by Edith Layton
The room was very still when Warwick Jones knelt by Lord Moredon, and so they all heard what he said to his downed opponent in terse and labored breaths. “Moredon,” he said, “you made two great mistakes. Oh, not just in hiring two men to hold Viscount Hazelton down so that you could kick him into submission. I understand that’s your way. But you oughtn’t to have left him alive to tell the tale. And you shouldn’t have forgotten that though he’s lost all else, he still has friends. I am one.”
Mr. Jones rose to his feet, and then it could finally be seen that he looked weary unto death. But then he seemed to remember something. He knelt again, and taking Lord Moredon by the hair, he lifted his head and added, coldly and loudly, “And oh yes, if you hire men to work your revenge in future, I’d advise you to engage two more, permanently, to then watch over you every next moment for the rest of your life.”
It was only late afternoon when Warwick Jones returned to his town house, but, his butler thought in alarm, he looked as exhausted as though he’d been out all night. He looked as if he’d been doing a great deal more that his butler ought not to ask about as well, for there were faint bruises darkening on the lean jaw, and after he’d handed his cane and his hat to a footman, it could be seen that he absently held his hand to his chest as though in some humorous imitation of the pose that vile Bonaparte was said to favor. But there was nothing amusing to be seen in the heavy-lidded eyes, which seemed more difficult for him to fully open than ever.
Mr. Jones began to ask after his guest, when his butler interrupted him, a thing he’d never do unless something as momentous as peace being declared or assassination accomplished had occurred in his master’s absence. But his news was almost that startling to his employer, and he’d known it would be.
“Sir,” the man said with some agitation, “whilst you were out, that Mr. Logan came to call again. This time, however, he came with his sister, and her chaperon, and her maid, and all their luggage. He said that they were to be staying on, here, with us, with your permission. I could scarcely call the man a liar, sir,” the butler went on in visible perturbation, “and so could not turn them aside. I let them in,” he went on, his voice rising with emotion until it almost reached normal conversational tones, “as I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Oh, damn,” Mr. Jones said, closing his eyes as if in pain, but as his butler began to eagerly say, “Just so, so if you’d like me to show them out—” he cut in to say wearily, “Sorry, Mr. Fox, I am sorry, I’d quite forgotten they were coming. I ought to have told you sooner,” he said, though he had to squelch a stab of annoyance at how quickly his sometime business partner had taken him up on his offer of hospitality. He’d never expected the man to come running with his blasted unwed sister so soon, he thought.
“Forgive my thoughtlessness,” he only went on to say, ensuring his servant’s devoted service for another lifetime for his consideration, “and would you please have rooms prepared for them all? And perhaps we ought to speak about hiring on a temporary housekeeper of some sort now that we’re not to be a bachelor household for some weeks. But that can be later. For now, I think I’ll make my bows, then excuse myself and see to the viscount, there’s a thing I have to discuss with him.”
“There’s that, too,” the butler said, in his excitation sounding like a gossipy commoner hanging over a washline, eager to impart a good bit of tattle to a neighbor, “for she’s up there right now. That is to say, she was here when the doctor came and he chatted with her and then he said that with her brother’s permission, of course, he thought it would do the viscount a world of good if she came up to chat with him to cheer him up and take his mind off his hurts. And so she’s there now, with her brother and her chaperon, the contessa, of course, that much sense they do have, and it has seemed to divert the viscount, he does seem much better than one would expect….”
The butler’s voice trailed off in embarrassment as he saw his master incline his head to one side as he listened to him. In the silence that followed, he could hear his own words echo, and realized he’d sounded like a prattling child. But before he could make a recovery, his master asked only, “She?”
“Miss Susannah, Miss Logan,” the butler explained, but by the time the second word was out of his mouth, Mr. Jones had nodded absently and was taking the stairs to the viscount’s room.
He’d been so angry and keyed up for so long that when his business with Lord Moredon was done with, he’d felt as physically deflated as if someone had put water in his knees. Then, no matter what the outcome had been, there’d been no question he’d been soundly thumped during the confrontation as well. So when Warwick reached the second landing, his heart beat a bit faster than usual, his breath came with a bit more effort, and when he came to Julian’s door, his face was wanner than it was normally, as well.
He saw Julian at once, lying on his bed in a dressing gown, propped up on a quantity of pillows. His face was cruelly discolored and out of shape, but even with the bits of plaster here and there, he could see that his friend wore a crooked smile. A middle-aged woman sat in a chair to one side, nodding at the persons in the room; from her quietude and air of calm, he knew her for the chaperon that had arrived with all the luggage. Mr. Charles Logan perched on the end of a table, grinning like a boy, obviously happy as a man at a wedding feast. And a young woman with an abundance of hair the precise color of the sunlight pouring in the window stood with her back to the door and offered Julian a glass with something cloudy in the bottom of it.
“Careful, Julian,” Warwick said softly from the doorway. “That’s how the Borgias did it, you know.”
He started to smile and went forward to better hear Julian’s somewhat slurred greeting and reply, when the young woman turned to face him.
And then, for the first time in his life, between the drawing in of one breath and the letting out of another, he lost a breath somewhere in between, forever, as every life’s function he had stopped in that one moment as he gazed at her. He’d been dealt a heavy blow earlier, but this one was the most profound he’d ever received. For she looked exactly as he’d always imagined love itself would look if he ever found it.
But that was only how she looked, so in the space of time he had to begin another breath, he thought on a certain wild hope and despair that she would speak now, and so shatter the illusion forever, for certainly, he thought, her words could never match what his eyes had seen. So he waited for the platitudes, or the polite nonsense, or the stammered foolishness that could release him from this sudden uncomfortable, unsought bondage she’d placed him in.
And she, already too aware of her brother’s forwardness, and her own enormous debt to her host, who must surely be this oddly stricken-looking, high-nosed, pale young man who hung in the doorway, watching her as though he’d found her strangling his beautiful friend instead of trying to nurse him, said at once, in her most conciliatory manner, “Indeed, sir, but I understood that Lucretia did her worst mischief at a dinner table, with the twist of her ring. By the time her victims took to their beds, she was far away, as were they. So I don’t think the viscount has much to fear from me, unless, of course, I take to preparing his dinner, instead of only attempting to force upon him this vile sludge the doctor brewed.”
Something very much like joy leapt into Warwick Jones’s heart at her amusing words, something very like hope sprang up there as well, as delight obviously registered in his eyes.
As Julian tried to make a jest and laughed a painful crooked laugh, she turned to her patient again. It was then that Warwick could see the look of fierce tenderness and the glimpse of something even more profound that she couldn’t disguise that glowed in her softened eyes when she but gazed down at his friend again.
And then it was nothing at all like a blow to his heart that Warwick felt, it was rather as if someone had cut into his chest and wrenched that troublesome organ out entirely.
“Why, Julian,” Warwick Jones then drawled in his usual cool, dispassion
ate, ironic tones, accepting the inevitable after only a restored heartbeat’s pause, “with all your lumps and bumps and scrapes, my lad, as usual, you’re a very lucky boy. Now, won’t you introduce me to your lovely lady?”
“Not mine, Warwick,” Julian corrected him with a tilted grin. “Miss Logan is ours.”
7
Susannah gazed down at the courtyard beneath her high window. Hers was a quietly situated room to the back of the great house and it looked over a tiny but complex garden. Birdsong woke her in the morning, the sun encouraged daffodils and told the afternoon time on a mossy dial in their midst below, and in the nights, the wind stirred the first buds on the few graceful trees and let them gently tap the windowpanes to remind a guest that she was fortunate enough to enjoy one of the best and most unusual sorts of accommodations to be had in the heart of London. But this morning, this particular guest thought on a sigh as she let the curtains slip back into place, that she’d have preferred less exalted lodgings overlooking the busy streets, for then at least there’d be distraction and something to do in her room instead of only having the peace to worry in.
There were a great many things to do beyond her door; of course, but over the three days in which she’d been a guest in Mr. Warwick Jones’s house, she’d become more reluctant to leave her room with every morning that dawned. It wasn’t because her host treated her rudely or impolitely in any way at all. That sort of behavior actually would have been preferable to her. At least it would be something to complain about, it would be something to take action against, and she could pick up, pack up, and leave without a backward glance and no argument from her brother when he heard of it, either. But it was more than difficult to decide to set out on one’s own and take new rooms in London, with only the poor, vague excuse that one felt “uncomfortable” and “uneasy” and “unwanted” in one’s host’s presence. If only she could find a reason without an “un” on it, Susannah thought unhappily, why then she could be on her way without a qualm.
But that wasn’t true either, she thought with painful honesty, settling at her dressing table and frowning at herself. For she wasn’t one to suffer silently, and Charlie wasn’t one to care about qualifiers; if she wrote that she was unhappy, he’d let her leave Eden if she wanted to. There was a very good reason she stayed on despite her reservations about her host, and prayed she’d be allowed to stay on even if he took to chasing her about his home with whips or leaping out at her from darkened corners with fistfuls of spiders. And that reason lay in another guest chamber on the other side of the house. For in fact, in many ways she’d never been happier than she’d been in the past three days, and if it were not for Mr. Jones himself, she would have been pleased to stay on in his house until the bronze dial in the garden below rusted away to a heap of fine green dust.
Because the sight of Julian Dylan was as welcome to her as the sight of the sun was each morning. He was admittedly now an invalid, he was undoubtedly, though he constantly denied it, always in pain, it was difficult to watch expressions try to form on his battered face, especially when one knew what glory had been there only days before, but withal, she couldn’t remember a time when she’d been happier. No, to be fair, she sighed to herself, it was only that there’d never been a person she’d ever been happier to be with.
She’d thought she’d be so wary of him that she’d never be able to behave with any sense, or naturalness, in his presence, for she’d never before had to actually associate with someone who seemed to be the embodied stuff of all her midnight fancies. Indeed, her first reaction on hearing that he was to be a guest in the same house with her had been one of sheerest terror. It was one thing to fantasize about a man so magnificent he seemed to have stepped out from a book on medieval romance when one was at a safe distance both physically and socially from him, quite another to actually contemplate living under the same roof with his breathing presence. And in fact, that first time, when she’d obeyed the doctor and crept into the sickroom to see him, her heart had been beating so fast she thought she’d soon supply the physician with a new and interesting case to study. For she wondered if he’d ever had a patient who’d literally died of fright. Now she wondered if he knew how to cure such a malady of the heart as she seemed to have contracted from repeated exposure to the gentleman in the sickroom.
The first sight of his injured face had shocked the fear for herself from her. Then when he’d seen her and attempted to arrange those poor aching features into something resembling a smile of welcome, her heart had broken, even as his first stumbling, genuinely warm words of greeting had taken up all those shattered shards and swept them into a heap that would just fit into his breast pocket.
She couldn’t be shy of him then, for it was clear he needed her, or someone, to help him ease his pain. She discovered that when there was need of her, there could be no fear in her. Had he been whole, on his feet, and perfect in face and form, she might well have hung back and showed her terror by showing her witlessness. But as it was, she’d responded naturally to him at once, only to find that in trying to give him comfort, she’d given herself to him entirely. It was a thing she hoped he’d never realize, for she’d only lost her heart, not her head.
She was still sane enough to know that for her, at least for now, he was still an unattainable dream. And as no man had ever been more to her as yet, she was still comfortable with that. Yet there was that little sprouting hope now, the thought that someday something more might come of their friendship, and that tiny spark of hope was in its way just as terrifying as it was thrilling to contemplate. So just now she was quite content to wait upon matters, and enjoyed each meeting with him more each day, for as it was, every time she entered his room it was like taking up residence in the pages of her favorite fairy tale.
He’d recognized her from their encounter at the Silver Swan, but had looked so woebegone and contrite when he explained his frivolous behavior, she’d forgiven him at once. That was no difficult chore, she explained, since she’d never really blamed him. But he’d asked for her forgiveness at once, and it didn’t surprise her.
Even without his incredible good looks in evidence, the viscount was everything else she’d ever dreamed a nobleman might be: gentle, charming, amusing, and certainly brave. And loyal, as well, she remembered, wrinkling her nose at the thought, for he’d nothing but praises to sing about his cold, cynical friend Warwick Jones. It was undeniably good of Mr. Jones to take his friend in and care for him, she thought, and unquestionably kind of him to oblige another friend and give house room to herself, but there were all those “un’s” again that sprang up when he came to mind. And then too, being charitable didn’t necessarily make a person likable; if it did, then the minister would be the most popular man in town. And anyway, she thought, feeling guilty about her ingratitude, charity that felt like charity was the coldest comfort in the world.
He was cold, that was the thing of it, she decided. For example, she thought, she’d taken great pains with her appearance this morning, and yet after only three days in their company, she could entirely predict the reaction she’d get from both gentlemen she shared the town house with. She stared into the glass and brooded on it. This morning her maid had been in early and had helped her dress her pale hair in high and curling fashion, a la princesse, and then helped her on with a soft rose-colored dress cut in the same sort of simple elegant Parisian style. It was high at the waist, long at the sleeves, and low at the neck, and the light wool fell in soft folds to her ankles. Her only adornment was a pair of small coral earbobs. She’d roundly approved her own reflection in the glass, a rare enough occurrence, since though she didn’t believe she was a toad, she was seldom precisely comfortable with her image. The problem was that she felt her appearance perfectly matched her place in life—she didn’t quite fit in anywhere, in either class or style.
If she had yards of soft, curling ebony hair, the height of style now, she thought with animation, that would be striking, and might suit her f
orm to perfection. A sultry sort of foreign look would complement a female whose family was not considered elevated enough to admit to politest society. Foreigners could get away with quite a lot that a native English person might not. After all, at school, Lili Berthon, whose mama was an émigré, could be excused any number of transgressions because of her obvious heritage. Of course, those excuses were always in the nature of snide comments about how “she didn’t know any better,” which was lowering, but on the whole it might be better, Susannah thought, to be thought an ignorant foreigner than an inferior native.
But the only way she could have dark hair would be if she dipped it into a vat of dye, and though she’d once contemplated it, the concoction was rumored to cause baldness, and if Miss Spring were any fair example, it also looked about as natural as two fresh coats of paint would upon one’s head. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her hair; she admitted it was pretty stuff and was rather proud of the way it held a wave. But it didn’t suit the rest of her person. If she were fated to be milky-skinned and blond, with a turned-up nose rather than a classic one, then it would have only been fair to have the rest match that delicate fairylike image.
She was not very tall and so found it pleasant to contemplate the fact that she measured just up to the viscount’s heart. But though she was slender, some parts of her person were far too ripe to complete the dainty ladylike image she coveted. It would have been fashionable as well as poetic, for example, she mused, to have little champagne-cup breasts of the sort the girls at school had learned from a forbidden French novel that Marie Antoinette herself had had, and been honored by having all such wineglasses exactly modeled on forever after.