by Edith Layton
She’d been taught, just as she was told by those at school who were entitled to the name, that a lady never felt such things. A lady loved her husband, and lay down on her wedding night in obedience to him, and suffered the mysteries of that marriage bed in order to bear his heirs and give him his strange joys. For gentlemen always took great pleasure from such things, it was the way nature had formed them, they couldn’t help it—that much, at least, she knew. But that sort of intimacy ought not to stir a lady, that ordeal ought not produce the sort of secret inner tremors and tinglings she’d experienced at some of her more secret thoughts on the matter. No, that was for common women, that was never for the princess in the tower. So she’d been pleased that her suitors’ embraces had won only her slight distaste or embarrassment, and that the idea of love itself continued to give her the greatest pure pleasure. Because romance was for true ladies, and sexual pleasure for sluts.
But last night Warwick had come very close to her, and something in his very proximity, or something in his eyes, or something in his intent, had woken something in her, and it had been fear of that which had made her cry out. Now, looking at Julian and feeling him so near, she was amazed again to discover that yearning, and now she recognized from all her readings that it could be nothing else but that other hallmark of her common state, for it could be nothing other than rising physical desire. Always in the past, she’d yearned for his attention, his admiration, and his devotion. Now for the first time she saw him as more than just amazingly handsome, now she wondered just what those astonishing lips would actually feel like upon her own, and what that strong perfectly proportioned body would feel like upon… She raised her head with a jolt, deeply shocked at the direction of her thoughts.
Julian thought she’d reacted to his wit and smiled at her, and went on with his commentary. But she gazed about the box frantically, searching the theater for something to take her mind out of the abyss she’d wallowed in. Her glance fell upon her host, and she discovered that he’d been sitting at the rail of the box, his chair turned round so as to better see the stage, but that he’d been looking steadily at her. In that moment something in his sympathetic aspect, something in the tilt to his head and his rueful smile convinced her that incredibly, somehow, he’d read her thoughts, and understood her so thoroughly that he was amused with her, and yet he grieved with her as well.
But Susannah was a reasonable creature, and in a moment she recovered herself. She realized that Warwick often wore a sardonic expression, and that what was in one’s head, even in this modern age of miracles and scientific discovery, was still one’s own private property. Her amusement at her own fear of having her thoughts pirated saved her, as did the lights which were lit and then flared up to announce an intermission. The darkness bred secrets, not the least of which were secretive sensual thoughts, which was why, she thought, turning a composed and amused face to Julian at last, she’d been taught that gentlemen sought most of their odd pleasures after nightfall. Remembering the girl who’d told her that all those years ago, the one who’d vowed never to visit with a gentleman except in sunlight, she smiled, restored by humor and common sense, and looked forward to discussing the forthcoming play with Julian sensibly now.
But he was up and on his feet and staring across the theater to an opposite box. And from the exultant look he wore, she knew immediately who it was he’d seen there as soon as the lights had come up.
Who could blame him, Susannah thought miserably, as Julian squeezed her hand and whispered a hurried good-bye as he sprang from out of his seat to hurry down the hallway at the interval, for Lady Moredon looked exquisite in red. She’d wanted to wear red herself, she brooded, childishly, but although the contessa had agreed that it was only fitting to dress more theatrically for the theater since everyone did, almost as though they felt they had to take advantage of the dramatic lighting and compete with the painted females on the stage, theatrical was not the same as blatant. She’d probably been too kind, Susannah now thought sadly, to mention that it was the dark-haired beauties who glowed in red like graceful poppies, while whey-faced light-haired creatures such as herself would disappear from view entirely in such a vital color, until they looked like gowns perambulating on their own, without a person inhabiting them. No, she breathed in a tiny sigh, blue it was for her, dark and clear blue, almost the color of the gentleman’s eyes who then interrupted the thoughts which were becoming the hue of her gown, by rising and saying cheerily, “Now we must parade along the corridors to give everyone a chance to see how well our unknown lady looks in blue. Lovely shade,” he said softly, taking her hand and placing it on his arm as he led her through the curtains and out from their box, “my favorite color actually, or is it green that I prefer? Odd, that,” he said gently. “My partiality changes every time I see you in one of your new frocks.”
She had the grace to blush, and then the courage to look up at him although she was again as close to him as she’d been the night before, only now midst a crowd of people, and now with his promise of propriety between them, and she said only “Thank you.” But she said it with such heartbreaking sincerity that his lean face grew grave, and he discovered and hated himself for patting that hand that lay upon his sleeve just as an aged, indulgent uncle might.
“His ribs are almost completely mended,” he mused as they strolled out into the crowded hallway, and she didn’t pretend to have to ask whom he spoke of. “One hopes the rapid beating of his heart doesn’t shatter them again. It’s an infatuation,” he said, as he nodded to a staring gentleman as matter-of-factly as if he were discussing the price of coal, rather than the state of her own wildly beating heart, “and infatuations are transient. Not to worry, he’ll need someone to pick him up when she falls from her pedestal. Ah,” he said then with great pleasure, glancing at her, “much better, nicely pink-cheeked now, embarrassment is the best cosmetic for young innocent girls. It’s only when you can’t summon up a blush anymore that we’ll have to resort to the rabbit’s foot and rouge, but then, we’ll also know you’ve succeeded with him and precisely what you two have been up to, won’t we? Very nice!” he said admiringly. “Now let’s introduce you to everyone before that alarmingly attractive flush and our opportunity fade away.”
While Susannah curtsied and nodded and smiled at an amazing array of gentlemen and ladies who had only whispered about her the night before, Julian stood just outside the curtains of another box on the opposite side of the theater. He waited there so long, turning his back and pretending he was engrossed in a program whenever anyone came along, that he feared the interval would be over and the deserted corridor would be flooded with returning theatergoers before he achieved his aims. But just before he decided to give up and seek his own seat again, the curtains stirred and a tall, thin, frowning woman pushed her way out through them. His wide smile of greeting was not returned, but then Miss Bridie knew no handsome young gentleman ever smiled so widely for her, but for what she came to tell him.
“She says,” the woman whispered harshly, “she can’t come out, and can’t speak to you now. But she says she’s glad to see you, and that she came so she could. And that’s the sum of it.” The woman sneered, and then, never forgetting that, importunate or not, impoverished or no, he was a gentleman, she added, with difficulty, “So good night, my lord.”
It was very little, he thought as he made his way back to Warwick’s box, but it was enough. Enough to know that she thought of him, enough to believe, as he gazed across to where she was sitting with her chaperon and the Earl of Alford, that she was nevertheless as acutely and. exhilaratingly aware of him at this moment, even if she never looked to him, as he was of her. And it was exhilarating, he thought, as the lights dimmed and the stage lights came up, this game of now you catch me, now you can’t, for it was a game he’d never played before. She was the first female to have ever refused him anything, and even so, he thought, gazing at her instead of the ranting Macbeth below him, he had every expectation, no ma
tter the obstacles, that it wouldn’t be long before she granted him all he desired, which was only all of herself, for all time.
He was completely in charity with the world then, for all that the world hadn’t treated him very well of late. But he had his health again, he thought, for he’d only occasional twinges in his chest when he exerted himself, and he had his dreams, and his investment in the future, which Warwick had only this day assured him was already so well in hand that at the very least he’d never have to take up the reins on the Brighton coach again if he didn’t wish to, but most of all, he thought, he had his friends. His best friend, Warwick, and his new friend, who was daily becoming more like the sister he’d never had—the charming and gentle and lovely Susannah.
And so he told her, when they were seated in the carriage again on their way home, for by then he was completely filled with goodwill and wanted to share it with everyone. Her sigh, he thought, was one of content, but the mockery in Warwick’s voice gave him pause.
“How enchanting,” his friend commented from his corner of the coach, “just what every beautiful young woman wishes to be told by a handsome young gentleman: ‘You are like the sister I never had.’ Oh, charming. Doubtless almost as enjoyable as you’d find it to be told you were the brother some young lovely never had. What a happy family we are indeed.”
Julian tried to get a glimpse of Susannah’s face when he handed her down from the coach, but she’d turned her head away from the gentle glow of the streetlamp’s light. As he attempted to see whether it was laughter or tears she was near as Warwick paused on the pavement to tell her to hurry along before Julian decided she was getting to be more like a mother to him every day, he lost sight of her face as the first blow fell upon his shoulder, spinning him halfway around.
And then as he automatically crouched, fists coming up, thinking wildly that it was dreams that were supposed to recur, not nightmares, he saw the three ragged men with clubs wading into their midst, and heard Warwick shout, above all the confusion, “Julian, to Susannah! At once! I’ll handle the rest!”
11
There were three things that Susannah desperately wanted to do when it was over. She wanted to hide, she wanted to weep, and she wanted to seek comforting. She did none of these. Instead, she acted without thought and soon found that her instincts had been right, and everything she’d read, or been told, or thought a lady should do in such circumstances would have been entirely wrong, at least for her to do, at least then.
So although her hand trembled badly as she held the handkerchief to Warwick’s streaming cheek, she kept it there, and even though her knees shook just as badly as she knelt on the pavement beside him, she stayed there until reason returned to his eyes and he shook his head and attempted to rise. And after he’d been helped into the house and seated, she stayed near to him, and insisted on holding the cloth to his cheek, even though he grimaced and told her he was getting blood all over her, and she ought to let him be, since the doctor had been summoned and was on his way. But she’d noted that the bleeding slowed when she kept pressure on it and so she ignored him, and in fact became bold enough to raise her shaking fingers to brush his hair back from his face to keep strands of it from being trapped beneath the cloth and getting into the wound, although when she did he glanced at her and frowned. But then he only put his head back against the chair as the contessa advised, and closed his eyes.
Julian returned to the room after a few moments, reporting that the physician was on his way, and frowning himself, he propped himself up against a wall as though he was still too keyed-up to sit, and stared at Warwick. Susannah glanced to him, and he smiled briefly, reassuringly, and though his hand continued to absently massage his side, she believed that he was as well as he’d claimed to be. It had been Warwick who’d been hurt in the foray, although he hadn’t acknowledged it until the last of their attackers had turned and run away, and only then he’d allowed himself to slump to his knees. Then Susannah had broken from her immobility and left the shadow of the coach to run to his side as he knelt on the pavement, the blood streaming from the long cut along the side of his face.
At first she’d been horrified into absolute stillness. She’d never seen violence done before, not of this sort, nor of this nature and magnitude. A horse being whipped, a child being slapped by an impatient mother, those had been the only acts of human rage she’d ever seen committed. But the reality of the three men marching forward, swinging clubs and being met by Warwick and Julian and their coachman’s fists, had shocked her to a complete stand. Then when she’d heard the sickening sound of the club landing on Warwick’s shoulder, she’d broken from that trance, and hadn’t known she’d lunged forward until she’d felt Julian thrust her back behind him again, and felt the contessa hold her firmly there, saying in a shaking voice, “Stay still, he’ll be killed protecting you if you don’t.”
She hadn’t realized that the sound of violence was as horrific as the sight of it, for men gasped and grunted loudly when they fought, and she never would have believed that she’d have been too terrified for Julian’s welfare, when he dodged a descending cudgel to duck under his foe’s arm and land a blow, to worry for herself. No, and she hadn’t known she could feel such blinding rage as she did when she looked to see where the other two men were grouped around Warwick and saw the knife flash in one of their hands, nor did she realize she could feel such grief when she did, for it was so profound she scarcely rejoiced when the door to the house swung open and footmen came rushing out to aid them. When the last of the three attackers fled limping into the darkness, she’d known only such a surge of impotent fury because they’d gotten free and not been killed in retribution that she’d wanted to run into the night after them and deal out justice herself. And only then had she felt sickened and weak-kneed and shaken.
But those reactions didn’t come to her until she had time to indulge them, when silence had fallen over the room where they all waited for the doctor to arrive. Then Susannah realized that she’d wanted to be alone after the attack, that she’d wanted to run to her room and hide beneath the covers, and that she could have gotten away with being fragile and calling for salts or help or sinking gracefully into a swoon. But she’d done none of these acceptable things; instead she sat next to Warwick and kept a blood-sopped handkerchief pressed to his face as she stroked back his hair, forgetting her place, her manners, and all her pretensions to being a lady in the process.
But the doctor approved her actions, and he told her so as he peeled back the handkerchief to study the wound. He brought a lamp closer so he could get a better look at it, so that when Warwick then opened his eyes and saw her face, he went a shade paler himself.
“Good grief, Susannah,” he said weakly, “don’t look at the thing. Contessa, see her to her room, this is no sight for a young girl.”
Before Susannah could object, the doctor did, misinterpreting the delicacy of feeling Warwick was implying for Susannah as being his diagnosis of the extent of the damage.
“It’s not half so bad as it looks,” he muttered as he began to clean the wound, “nor half so deep, lucky chap, though it’s true you’ve bled like a stuck pig, and would’ve bled yourself out if it weren’t for this lady’s quick thinking. Aye,” he said, as his patient winced at something he anointed the wound with, “and because she’s kept it pressed together, I believe we can get away with not stitching it up too, for if I did, no matter what my craftsmanship, then you’d have your face decorated with a jagged track for the rest of your life. Believe it or not, you’ve cause to be pleased the villain had a nicely sharpened knife in hand, because he’s left a nice clean cut behind him. So I think if I seal up the ends neatly now, and keep them together with the salve and the bandage, we can have you healed without a lifetime souvenir of the night.”
“It scarcely matters,” Warwick laughed softly, and then added in a thready voice that was far from his normal tone, “I’m not the Mona Lisa, my friend, so my defacement wouldn’
t be a crime, even if it were noticed.”
But if he had no illusions about his beauty, he was still, after all, a young man, and so found himself relaxing, vastly relieved that he wouldn’t be transformed into some sort of a monster from his night’s adventures, and so he began to say, until the doctor hushed him, saying it was delicate work he was doing and his patient had to oblige him by keeping his mouth closed and his face still for it.
When he was done, the doctor nodded with satisfaction and then asked the ladies to leave, since he wanted his patient to remove his jacket so he could get on with the examination of other hurts.
“Sometimes the shock of such bloodletting conceals something even more vital,” the doctor mused.
But as Susannah and the contessa nodded mutely and began to leave the room, they heard Warwick disagree, and turning, saw him rising from his chair, although it was clear he had to grasp onto the back of it to do so.