by Edith Layton
“No, doctor,” he said in a strained monotone as he came to an unsteady stand, “see to my friend now, please, for I’ve unfinished business to see to tonight. I assure you I’ve no other hurts, or at least none that can’t wait until morning.”
The doctor scowled and stepped close to his patient, peering into his wide-open glazed eyes.
“Aye, shock setting in, as I thought. You’re one of the most reasonable men I’ve ever met, Mr. Jones, when you’re in your right mind, which I believe you’re not at present. I don’t think it’s from a blow on the head, I think it’s a passing thing, from the loss of blood and the surprise of it. But if you go now, you’ll wind up dead, if not from finding what you’re looking for, then from going to find it. And you’ll open up that wound again.”
“I really have to leave now,” Warwick said, beginning to make his way across the room.
“Warwick!” Julian cried sharply, striding to his side. “You must not.”
“Indeed, you mustn’t,” Susannah said, surprising herself as much as she did Warwick, for he paused and frowned down at her as she came up to him and laid a hand on his sleeve, “for I don’t wish to come with you, but I must if you go, if only to see that all my work didn’t go in vain. I’ll have to stand by you, bandages at the ready, and I’m really very sleepy now, but I don’t wish you to be scarred, you see,” she said cajolingly, further amazed to find that he was standing still attending to her just as though it weren’t nonsense she was spouting in an attempt to get him to stay.
“Exactly,” Julian said in the same spirit, though his eyes were troubled, knowing that if his friend were in his right senses he would laugh them out of his way, “and I do ache a bit, Warwick, and don’t fancy going trailing after you tonight either. Come on, old man, let’s get you into bed, with a hot brick at your feet, and we’ll pursue it further tomorrow. For my sake,” he added, as Warwick wavered, his eyes growing blanker with the effort of his thoughts, “and if not for me, then most certainly for Susannah.
“And,” he added to Susannah and the contessa later, as he came to report promptly on Warwick’s condition after he’d helped get him to bed, hurrying down the stairs still buttoning his shirt after the doctor had seen to him as well, “I promise you, if he hadn’t taken a hot brick at his feet, I would have dropped it on his head to keep him home tonight. And thank you, Susannah”—he smiled then—“for helping to get him still, and for your quick thinking. Remind me to call on you next time we’re attacked.”
“And you?” she asked at once, her great brown eyes so concerned that he checked for a moment, gazing down at her, before he said lightly, “Ah well, I didn’t do my ribs any great harm, but I didn’t do them much good either. That fiend of a physician taped me so tight this time that I thought he was planning to bury me in Egypt. No,” he laughed, “I’m fine, really. Now, you get to sleep yourself,” he said, flicking a finger against her upraised chin, “before I send the doctor to check you out too, and he’s in such a fit of healing, he’ll brew you an evil-tasting posset before you can explain there’s nothing the matter with you.”
But there was, she thought as she ducked her head and agreed and went to climb the stair to her room. Although, she thought sadly, as she allowed the result of fatigue and fear to take their toll at last, there was nothing any doctor could give her for it.
In the morning, Susannah was amazed to find that her limbs ached as though she’d been mountain-climbing the previous night, instead of only watching as an attempt was made to murder her two closest friends in the world. The contessa nodded when she came into Susannah’s room and heard her complaining in wonder over it, as she sat at the edge of her bed with her knee bent and her leg in her hands, attempting to massage the stiffness from out of her calves.
“A hot bath will put you right,” the older woman advised. “It’s only that your body, you see, was ready to do all the things that you’ve been trained not to do. A lady mustn’t face violence of feeling with violence of action as the gentlemen do, but I’m afraid her body doesn’t know that, and so it gets all knotted up tightly and ready for battle no matter what she’s been taught. And then, having done nothing to release all the waiting energy, it frequently sets that way. It’s the price,” the contessa said a bit sadly, “for being a female in this world, I believe. Or, at least, a well-behaved one. For if you’d actually been fighting,” she said thoughtfully, “which, of course, you could not, I believe you’d not be in such a condition now. In fact,” she added, after she’d requested that Susannah’s maid bring her a steaming bath instead of her usual tepid morning pitcher of water, “I too had to have a nice hot soak, but knowing the state of my emotions, I took it last night. I didn’t think to advise it for you, my dear, for I believed you needed sleep more then. And yes,” she said, before she left Susannah to her bath, “no need to hurry, I’ve been up for hours and asked and Mr. Jones is sleeping peacefully, oh dear, that sounds more dire than I intended,” she went on apologetically, “I only mean he’s doing very well so you can soak for as long as you wish.”
Susannah relished the idea of sinking into the warm water for hours, but before she did she had another question to ask, and so waited for the lady to be done with her rambling speech. She’d gotten used to her chaperon’s way of expressing herself, believing it to be the result, as the lady herself once said during one of her longer soliloquies, of having spent too much time with Mrs. Anderson, who’d never listened to her at all, much less replied. So she waited until the lady was done, and then asked, “And the viscount?”
“The viscount?” the contessa answered with a puzzled look—“why he’s fine, and downstairs having his breakfast.” So Susannah didn’t linger in her bath long, after all.
But two gentlemen were seated at the breakfast table when Susannah finally arrived there. Both had already done with their breakfast, but only one arose at her entrance. Warwick remained seated, but he said at once, “Forgive my not rising, Susannah. Not only do I fear that Julian will sit on me if I do, there’s also the matter of the fact that I’m not properly dressed, due to my invalidish condition. Now, while I do believe this to be the most beautiful gentleman’s dressing gown in existence, I don’t believe I ought to be flaunting it in front of a well-brought-up young female. But they won’t let me get dressed, and I won’t remain in my bed. So if you do what all well-brought-up females are so excellent at, which is pretending they don’t see what is right under their noses, and haven’t a clue as to what the gentlemen are doing, we’ll manage to scrape through this embarrassing moment with our reputations and our sensibilities intact.”
“I see only that I don’t have to ask: obviously you’re feeling quite yourself again this morning,” Susannah replied coolly, with only a hint of laughter coloring her voice as she took her seat at the table.
“Estimable creature,” Warwick said admiringly. “Yes, thank you, I am.”
“And I see it is a lovely shade of blue, and green,” she said, lowering her head to conceal her rising giggles.
“Just so,” he answered appreciatively, looking down to the long silken dressing gown he wore. “I’m particularly pleased with how many flowers there are per inch, and with how beautifully executed the occasional bee is, but then, Eastern weavers are quite accomplished.”
“Flowers?” she asked with a great show of amazement. “Bees? Why, whatever are you talking about?”
And while Warwick looked at her oddly, she went on quickly, before she could burst into laughter, “Why, I was discussing your eye, sir, and not your robe. Although, I’ll grant, I forgot to mention the purple, which is causing perhaps the greatest and most interesting color contrast to the rest of your face.”
Warwick grinned ruefully, acknowledging the gibe, touching the skin on his unbandaged cheek beneath his swollen, discolored eye as Julian and Susannah began to laugh together, but there was an enormous amount of appreciation to be seen glinting in his other, undamaged eye, as he said, “Saucy creature. Well
, what can you expect from a girl who breakfasts with gentlemen in their nightclothes?”
They all laughed at that, and Susannah got on with her breakfast, as the two gentlemen grew more serious and went on with the discussion that her entrance had obviously interrupted, which was about the last night’s events.
Susannah was still smiling to herself, enormously pleased with the success of her jest, and delighted to find that it grew easier with every passing day to joke with her host, and he seemed to like that very well. But so did she, for the longer she knew him, the easier she became in his company. She was congratulating herself on this newfound facility when she chanced to glance up at him again, and what she saw killed her laughter in her throat. For when he wasn’t exerting himself to be charming, or smiling, which he wasn’t while talking seriously with Julian, she could more easily see the extent of the damages he’d sustained.
He might not believe that he had a pleasing countenance, but it was, Susannah thought, or rather, it had been. Although his were not the sort of looks which astounded the eye instantly, as Julian’s were, he had a strong and strongly attractive face. But now a patch of white bandage obscured his right cheek entirely, and his left eye was, just as she’d mentioned, swollen to a profusion of bruised colors. His dark complexion was off color, and there were dark smudges beneath his eyes, as though his sleep, though sound, had not been a healthy one. The contrast between the two gentlemen couldn’t be more acute than it was this morning, for though Julian seemed equally concerned as he listened to what Warwick was saying, his golden hair and fair skin gave his handsome face the glow of youth and health, while Warwick looked worn and weary and very troubled.
But Susannah was too, when she began at last to listen to what they were saying. Warwick chanced to look to her, as she sat, fork arrested in air, halfway to her lips. Then he smiled again. “We’ve been rude, Julian. No, worse, we’ve been thoughtless, because rudeness can be amusing, and what we’ve done to Susannah isn’t amusing in the least. She’s heard half, poor girl, and half overheard is worse than all listened to, because, look at her face, she’s built on that half and come up with something far worse than there is.”
“I don’t know what can be worse,” Susannah admitted, putting down her fork, her appetite entirely gone. “You think that this Lord Moredon was behind that attack. Because he hates you both and because he wants to keep his sister from Julian, and he’s rich and influential and may have the support of this…ruthless king of the underworld, this Lion you mentioned. How can anything be worse? How can either of you ever set foot out the front door again, knowing this?”
“You’re right, Warwick,” Julian said on a smile, “far worse. Susannah,” he said, “it’s not half so bad as that. Yes, it’s Lord Moredon that’s responsible, or so we think, because we haven’t that many enemies, and it certainly wasn’t coincidence. Those men weren’t set on robbing us, only maiming us. But with all his money, Sir Robert’s not so influential any longer, and the point is that Warwick has some…connections, and one of them may be this Lion fellow, so we can find out just who is responsible. Then we can put a stop to it. It’s when you don’t know who’s at fault that you have trouble, so don’t worry, we’ve got everything in hand.”
“Everything in hand?” Susannah said, aghast, and then angry; and then, suddenly far too angry to be aware or shocked or even care that she could speak up so to Julian, and dare to confront Warwick as well, she gasped, “In hand? It seems to me,” she went on furiously, “that you’ve gotten everything in ribs, and eyes, and faces up to now, but I don’t recall the doctor patching up any hands lately. Perhaps that will be next time, eh? All you have to do is to let Lady Moredon alone, and you can live without pain. All you have to do is continue to see her, and soon, likely, we’ll all have everything in hand, and face and heart too, no doubt, aye!” she said, too wound up to care that Julian was staring at her gravely, or to notice that Warwick was watching her with something very like delight.
The silence that greeted her when she was done was sharper than a rebuke. She colored up and dropped her gaze, unwilling now to look at the hurt she could at last recognize in Julian’s open face. She kept her eyes on her breakfast plate, and so could only hear him say softly, gently, and entirely reasonably, “Ah, Susannah. You may not agree with my taste in ladyloves, and you don’t have to, but I promise you, I wouldn’t pursue where no lead was given. And I’m trying to erase those objections of her brother’s. In fact, so soon as these ribs you mentioned are knit up tightly enough, I think I’ll be getting back on the Thunder, and so will bring no danger down upon anyone here any longer. I’ll do anything to restore my fortunes faster, anyway, for that’s the problem as I see it. Lord Robert doesn’t want a beggar to carry off his sister, and for all he’s not a good man, who can blame him? But more,” he said in so imperative a tone that she looked up and so was as caught in his clear knowing gaze as if he’d shone a light upon her, “he’s gone beyond objecting to my suit, he’s interfered with my life…our lives. And what sort of a man would I be if I allowed my liberty to be taken away because of another man’s whim? Whether I loved the lady or not, I’d not be much of a man then, would I?”
“And as I certainly don’t love the lady,” Warwick put in softly, “it’s clear the issue is more about the state of our freedom than of Julian’s heart.”
“If it’s your safety that’s worrying you,” Julian said at once, “don’t worry, that’s what I’m off to see about today, and if there’s any real danger to you, we’ll certainly make sure that you’re well out of it before we go any further.”
“Ah, not too well put, my boy,” Warwick said, smiling at Susannah’s outraged expression, “since right now she looks—in hair, coloring, and certainly in emotion—like a direct descendant of one of those fierce ladies who rode in a chariot, spear at the ready, protecting her menfolk from those nasty Roman chaps when they threatened them. And anyway, Julian, my dear friend,” he added, turning his attention to the blond gentleman, “you’re in error. You are not going anywhere, I’m sending out various summonses today, and tomorrow, as soon as the doctor peeks under his dressing and pronounces me fit to scowl and shout again, I shall be going. Not you. They’ll eat you alive where I’m bound.”
“Oh yes,” Julian said angrily, wheeling about to face his host, “I only drove the coach from Brighton and back past midnight and across the heath for a month of Sundays, so I’m clearly far too delicate a flower to do what the great Mr. Jones can do. They’ll eat me up alive,” he mocked. “Oh, I’m terrified, can you point out a bed I can hide under, Mr. Jones?”
“I know the lay of the land,” Warwick said icily, looking down his long nose at his friend, an effect that would have been coldly aristocratic but was somewhat ruined by the battering his face had taken, “and however virile you undoubtedly are, you look much the gent, my dear.”
“And you, I suppose,” Julian said with some heat, “look far more able to defend yourself, swathed in bandages like Ramses the First.”
“Why don’t you go together?” Susannah asked softly.
Warwick replied, “Bandaged or not, Julian, I know those low streets, I know how to deal with the king of the dunghill, and you do not.”
As Julian snapped, “Yes, and they’ll deal with you promptly enough, they won’t even need a knife this time, I believe they can use a feather—”
And Susannah said again, more sharply, “Why don’t you go together?”
The annoyance in her voice, as well as the tone of it, stopped them abruptly. They gazed at each other, and then at her, and they both began to laugh.
“Thank you, Mama,” Warwick said contritely when he was able. “And will you come with me tomorrow, as Nurse asks, Julian?”
“I’d be pleased to, Warwick,” Julian said, on a grin. “And thank you, Susannah.”
She smiled to herself, and was thinking up a suitably cool reply to cover the amazingly good feeling their restored good feeling evoked in
her, when Julian commented approvingly on the civilizing influence of females, and then Warwick agreed, and began to mention such famous feminine peacemakers as Eve, Medea, Joan of Arc, Helen of Troy, Mary, Queen of Scots…until Susannah pretended outrage, and they all fell to laughing again.
Watching the two gentlemen so in concert with each other again, Susannah, oddly enough, felt her own merriment fade. There was a flash of awareness in that moment for her. For it seemed to her then that the two gentlemen, one dark, one light, were part of each other, and parcel of her happiness, and yet since the one she wanted could never want her, so she would always be doomed to doing just what she did now, which was to only look on and watch their happiness and try to take what comfort she could from that.
They took her sudden silence for concern for them, and then began to assure her of their safety, and of her own. But she’d never for a moment worried about herself, since she felt more secure when with the two of them than she ever had in her life, and thought that no hostility, physical or verbal, from either acts of desperate ragged men in the streets, or words of silk-clad aristocrats at a ball, could touch her, or harm her, so long as they were there with her.
But they were gone all day the next day, and it was dreary for Susannah, and there was no mistaking the fact that she was nervous and uncomfortable with herself as she wandered the house wondering what was happening to them. Warwick had been pronounced fit enough to go out if he were a madman, as the doctor had said, and as he’d replied that was fair enough, it hadn’t been long until he and Julian had left to search for the man they called the Lion, who might have knowledge of those who’d been hired to assault them. Not for the first time, Susannah regretted the circumstance of her gender, for it didn’t seem fair that she could only pace and wait for word of them, while they might go out and meet their difficulties head-on. She remembered the contessa’s explanation for her aching body the day after the attack as she continued to prowl the lower portions of Warwick’s town house, and wondered if her body were again refusing to admit to the rules society forced upon it, for there was no way she could be comfortable sitting down, or lying down, or even standing still this day, not until she knew what had become of her two gentlemen.