Love in Disguise (The Love Trilogy, #1)

by Edith Layton

  There wasn’t even anyone for her to talk with as she wandered and waited. Since the contessa had different training, or at the least, more experience with it, and also because she wasn’t so personally involved, she’d gone to her room for an afternoon nap that threatened to slide into evening and become a night’s sleep. Susannah was bored and anxious and edgy when the butler went to answer a summons at the door in the late afternoon.

  And so that was why she completely forgot her role as guest and ran to the door to hear if it were news of Warwick and Julian. And, of course, that was why she then completely forgot her role as lady, and despite all of the astute butler’s hints—raised eyebrows and discreet coughs, telling of his hesitancy to comply with her wishes—insisted on inviting the strange gentleman in, and interviewing him herself, by herself, in the drawing room.

  *

  They’d taken Warwick’s light curricle into a district where hired hackney coaches would not go. Although Julian had wondered if they weren’t making too much of a splash, as he noted the crafty, hard, and sullen faces observing them as their blooded high-stepping team picked gracefully through the filthy, teeming streets, Warwick assured him that his clothes, face, and voice were enough to alert the entire district, so there was no need to try to dissemble by walking where they might drive. And anyway, he’d said, with the fleeting ghost of a smile behind his bandage, the way news traveled in such a place, they were probably remarked the moment they set out from his town house.

  His friend was amazed at how well Warwick knew the area, how easily he steered his team, threading it through narrow streets and down darkened alleyways, seeking out one low house after another. He was further astonished at how well Warwick predicted the people he met—for every starveling brat he picked as postboy did his job perfectly, so that not a scratch was ever found on the curricle when they emerged, blinking, from out of some stygian tavern, or when they came down from some hovel in one of the tenements high above the rank streets. And he was no little disturbed at how Warwick remained impassive as he interviewed opium eaters and drunkards, filthy bawds and pickpockets, procurers and their bizarre living merchandise of every sex, and received just as much respect from them in turn, however grudgingly given, as if he were the King of Thieves himself, while reacting to it as casually as if he dealt with them every day.

  “But I did once, my friend,” Warwick explained as they drove to what they hoped would be their last stop for the day, for evening was drawing on, and even Warwick seemed uneager to spend the night in the area. “Or almost every day, in my youth. And please don’t imagine I’ve got onto some unhealthy new scheme for increasing my riches. I receive such devotion here because of my wild youth, and I got that only because of my name. Yes, my ancestor Gentleman Jones may have ended rotting on a gibbet, but his great-great-grandson is rated aristocracy here because of that ill-famed life, and even more for his ill-fated end. It’s the nose, I think, that cinches it,” he said lightly, running a finger along the length of that high and narrow feature as he did, “that was handed down in the family with the ill-gotten goods, or so all the portraits and broadsheet caricatures insist. It’s the only good thing about it, I believe,” he mused, “except for the fact that I’d likely last longer underwater than such a pretty lad as you, if only because my standing on tiptoe would save the day for me,” he commented, as he drew his horses up under a half-legible sign which declared that they’d finally arrived at the Lost Sheep Inn.

  Once within the dark and foul-smelling place that had only a few wretches sleeping, or dead, in the sawdust on the floor, they were eyed by two reasonably healthy-looking young men, and then told that they were expected upstairs. As they climbed those narrow, circling steps, Warwick recognized the place as being the Lion’s den, and so he paused, and so he told Julian. But at Julian’s look of relief, for he was growing weary with the search, since everyone had been glad enough to talk with his friend, but they’d all grown silent as the grave at the mention of the Lion he was seeking, Warwick only chuckled.

  “It’s the same place, and so it’s his lodgings of course, but of course he isn’t here, and won’t be anymore.”

  Before Julian could challenge him, he said softly, as he continued following his escorts up the stairs, “Of course he’s not, because they’ve directed us here and let us see where it is.”

  It was the same apartment Warwick remembered, the same guards seemed posted at the doors, and the same bright-haired overdecorated young woman sat at the table. But this time, she was alone.

  She was young, though there was that in her small face which had never been young, and beneath her bright red hair it was entirely possible that her bright face might have been as beautiful as she’d painted it. Her figure was attractive as well, and displayed to advantage in her almost fashionable gown, and Warwick suppressed a smile as she rose and walked, swaying provocatively, toward her visitors, for he knew she’d never have approached them so if her protector were anywhere in sight or within leagues of hearing what she said.

  “He’s not here,” she said, while all the while she looked at Julian, studying him until he, although used to a female’s scrutiny, looked away, discomfited by her blunt appraisal.

  “Obviously,” Warwick answered, “but you’d hardly have allowed us to be led here again if there weren’t some message, or reason, from him.”

  “Oh, too true,” she said, giving up her examination of Julian in order to study Warwick’s battered face, only not so closely, and from a further step away. “It wasn’t him what got you, I was to say.”

  “And that’s all?” Warwick asked.

  “Aye,” she said, although she seemed amused now.

  “And he won’t be back here?”

  “Who’s to say?” She shrugged.

  “I thought you might,” Warwick said, smiling sadly.

  “I thought so too,” she said on a sudden laugh, “but the runners are onto him now. Someone’s set the cat to the pigeons.”

  “It wasn’t us,” Warwick said thoughtfully.

  “Oh, I know.” She grinned widely at that, looking far younger than she had. “You’re breathing, ain’t you?”

  “And no other message for us?” he asked, smiling back at her, though Julian seemed stunned.

  “Naw, not right now, not yet, not here, leastways,” she answered, seeming to grow more amused by the minute.

  “Tell him I honor my debts, all of them,” Warwick said, suddenly very serious, suddenly in great haste to be gone.

  He said very little to Julian after they’d left the Lost Sheep, and only replied in curt monosyllables as he sprang his team as best he could out of the slum district and then through the increasingly congested London evening traffic. Julian followed him as he hurried up the stairs to his town house after he’d thrown his reins to a footman, and was on his heels when he came walking rapidly into his entry hall.

  “You have a visitor—” the butler began, as his master snapped, “I know, has he left?”

  But he didn’t wait for a reply as he went to the drawing room and threw the door open wide.

  Susannah stood and smiled a greeting to them, her smile slipping and becoming more tremulous when she saw Warwick’s face. But standing in back of Warwick, Julian couldn’t see the expression that had alarmed her, he could only see the enormous, broad-shouldered square of a man who lazily rose from a chair at their entrance, as a grin of greeting spread over his wide and craggy face.

  “This is Mr. Sean Jonathan Ryan, Warwick, Julian. Mr. Ryan, may I present Mr. Jones, the Viscount Hazelton,” Susannah said correctly, introducing them.

  But though Julian took a step forward with his hand outstretched, Warwick moved to block him, and did not himself put out a hand, or incline his head or his body into the least semblance of a bow. Instead he stood erect and said coldly, “Otherwise known as Stephen Patrick Francis O’Brien.”

  “Possibly, but,” said Susannah, looking very surprised at the rudeness her host was sho
wing to his guest, “also, of course, as the Lion.”

  12

  The fair, lovely young woman stood quite still as the two gentlemen paused in the doorway to the drawing room. They remained where they were standing, arrested, as the large gentleman they’d just been introduced to shrugged and dropped his ignored outstretched hand to his side again.

  “The penalty, I might inform you,” the wide-shouldered man then said on a smile, “for murder, is the rope. But then, I need hardly remind you of that, Mr. Jones, need I?”

  Warwick unbent enough to smile, though he never took his eyes from Susannah as he replied absently, “No, but I doubt I worry you a great deal Mr. O’Brien…ah, Mr. Ryan.”

  “‘Lion’ will do,” the man rumbled comfortably, sitting down again and crossing his legs, “but I cautioned you because it’s the young lady I was worried about, not myself. You shouldn’t blame her, she couldn’t help it, you know, not really. Not that I held a gun to her head, mind, for my dear old mam taught me good manners, but I’ve a silver tongue, you know, which was the only other thing the poor old soul left to me.”

  “No,” Susannah said at once, “there’s no need to defend me, Mr. Ryan, I was not in the least beguiled, I was curious. You said you knew something that would be to Julian and Warwick’s advantage, and so I decided to admit you. It was entirely my own decision, for I couldn’t see what harm it could do.”

  “Aside from the fact that your visitor might have had you in seventeen pieces in less time than it takes to talk about,” Warwick said easily, though his fists remained knotted and his eyes blazed, “that is, if he didn’t decide to have you in less spectacular but more usual ways, why, none at all.”

  As Susannah’s face grew very pale, the large gentleman chuckled and said softly, “Now, now, Mr. Jones, it’s true she’s lovelier than anything I’ve seen in many a long day, but I’ve had a long day myself, and then too, you’ve seen my own little sweetheart, dear Sally, again only just this afternoon. She’s an engaging little creature, isn’t she? And demanding too. I’m a talented fellow but I have some limitations, and only so much stamina.” He grinned before he added slyly, “And today, at least, to misquote wildly from a nobler gent, I came to bury enmity between us, not to praise the lady”—he glanced at Susannah in such a way as he had not all the time he’d passed alone chatting with her, causing her to grow even whiter as she realized for the first time that Warwick was absolutely right and she ought never to have done as she did—“praise-worthy as she most certainly is.”

  “Then I think we ought to talk,” Warwick said, relenting, realizing no harm had been done, and from Susannah’s transparent distress, that the lesson had been taken. He turned his attention to his visitor. “No doubt you know we’ve been searching for you all day? Your dear little Sally was too amused at our call for it to be coincidence to find you here waiting for us.”

  “Of course,” his guest replied, obviously approving his host’s logic, “and I would’ve been glad to give you a chance to have at me with swords, or fists, or words, whatever your pleasure, gentlemen, if I had the leisure. But I had my own business to attend to, as I said. Someone peached on me, and though I generally find I can pay enough to turn official interest elsewhere, this time someone with entrée to higher, wealthier authorities made it difficult for me to remain where I was. Now I’m moved, now all’s secure, so now, before I go to ground, I thought I would oblige you. Now I’m at your disposal.”

  And so saying, he folded his hands in his lap, and looking very amused, sat back and waited for the two gentlemen staring at him to make their move.

  Julian had remained silent all the while. When Warwick had called Susannah to task, his own heart had seemed to stop as he became aware of the danger she’d put herself in with her attempts to help them. He recognized the man he saw before him, the one she’d entertained alone, as a dangerous one, not only because of his size and shape. This Lion’s obvious intelligence, purring speech, and easy humor made him all the more formidable. There was something about the man he almost recognized, but more that he was instantly wary of, and the way that he’d looked at Susannah had chilled him, so he said, before more could be said, “I think Susannah ought to leave now, don’t you agree, Warwick?”

  “I most certainly do not!” Susannah cried before Warwick could answer, her color having gone from white to a fiery blush. “It’s hardly fair! I sat and waited for you all day. I sat and spoke with Mr. Ryan too, and for all he pleases himself by leering like a jack o’lantern now, he was the soul of decency with me when we…were alone,” she said more quietly, realizing as she did that she ought not to have mentioned that again.

  So she went on quickly, “And if I have to suffer with you when you are hurt, and worry for you when you’re in danger, it’s not right that I should be asked to leave just when explanations for it are discussed. I’m not a child, and…and…being female doesn’t mean being senseless and blind and deaf too. If you want me to leave,” she said, realizing that they were all staring at her now in some wonder, and becoming slightly terrified by the unexpected force of her own emotions herself, she concluded, raising her chin so her voice wouldn’t lower, “why, then, I shall. But I’ll leave this house too, forever, and at once.”

  The first one to break the silence was the large sandy-haired gentleman, who said, in some wonderment, “I congratulate you.”

  But as he said this to Warwick and Julian, and not to her, Susannah was not best pleased, but she knew she’d gone very far and so didn’t say a word even when he added, “Whose is she, may I ask?”

  “Her own,” Warwick said in some amusement, the tension in the room suddenly gone with the smile he wore, which was answered by the one Julian displayed as well, “and I’m very sorry, Julian, but I don’t think I’m brave enough to oust her just now. Well, I’m still in bandages. Do you want a go at it? You’re almost mended. Or shall I ask the Lion here to do the honors?”

  And as the Lion quickly uttered his disclaimers with great mock apprehension, and Julian denied his willingness with equally outsize horror, they all began to laugh together. It was being accustomed to just that sort of masculine camaraderie, Susannah thought, that easy familiarity that these diverse gentlemen could show to each other now, even though two were true gentlemen and one was a professed thief and worse, that had seduced her into declaring her true feelings in the first place. Constant association with her two gentlemen had changed her, she realized. She’d never have believed she could be so nonchalant in speech with gentlemen, as free with them as she’d been with her own brothers, as easy with them as she’d been with her bosom friends at school, nor had she realized how quickly she’d lose all the airs and graces she’d been trained up to at that school. Surely, she thought, as she took the chair Julian indicated she should, near to him, surely a lady would not act as she had. But, she thought, hugging the thought to herself as Julian smiled reassurance at her and she settled to hear the men speak, then surely she would not have so much pleasure as she did now.

  “I came to say, as I told the pretty lady,” Lion said, “that I had nothing to do with the attack on you last night. I see you’ve gotten yourself some trophies from it, Mr. Jones, but as there were three of them armed and ready against your unpreparedness, I believe you came off best in the match. Oh, I know the details, though I didn’t arrange it or know of it until after. There’s nothing that goes on that’s wrong that I don’t know of, eventually. But I promise you, if I’d arranged it, it would’ve been done better. Aside from the fact that I believed we had an understanding, if I’d a grievance with you and wanted it finally settled the other night, Mr. Jones, trust me that our little chat would’ve been quite impossible to hold today.”

  He paused to let the import of his words register before he added, simply, “And because I believed we had that understanding, I came today as a matter of pride. My boyos wouldn’t have made such sloppy work of it, but then, my cullies won’t take coin from Lord Moredon neither, n
or will any I’ve control over. And that’s a great many. But hunger drives out fear, and there are too many in London town starving to care whether it’s me or hunger that gets to them first. There are wretches who’ll sell their mothers, their children, and their souls if the devil didn’t already have them, in order to eat, or drink. Those are the sort he hired this time, because those, the rogue ones that no one else wants, except for anatomy lessons, are the only ones he can get.”