, “you are way ahead of me. No, something is left,” he said, before he drained his tankard.
“It would be lovely,” Warwick said pleasantly, “to be as brilliant as you always credit me. But it’s only a matter of simple observation, Julian. If there was nothing at all left, you’d hardly be sitting here tonight, with your coachman’s cape drying in the hall. You’d be off and about the world looking for your fortune. You always were intrepid, if not a little headstrong. Something is holding you here beyond your love for the innkeeper’s Jamaican punch, I think.”
The viscount’s handsome face was distorted for a moment by an expression somewhere between a grimace and a grin. There was no use attempting evasion; Warwick had always understood his mind, from the first moment they’d met at school. He’d been nervous and defensive as always that first day in a new school, because he’d learned his appearance sometimes provoked other boys to test his mettle. And so when he’d come into his newly assigned room and seen a strange gangling youth staring at him, with his head slightly down and forward and held to one side to present one bright eye, in the pose that he’d come to learn was characteristic, he’d demanded at once, “Is there something amiss with my cravat, sir?”
The boy had continued to gaze at him, seeing things, he realized later, that no one else could see or had ever seen in him, before he’d answered, displaying that strangely winning half-smile he often wore. “Nothing, my friend, but you needn’t get huffy just because I’m amazed. It isn’t often that an oil painting walks through my door. It must be most difficult for you. But what a pleasant problem. Now,” he’d gone on mildly, “if you’d gaped at me, I wouldn’t have bothered to ask. I’d have known it was my cravat.”
He’d not known what to say
in reply to such candor and good humor, so he’d only laughed. And that had begun their friendship.
Although to this day, he thought, eyeing the slender man, he didn’t know what Warwick Jones derived from it. Even then Warwick had been acknowledged to be brilliant; his tutors would have adored him if they hadn’t been so nervous about him. For he was a solitary fellow, not so much alone, as apart from all the others. His comprehension seemed years above his fellows’, his humor often soared over their heads, and though his elders appreciated it, it disconcerted them, for it was admitted to be idiosyncratic. That humor, the viscount thought now, was the only sign that Warwick had ever been a boy, for otherwise he seemed to have been a grown man since childhood. It was only his willingness to create his famous complex pranks that had shown his actual age.
His classmates might have envied him his ease with studies, and some might have resented his outspokenness, but few ever tried to physically best him. He’d been an athletic young man and a successful sportsman, taking advantage of that edge that only a keen mind can lend to a trained body. And when he was provoked beyond tolerance, on the rare occasions, when still a boy, that he could be, and lost control of his emotions, he was absolutely terrifying because then it became clear why he kept his anger so tightly leashed, for once unloosed, he lost touch with all else but winning, including the possibility of losing his life. But then when that happened, of course, he never lost.
He came from an old, monied family. He had no title, for as he explained, the canny Joneses from his peculiarly bent branch of the family had always passed up the honors and fame, and knowing the nature of kings, had always kept their heads low to prevent them from being lopped off. When their neighbors were being beggared by the honor of entertaining the queen who’d just elevated them to an earldom, he’d once said, his family had immediately hidden all the silver plate in the backyard and sent a delegation to her, in rags, asking for a loan. That way, he’d explained reasonably, even though she’d refused them, they’d been able to afford to buy their neighbor’s estate in the next generation, when that luckless family had run through all their funds carrying on in the style in which they thought they must as noblemen.
But then, the viscount thought, with Warwick, one never knew which of his tales to believe. The most dazzling one, at least, was true. He had one ancestor who defied the family wisdom and came out into the open and courted a king, and so gained fame even as he lost everything. Warwick’s great-great-grandfather had supported Charles, and when that unhappy monarch lost his head his supporter had been allowed to keep his own, but little else. He’d had his property and funds stripped from him. Then the fellow had turned to a life of elegant crime. He became one of the first famous gentlemen highwaymen to plague and delight the nation by holding up travelers, with exquisite style and grace, as they attempted to travel the deserted heaths leading from London. “Gentleman Jones” had swung for it, from a gibbet improvised on the spot to mark the scene of his greatest triumphs. It had been a sensation. The ladies had wept, the balladeers had sold out all their song sheets. He’d been such a merry fellow that even his victims, they said, had come to his farewell, to drink champagne with him the night before he was turned off. And the greatest joke of all was that though they’d caught the culprit, they never located his ill-gotten gains, although his young son, when grown to manhood, suddenly came up with enough money, from somewhere, to buy back all the family holdings even before Charles’s own son had a chance to sit on his restored throne long enough to restore them to him.
It was easy to see that bold ancestor in the lurking humor in Warwick’s own dark face, and find the fellow’s last jest still shining in those knowing, hooded eyes. Warwick was a fellow who kept to himself, kept his own counsel, and gave out only that which he thought he should. He didn’t seem to need anyone, being totally contained and self-sufficient, for though he was offered many, Warwick had few fast friends. But those he had, he held, and kept complete faith with. Why he believed he should be his friend, why he’d ever decided upon it in the first place, the viscount didn’t know, had never known, but he was grateful for it. For it was comforting, Julian Dylan thought, watching the gentleman pace from the hearth to the table and back again, contemplating his problem, to speak with a true friend again, even if he was resolved that he’d ask for nothing more than his advice, and accept no more than his concern.
“Then you’ve not lost the manor, have you?” Warwick asked as though he already knew the answer.
“No, but not only because it’s entailed and it would be the devil to get through the courts to the auction block. I’ve earned enough to keep it,” the young man said with some pride, “and keep it going, but barely. I can’t live in it, of course,” he said on a rough laugh, “but I can keep its grass scythed and its roof intact. I’ve made arrangements with some pensioners, they live there and take care of the place for little more than a pittance and that intact roof over their heads. That much, at least, a coachman can do.”
“Then it should be a simple matter to turn things around again,” his friend said with a relieved smile. “You can get enough, putting up the estate as security, to invest handsomely. Then, within a few years you may buy your own coaching company if you’re still that keen on the job.”
“You expect me to go to the moneylenders with Elmwood Court, and then gamble with it?” the viscount asked in disbelief, sitting bolt upright.
“Not,” his friend replied negligently, “to the moneylender…me. And I never gamble, I invest.”
“I see,” the viscount said sadly, settling back in his chair. “Thank you, Warwick, but no. If I’d wanted charity, I could have come to you at once, my friend, and I know it, and I thank you for it. Or, failing that, I could have gone to Higgins. True, the old man married before daffodils could spring up on Mama’s grave. It seemed once he’d gotten his mind set on wedded bliss, he didn’t let death deter him, he married some other lucky widow months after he’d bid Mama farewell. But he liked me and I imagine he’d have felt guilty enough about it to have been a soft touch, he was a decent chap. But I don’t take charity, you see, not from friends.”
“And it’s difficult enough to get it from foes,” the gentleman agreed with some asperity. “Do not insult me, Julian,” he went on, his easy manner replaced by cold scorn, “I’m not a fool, and even if I thought you were after a handout, I don’t believe you’d have entreated heaven to bring you an ice storm to strand me here with you in this end-of-the-world inn so that you could set me up for one tonight. You were always a favorite of the fates, lad, but that’s stretching it too far. No, obviously it was your damnable pride that kept you from seeking my help immediately. And that’s a pity. For the definition of help is not charity, and a friend is supposed to help another. Where were you during our English classes, Julian, not to mention chapel?
“I’m an excellent investor, Julian, it is one of my pastimes, actually. That fellow who stopped me in the hall on the way in here tonight, that citified fellow, he’s only one of my business partners. You recoil in horror, my dear?” Warwick said with a hint of anger, “but this is 1814, not the good old days when a gentleman could afford to sit back and watch his serfs toil for the good of the king and country, an acre of land, and a healthy cow. Life’s expensive these days, and getting dearer. If a gentleman doesn’t soil his hands with trade, he may not have anything to trade with in a few decades.
“But then,” he said, shrugging, and turning his back to his friend to gaze into the fire again, “perhaps you’re right. Why listen to me? I am, after all, not a nobleman. I suppose you can go on driving your coach. Perhaps you can find some wealthy girl to wed. My merchant friend from the city was just inquiring after you, by the by, and he gave me to understand that he has a lovely sister. That might be a good course for you to follow. It’s not filthy trade, nor hard work if she’s handsome and complacent enough. And certainly a dowry is not charity.”
“Warwick,” the viscount said, shaking
his head and laughing, “oh Warwick, I have missed you,” he said, rising and clapping his friend on the shoulder, “for I think I would have planted any other fellow in the world a facer for saying what you just did. But you’ve always known how to get around me. I’ll put Elmwood Court up for security, and I’ll give you complete authority to invest whatever it’s worth. It makes perfect sense, but I’ve no head for business. I’d be pleased to go partners with you if you promise not to conceal losses, nor pad winnings.”
His friend turned and fixed him with such an outraged stare that the blond gentleman fell to laughing again, even as Warwick said haughtily, “There is never any need for me to conceal that which never occurs,” before he relented, and grinning, said, with a nod, “Done then, Julian, we’ll see you out of this tangle entirely in a few years.”
But then the viscount sobered. “That might not be soon enough,” he sighed. When his friend looked at him curiously, he added, “There are some things you cannot help me with. You were right, it’s not only Elmwood Court that’s kept me here. There’s a lady, you see, that I cannot bear to leave, and yet can’t afford to have just now.”
“She’s handsome and she seemed content enough. I wouldn’t have thought it would take that much to support a serving wench,” his friend said carefully, watching him closely.
“No, not Nan, she’s a good girl,” the viscount sighed, “but as I said, a diversion merely. There is a lady, though. I met her last year and we were on our way to a firm understanding when the ground fell out from beneath me.”